Luigi Mangione—the 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate who faces murder charges for the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—was reported missing by his mother weeks before he was arrested, but investigators are still piecing together where he was prior to that.
Suspected shooter Luigi Mangione is led into the Blair County Courthouse for an extradition hearing December 10, 2024 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Mangione has been arraigned on weapons and false identification charges related to the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. Mangione is incarcerated in the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania awaiting extradition to New York. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
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Key Takeaways
- On Nov. 18, Mangione, a Maryland native, was reported missing to the San Francisco Police Department by his mother, Kathy Mangione, who said she hadn’t spoken to him since July, The San Francisco Chronicle reported, though it’s not known why the family waited so long to report him missing.
- Kathy Mangione reportedly said her son had been working at TrueCar—which had a now-closed San Francisco office and was listed as his last employer on a LinkedIn page seemingly belonging to him—but a spokesperson for the company told the Chronicle he was last employed in 2023.
- The LinkedIn page, which is still up as of Friday, said Mangione was based in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was known to have lived in a co-living community for six months in early 2022 before leaving around June to get surgery on his back, though the Associated Press reported he returned to Hawaii for a short time after his surgery and rented an apartment.
- Earlier this year, Mangione traveled through Asia for about two months, multiple outlets reported, citing his now-scrubbed Reddit posts and friends he met while traveling.
- But over the summer and into the fall, Mangione’s friends and family lost contact with him: The Wall Street Journal reported his family reached out to his old friends to try and reach him, and one friend asked Mangione over Twitter if he was okay, saying “Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you.”
What Was Luigi Mangione’s Motive?
Police have not outright stated a motive for Thompson’s killing, but officials said the writings found on him at the time of his arrest showed “that he has some ill will toward corporate America.” Mangione’s posts from Reddit and Goodreads accounts believed to be his gives insight into the debilitating back pain he suffered, along with insight into an apparent radicalization he had through books he was reading and people he was following and engaging with. He was an active poster in the subreddit “r/spondylolisthesis,” where people discussed the condition he had in which vertebrae in the spine slip out of place.
“When my spondy went bad on me last year (23M) it was completely devastating as a young athletic person,” the alleged Mangione account wrote, Forbes reported. His Goodreads profile, which is now private, shows he read the Unabomber’s manifesto—and gave it a four-star review—“Brave New World,” books about spinal pain and more. On Thursday NYPD’s Joseph Kenny told NBC New York it seems Mangione’s “life-changing, life-altering injury … may have put him on this path,” the station reported.
Key Background
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday after a customer in a McDonald’s recognized him as the potential gunman in Thompson’s shooting on Dec. 4. Police said Mangione had with him a written statement and a gun and silencer they believed matched the weapon used to kill Thompson. He was arrested on gun charges and false identification. Thompson, 50, was killed outside of the New York Hilton Midtown where the UnitedHealth Group was holding its investor meeting.
Police said the attack was brazen and targeted, and they searched the area using diving teams in Central Park, helicopters,security cameras , drones and dogs. Police have said they believe the shell casings found at the scene match the gun found on Mangione, and that his fingerprints match evidence found near the scene. In addition to the gun charges he faces in Pennsylvania, Mangione has been charged with second-degree murder in New York, and his attorney has said he plans to plead not guilty to all charges. He is currently being held in prison at SCI Huntingdon, about 40 minutes from where he was arrested, and is fighting extradition to New York and trying to get released on bail.
What We Don’t Know
Whether Luigi Mangione’s family recognized him from the photos released by police in the days after the shooting and reported him to police. The NYPD has said it is still making its way through more than 400 tips it received.
Surprising Fact
The San Francisco Police Department recognized Mangione from the surveillance photos days before he was captured in Pennsylvania, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said earlier this week Mangione’s name was not on any list they had before he was arrested, but two unnamed people told the Chronicle the SFPD’s Special Victims Unit—which had been investigating Mangione as a missing person—shared his name with the FBI on Dec. 5.
