Luigi Mangione, the prep school valedictorian and University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family who is now accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, draws comparisons to Ted Kaczynski, Unabomber.
“They both sent messages through their violent killings,” said John Kelly, a criminal profiler and head of the Deadly Apprehension System. “The Unabomber sent a message to the tech industry and how it will destroy the country.”
Kaczynski's case was the first on which Kelly worked. The Unabomber, FBI shorthand for university and airline bomber, sent 16 bombs over nearly 20 years, including one that exploded on a plane after it reached a certain altitude.
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The suspected gunman in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, believed to be Luigi Mangione, was seen flirting with a hotel employee in surveillance footage before the Dec. 4 shooting. (nypd)
“The UnitedHealthcare suspect has sent his message to the insurance industry, and I don't think it will be the last if he is not caught,” he added.
As Kaczynski was making his own bombs, he was a suspect Murder weapon Kelly said Thompson's murder had 3D-printed homemade parts.
Police described it as a “ghost gun” equipped with a plastic receiver and silencer.
Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, arrives for trial in Helena, Mont., on April 4, 1996. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
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“Neither of them had a meaningful relationship with a woman,” Kelly said. “Both of them could have suffered from schizophrenia. Certainly, the Unabomber did. Luigi is at a mature age where it could start.”
Kaczynski killed himself In prison last year after opting out of cancer treatments. He was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after his brother read his statement, which was submitted anonymously to the court The Washington Post In 1995, I handed it over.
Mangione reportedly had a handwritten statement when police arrested him in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday. In the statement, he allegedly mentioned UnitedHealthcare and the shareholder conference that Thompson was chairing at the time of the assassination.
“They were both obsessed with, and focused on, the industries they wanted to hurt and raise public awareness,” Kelly said.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson (AP Photo/UnitedHealth Group)
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Mangione was a regular poster on Goodreads, the literature-focused social media site where he wrote a review Kaczynski statement.
“It is easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as a crazy statement, to avoid confronting some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,” he wrote. “But it is simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions are about modern society.”
While writing about Kaczynski's “Industrial Society and Its Future,” he quoted another Internet passage that he “found interesting.”
Suspect Luigi Mangione was transported to Blair County Court on December 10, 2024, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. (Janet Klingbeil via AP)
“When all other forms of communication fail,” he wrote, “violence becomes necessary for survival.” “You may not like his methods, but to see things from his point of view, this is not terrorism, but war and revolution.”
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He praised the single serial bomber as a “miracle of mathematics.”
Luigi Mangione (Luigi Mangione/Facebook)
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“He was a violent individual — rightfully incarcerated — who mutilated innocent people,” he wrote. “While these actions tend to be described as those of a lunatic Luddite (sic), they are more accurately viewed as the actions of a radical political revolutionary.”
Both men had become reclusive before their alleged crimes. Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water to get away from the technological society he hated. Mangione's mother reported him missing to San Francisco police last month, telling them she had not been able to contact her son since July, according to law enforcement sources.
The business address I thought he worked at was permanently closed.
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This photo shows the home of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. The entire structure was later transported to Washington by the FBI. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
“He became a recluse,” said Nicole Parker, a former judge. FBI agent. “That's when he really starts to decide what he's going to be like. Maybe that's what caused him to start down this path toward violence. But don't be fooled that this kid hasn't thought this way before.”
But she wondered if the suspected killer had actually acted alone.
“I want to see the call history on this traditional phone,” she told Fox News Digital. “These feelings didn't start yesterday or just three months ago. Were those internal thoughts he was having? No.”
Like Mangione, Kaczynski is a former Ivy League member — a Harvard graduate and mathematician. The Unabomber killed three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995 with a series of bombs he mailed to his victims.
Ted Kaczynski appears on June 21, 1996. (AP Photo/Eileen Thompson)
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Surveillance video taken outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan shows a masked killer sneaking up behind Thompson on the sidewalk at about 6:45 a.m. on December 4. Thompson was on his way to attend a shareholders' conference at the venue scheduled to begin later that morning when the gunman opened fire from behind.
As the CEO collapsed in the street, a woman who witnessed the attack ran away in one direction and the masked person casually walked in the other direction. The police tracked his movements all the time New York City To the bus station, where he left about an hour after the murder. They shared surveillance photos, which were widely circulated online, and police arrested him at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday after witnesses identified him and called 911.
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Luigi Mangione, the CEO's murder suspect, screams as officers handcuff him as he arrives for his extradition hearing in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, on December 10, 2024. (David De Delgado for Fox News Digital)
Mangione is being held without bail in Pennsylvania on a slew of charges. His lawyer told a judge this week that he plans to fight extradition to New York, delaying a second-degree murder case there.
Police told Fox News they are looking into whether his health care claim was denied while investigating a possible motive.
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They claimed Mangione confessed to the crime in writing and left behind other evidence, including bullet casings bearing the words “denial,” “defense,” and “deposit” and a backpack full of Monopoly money.
UnitedHealthcare CEO and murder suspect Luigi Mangione is seen at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on December 9, 2024. (Pennsylvania State Police)
The notes left on the bullet covers led to comparisons to the book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.” The book did not appear on his Goodreads account. Police said Wednesday that the casings were a ballistic match to the gun seized during Mangione arrested.
“He had sympathy for someone, he had a case and he allegedly used violence for that cause,” Parker said. “It takes a long time for these ideas to develop. This shooter had the intelligence and sophistication to do it, (a) personality characteristic of someone who is willing to go to extreme measures for something he is passionate about. He believed he was fighting for something for his cause.” His self-identity: saving all those people who have been victimized by the health care insurance industry.
Fox News' Michael Lundin, Chris Pandolfo and Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.
