Luigi Mangione, the New York City Shooter, and the For-Profit Health Care System: Investigating “Famerial Robbers” on Social Media

In the wake of praise for the act of violent vigilantism, some companies removed biographical information and photographs of their executives from their websites.

The man in custody is named Luigi Mangione by New York City police. At this time, Mangione is considered a “person of interest” in the case that launched a nationwide manhunt and sparked heated discussions about the state of for-profit health care in the United States.

The New York Police Commissioner said that Mangione was in custody on firearm charges. He is a person of interest in the case and has not been charged.

During the press conference featuring the NYPD police chief and embattled Mayor Eric Adams, police said an employee at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, recognized Mangione from photos made public by police and called local authorities.

The New York police called Thompson’s death a brazen, targeted murder. Mangione was taken into custody this morning at a fast food restaurant on unrelated charges.

The social media pages that appear to belong to Mangione show a complicated picture of an Ivy League educated data engineer who is interested in philosophy and literature.

In one online review by “Luigi Mangione” of the book Industrial Society and Its Future, the anti-technology essay penned by the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski, the reviewer wrote: “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. It’s impossible to ignore how prescient some of his predictions were.

Critics of the U.S. health care system felt that the shooter’s actions could have been the result of the system that prioritized profits over people’s well-being.

On social media, images of the suspected shooter — mask down and smiling in surveillance camera footage — were circulated as the face of a modern-day folk hero who had taken action against a system perceived to be rife with corruption.

Police were led to Mangione via a “combination of old-school detective work and new age technology,” Tisch said. “We deployed drones, K9 units, and scuba divers. We leveraged the domain awareness system, argos cameras, and conducted aviation canvases.”

An investigation of the incident of the shooting death of Brian Thompson at the New York Hilton Midtown, New York, during a meeting with law enforcement

At the scene of Thompson’s shooting outside the New York Hilton Midtown, NYPD investigators discovered bullet casings bearing the words “delay,” “depose,” and “deny,” likely references to the ways in which health insurance companies refuse to cover customers’ medical claims. According to the Times, authorities say Mangione was carrying a “manifesto” that included passages “criticizing health care companies for putting profits above care.”

He was an Ivy League educated tech worker who was interested in philosophy and self-help advice, as well as being a feminist, according to his social media accounts.

He then attended the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated in 2020 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science, according to his LinkedIn page. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that while at Penn Mangione founded a club that grew to include over 50 members.

Mangione worked at TrueCar as a data engineer. A spokesperson for the company said via email that Mangione “has not been an employee of our company since 2023.”

The writings of Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, had a positive review left on his Goodreads account.

Authorities arrested a man in Pennsylvania on Monday who police say is connected to the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last week.

The UnitedHealthcare contacted by WIRED did not reply immediately. The company had said in a statement provided to other media outlets that it hoped that today’s apprehension would bring some relief to Brian’s family and friends. We are grateful for law enforcement’s assistance in the investigation. Everyone is asked to respect the family’s privacy while they mourn.