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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was truly cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post stated: “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 alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame 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 – “delay”, “refuse” and “depose”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any mention of myths, folk heroes, champions or monsters will not be allowed in court in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.