ALTOONA, Pa.—The all-out pursuit of the criminal suspect who gripped the public’s imagination for nearly a week ended on Monday at a McDonald’s in central Pennsylvania, about a half mile from the Greyhound bus station in a nondescript part of this town. A worker there noticed something familiar about a lone customer on Monday morning and called the local police. Soon 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, the subject of a massive manhunt and the man police suspect murdered UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week in a targeted killing , was in custody.
When, at last, he was unmasked—and unhooded—the mystery man at the heart of the brazen and apparently carefully plotted attack was even more of a riddle than expected. Held up as folk hero by some for striking a blow against America’s health insurers, he turned out to be a high-achieving product of elite schools, an affluent Ivy Leaguer who harbored anticapitalist leanings that may have played a role.
A review of his reading diet suggested that, at some point, his ideas about activism had crossed into an interest in violence. In January he wrote a chilling review on the Goodreads book-review site of Theodore John Kaczynski ’s “ Industrial Society and Its Future ,” also known as “The Unabomber Manifesto.” He gave it four stars.
In Mangione’s review, he wrote: “A take I found online that I think is interesting”:
“Had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere and at the end of the day, he’s probably right…. When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”
In addition to a homemade “ghost” gun—a black 3D-printed pistol—a 3D-printed silencer and a fake New Jersey ID, police also found Mangione on Monday with his own handwritten, three-page missive, according to Joseph Kenny, chief of detectives for the NYPD. “It does seem he has some ill will toward corporate America,” Kenny said, without elaborating on the writings.
In recent months, there were hints he had become estranged from friends and family, according to Mangione’s social-media accounts, which might have also shed light on his own health. The banner photo of Mangione’s X account featured an X-ray image of a person’s back after what appears to be a spinal fusion surgery, according to a doctor who is knowledgeable in orthopedics. His Goodreads profile shows he had been reading books about back pain.
According to a Pennsylvania police criminal complaint, Mangione was found toward the back of the McDonald’s, wearing a medical mask and sitting with a laptop. When a police officer asked if he had been to New York recently, he became quiet and began to shake.
The arrest, about 95 miles east of Pittsburgh, came after a six-day pursuit that New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said involved drones, canine units, scuba divers and sifting through thousands of hours of video surveillance footage.
His circumstances were hard to reconcile with his standing less than a decade ago as the fresh-faced valedictorian at the nearly $38,000-a-year Gilman School in Baltimore, which he attended from the sixth grade until he graduated in 2016. The all-boys school prides itself on having educated future senators and governors.
Friends from those days recall him as likable, athletic, studious and on the quiet side, with an interest in technology and robotics.
Freddie Leatherbury, who attended Gilman with Mangione, said he initially thought it was a joke when he heard the startling news about his former classmate in a group chat with several high-school friends.
“There was really nothing off about the kid,” said Leatherbury, 26, an accountant in the Baltimore area. “He had a lot going for him.”
From Gilman, Mangione went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in computer science and earned a master’s degree. A Luigi Mangione of the class of 2020 was inducted into an academic honor society reserved for the top students in electrical and computer engineering. He also started a videogame development club and appeared to enjoy Greek life, posting photos on Instagram of him and his Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers, often on a couch outside their house.
In Maryland, the Mangiones are a well-known Italian-American clan. They founded Lorien Healthcare, a senior-care company, with services that include nursing and assisting living, in 1977. They also developed Turf Valley Resort, a spa and conference center in Ellicott City, Md., and suburban Baltimore’s Hayfields Country Club. Nino Mangione, Luigi Mangione’s cousin, is a Republican member of the state house of delegates.
He released a written statement Monday night on behalf of the family, saying, “Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione. We only know what we have read in the media. Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.”
The statement added: “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”
Early on, Luigi Mangione flashed idealism. In 2015, while still in high school, he blogged about the potential of computer science to level the socioeconomic playing field.
“The simple truth of life is that some people are born with better opportunity,” he wrote in a post on WordPress. “The field of CS, however, can potentially make this opportunity available to all. I learned to program entirely on my own, for free, without ever taking any courses at my school.”
Baltimore is a big city, but its wealthy elite class is akin to a small town, where when they ask, “where’d you go to school?,” they often mean high school, not college.
A video of Mangione’s valedictory speech shows a promising young man wearing a blazer and the school tie, striding to the podium, a white flower in his lapel. Mangione was gracious, thanking parents and faculty and recognizing, among others, a classmate who had arrived at the school speaking no English. His theme was marrying innovation with tradition. He praised his classmates for their moxie in coming up with a novel class fundraiser: selling dozens of Chick-fil-A sandwiches a day at lunchtime as a class fundraiser.
Pictures from this era tend to capture a gleaming smile—a fragment of which was visible in one of the photos police circulated last week while still trying to track him down, and which prompted many to liken him on social media to the Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet.
After college, he spent time in San Francisco and Honolulu, according to police.
He appeared to be a prolific reader. He wrote at least 13 book reviews on Goodreads, four of which include links to public Google drive folders containing PDFs of his handwritten thoughts and feedback.
In his review of “The Four-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, Mangione talks about how his mother would make him eat steak with his right hand even though he was naturally left-hand dominant out of adherence to social norms—and his disdain for simply accepting things as they were.
The accounts he followed on X ranged from Edward Snowden and Sam Altman to Joe Rogan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . His social-media posts suggested he had health issues or an interest in them.
He also posted on X about mental health and brain plasticity, and in January, Mangione shared a quote by an Indian philosopher: “It is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
What transpired in the days leading up to Mangione’s arrival in New York City, where he stayed in a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is still being pieced together by law enforcement. Thompson was intercepted by his killer on Wednesday morning, just before dawn, as the chief executive was walking to the Hilton hotel for UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference.
There are signs Mangione had become a source of concern for some friends in recent months, according to posts on social media.
“Hey man, I need you to call me. I don’t know if you are ok or just in a super isolated place…. But I haven’t heard from you in months,” a man wrote on X to him in July, reminding Mangione, “You made commitments to me for my wedding, and if you can’t honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly.”
On Oct. 30, another posted: “@PepMangione Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you.”
Write to Joshua Chaffin at joshua.chaffin@wsj.com , Valerie Bauerlein at Valerie.Bauerlein@wsj.com and Scott Calvert at scott.calvert@wsj.com
