Who is Luigi Mangione? The smiling suspect in the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO

Luigi Mangione was last night arrested and charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – but who is he and what do we know about him?

Before being officially identified as the suspect, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced at a news conference Monday afternoon that Mangione was believed to be a person of interest in the shooting.

The 26-year-old was arrested in a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania after being identified by a member of staff, and was found with a gun, mask, and fake IDs on him, according to legal documents.

He has since been charged with murder by New York prosecutors, as well as five additional counts including possession of a firearm by the state of Pennsylvania.

Luigi Mangione’s social media photos matched the description of the suspect in UnitedHealthcareCEO Brian Thompson’s killing (Picture: Facebook)

Where is Luigi Mangione from?

An Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Baltimore family, Mangione was born in Maryland, had ties to San Francisco, and his last known address was in Honolulu.

Mangione was born in Maryland, had ties to San Francisco, and his last known address was in Honolulu.

He attended the private all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore and was high school valedictorian in 2016. He later earned a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated in May 2020, and previously earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and computer science from the same college.

Mangione was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, and previously talked about how he had started a video game development club.

‘In high school, I started playing a lot of independent games and stuff like that, but I wanted to make my own game, and so I learned how to code,’ he said in a blog post. ‘In my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I learned (on my own) how to program, and that’s why I’m a computer science major now; that’s how I got into it… I just really wanted to make games.’

A former colleague who worked with Mangione as a counselor at a Stanford University summer program during his college years described him as outgoing and socially charming.

‘I am flabbergasted,’ said the anonymous colleague told CNN. ‘I never got the impression he would self-destruct.’

Luigi Mangione was born in Maryland and had ties to San Francisco and last lived in Hawaii (Picture: Facebook)

What have Luigi Mangione’s family said?

Mangione said during his arraignment on Monday evening in Blair County Courthouse that he had spoken to his family ‘until recently’.

A wealthy family that made it big in business, Mangione’s grandfather Nicholas, a former masonry contractor, built a real estate empire that included two country clubs and a number of nursing homes in the Baltimore suburbs.

The Mangione family also run a family foundation which has nearly $4.5 million in assets and have donated to Maryland’s Loyola University, which has named its aquatic centre after them.

Private security guards were seen blocking access to the family’s house on Monday afternoon.

In a statement released by his cousin Nino Mangione, the family said they are ‘shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.’

“We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved,” the statement said.

His family stated through Maryland state delegate Nino Mangione, who is Luigi’s cousin, that they are ‘shocked and devasted’ by his arrest.

‘We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved,’ stated the family.

They said they ‘only know what we have read in the media’.

What did he say about the Unabomber?

The 26-year-old allegedly praised the Unabomber in an Amazon review of the terrorist’s manifesto, and was arrested at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Monday.

The Ivy League graduate is being questioned on the fatal shooting of multi-billion pound CEO who was killed last week.

A Goodreads account with Mangione’s same name and matching his photos gave a four-star review to Unabomber Ted Kaxzynski’s book in January.

‘Clearly written by a mathematics prodigy,’ stated the review.

Luigi Mangione wrote a four-star review of the Unabomber Manifesto (Picture: X)

‘Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life.’

The review by Mangione continued that ‘it’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies’.

‘But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out,’ it reads.

Mangione acknowledged that Kaxzynsk, the late American mathematician and domestic terrorist, ‘was a violent individual’ who was ‘rightfully imprisoned’ because he ‘maimed innocent people’.

‘While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary,’ Mangione concluded.

Who is arrested in the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s killing?

Mangione was taken into custody while reading at a McDonald’s, on firearm charges in Altoona.

He was quickly identified as a ‘strong person of interest’ in the shooting death of Thompson, by New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Industrial Society and Its Future, by Theodore John Kaczynski, is also known as the Unabomber Manifesto

Mangione matched the description of the suspect pictured in the manhunt for the gunman who shot Thompson on the back and leg outside of a Midtown Manhattan hotel on December 4.

A McDonald’s worker recognized Magione and reported him to authorities on the sixth day of the nationwide manhunt.

Does Luigi Mangione have social media accounts?

Social media accounts with Mangione’s name had pictures of him that matched the description of the suspect.

An X account, @pepmangione, seemed to belong to Mangione. It had 100,000 followers after his name was released to the public.

The account was suspended by X for violating its rules but appeared to be back online shortly after with over 196,000 followers.

What is a ghost gun?

At the time he was detained, Mangione possessed a ghost gun and a silencer.

A Baltimore County Police squad car sits outside a former home of the Mangione family after it was reported that police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, had arrested shooting suspect Luigi Mangione, 26, identified in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (Picture: Reuters)

The gun was able to fire a 9-millimeter bullet and was possibly made using a 3-D printer, said New York Police Department chief of detectives Joseph Kenny.

A ghost gun is a homemade firearm that is usually built from a kit and does not contain serial numbers or require background checks.

Unfinished receivers could be bought online legally without a gun license or serial numbers because the US government previously did not categorize them as firearms.

Sophia Martinez