The 26-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson suffered for years from health problems related to his back, which ultimately led to him having surgery in 2023, according to reports Posts that he apparently wrote on Reddit.
After reviewing social media posts, investigators with the New York Police Department are now investigating the possibility that an insurance claim may have motivated the suspected shooter, Luigi Mangione.
“We're looking at whether the insurance industry either denied a claim from him or didn't fully assist him,” NYPD Chief Detective Joseph Kenny told Fox News' Neil Cavuto on Tuesday.
Thomas Dickey, Mangione's attorney, did not immediately respond to HuffPost's request for comment, but told NewsNation's Chris Cuomo that he had seen “no evidence” linking Mangione to the murder.
“I don't want people to have that kind of prejudice because no one would ever want that if they or a loved one were accused,” Dickey said.
On Reddit, Mangione appears to have actively posted in a subreddit about spondylolisthesis, a condition in which a vertebra slips out of alignment, under the account u/Mister_Cactus. That account has been suspended since Mangione's arrest, but HuffPost reviewed its activity as part of a program that archives activity from suspended accounts.
The account was also posted on a technology-based subreddit with links to Mangione's GitHub account, where he shared open source projects he worked on as a student at the University of Pennsylvania.
In various posts apparently written by Mangione, he says that he has always suffered from back pain, but that it became serious when he was 23. After “conservative treatment,” things got bad in the summer of 2022 when he was injured. One post describes that I have been suffering from bladder and genital pain as well as sciatica and back pain for a year.
RJ Martin, the founder of the Surfbreak apartment community in Hawaii, where Mangione lived for six months in 2022, told the New York Times that a surfing lesson left Mangione in debilitating pain.
“He knew that dating and physical intimacy was not possible because of his back condition,” Martin told the Times.
Another Reddit post apparently written by Mangione describes an L5-S1 fusion surgery in July 2023. A photo on his now-deleted X account showed metal screws in his spine.
Subsequent Reddit posts suggest that Mangione was optimistic about the procedure in the months following the surgery.
“The surgery wasn't nearly as scary as I imagined it would be and I knew within a week that it was the right decision and that I wouldn't have to worry about injections or future surgeries for many years. ” read a Reddit post from October 2023. “Remember that the human body is intended to exist in a pain-free state. Constant pain means something is wrong. Even with metal in my back, I don’t feel any pain.”
Mangione appeared to offer advice and condolences to other users who had similar issues.
“If your back is broken and no longer viable, age has nothing to do with it,” one post said in April. “Good surgeons understand this and will operate on you based on your symptoms and anatomy.”
In another post, another Reddit user who wanted surgery was advised: “Tell them you're 'unable to work.'
“We live in a capitalist society. “I have found that the medical industry responds to these keywords much more urgently than you do when it comes to describing excruciating pain and its impact on your quality of life,” the post reads.
The posts were discontinued in May and, according to Mangione's friends and family, he began to retire over the next few months. In a missing person report to San Francisco police first published by the San Francisco Standard, Mangione's mother said she last spoke to her son in July. A now-deleted post on X from a friend in July asked Mangione to contact us.
As of Aug. 31, Mangione no longer lived in the Hawaii apartment he had rented for two years, KHON2 reported. It is unclear where he was until November 24, when police said he arrived in New York City on a Greyhound bus. On Dec. 4, he allegedly left the hostel where he was staying before dawn and then shot Thompson as he arrived at UnitedHealth Group's annual investor conference.
Mangione was arrested Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Authorities said he was carrying a ghost gun, a silencer, thousands of dollars in cash, fake IDs and a manifesto.
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The three-page handwritten document reportedly criticizes the U.S. health care system without going into detail about any specific complaints Mangione may have had.
“Frankly, these parasites just had it,” the document says.
