Accused CEO Killer Had Creepy To-Do List and Referenced Filmmaker
Luigi Mangione, the accused gunman in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week in New York City, allegedly referenced left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore in his handwritten manifesto—and left behind a notebook with a creepy to-do list.
Details of the scribing were confirmed and published by multiple outlets on Tuesday—shedding further insight into the thoughts of the 26-year-old who was charged with murder five days after the shocking attack.
Although portions of the document were previously published by The New York Times and other outlets, the entire text was finally posted on Substack by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.
In it, Mangione referenced documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and former New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal as people who called out the industry he was railing against. He wrote that “many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain.”
Moore’s 2007 film “Sicko” focused on America’s health insurance system, while Rosenthal authored the 2017 New York Times bestseller “An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back.”
The Daily Beast confirmed with law enforcement sources that the manifesto published online largely resembled the one recovered during Mangione’s arrest, but could not verify the exact text because of potential handwriting discrepancies.
Along with the manifesto, CNN reports that law enforcement are also looking into a spiral notebook Mangione wrote in. The notebook reportedly included a “to-do list” and plans for how to execute the killing.
In the notebook, Mangione apparently ruled out the prospect of using a bomb as it “could kill innocents.” He determined that shooting would be more targeted, and mused on the prospect of killing the “CEO at the bean-counter convention.”
He wrote: “What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”
CNN journalist Shimon Prokupecz added that “law enforcement and certainly investigators” will view that particular sentence as a “confession.”
Magione is accused of executing Thompson, 50, as he arrived at the New York Hilton to address investors at a conference on Dec. 4.
Unlike the Unabomber’s 35,000-word manifesto, which a Goodreads account attributed to Mangione positively reviewed in January, the statement he allegedly penned was incredibly brief—clocking in at 262 words condensed into a single paragraph.
The short manifesto railed against the for-profit healthcare industry, and offered some insights into how the 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania grad pulled off the attack.
“To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience,” Mangione allegedly wrote. Mangione was also charged in both Pennsylvania and New York for weapons charges for the firearm and silencer that authorities say were 3D printed.
The writer said he had “respect” for federal investigators, and apologized for causing any “traumas,” but seemed unrepentant towards his target. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” he added.
Mangione allegedly claimed the U.S. had the “most expensive healthcare system in the world,” but lambasted the system for making America only 42nd in life expectancy.
The most recent data published by the World Health Organization in 2020 found that life expectancy in the US was 78.5 years for both men and women—ranking it 40th compared to the other nations surveyed.
A 2023 report published by the World Economic Forum did find the U.S. had the most expensive healthcare compared to the other mostly western nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—with Americans spending an estimated $12,318 per person in 2021, compared to $7,383 spent per person in Germany, the second-most expensive system.
