2020 Engineering graduate Luigi Mangione currently faces the possibility of a life sentence without parole in the state of New York, and four federal charges that could result in the death penalty for the December 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
At his Dec. 23, 2024 arraignment in the New York State Supreme Court, Mangione pled not guilty to 11 charges — including first-degree murder, two variations of second-degree murder, and weapons charges. A week before, he pled not guilty to the Southern District of New York’s charges against him for murder through the use of a firearm, two stalking counts, and a firearms offense.
When Mangione was arrested, authorities found his 262-word note about his fight against the “parasitic” healthcare industry. In it, he wrote that Thompson’s murder was a “symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its [UnitedHealthcare’s] alleged corruption and ‘power games.’”
As the 26-year-old murder suspect’s past continues to come under scrutiny, The Daily Pennsylvanian looked at Mangione’s ties to Penn.
While a student at Penn, Mangione pursued a dual degree in engineering, and founded the University's first game development club — all while periodically suffering from alleged back issues and "brain fog."
Mangione graduated from Penn in 2020 with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer and information science after four years and was inducted into Penn's Eta Kappa Nu honor society for excellence in electrical and computer engineering.
Several of the available courses for his degrees in computer and information science would have involved 3D printing knowledge. At the time of his arrest, Mangione was in possession of a 3D-printed "ghost gun" in his backpack, which he is widely believed to have made himself.
Mangione was affiliated with Phi Psi, a University-affiliated fraternity. He suffered from mental and physical health problems while at Penn, which he claimed in a social media post was exacerbated by his fraternity’s “hell week" — the final week of intense pledging ahead of initiation. Mangione also posted frequently on Reddit about his difficulty maintaining focus amid exhaustion and brain fog. His posts also attributed his decline in academic success to these issues, citing their negative impact on his overall well-being.
"It’s absolutely brutal to have such a life-halting issue," Mangione wrote of his brain fog in a Reddit post. "The people around you probably won’t understand your symptoms — they certainly don’t for me.”
In screenshots of texts and voice memos obtained exclusively by the DP, a current Phi Psi brother said the new member education process for the fraternity included binge drinking and eating. According to the texts, the pledges had to “solve an ACT for [a] 36 straight drunk” and were “stuck” in a basement.
In a voice memo, the brother described an eating event as “really nasty” and said his "stomach hurts a lot." The texts also included a screenshot of a 9.07-mile pledging run the student tracked on a fitness application.
“We didn't really sleep much," he said in the voice memo. "I thought I was gonna be able to sleep between 7 [a.m.] to 9:30 [a.m.], but at 6 [a.m.] we did our running in between drinking."
The DP could not determine whether the current new member education process has changed since Mangione was a pledge in the fraternity. Penn's Phi Psi chapter directed a request for comment to the national organization.
The health problems Mangione allegedly faced seemed to be compounded by his back-related issues. Mangione’s now-deleted Reddit account first appeared in 2016 under the username “Mister_Cactus.” The user posted on a subreddit multiple times about spondylolisthesis, a condition where a bone slips out of alignment, putting pressure on nerves around the spine and lower vertebrae.
A July 2023 post indicated an injury flare-up around the region after “Mister_Cactus” had gone surfing, while other posts suggest the user had spinal fusion surgery around the same time. Medical professionals point to surgery as a last-resort option for patients like Mangione.
“In the gross majority of treatments, surgery is when everything else has failed to provide relief,” Jason Pittman, co-director of the Spine Center at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said to the Associated Press.
Martin, Mangione’s friend in Hawaii, reported similar information to NBC. Their last communication was in October, in which Martin asked Mangione if he had undergone spinal fusion surgery, and Mangione had responded with a photo showing screws in his back.
“You wouldn’t know he’s in pain until afterwards he might say, ‘Oh, sorry. I couldn’t get out of bed for a couple days.’ And that’s kind of the beginning and end of it,” Martin told NBC.
While the killing prompted speculation that Mangione had negative personal experiences with the healthcare system, his Reddit posts point to a largely positive experience with spinal fusion surgery.
“Surgery was painful for the first couple days, but I was shocked that, by day seven, I was on literally zero pain meds,” Mangione posted on Reddit in August 2023. “Obviously will be awhile until I get into rigorous activity, but it was way less of a big deal than I had anticipated.”
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