TOWSON, Md. — In a span of one week Luigi Mangione went from an Ivy League graduate who excelled in a world of privilege to an accused killer sitting in a Pennsylvania jail cell for the cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomson.
The 26-year-old Mangione, the grandson of a wealthy Maryland real estate developer, was the last person friends and neighbors would have expected to turn out to be the masked gunman wanted for gunning Thompson down on a Manhattan sidewalk last week.
He graduated as valedictorian of the private all-boys Gilman School, and played soccer there and ran track. He went to the University of Pennsylvania, earned a Master’s degree in computer science and co-founded a video game development lab at the Ivy League school.
He worked in tech, including as a data engineer for a California-based online car marketplace, according to his LinkedIn profile. But the company said he hadn’t worked there in 2023, and about six months ago, he cut off contact with his friends and family, according to The New York Times.
NYPD investigators are still looking for a motive for the shooting. Mangione was arrested Monday in an Altoona, Pa. McDonald’s carrying a powerful 9mm ghost gun — and a “manifesto” criticizing the health insurance industry.
Luigi Mangione’s lawyer says he will plead not guilty to ‘every charge’
Mangione’s outlook on the industry may have been shaped by his own experience with chronic back pain. R.J. Martin, who founded a co-living space called Surfbreak in Honolulu where Mangione lived for six months, said Mangione told the Times he was suffering from a spinal misalignment.
A photo posted on X believed to belong to Mangione shows an x-ray of a spine with screws in it, and his Goodreads.com account included reviews of several books about back pain.
“He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,” Martin told the Times. “I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”
In Towson, Md., the Baltimore County suburb where Mangione grew up, a sign hung outside what used to be the his family home: “We purchased this home in June. We do not know the Mangione family, have no relations with them, do not know how to contact them, have never met them, wouldn’t know them if we ran into them.”
Several neighbors hung signs telling reporters they didn’t know the family at all. One man, who didn’t give his name, didn’t mind talking, but said he never met the alleged killer.
“I knew his parents. The parents were very nice people. They were pretty much to themselves. But very nice people,” the neighbor said. “They didn’t really socialize with the community to my knowledge. … They were well-off. You’d never know, they were down-to-earth people.”
As for the killing, the neighbor said, “I mean look, honestly, these CEOs make millions of dollars. That’s so silly. It’s like why don’t you invest that for the people who work below that? I mean, it’s like having demigods.
“Murder is not the answer, obviously. But sometimes you’re just not heard through the proper channels.”
Mangione’s cousin, Nino Mangione, a GOP lawmaker in Maryland’s House of Delegates, canceled a Thursday fundraiser “because of the nature of this terrible situation involving my cousin,” according to his Facebook page.
“Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione. We only know what we have read in the media,” his cousin wrote on X. “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask for people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news.”
Mangione’s life of affluence was thanks to his grandfather, Nicholas Mangione. The family patriarch built his wealth as a real-estate developer after being born into poverty, the son of an Italian immigrant in Baltimore’s Little Italy, according to a 1995 profile of the family patriarch in The Baltimore Sun.
Nicholas’ father died of pneumonia when he was 11 years old, leaving his family without support.
“There was no welfare, no city pension,” Mangione told the Sun. “We had little help from outsiders. Once a week, my brother and I would get a bag of flour from the church.”
He did several odd jobs, got a full-time job at age 15 as an accounts receivable clerk, then a secretary-bookkeeper, and joined the Navy in 1943. After his return home from war, he made the shift to contracting work, and ultimately formed an empire in Mangione Family Enterprises.
He built nursing homes, office buildings and hospitals — including the now-closed Fallston General in Harford County, according to the Sun.
He and his wife, Mary, bought the Turf Valley Country Club in 1978, re-developing it as a golf course resort and residential community, the Baltimore Banner reported. The couple bought what would become the Hayfields Country Club, in 1986, and he later bought the conservative WCBM-AM 680 talk radio station and two others, the Banner reported.
The couple also founded Lorien Health Service, a nursing home and assisted living company calleds, where Luigi volunteered in high school, according to the Banner.
Nicholas Mangione was known for having a volcanic temper when he faced opposition to his projects, and he was known to shout people down at public meetings, according to the Sun profile.
He supported several charities in the Baltimore area, and the pool at Loyola University bears his name, according to the Banner.
He died of a stroke in 2008, and his wife died of complications from Parkinson’s Disease, the Banner reported.
Nicholas Mangione had 10 children, including a son, Louis, Luigi’s father. Luigi is one of 37 grandchildren, according to the Banner, and apparently inherited his grandfather’s drive.
His high school friends described him to the New York Times as intelligent and driven, “a big believer in the power of technology to change the world,” according to one of those friends, Aaron Cranston.
Once in college, he focused on coding and video games, co-founding a 60-student club that met on Saturdays to develop games.
“He was very smart, a pretty big math guy, really well read and quite well liked to be honest,” another friend, another friend, Freddie Leatherbury, told the Times. “I don’t have any bad memories of him. He had a very healthy social circle.”
Who is Luigi Mangione, arrested in connection with shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?