Luigi Mangione reveals motive for CEO's killing after pleading guilty in federal case

3 days ago by pelespirit to c/investigativejournalism

In a surprise turn, Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty to the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione admitted he stalked and shot Thompson in 2024 outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan. He potentially faces life in prison. The 28-year-old is also still facing state murder charges for Thompson’s death in New York. Justice correspondent Ali Rogin reports.

He detailed some of his planning leading up to the murder. He said that he was motivated by years of back pain and what he believed was a health insurance system working against him. He said that, once he learned that the UnitedHealthcare Company was holding an investor summit in Manhattan, he e-mailed company leadership posing as an investor to get information about where and when this meeting was taking place.

And that's how he was able to confront Brian Thompson. Mangione also shared an observation with the judge that had clearly made an impression on him. He talked about how, while he was posing as a wealthy investor, leadership e-mailed him back within an hour, and he said that was in stark contrast to his interactions with insurers as a patient.

Freeposity 260 points 3 days ago

I find it impossible to be upset about Luigi stalking and killing someone who has killed tens of thousands of people for money.

In fact, I wish he had never been caught.

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13igTyme 172 points 3 days ago

He Luigi actually saved life. Insurance companies were approving everything for a few weeks after the killing.

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Freeposity 30 points 3 days ago

He, being Luigi.

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13igTyme 20 points 3 days ago

Good call out. Edited.

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certified_expert 8 points 2 days ago

Woudn't that be an angle for the defense? Greater good?

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im_fine_sandy 5 points 2 days ago

No. That's not how the law works.

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certified_expert 1 point a day ago

Yeah... I know...

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HubertManne 30 points 3 days ago

I still don't think he did it. Hes just trying to pretend to be the greatest hero in all american history.

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P1k1e 18 points 3 days ago

Yea I know, we were hanging out that night and he was telling me "man I'd totally lie to steal the glory from a killer, everyone would think I'm SO cool". He frustrates me sometimes but how can I be mad at THAT face

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pHr34kY 8 points 2 days ago

Taking the fall so the real guy can plan the next one.

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CileTheSane 6 points 2 days ago

I was there too and just thought to myself "That is so Luigi"

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TachyonTele_Esq 5 points 2 days ago

Lu be cray sometimes, it's true

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a_non_monotonic_function 7 points 2 days ago

I don't think he is. This happened just before the state trial, even though they dropped the federal murder charge.

IANAL, but I wonder if the admission is some sort of push to kill the NY trial due to double jeopardy?

Then again, I'm a random idiot on the Internet so I'm probably way off base.

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Nollij 3 points 2 days ago

I've seen a number of analysts on whether it would count on double jeopardy. Notably, NY prosecutors claim that it doesn't.

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a_non_monotonic_function 5 points 2 days ago

I suspect that prosecutors would say that, but ultimately that would be the judge's job, right?

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SaveTheTuaHawk 1 point 2 days ago

This is also de Nile.

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Furbag 21 points 2 days ago

Him never getting caught would have been a much better outcome. The specter that strikes fear in the blackened souls of healthcare CEOs would still be at large. They'd have to scale back on their penny-pinching tactics or forever have to sleep with one eye open and be constantly looking over their shoulder in public.

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Major_Tsiom 19 points 3 days ago

I don't either, really, but CEOs are under pressure from the board of directors and investors to constantly and relentlessly increase profits. If it wasn't that Thompson asshole, it would have just been another one. It's not one evil man, it's the whole system.

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TheJesusaurus 73 points 3 days ago

The system requires evil men to do that job. You can say it'd just be another, but they'll run out of them pretty quick if there are consequences to their actions

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Major_Tsiom 13 points 3 days ago

Oh, I agree. But the consequences are usually in the form of big bonuses for the perpetrators. The law protects them. We have to scrap the system.

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Initech_vs_Initrode 36 points 3 days ago

Or we could just pass a law mandating that they have to approve any request made by a doctor unless they can show clear evidence of fraud.

This will probably cause a collapse of most of the health insurance industry, which shouldn't exist in its current form anyway.

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TheJesusaurus 2 points 11 hours ago

I meant like Luigi consequences. Maybe a French shave

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Ismay 20 points 3 days ago

Too easy.

"Shareholders" is, purposefully, an abstract notion. CEO's and C-Suite in general are the willful instruments of evil.

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TankovayaDiviziya 12 points 3 days ago

"Greed is good."

"There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game."

Fuck Milton Friedman. Do I think he makes cold logical sense? Yes, but that's precisely the problem, his philosophy is devoid of warmth and humanity. His ideas are what led to where we are now. Friedman is the AI agentic machine in the flesh if put in charge. Now that i think about it, he's probably the Terminator but instead of using physical violence to achieve results, he's using cold logical argument to convince others that "greed is good" and to abandon social responsibility, leading to suffering caused by administrative decisions.

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Major_Tsiom 7 points 3 days ago

The problem isn't that he's cold and logical. Cold? Yes. Logical? Only in the context of the game we are playing. This reasoning is not logical when applied to a society. Society is not a game. Life is not a game. Business IS a game and the principle of that game is stone simple. The problem is seeing the game and society as the same thing. They aren't. That is why you don't ever want to run a government like a business. A business is much simpler.

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ayyy 9 points 2 days ago

It’s actually really easy to not be a shitbag healthcare CEO. I’m doing it right now, in fact! And so are you! Anyone doing that has actively chosen to do so. They don’t have to.

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RememberTheApollo_ 9 points 2 days ago

“I was just following orders.”

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prole 9 points 2 days ago

Ok then get a different job. All problems solved.

This is some bullshit, nobody is out there forcing people to be healthcare CEOs

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fyzzlefry 6 points 2 days ago

You can't make me feel sorry for him.

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BC_viper 6 points 3 days ago

Then we should start taking out more of them.

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DarrinBrunner 3 points 2 days ago

You're right, it's the billionaires at the top, plus everyone who supports or defends them.

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FluidBeef 11 points 2 days ago

Hollywood has certainly fed us a lot of stories about a dogged investigator tracking down and stopping a serial killer.

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godsammitdam 104 points 2 days ago

Sounds like self defense and attempting to prevent 114,000 deaths each year according to Yale.

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Jankatarch 40 points 2 days ago

A bunch of healthcare applications got approved right after the event too, he definetely saved some people from debt and death.

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ThePantser 22 points 2 days ago

And they should be allowed as character witness's.

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tanisnikana 102 points 3 days ago

Luigi should be sentenced to surgery and therapy, followed by rest and relaxation at home, and afterward, put into community rehabilitation in a city or town he’d like to be in, and generally be free with a healthy back.

Mans needs it.

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noxypaws 1 point 3 days ago

sentenced to surgery?? the hell?

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tanisnikana 40 points 3 days ago

My English is dodgy sometimes.

It’s a turn of speech saying he should be given his necessary treatments in lieu of any sort of punishment, cause he did the morally correct thing.

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ayyy 5 points 2 days ago

(Your meaning was perfectly clear and you said it correctly in English. I don’t know how that other dude missed it.)

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noxypaws 4 points 3 days ago

ahh good. I didn't think you meant he deserved, like, surgical torture or something. but that's still where my mind went cuz I've unfortunately learned more than I care to know about the depths of human brutality

also i forgot about his bad back, which is like, the foundation of his grievances!

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tanisnikana 5 points 3 days ago

My jury is still out on whether anyone is a candidate for torture or not. On the one hand, torture is uniquely terrible, but on the other hand, the Epstein Files are right there for all to see.

So I don’t know.

There’s ethics people who can debate this better than me.

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LostCarcosan 8 points 2 days ago

Yeah, he has chronic back pain and that usually requires a surgery to fix

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ayyy -1 points 2 days ago path: 0 25344363 25345732 25352560, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0
Pandantic 97 points 2 days ago
Whole quote re: his reasoning

He detailed some of his planning leading up to the murder. He said that he was motivated by years of back pain and what he believed was a health insurance system working against him. He said that, once he learned that the UnitedHealthcare Company was holding an investor summit in Manhattan, he e-mailed company leadership posing as an investor to get information about where and when this meeting was taking place.

And that's how he was able to confront Brian Thompson. Mangione also shared an observation with the judge that had clearly made an impression on him.

He talked about how, while he was posing as a wealthy investor, leadership e-mailed him back within an hour, and he said that was in stark contrast to his interactions with insurers as a patient.

This is the story. This is the rallying cry. Spread this story.

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quarkquasar 24 points 2 days ago

I was just reading about the Wendys president having his position eliminated.

He's going back to his old position as the head of the supply chain company.

And the company is vesting some of his stock early to reward him for his one year of hard work.

And I wondered how many people have busted their ass for Wendy's for years, worked their bodies past their breaking point, and all they got was probably shitcanned.

Not directly related to this, of course, but there's two different worlds, and I would prefer the privileged one be torn asunder and the pieces burned.

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minorkeys 47 points 2 days ago

I can't help but to notice that they recently released a new Robin Hood movie. In this new version of the most famous peasant class hero in western cannon, we don't see him steal from the rich and give to the poor, ya know, or bring justice to the misdeeds of the wealthy, the entire reason he's a hero. No, instead, we see him as a murderous criminal whose deeds caused a bunch of peasant suffering who needs to learn empathy. Then he dies.

They've taken the most influential hero of the lower class, a hero fighting against the never ending wrongs of the wealthy elite, made him into a psychopath criminal, and killed him him off, along with everything he once symbolized.

I can't help but wonder if the decision to make this movie, and the incidents around Mangione, might be somewhat related? As if the wealthy needed to culturally manipulate us away from glorifying people who force the wealthy to endure the justice they constantly seek to avoid.

Or maybe not. The wealthy would never intentionally try and shape our values, and thus our behavior, through the media they make, would they?

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gandalf_der_13te 13 points 2 days ago

hollywood has always (mostly) been a propaganda instrument. i'm not really surprised by this; that's why i've stopped watching live-action movies (which imho and in my experience are the worst offenders) years ago. for some reason, cartoons seem to be a lot better.

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DarrinBrunner 8 points 2 days ago

All I saw was that it flopped. Now it makes more sense. WTF? It never occurred to me that they'd try to make fucking Robin Hood a bad guy.

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Juice 6 points 2 days ago

Hegemony goes crazy. It doesn't even have to be intentional or explicit, it just has to work with the incentives of the ruling class.

Although some of it is explicit obvs, like in Black Panther the only good white guy was a CIA agent

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TheStaffmaster 46 points 2 days ago

If you kill a murderer before he kills more people that usually makes you a hero.

I mean there's your whole defense right there.

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pelespirit 42 points 3 days ago

From the article, it looks to be like his lawyers are trying to get the murder conviction thrown out by him pleading guilty. It would be double jeopardy for the same event. It also makes it seem like they had a lot more evidence against him than I originally thought.

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fyzzlefry 2 points 2 days ago

Looks like it was successful

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Hello_there 35 points 3 days ago

2028 candidates too scared to pledge a pardon for this patriot

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zarkanian 18 points 2 days ago

Ho-ho-ho-holy shit, that would be insane. Can you imagine if the Democrats were a real opposition party and said "Oh, so you pardoned all of the Jan. 6 rioters? Well, guess what, assholes"

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Hello_there -1 points 2 days ago

Graham planter comes back with mask off populism. Buckle up ppl we putting billionaires on notice.

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Smeagol666 33 points 2 days ago

I love that in the best pic they found of Thompson, he still looks like the asshole he most likely was in life. Also, the news people know where their bread is buttered referring to the "horrendous murder", and the crying family members.

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fodor 17 points 2 days ago

The family he did not live with, who did not give a fuck, that family?

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AnyOldName3 20 points 3 days ago

I'm not sure this is the right comm for this - it's not really investigative journalism if they're just reporting things that were said in open court.

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pelespirit 9 points 3 days ago

Fair point, next time.

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Bonus 20 points 2 days ago

It only now just occurred to me to be happy for him. He looks so relieved.

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Grandwolf319 20 points 2 days ago

I still find it weird how one person can pull off fleeing the scene but not to get rid of their backpack and just go home and resume their routine.

What makes it even less believable for me is that it was a ghost gun. As long as he cleaned his finger prints off, it would have basically removed the most important piece of evidence.

The only reason I can think of is that he wanted to be caught (maybe to become a martyr) or the more likely solution that it wasn’t him but he is gonna get the book thrown at him regardless (hence maybe why he is taking the plea deal, given his celebrity status he could be set for life if he gets out soon enough).

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cantstopthesignal 18 points 2 days ago

They had a face match from his picture and used the surveillance state to catch him once he either logged into wifi at mcdonalds or showed his face to the kiosk. They then called the local cops to get him and pretend it was a hot tip via parallel construction.

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darkwing_duck 9 points 2 days ago

Yup I still think it wasn't him.

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MadameBisaster 4 points 2 days ago

My guess is that he was permantly under adrealine and wasnt thinking it through anymore.

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Pandantic 3 points 2 days ago

Even though I won't be surprised if he turns out to be innocent, it seems more likely to me at this point that, sadly, he's probably not.

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jpreston2005 16 points 3 days ago

I dunno, if you're in charge of rescue operations, and see a person holding on by their fingertips to the side of a massive cliff, and instead of helping, you just drive by, I'd say that's passively killing someone. Ignoring your job, that would have saved someone's life, and you chose not to. This is what health insurance companies do thousands of times every day.

Luigi actively murdered someone who was passively responsible for thousands of deaths.

Seems more like a real-life version of Dexter to me.

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Nollij 10 points 2 days ago

In the US legal system, there's a concept of duty of care. You aren't obligated to perform CPR on a random person. But if you are part of the medical team at a nursing home, you are (probably) obligated to perform it on the residents.

If it weren't for the entire system being corrupted by money, insurance would have that duty.

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Swedneck 1 point 2 days ago

idk if the US has this, but in many places there's also the legal obligation to report things like crime and accidents. You don't just get to walk away from someone in need, even if you're not obliged to actively help them.

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switcheroo 13 points 2 days ago

Free Luigi!

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zarkanian 7 points 2 days ago

So, was it his back?

reads story

Yup, it was his back.

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