A 26-year-old man identified as Luigi Mangione arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania has been identified as the person of interest in the Dec. 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, according to the New York Times. Mangione was arrested with what police have described as a handwritten “manifesto,” according to the Times, as well as a firearm described as a ghost gun, a weapon assembled from parts either purchased individually or sometimes 3D printed.
Mangione was arrested, roughly 400 miles west of New York City, on firearms charges but has not been charged with the death of Thompson, according to the Times. He appeared for a preliminary arraignment in a Blair County, Pennsylvania, court at 6 p.m. ET. and has been charged with five crimes in the state, including “carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to the authorities and possessing instruments of crime,” according to the Times.
Mangione was sitting at McDonald’s with a laptop wearing a blue medical mask, according to the criminal complaint obtained by KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. The cops on the scene approached and asked Mangione if he’d recently been to New York and he “became quiet and started to shake,” according to the complaint.
Mangione was reportedly carrying “multiple” fake IDs, including one with the name Mark Rosario which has an address in Maplewood, an affluent suburb of Newark, New Jersey. The same name and address were allegedly used at the hostel where the shooter stayed in New York.
BREAKING: Shooting suspect Luigi Mangione seen for the first time since being arrested in PA. Police led him into court. #fox10phoenix pic.twitter.com/zLCuSO53hR
— Habib Obi (@ObiSun) December 9, 2024
CNN quoted an unnamed police official who saw the alleged manifesto, which included lines like “These parasites had it coming.” Another line published by CNN reads, “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.” The accuracy of those quotes could not be independently verified by Gizmodo.
The New York Times reports Mangione was the valedictorian at Gilman School, a private all-boys high school in Baltimore. The internet was also quick to dive into Mangione’s digital footprint, which presents a mix of political ideas that perhaps defy conventional left-right divides. Mangione’s X account lists him as studying “Computer Science @ Penn” and his LinkedIn lists his location as Honolulu, Hawaii. The University of Pennsylvania confirmed to the Times that Mangione graduated in 2020 with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering.
A photo obtained by WNBC shows the gun allegedly used to carrying out the killing, which could be part of a 3D printed parts kit.
Initial reports indicate that the firearm used in the brazen murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assembled from a 3D-printed parts kit completion, specifically the Chairmanwon V1 model. This model is a 3D-printed frame designed to accommodate Glock components.
— Dr Yannick Veilleux-Lepage (@yveilleuxlepage.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 12:51 PM
The complaint goes into more detail about the weapon that was found:
During a search of the Defendant’s backpack, Officers located a black 3D-printed pistol and a black silencer. The pistol had a metal slide and a plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel. The pistol had one loaded Glock magazine with six nine-millimeter full metal jacket rounds. There was also one loose nine-millimeter hollow point round. The silencer was also 3D printed.
Mangione’s LinkedIn also lists him as being a data engineer at TrueCar Inc. in Santa Monica since 2020, which the company confirmed to the New York Times, though said he last worked there in 2023. His LinkedIn also lists previous work as a teaching assistant in artificial intelligence at Stanford in the summer of 2019 and an internship at Firaxis Games in 2016 and 2017.
Reporter Jacob Silverman pointed out on X that Mangione’s banner image on that social media platform appears to show an X-ray. The obvious implication is that Mangione may have experienced health issues in some way that may point to some kind of motivation for a crime against a healthcare CEO.
I'm guessing this middle photo in Luigi Mangione's X banner has some bearing on the situation here pic.twitter.com/BltTPY7BJS
— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) December 9, 2024
Barstool reporter Jack Mac tweeted about having an unnamed source who told him that Mangione injured his back surfing but the surgery “didn’t go great,” claims Gizmodo could not independently verify. Mac also said his back surgery “changed everything and he went “absolutely crazy.”
Spoke with a source that had a lot of friends that went to high school with Luigi Mangione.
What keeps coming up is a back surgery that “changed everything” for him and he went “absolutely crazy.”
Checks out with his GoodReads history and the X-Ray in his header. pic.twitter.com/dsrXMQcqB2
— Jack Mac (@JackMacCFB) December 9, 2024
The reviews on what appear to be Mangione’s account on Goodreads include everything from the Unabomber’s manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future (which he gives 4/5 stars) to Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (which he gives 5/5 stars). Assuming it’s the same Mangione—and it does look like the photo in the profile is similar to one of the images released by police—the 26-year-old seems to have also reviewed books like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the 2015 biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance.
From Mangione’s review of Ted Kaczinski’s book:
Clearly written by a mathematics prodigy. Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life.
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. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.
He was a violent individual – rightfully imprisoned – who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.
People obviously found his review interesting given the fact that he is a person of interest in a homicide investigation with potential political motives. “Reviewing the unabomber’s manifesto on goodreads and giving it a 4/5 is so fucking funny man,” one online humorist known as Ceej wrote on Bluesky.
reviewing the unabomber’s manifesto on goodreads and giving it a 4/5 is so fucking funny man
— ceej (@ceej.online) December 9, 2024 at 10:50 AM
Magione tweeted about a number of topics, including his belief that porn should be regulated, in a post from earlier this year.
Porn should be regulated no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel
— Luigi Mangione (@PepMangione) January 24, 2024
Social media also quickly filled up with jokes about Mangione’s identification at a McDonald’s, including jokes about the elderly customer who apparently called police after he spotted someone who looked like the security camera images that had been released by law enforcement. Some joked about giving the McDonald’s where Mangione was arrested a bad review on Yelp.
The New York Times reports Mangione was a member of the Hub Coworking Hawaii coworking space in Honolulu. He reportedly would come in with others from Surfbreak a coliving space for “digital nomads”—people whose jobs allow them to work remotely from places like Hawaii.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro gave a press conference Monday evening about the case and admonished anyone who may be celebrating the killing of a health insurance CEO.
“In some dark corners, he’s being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this, he is no hero. The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 at McDonald’s this morning,” Shapiro said.
The gap between the way that mainstream TV news has talked about the killing and the way it’s being discussed online has been astonishing. There’s clearly an anger in the U.S. about the way that health care is administered and some celebrated the death of the CEO, or at least expressed ambivalence. UnitedHealth Group’s Facebook post about the death of Thompson was met with over 90,000 laughing emojis before that feature was disabled.
Some people have made videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram praising the killer, and there are even fan-edits attacking the health insurance CEO and politicians.
THEY ARE MAKING FAN EDITS ON TIKTOK pic.twitter.com/vZlIt8TUDn
— tooth 🔆🇵🇸🇮🇪 (@toothbrushlord) December 7, 2024
Now that we may have a name for a person who could be connected to the case, it will be interesting to see how the conversation changes online. Because that can change dramatically when a mysterious figure known only as a mythologized outlaw becomes a real person with a history and opinions that may differ from preconceived notions about his motivation.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated as we learn more.
