The suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist Ivy League graduate who admired online comments from “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a manifesto, “These parasites simply had it coming,” law enforcement sources told The Post on Monday.
According to accounts, tech wiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Maryland, despised the medical community because of how it treated his ailing cousin.
According to sources, the suspect may have had resentment toward the profession due to his own contacts with it, as evidenced by an X-ray photo on his X account showing four pins in a spine.
Mangione, who comes from a wealthy and well-known Maryland family and has a relative in the state assembly, had five books about chronic back pain on his GoodReads reading list.
The books featured titles like “Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery” and “Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease―and How to Fight It.”
They were added to his virtual bookcase from May 2022 to February 2023.
High-school friends were astonished to find that the onetime prep-school valedictorian and brilliant University of Penn graduate was suffering — and even more stunned to learn of his arrest in connection with the slaying case.
“He was always doing the right thing,” a former classmate told Fox News Digital.
Mangione “was always smiling.” He never struck me as socially uncomfortable. So that is why I am so startled.
“I graduated in 2015, he graduated in 2016, It’s crazy how 10, 9 years later how people can change,” a source told me.
A former classmate at Penn told The Post that Mangione belonged to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
“He was just a regular fraternity guy. He played beer pong. “Some girls thought he was hot,” the source stated.
In May 2019, Mangione was tagged in an online Facebook discussion dubbed “Penn Crushes,” with the message, “Hot damn. Are you single? “You give us engineers hope.”
Mangione said, “Despite all my best efforts… yup, still single.”
One of the surveillance photographs released by NYPD officers of the accused killer just days before Thompson’s murder showed him flirting with a clerk at the Manhattan hostel where he was hiding.
“He’s not a monster,” a friend remarked on Instagram about Mangione.
“I can’t put into words how worried I am for you right now,” the friend replied, presumably addressing Mangione. “They have this story completely upside down.”
According to Fox, Mangione seemed to disappear from friends’ lives this fall, which worried them.
Mangione, who has not been prosecuted in Thompson’s death, was arrested Monday morning while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Mangione was apprehended with a ghost pistol that fires 9mm bullets, a silencer, a US passport, four fake IDs with names used during the killer’s time in New York City, and the manifesto, according to sources.
The manifesto consisted of two and a half handwritten pages that mirrored the quotes that Mangione posted on his Goodreads account from the wacky anti-establishment Ted Kaczynski, the infamous “Unabomber,” who terrorized the country for nearly two decades by mailing deadly bombs before being apprehended in 1996, according to sources.
“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, and then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness.” Kaczynski once composed a quote that Mangione appreciated.
“Science fiction.” It is already happening to some degree in our own society. Instead of addressing the underlying causes of depression, modern culture prescribes antidepressants.
In consequence, antidepressants adjust an individual’s internal state in such a way that he can withstand social settings that he would otherwise find intolerable.
According to sources, the manifesto stated that the suspect acted alone.
Mangione also stated in an examination of the Unabomber’s manifesto, “He was a violent individual – rightfully imprisoned – who wounded innocent people.
“While these activities are commonly attributed to a lunatic luddite, they are more correctly described as those of an extreme political revolutionary.
“To see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution,” she said.
Mangione’s manifesto stated that the suspect acted alone, according to sources.
It was unclear who the relative was, whose treatment may have infuriated the suspect.
According to online obituaries, he lost both his grandma in 2013 and his grandfather in 2017.
His LinkedIn profile shows that he worked in an assisted-living facility for the elderly for a few months in 2014, while still in high school. According to local media, his family controls Lorien Health Services, a chain of nursing facilities.
He is also the cousin of Republican Baltimore County Delegate Nino Mangione, according to WBAL-TV.
In addition to his major troubles with the healthcare profession, Mangione supported anti-capitalist and climate-change movements, according to law enforcement sources, who cited internet activity uncovered by police.
According to online sources, he graduated as valedictorian of his high school class in 2016 from the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer. High school tuition at the all-boys school is over $40,000 per year.
“We recently learned that the person arrested in connection with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is a Gilman alumnus, Luigi Mangione, Class of 2016,” the school’s leader, Henry Smyth, wrote in a letter to the community, which was acquired by local TV 11.
“We have no information other than what has been reported in the news. This is quite troubling news on top of an already bad situation. Our thoughts go out to everyone involved.”
According to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl, Mangione stated at graduation that he intended to pursue a degree in artificial intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on computer science and cognitive science.
According to his LinkedIn page, the computer hotshot graduated with honors from the private Ivy League college in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Computer and Information Science in 2020.
He also earned a Master of Science in Engineering, Computer, and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, according to his profile.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he works as a data engineer for a car firm in California, but his present address is Honolulu, Hawaii.
According to the New York Times, he was once cited for trespassing on a Hawaiian beach, but has no other apparent criminal record.
He appears to have been concerned about the state of the country’s administration and economy for many years.
In 2019, he put on Facebook an article from the Wall Street Journal headlined “Obstacle to Deficit Cutting: A Nation on Entitlements.”
His Facebook page, which has no recent posts, states that he is the co-founder of AppRoar Studios, which bills itself as “an app development start-up founded to provide the simplest and most engaging gaming experience.”
While at Penn, Mangione was featured in a student journal that praised him for establishing a student-run video game creation club. The club is currently referred to as the University of Pennsylvania Game Research and Development Environment.