At 6:45am on December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered by Luigi Mangione. Police have been investigating the scene, although motives as to why Mangione would kill are unclear.

Introducing Key Players

Luigi Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and most recently lived in Honolulu, Hawaii (NY Times). He is 26 years old, and he was the 2016 valedictorian of the private all-boys Gilman school before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in engineering. In 2023, he had a surgical procedure on his back because of struggles with chronic pain and brain fog (BBC), as he would describe on Reddit often until he had surgery. 

Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, lived in Maple Grove, Minnesota (NY Times). He graduated from the University of Iowa in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration (CBS News). Thompson worked at UnitedHealthcare for 20 years. According to CBS News, he worked as “chief financial officer for the company’s Employer and Individual, Community and State and Medicare and Retirement businesses.” A chief financial officer manages multiple tasks such as financial planning, budgeting, and establishing compliance with regulations.  He also served as the financial controller for UnitedHealthcare’s Employer and Individual business and was a director in the company’s corporate development division.” Unfortunately, he was murdered on December 4 at the golden age of 50-years-old. 

Setting the Scene

According to authorities, the murder was meticulously planned, and it occurred on December 4 at around 6:45am as Thompson showed up to Hilton hotel on West 54th Street to get ready for a “UnitedHealthcare investors’ day gathering,” as described by The New York Times. He was shot multiple times, including once in the back and in the leg (CBS News) with a pistol fitted with a silencer (NY Times) by a man in a dark hooded jacket and a mask that covered the bottom of his face with a gray backpack. Once Thompson folded, the man walked over to the body, pointed the gun at him one more time, confirmed Thompson was dead, and then fled the scene. The hooded man escaped to Central Park in a taxi on the Upper West Side. 

The Investigation

When police arrived at the scene, they found 3 bullet casings with the words “deny,” “delay,” and “depose” written in Sharpie on them. They speculate that the words reference the “3 D’s of insurance” as described by the industry’s critics: “delay,” “deny,” and “defend” (CBS News). “Delay” refers to how insurance companies deliberately take a long time to process legal items such as paperwork or claims, “deny” is simply downright refusing to cover a claim, and “defend” alludes to policyholders potentially suing, so the company is likely to use legal tactics to belligerently contest said claim in court.

Mangione is currently being held in Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York for murder charges. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “Mangione is charged with one count of using a firearm to commit murder…one count of stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death…and one count of discharging a firearm that was equipped with a silencer in furtherance of a crime of violence.” 

Authorities have lots of evidence that connect Luigi Mangione to the murder of the Unitedhealthcare CEO. To begin, they found a fake ID and a Faraday bag, a bag that you can put your phone in so the police have trouble tracking you, that assisted with the police being unable to track him (Kramer and McNicholas). Mangione, “a careful and complicated man,” supposedly made the weapon and suppressor speculated to have been used in the murder. He allegedly ordered a receiver (the bottom part of a ghost gun) and 3D-printed the rest of the gun as well as the silencer. Authorities have also matched a gun to the bullet casings. They also recovered a two-and-a-half page handwritten document in his backpack when they arrested him in Altoona, PA. The document makes it very clear that Mangione was enraged with the healthcare industry, further tying him to the case. His obsession with the Unabomber–Ted Kaczynski– also leads police to think that Mangione was indeed the shooter at the scene. The review he left on the Unabomber’s book, called Industrial Society and Its Future, a.k.a The Unabomber Manifesto. The last sentence of his review was: “Violence never solved anything” is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.” Police say, “in his view, violence can be justified to right social wrongs. So this was an endorsement of Ted Kaczynski and his book.”

The forensic evidence is undeniable, too. For one, there are fingerprints. At the scene of the crime, there were not any on the bullet casings, but there was a cell phone that was in the backpack and is currently being processed. They were also able to gather more fingerprints from a water bottle and a KIND bar by a Starbucks, which is where they found surveillance footage of the suspect before the shooting. A recovered cell phone with fingerprints in a nearby alley from the hotel where the shooting took place has been proven to match the ones of the water bottle and KIND bar, too.

Mangione’s motive to kill the UnitedHealthcare CEO is still unclear, but it is possible that he targeted such a well-known company because of his back surgery. Spinal surgery costs thousands and thousands of dollars, and sometimes insurance isn’t all that helpful. Perhaps Mangione had trouble paying off all the money and then decided to make Thompson a mark to show his own frustration with healthcare insurance. Some also speculate that Mangione did it more so as a political statement rather than revenge because of the government prioritizing these higher class citizens over the regular middle class. 

Updates

Since being transferred to a New York facility from Altoona, PA, Mangione has received letters from supporters and expressed gratitude toward receiving these letters (Jonko). His defense has created a website for him (luigimangioneinfo.com) where he speaks about the letters: “I am overwhelmed by – and grateful for – everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support. Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions, as mail has flooded MDC from across the country, and around the globe. While it is impossible for me to reply to most letters, please know that I read every one that I receive. Thank you again to everyone who took the time to write. I look forward to hearing more in the future.” This is Mangione’s first statement to the public since his arrest back in December of 2024. Officials have denounced the killing and those supporting it, such as Josh Shapiro who commented that “In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this: He is no hero.” Although he faces charges in Pennsylvania, he has pleaded not guilty, and supporters have subsidized nearly $400,000 to Mangione’s legal team. His most recent court trial was February 21st.