Luigi Mangione spent months meticulously planning to assassinate the head of America’s biggest health insurance company, his newly published diaries suggest.
Court documents filed by prosecutors show that Mr Mangione was in possession of a red notebook when he was arrested for the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, who was shot dead in the centre of Manhattan.
The diary, filed in evidence by prosecutors on Wednesday, was found on Mr Mangione when he was detained at a Pennsylvanian McDonald’s in December 2024 following a five-day manhunt.
In the notepad, Mr Mangione outlined his plot to carry out the killing, vented about his frustrations with the health insurance industry and focused on winning over public opinion, musing that his actions would garner even greater support than Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, received.
“So say you want to rebel against the deadly, greed fuelled health insurance cartel. Do you bomb the HQ? No. Bombs=terrorism,” Mr Mangione allegedly wrote in August 2024.
“Such actions appear the unjustified anger of someone who simply got sick/had bad luck and took their frustration out on the insurance industry, while recklessly endangering countless employees.”
That same month, he appeared to select his victim. “The target is insurance. It checks every box,” an entry from Aug 15 reads.
Counting down the days
Mr Mangione allegedly planned to “whack” Mr Thompson at a “parasitic bean-counter convention” as it “doesn’t risk innocents… The point is made in the news headline ‘Insurance CEO killed at annual investors conference.’’
From October, Mr Mangione appeared to be counting down the days until the killing took place.
“1.5 months. The investor conference is a true windfall. It embodies everything wrong with our health system, and-most importantly the message becomes self-evident,” one entry reads.
At the time, Mr Mangione is said to have lost contact with his family who lived in an affluent Baltimore suburb and had raised him to become high school valedictorian and an Ivy League graduate.
The previously unreported diary entries shed light on Mr Mangione’s plan to target the insurance industry, which prosecutors claim has triggered a wave of threats against health insurance workers.
Outpourings of support
Following his arrest, Mr Mangione has become a cult-like figure, eliciting outpourings of support on certain corners of social media.
In a further diary entry shared in the court filing, Mr Mangione allegedly apologised to federal officers who chased him down.
“To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly I wasn’t working with anyone,” the scrawled handwritten note said. “I do apologise for any strife or trauma but it had to be done.”
Mr Mangione is said to have been influenced by the Unabomber, whom he described as an “extreme political revolutionary” on his GoodReads account.
Elsewhere in the notebook, entries suggest Mr Mangione had previously weighed up another target, known as “KMD”, before selecting Mr Thompson as his victim.
“KMD would have been an unjustified catastrophe,” an entry reads.
Despite the alleged diary’s confessions, Mr Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to both state and federal charges in connection with the killing.
If convicted on all counts he will face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole, though federal prosecutors have filed a notice seeking the death penalty.