From Ivy League graduate to suspected assassin: what we know about Luigi Mangione

The suspect in the high-profile killing of a US health insurance CEO hails from a wealthy family but suffered debilitating pain and had recently lost relatives.

Luigi Mangione in police custody in the US.

The 26-year-old man charged with the brazen shooting murder of a healthcare executive in midtown Manhattan last week is an Ivy League university graduate who had “some ill-will toward corporate America” and had recently become estranged from friends and family.

Luigi Mangione, charged in New York with murder, forgery and possession of a weapon, was also a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, an academic honour ­society for students in electrical and computer engineering, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr Mangione was arrested in a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, about 130km east of Pittsburgh on Monday, after an employee called police when recognising him as a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, 50, outside a Manhattan hotel last Wednesday.

The banner photo of Luigi Mangione's X account.

The New York City Police ­Department said on Tuesday AEDT that Mr Mangione had been acting suspiciously and was initially arrested on firearms charges and taken in for questioning. He had a silencer and what investigators ­labelled a “ghost-gun”, which do not carry serial numbers and can be made from a 3D printer.

Mr Mangione was carrying a US passport and several fake IDs, including one that matched that used by the murder suspect at a hostel in the upper west side of Manhattan on November 24.

He also had clothing and a mask consistent with the suspect.

Police chief Joseph Kenny said the arrested man had a three-page handwritten document demonstrating “ill-will toward corporate America” and that criticised health insurers for prioritising profits above care.

The New York Times reported that the manifesto mentioned UnitedHealthcare by name, noting the size of the company and how much money it makes.

Luigi Mangione in a police van.

A review by The Wall Street Journal of Mr Mangione’s reading diet suggested that at some point his ideas about activism had crossed into an interest in violence. In January he wrote a chilling review on the Goodreads book review site of Theodore John Kaczynski’s ­Industrial Society and Its Future, also known as The Unabomber Manifesto, giving it four stars.

In his review, he wrote: “A take I found online that I think is interesting. Had the balls to recognise that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere and at the end of the day, he’s probably right … When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”

In recent months, there were hints Mr Mangione had become estranged from friends and family, according to his social media ­accounts, which may have also shed light on his own health. The banner photo of his X account featured an X-ray image of a person’s back after what appears to be a ­spinal fusion surgery. His Goodreads profile shows he had been reading books about back pain, a debilitating and continued problem for him, according to The New York Times.

A spokesman for the owner of an accommodation centre in Honolulu called Surfbreak where Mr Mangione lived for about six months said a back injury had stopped him surfing and “even hampered his romantic life”.

He had also lost two grandparents – a grandmother in 2013 and a grandfather in 2017.

The banner photo of Luigi Mangione's X account.

The New York Times reported that Mr Mangione, who grew up in Maryland, had used his valedictorian address at wealthy Gilman high school to praise his classmates for “coming up with new ideas and challenging the world around it”.

The NYT said tuition at Gilman was $US37,690 ($58,630) a year.

It was also reported that Mr Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering. Stanford University also confirmed that a Luigi Mangione had worked as a head counsellor in its pre-collegiate studies program in 2019.

A video of Mr Mangione’s valedictory speech shows a promising young man wearing a blazer and the school tie, striding to the podium, a white flower in his lapel.

He was gracious, thanking parents and faculty and recognising, among others, a classmate who had arrived at the school speaking no English. His theme was marrying innovation with tradition. He praised his classmates for their moxie in coming up with a novel class fundraiser: selling dozens of Chick-fil-A sandwiches a day at lunchtime as a class fundraiser.

Police said Mr Mangione had lived in San Francisco, while his last known address was Honolulu, and that his name was not known to them before Monday. They did not believe he had been planning to leave the country.

A supplied image of the alleged killer.

No prior criminal record for Mr Mangione has been uncovered.

Thompson’s murder – early on the morning he was due to attend an annual investors meeting – has prompted a range of reactions, including harsh criticism of UnitedHealthcare’s business conduct and general condemnation of the US healthcare system.

The suspect had inscribed “delay”, “deny” and “depose” on the bullets believed to have been fired from his gun – words commonly used by insurers to knock back claims.

A police officer updates the media outside the Altoona Police Department in Pennsylvania. Picture: Getty Images

The slaying prompting a manhunt across the US east coast, and police were scanning thousands of hours of surveillance footage and interviewing witnesses.

Surveillance video recovered by police showed the suspect riding into Central Park on an e-bike, taking a taxi through Manhattan’s west side and entering a bus station.

A timeline of his movements ­ suggested he had arrived in New York 10 days before the shooting.

Minutes before the shooting, the assailant made a purchase with cash at a nearby Starbucks and was loitering in the area outside the Hilton Hotel for about 30 minutes before shooting Thompson.

Investigators later recovered a backpack, believed to have been discarded by the murderer in Central Park as he was cycling away from the scene, and a mobile phone in a nearby alley.

Brian Thompson.