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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid whether we like it or not’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the press in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.