Suspect in fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson ID’d as Luigi Mangione, an ex-Ivy League student
The suspect nabbed in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a manifesto, “These parasites had it coming,” law-enforcement sources told The Post on Monday.
Tech whiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md., apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, sources said.
He has not been charged in the slaying but was taken into custody Monday morning while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., ending an intense manhunt sparked by the coldblooded execution of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last week, sources said.
The former prep-school valedictorian was caught with a ghost gun that uses 9mm bullets, a silencer, a US passport, four fake IDs with names used during the killer’s stint in New York City and the manifesto, sources said.
The manifesto consisted of two-and-a-half handwritten pages that mirrored the quotes that Mangione posted on his Goodreads account from wacky anti-establishment Ted Kaczynski, the infamous “Unabomber’’ who terrorized the country for nearly two decades by planting deadly bombs before he was nabbed in 1996, sources said.
“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness,’’ Kaczynski wrote at one point in a quote liked by Mangione.
“Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.’’
The manifesto said the suspect acted alone, sources said.
Mangione had a particularly personal reason to hate the medical community — its treatment of an ailing relative, sources said.
Online obituaries show he lost a grandmother in 2013 and grandfather in 2017.
His LinkedIn page indicates that he once worked in an assisted-living facility for the elderly for a few months in 2014, while still in high school.
It is unclear if Mangione has yet made any statements to cops.
Mangione also subscribed to anti-capitalist and climate-change causes, according to law-enforcement sources, citing online activity gleaned by authorities.
Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.
He said at the time of graduation that he planned to seek a degree in artificial intelligence, focused on the areas of computer science and cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.
The tech hotshot graduated cum laude from the private Ivy League institution in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE), Computer and Information Science in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He also completed a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE), Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, his profile states.
His LinkedIn suggests he is a data engineer at a car company based in California, although he lists his current home as Honolulu in Hawaii.
What we know about the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
- Brian Thompson, the CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down Wednesday outside a luxury Midtown hotel in a “brazen, targeted attack,” police said.
- The methodical killer used a firearm with a silencer outside the Hilton hotel along Sixth Avenue.
- The gunman fired at Thompson multiple times, striking his back and right calf before fleeing on foot.
- The NYPD released a new photo of the hooded suspect standing in front of the counter at the Starbucks at West 56th Street and 6th Avenue, just minutes from the Hilton hotel where he gunned down Thompson, 50.
- Thompson was named CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice.
- Thompson’s wife, Paulette, said her husband had been getting threats before he was killed.
- The NYPD is investigating a possible message — which appears to include the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend” — written on live rounds and shell casings left behind by the masked assassin.
- A person of interest has been nabbed by police officers inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.
Follow along with The Post’s live updates on the news surrounding Brian Thompson’s murder.
The state of the country’s government and economy were apparently on his mind for years.
He reposted a Wall Street Journal article on Facebook in 2019 titled, “Obstacle to Deficit Cutting: A Nation on Entitlements.”
