Every so often a crime capture’s the internet’s attention, and the murder of an American health insurance CEO in Manhattan last week has done just that. While the suspect – named as Luigi Mangione – has not yet revealed his motivation, The New York Times reported that he had a handwritten manifesto in his backpack which “criticized healthcare companies for putting profits above care.”
Yet while the crime may have been carried out to highlight the injustices in the American healthcare system, much of the attention is currently focused on Mangione himself. Internet sleuths have uncovered the 26-year-old’s digital footprint, which spans Reddit to Goodreads, and are obsessing over how a popular Ivy League graduate who friends describe as “thoughtful and deeply compassionate” became an assassin.
Here is what we know about Mangione from his various social media accounts.
Instagram: frat parties and travels
Mangione last posted on Instagram in 2021, but his profile @luigi.from.fiji was gaining hundreds of followers a second until Meta removed it last night. Mangione’s posts show him travelling to various countries, including Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, where he hiked around volcanoes, swam and posed in bars. He also shared images from the fraternity he was a member of while attending the University of Pennsylvania.
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In 2022, Mangione moved to Hawaii and lived for around six months at a co-working and co-living space in Honolulu. The space’s founder R.J Martin told CNN that Mangione led a book club for residents and enjoyed hiking and yoga. However, he did a surfing lesson which left him bedbound for “about a week” and led to complications with his back.
Reddit: an account of chronic pain
While Mangione did not have a Reddit account in his name, there are posts from a now deleted account including personal details which match Mangione’s, including age, major, university, and health condition. In the posts, the user says that they had always suffered from back aches, but the pain became chronic after a surfing accident.
“My back and hips locked up after the accident,” the user wrote in July 2023, adding that “intermittent numbness has become constant” and that they were “terrified of the implications.” Several weeks later, the user shared that they had spinal surgery which had alleviated their symptoms. They also detailed having debilitating brain fog which began after “hell week” at their fraternity, a term for hazing when frat “pledges” have to carry out often gruelling initiation tasks to prove their loyalty to the fraternity. “It’s absolutely brutal to have such a life-halting issue ,” the user wrote. “The people around you probably won’t understand your symptoms - they certainly don’t for me.”
Goodreads: from Dr Seuss to dystopia
Mangione appeared to be an avid reader, with 295 books on his reading list. He rated 52 books and wrote 13 reviews. He read a number of self-help and improvement books, including “How to break up with your phone” and “Building the ultimate male body”.
He gave five star reviews to novels like Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic Brave New World, including quotes in his review like: “‘I’d rather be myself,’ he said. ‘Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.’” He also rated Dr Seuss’s The Lorax five stars.
Mangione’s longest review is of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, which he gave four stars. Known as the Unabomber, Kaczynski sent bombs through the post from the 1970s to the 90s which killed three and left dozens injured. In his manifesto, Kaczynski said he believed modern technology was destroying humankind and the environment, and that industrial society should be dismantled.
the suspected ceo shooter's goodreads page... who says there aren't any literary men left pic.twitter.com/kgoGtqGj2C
— jenny (@jennygzhang) December 9, 2024
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless [sic] write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,” Mangione wrote in his review, which he posted in January this year. “But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”
“He was a violent individual – rightfully imprisoned – who 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,” he continued.
There were also a number of books about chronic pain on Mangione’s “Want to Read” list.
X: a broad church
While most of Mangione’s online accounts and websites have been taken down or made private, his X account is still open to the public. It was deleted for a brief spell, yet when X owner Elon Musk found out, he posted: “This happened without my knowledge. Looking into it,” and had the account reinstated. The account has racked up over 300,000 followers in 48 hours.
The cover photo is a collage which includes an X Ray of a back with four screws in the lower spine. Mangione used the same photo for his Goodreads profile. It’s difficult to place Mangione’s political affiliations from his X activity. He posts and retweets about science and technology as well as artificial intelligence and psychedelic drugs. In one repost, a user asks why caffeine is the only “normalised” drug. He follows 71 people who are nearly all men, including podcaster Joe Rogan, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and senator Robert F. Kennedy junior.
7 years ago, I gave my hs senior speech on this topic: “Today, I will be talking to you about the future, about topics ranging from conscious artificial intelligence to human immortality. Likely, you’ll dismiss all this pretty quickly as interesting, but just science fiction…” https://t.co/xJs8H1Q2Nl
— Luigi Mangione (@PepMangione) December 8, 2022
He retweets a number of posts about men and masculinity, including one user who writes: “Men are made for impossible situations and daring feats. They are born with a heroes heart. This is innate.”
He often reposts author Jonathan Haidt, who wrote about how smartphones are negatively affecting teenage mental health in The Anxious Generation. Mangione also revealed that he gave a speech in 2015 while he was a senior about artificial intelligence and the influence it would have on our lives. “It’s 2022 and we live in the future. What a wild time to be alive,” Mangione added.
This summer Mangione stopped posting online and ceased contact with friends and family. Some reached out to him on X to ask if he was okay. “I haven’t heard from you in months,” wrote one friend. In late November another posted: “thinking of you and prayers everyday in your name. Know you are missed and loved.” Mangione’s family reported him missing on 18 November, weeks before the shooting.
