Luigi Mangione identified as person of interest in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson murder

On By Littum

The person of interest identified in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist former Ivy League student — who liked online quotes from “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski raging against the nation’s medical community.

Technologist Luigi Mangione, 26, of Towson, Md., was taken into custody Monday morning at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., following an intense manhunt following the cold-blooded execution of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last week, sources said.

He has not been charged.

The former prep-school valedictorian was caught with a manifesto that appeared to list grievances with the health care industry, including taking on their huge profits and alleged shady motives, sources said.

Police have taken a person of interest into custody in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. DCPI

He is believed to have acted alone and it was unclear whether he had yet spoken out.

Mangione has subscribed to anti-capitalist causes and climate change in addition to showing disdain for the country’s health care industry, according to law enforcement sources, citing online activity collected by authorities.

On the Goodreads website, Mangione’s account lists quotes he particularly likes, from Socrates to Bruce Lee — to the anti-establishment lunatic Ted Kaczynski, the infamous “Unabomber” who terrorized the country for nearly two decades by planting deadly bombs, before he was caught inside. 1996.

Surveillance footage captured a person of interest at various locations in New York City. AP
The killer shot Thompson at close range on a Manhattan street. AP

What we know about the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

  • Brian Thompson, CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down Wednesday outside a luxury Midtown hotel in a “frequent, targeted attack,” police said.
  • The methodical killer used a silenced firearm outside the Hilton hotel along Sixth Avenue.
  • The gunman fired at Thompson several times, hitting his back and right calf, before fleeing on foot.
  • The NYPD released a new photo of the hooded suspect standing in front of the counter at the Starbucks on West 56th Street and 6th Avenue, just minutes from the Hilton hotel where he gunned down Thompson, 50.
  • Thompson was named CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several executives at the company under investigation by the Justice Department.
  • Thompson’s wife, Paulette, said her husband had received threats before he was killed.
  • The NYPD is investigating a possible message — which appears to include the words “reject,” “depose,” and “defense” — written on live rounds and grenades left behind by the masked assassin.
  • A person of interest has been apprehended by police officers inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.

Follow The Post’s live updates on the news surrounding Brian Thompson’s murder.

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy and then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness,” Kaczynski wrote at one point in a quote Mangione liked.

“Science fiction It already happens to a certain extent in our own society. Instead of eliminating the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them anti-depressants. In reality, 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 taken into custody in Altoona, Pa.

Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played football, 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 pursue a degree in artificial intelligence, focused in the fields of computer science and cognitive science, at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.