A dedicated student, from a wealthy family, who had not been heard from for months: Luigi Mangione He was arrested this Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvaniaafter six days of intense police search for the Murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompsonthe largest health insurer in the US. The suspect, 26 years old, went to court this Tuesday dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and showing his anger: “This is out of line and an insult to the intelligence of the American people.”
Mangione was arrested when he was recognized at a McDonald’s. After receiving a tip, the police arrived at the scene and found the suspect. sitting at a table in the back, wearing a mask and using a laptop. When they asked for documentation, the young man gave them a fake New Jersey driver’s license under the name Mark Rosario, which matched the identification he would have used to register at the New York hostel before the shooting.
The officers asked him if he had been in New York recently, to which Mangione “fell silent and began to shake,” according to police. In the end, he ended up confessing his true identity. At the time of his arrest, carried a ‘ghost’ gun with a silencer that could have been made with a 3D printersix 9-millimeter bullets and 10,000 dollars in cash, 2,000 of them in foreign currency, although the detainee assures that this money is not his and he does not know where it came from.
But what has drawn the most attention has been a three-page handwritten document that shows his “ill will toward American corporations,” according to authorities. Thus, in this letter, Mangione claims to have acted alone: ​​”To the federals, I will be brief, because I respect what they do for our country. To save you a long investigation, I clearly state that I was not working with anyone“.”I apologize for any conflict or trauma, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply deserved it,” he adds, according to American media.
An impeccable young man from a wealthy family
Luigi Mangione was until now a promising young man who studied at an elite university and was passionate about video games. Born in Maryland, he grew up in the from a wealthy family with roots in the real estate sectors. The suspect is also the cousin of Republican Congressman Nino Mangione, who has called the arrest a devastating blow.
His grandparents, Nicholas and Mary Mangione, founded Lorien Health Systems, a network of nursing homes where the detainee worked as a volunteer, and ran WCBM, a conservative radio station in Baltimore. The grandfather, who died in 2008, was a successful real estate developer and one of his best-known projects was Turf Valley Resort, a luxury conference and retreat center he purchased in 1978.
Likewise, his family manages a foundation with assets close to 4.5 million dollars, She was a benefactor of Loyola University of Maryland and bought the Hayfields Country Club north of Baltimore in 1986. Likewise, they donated to various causes, including Catholic organizations, universities and the arts, according to several American media.
All this favored a good education for Mangione, who He had an impeccable academic record. He was valedictorian of his class at the prestigious Gilman School in Baltimore and, in 2020, earned a degree in computer science from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. There he was part of the exclusive academic society Etta Kappa Nu, reserved for the most outstanding students in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and was a teaching assistant.
In 2019, he was chief advisor and Stanford Pre-College Studies Teaching Assistantaccording to his LinkedIn profile. Mangione also founded a video game development club in Pennsylvania, where he led a small team of programmers, writers, musicians, artists and designers on the “College Simulator” project.
On the other hand, his ideology is somewhat more ambiguous: on his social networks he followed public and controversial figures such as the comedian Joe Rogan, the anti-vaccine Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Edward Snowden. But worrying was his positive review on Goodreads of Theodore Kaczynski’s manifestoterrorist known as ‘Unabomber’, whom he described as an “extreme political revolutionary” and justified violence as a tool to “survive” and “revolutionize” in times of crisis.
No news for months
In addition to Maryland, Mangione has lived in San Francisco and his last known address is in Honolulu (Hawaii). From January to June 2022, the young man lived in Surfbreak, a space of co-living just outside the touristy Hawaiian neighborhood of Waikiki. Like other residents, was subjected to a background check, according to Josiah Ryan, spokesman for Surfbreak owner and founder RJ Martin, reports the Associated Press.
“Luigi was a great guy. There were no complaints or any indication that he could point to those alleged crimes that they say he committed,” Ryan said. The spokesperson has assured that Mangione I had severe back pain and my spine was “misaligned”which interfered with aspects of his life. The problem worsened after a surfing incident and in 2023 he returned to the east coast of the United States to undergo surgery.
Afterwards, he returned to Honolulu and rented an apartment. However, at one point he stopped responding to messages and disappeared. In fact, both the companions and the accommodation as well as Mangione’s own relatives They stopped hearing from him for approximately six months. Most of his loved ones did not know anything about his whereabouts until Monday, when police revealed his arrest as the main suspect in killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Mangione, who is in prison without bail, is charged in New York with one count of first-degree murder, one count of manufacturing a weapon and three counts of weapons possession. Additionally, in Pennsylvania he has been charged with five other crimes, including forgery of identification documents. Now, researchers are trying to reconstruct why the young man could have deviated from a path full of comforts to carry out the crime.