https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/luigi-mangione-brian-thompson-ted-kaczynski/2024/12/09/id/1190968/The person of interest nabbed in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist Ivy League graduate who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski — and apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated a sick relative, law-enforcement, sources told the New York Post on Monday.
Luigi Mangione, 26, has not been charged in the slaying but was taken into custody Monday morning in Altoona, Pennsylvania, ending a manhunt sparked by the execution of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last week, the Post reported. He was caught with a ghost gun that uses 9 mm bullets, a silencer, a U.S. passport, four fake IDs with names used during the suspect’s stay in New York City, and a manifesto, sources said.
Mangione had a particularly personal reason to hate the medical community — its treatment of an ailing relative, sources said.
Online obituaries showed a grandmother of his died in 2013 and a grandfather in 2017.
His LinkedIn page indicated that he once worked in an assisted-living facility for the elderly for a few months in 2014 while in high school.
The alleged shooter is believed to have acted alone. It is unknown if Mangione has made any statements to police.
Mangione also subscribed to anti-capitalist and climate change causes, according to law-enforcement sources, citing online activity gleaned by authorities.
On the Goodreads website, Mangione’s account showed quotes he particularly liked ranging from Socrates to Bruce Lee — to Kaczynski, the infamous anti-establishment “Unabomber’’ who terrorized the country for nearly two decades by dispatching deadly bombs before he was nabbed in 1996.
“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 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.’’
Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school 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 suspect graduated cum laude from the private Ivy League institution in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science, and Computer and Information Science in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also completed a Master of Science in Engineering, Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, his profile stated.
