I am going to lay out some key evidence and unanswered questions and explore alternatives as well, but after looking over everything I am feeling swayed toward one theory specifically (which is at the bottom).

The Whos:

1. Brian Thompson:

– CEO of UnitedHealthcare

– Assassinated on Wednesday, December 4th, in Midtown NYC on his way to a UnitedHealthcare investor's conference

– According to Thompson's wife, he had been receiving threats, but she doesn't know who was sending them. She says that she thinks it did have to do with insurance coverage. He never reported those threats to the Minnesota police (where he is from) and hadn't had any security detail with him (which not having security is the norm for him).

1. The killer (I will separate him from Luigi Mangione – they might be the same person, might not be, but I will be treating them as two different people for now):

– Was lying in wait for Thompson to exit the hotel around 6:45am (leading to believe that he had prior knowledge of where Thompson was staying, that he would not have security with him, and around what time he would be leaving – possibly knew about the investors meeting as well, which is annual)

– Shot three rounds into Thompson's back using a handgun with a silencer. The 9 mm bullets each said "deny", "defend," and "depose" written in permanent marker. Deny, defend, and depose is a commonly used phrase to critique the healthcare industry, referring to their process of delaying payment, denying claims, and defending their actions.

– Gunman seems to be experienced with shooting

– Images released of him showed him wearing a hooded jacket and and mask, concealing most of his face, which wasn't out of the ordinary as NYC was cold that morning.

– After the shooting, the gunman slipped down an alley and used a citibike to escape into Central Park, which was full of morning joggers and bikers. Later, the NYPD recovered a backpack consistent with the one the assassin wore full of monopoly money from the park.

– The gunman apparently visited Starbucks right before the assassination and threw out of a trash can near the crime scene, where a recently bought phone, water bottle, and protein bar wrapper were all recovered.

– NYPD received a tip that he may have been at a hostel in the UWS, with the first photo of Luigi Mangione being made public from the HI New York City hostel, where he possibly used a New Jersey fake ID to check in (later recovered off of Mangione). Employees of the hostel remembered a man who always wore a mask.

1. Luigi Mangione:

– Found at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania about 300 miles away from the shooting (some people on Twitter are going into the exact number here, but I'm not tracking that info down right now – but I would love to see discourse about it in the comments)!

– It was first thought that a McDonald's employee reported him to the police, but it was later published that a man named Larry who was a customer there had a conversation with his friend about how Luigi looked like the photo of the killer, but didn't alert anyone himself. He thought Luigi was a McDonald's employee going on break.

– According to Larry, Luigi ordered his food, and then sat in the back of the McDonald's with his hood up, alone.

– When police showed up, they asked him if he had been to New York recently and, according to reports, he stayed silent and began to shake, with police reporting that he was visibly nervous. They reported he was sitting with a blue medical mask on, using his laptop, and had a backpack on the ground. After taking off his mask, they said they "recognized him immediately"

– Police recovered from him: a loaded "ghost gun" (a gun 3D printed and capable of shooting real ammo), a silencer for the gun, a fake New Jersey ID, a mask and clothing consistent with the gunman's attired, and a handwritten manifesto admitting to the shooting. Additional things on his person included multiple fake IDs and a US Passport. When officers asked for his ID, he reportedly gave them the fake NJ ID

– Only gave his real name when told he would be arrested for lying to the police

– He had put his phone in a signal-blocking bag, but could be traced travelling from Pittsburgh to Altoona after leaving NY.

– Luigi was cooperative at first, then became silent. The only "criminal history" (if we can call it that) was an incident of him trespassing in a state park in Hawaii.

– Currently charged with the murder of Brian Thompson

– Additional background info:

• He is of Italian-American descent, 26-years old, coming from a well-off family, went to private school for high school in Baltimore, MD, graduated as valedictorian, and graduated from UPenn with both a bachelor's and master's in computer science.
• While in HI, he spent a lot of time surfing but left due to severe back pain
• He has a pretty robust digital footprint, with his goodreads account showing him as an avid reader, and agreeing with the philosophy of the unabomber while still acknowledging his violent nature
• Registered voter, unaffiliated with any party, but his cousin is a Republican State Delegate of MD, Nino Mangione. Despite not having public party affiliation, Luigi's twitter account (now X) shows more conservative/libertarian views on politics, although, again, he doesn't explicitly state his opinions anywhere
• Well-off may have been an understatement when talking about his family, as their family has a foundation worth nearly $4.5 million in assets, and have an aquatic center at Loyola University named after them due to donations
• active on social media for years, had lots of family and friends, and a social life. No presence of mental illness (not counting the past 6 months where he went AWOL)
• Over the summer, Mangione appears to have cut off contact with all friends and family, causing them to worry, and also stopped posting on social media – next they heard from him was after the killing of Thompson

1. The Manifesto

– Not much is known about it, aside from it being relatively short and showing serious contempt toward corporate America

– It is supposedly 262 pages long

– Not the manifesto, but a notebook alongside it had been recovered that included pages such as:

• a to-do list of tasks to complete for the assassination of Brian Thompson
• plans to use a bomb in Manhattan
• additional notes that seem to be how he worked out possible ideas for the murder
• supposedly, the notes indicated he decided not to use bombs as to avoid killing innocent people
• an excerpt from Independent: "what could be better than 'to kill the CEO at his own bean-counting conference'"
• insists he acted alone; provides full motive where he is vehemently anti-american US health insurance companies

1. The Public

No sources here, now I am going to begin moving into my observations:

• overwhelmingly agreeing that the country has a serious issue when it comes to health insurance
• this murder has gained a lot of publicity and support, overshadowing something that maybe you haven't even heard about yet that's currently happening – Malibu is on fire, with celebrities like Beyonce, Jay Z, Lady Gaga, Cher, etc. (literally every big name out there) having to evacuate and possibly losing all those multi-million dollar homes
• a lot of people are beginning to vent and rant about their own issues with health insurance companies, with UnitedHealthcare being at the forefront of "FU!!!", but there are still plenty of stories outside of them
• many CEOs (mainly of anything relating to do with medicine) have begun erasing contact info, profile pages online, and (supposedly) are beginning to hire security
• For anyone interested: UnitedHealthcare news from Dec. 3rd, Dec. 4th, and December 5th
• America's anger: " a Facebook post by UnitedHealth Group expressing sadness about UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s death received 62,000 reactions – 57,000 of them laughing emojis."

Sources:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/luigi-mangione-healthcare-ceo-shooting-what-we-know/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-brian-thompson-suspect-what-know-rcna183155

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/04/unitedhealth-cancels-investor-day-after-reports-of-executive-shot-in-manhattan.html

https://apnews.com/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo-manhattan-shooting-death-7f6581ba6b0b520938d82c361e77a83c

https://apnews.com/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-delay-deny-defend-depose-ee73ceb19f361835c654f04a3b88c50c

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/luigi-mangione-altoona-mcdonalds-witness/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9nxee2r0do

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/09/us/luigi-mangione-what-we-know-monday/index.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/luigi-mangione-manifesto-notebook-bomb-manhattan-new-york-b2662458.html

————–

Now for some possible theories:

1. Luigi did it, and it all happened exactly as the media is reporting it.

Let's be honest, this is almost 100% not the truth of the matter (when has it ever been??) But let's humor it for a moment!

It's obviously possible, if we are to believe all the evidence is correct. Here (just a few) questions I have:

He seemed like he wanted to be caught. Why? | Where did he learn to handle a gun like that? | What was he doing for those 6 months? | Did he really act alone? Or is the admission in the notebook to cover up for a group?

1. Luigi is clueless and has been set up as the fall guy by someone else.

This one explains discrepancies in the jackets and eyebrows (if you haven't look at the shooter's eyebrows and Luigi's, it would seem that if Luigi was the shooter then he got his brows waxed right before the assassination and then grew it back by the time he was caught – except for those pesky photos of him flirting at the hostel???)

Yes, Luigi was always wearing a mask in NYC, but maybe he's simply the type of person who always masks. It's not uncommon.

Here are (again, just a few) questions that this raises for me:

What was he doing with everything at McDonald's? Doesn't seem like it was just planted on him out of nowhere, especially if we are to believe the reports of him appearing nervous simply at the question of "Were you recently in New York," that is, unless he is hiding something else that has nothing to do with the shooting. But how likely is that? | It would be a very interesting coincidence for him to have read all those books. | While knowing how to code doesn't inherently make you a genius (and, if the rewrites of his manifesto are character for character, his grammar skills certainly don't seem to be on point), it does give you certain abilities and knowledge of things that are consistent with 3D printing a gun, knowing how to avoid surveillance (although, again, unless he's some flaming narcissist, why take his mask off at the hostel?), and obtaining fake IDs.

1. Luigi did do it, but not in the way we are being told.

This one has far too many questions behind it, but I'm not going to lay any out as I think all the discrepancies are being laid out in the other possibilities.

1. Luigi is the fall guy, but he knows it (i.e., he's working with a group).

To me, this is the most likely. But that leaves us with the biggest question of all: who?

While I did put in the title it could possibly be mafia related (I mean, unions don't work that way anymore, so you gotta figure something else out – tracks with typical union/mafia mentality, he seems like he'd have the connections, his entire family and friends are rallying behind him, even though he's obviously smart he's also young and this was a complex orchestration), I think we shouldn't brush off other possibilities.

Lone, Anonymous Group

This is possible to find, I think especially amongst computer science people, maybe even people he knew from UPenn, or from… other areas of the internet… and even if they are all young, I think this is much more probable than him acting alone.

Politicians

I'm simply going to give one motive and move on, but I would love to see discussions about this and y'alls take on it:

We think of politicians as scummy people who constantly just do favors for those with more money (like the healthcare insurance industry and big pharma). But maybe they're not the completely evil capitalists we think they might be, but are puppets of the wealthy, private corporations and maybe they're fed up with it. I think this is both a new and not new idea at the same time, if that makes sense. Would love to see someone help me flesh this one out. Last thing to consider – this country is in debt, and remember who we are in debt to and why and who shoulders the most pressure to alleviate it.

Mafia

While motive for this should be fairly obvious, I have one addition here that, for me, ties everything together: they're also the police.

Ok folks, there you have it, all my (major) theories about this murder! I really want to see what everyone thinks! Thanks for the read!