Joshua Chaffin
Appearances
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Has the health insurance industry responded? So far, I think the industry is, my sense, just looking from the outside, is that they themselves are sort of in a state of shock as to what happened and still kind of digesting this whole saga and what it's telling them, how people feel about them.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
We have a lot of questions. You know, there's a lot of sort of gumshoe police work, basic stuff. You know, when did he get to New York City? How did he get here? What was he doing day in, day out while he was preparing? How was he able to intercept Brian Thompson that Wednesday morning outside the Hilton?
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
And I think that, you know, we have sort of a rough, broad-brushed picture of a very promising... young man kind of in some ways turning, but we haven't really fleshed that out yet. And I think that's important to do, to understand all that he went through that took him to this point.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
It does feel like we're in a kind of time of anger and earthquakes and eruptions and, you know, every institution suddenly seems kind of vulnerable or at risk from, you know, this kind of public rage and discontent. Social media, of course, is also great at harnessing that. If you move past the shock and the sort of tabloid elements of the story it seems to tap into something about this broader
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
public mood in the nation at the moment, that there is so much anger at institutions and health insurers among them. And so the fact that we've had this strange reaction, the fact that it seems to have almost created kind of a reckoning, I guess, for the health insurance industry is, I think, pretty significant.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
I think that their clues were largely surveillance. And this is, you know, Midtown is one of the most surveilled places on the planet, apparently. And so there were all sorts of camera feeds, either from the NYPD itself or from... private landlords and businesses and neighboring buildings all around that area.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
And so it was remarkable that people could see, and really gruesome, people could actually watch this murder quite soon on video, which distributed all over the internet. People were able to see that, and yet at the same time, the killer seemed to have been careful enough that police could not After the shooting, the suspect rode a bike to Central Park, where he disappeared for a while.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Then he took a taxi to a bus station at the northern edge of the city and left town.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Those were the first kind of clues to his motivation. And those are kind of buzzwords for people who are opponents or protesters of the health insurers and who complain that this is the common playbook of the for-profit health insurance industry, that they delay claims, they deny them, and that basically their playbook is to do whatever they can to not pay. And that's how they...
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
had their bottom line. So that was the first sign that this might be tied to some grudge or gripe about healthcare.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
It has the kind of makings of like a thriller. You know, this top executive is in the middle of midtown Manhattan in the middle of holiday season, and he is gunned down by an assassin in the sort of pre-dawn darkness.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
No, we didn't. And of course, there was all sorts of speculation. Was it some sort of personal matter, et cetera? But we didn't know. We knew that this was a gentleman who had been targeted specifically, that the killer had sort of been lying in wait, that all sorts of people had passed him by on the sidewalk.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
But he clearly was focused and waiting for Brian Thompson, who is a health care chief executive. And then I think when those The words written on those shell casings became apparent that I think began to tip suspicion in that direction.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
According to Jessica Tisch, the new police commissioner, she pointed to all of these kind of neat gadgets and assets that they deployed, drones, scuba teams, aerial surveillance, aviation, canine units.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
But it sounds like a huge part of it was sifting through and looking at thousands of hours of footage, of surveillance video footage, and trying to find the kind of proverbial needle in the haystack.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
They found a very kind of telling picture of him at the front desk of a hostel on the Upper West Side, where the clerk apparently asked him to remove his mask and smile for an instant when he was checking in. In that moment, he has a very distinctive smile. That was captured on video, and then the police were able to circulate that to the media and online.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Yeah, so the first thing that we, that I at least began seeing was all sorts of snarky comments online, which is, you know, not something that's atypical for social media. You know, things like my deductible, you know, doesn't cover my sympathy or clearly a lot of disdain for UnitedHealthcare.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
It was easy to kind of chalk that up to, you know, this is people online saying kind of crass things.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
But very quickly, my email box began to fill up with really heartfelt letters or notes from doctors, dentists, healthcare practitioners, laying out the depth of their frustrations with the insurance industry and how kind of soul-crushing it was to fight every day to try to get treatments and procedures approved for patients. what a misery it was to endure this constantly.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
And they did not defend in any way the murder, but they certainly attested to how unpopular the health insurance industry is.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
So in the immediate aftermath, there were all sorts of people who have kind of this new practice of people kind of crowdsourcing an investigation, kind of amateurs getting together online and helping the police through open source data make connections that were very effective in identifying some of the January 6th insurrectionists.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Somebody with a pistol, with a silencer, who seemed to know what they were doing. And it's utterly mysterious as to what has happened, why this has happened.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
A lot of those people said, you know, I don't condone murder, but I'm not going to help in this case. I'm sitting this one out. I don't believe in the health care system.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
I think they've been grieving very privately. His funeral was private. I imagine it must kind of deepen their pain to know that there are a lot of people celebrating his murder or, if not celebrating, justifying.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
So the scene of the arrest is a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, which is kind of central Western Pennsylvania. It is kind of a walk away from the Greyhound bus station, a really nondescript neighborhood. And apparently he was sitting toward the back of the restaurant with a laptop and somebody recognized him from Wanted poster and employee called the local police.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
The police responded. I think they said it was 9.14 a.m. And they approached Luigi Mangione. And it sounds like he was reasonably civil. And he gave them a fake New Jersey driver's license. And then one of the officers apparently asked him if he had been in New York recently. And apparently at that moment, he went quiet and started shaking. So I think at that point, police...
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
had a pretty good indication who it was. And he was taken into custody soon thereafter.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
So in addition to the fake ID, they found a ghost gun that had been produced on a 3D printer. They also found a silencer that had been produced on a 3D printer. And they found a three-page handwritten document.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
You know, this figure had been cloaked in a hood and a medical mask as we knew him during the manhunt. And all of a sudden, after he's captured, we have images and we have a name very quickly, Luigi Mangione. Luigi attended a very prestigious school, the Gilman School, an all-boys school where tuition runs up to $40,000 a year. He was the valedictorian, graduated in 2016.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Here's Mangione addressing his class as valedictorian.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
And then he goes on to University of Pennsylvania, where he's an honors student and gets a master's in computer science. So he's a very bright, talented young man and seemingly pretty idealistic and thoughtful. And it turns out that Luigi Mangione is from a very affluent, prominent family in Maryland. The family owns or developed a golf course and resort. It's a large Italian-American family.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
He had written some blog posts in high school talking about, you know, he became very interested in computer programming. You know, we can follow books that he read and so forth, you know, through college and after college. He posted on the Goodreads site, and he's clearly wrestling with a lot of questions about society and ethics and so forth.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
He posted a review of the Unabomber's manifesto that was quite sympathetic. And he sort of endorsed the idea that if you come to a point where your political activism isn't working, then maybe violence is justified. So in light of what we now know, that's really pretty chilling. He also posted various books about back pain and
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
We believe that he had back surgery, that he had chronic back pain, that he had what looks like spinal fusion surgery. And so there is obviously a lot of suspicion about his interaction with the health care system and what that experience did to him.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Yeah, this is still very much kind of a gray period in the investigation, and I imagine we'll learn a lot more about it in the coming days. But there are messages on his social media from friends saying, you know, hey, are you okay? What's happened to you? Your family's looking for you. Can you get in touch? Should I be worried? There's another one from a friend saying, yeah.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
You committed to the wedding, to my wedding. Like, are you coming? What's happened? Is all okay? So clearly, at some point in the last however many months, something seems to have gone wrong, and he seems to have sort of drifted away.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
There's yet another layer to the story, which is the response from the public and the deep, deep anger at the healthcare system, at the health insurers in particular. And so we've actually seen a case where you have a murdered executive who's a father of two, and yet you have all sorts of sympathy online for the killer, which is unusual.
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
It's a fascinating question. I mean, I don't think health insurance companies have ever been terribly popular, but it must be bracing and shocking for insurance executives to follow the story and discover just how angry people are at them. And a sentiment in a lot of the emails that I've received is, is it really surprising that this has happened?
The Journal.
The Suspect in the UnitedHealth Killing
Isn't it more surprising that this hadn't happened sooner? So I think you have United Healthcare, Brian Thompson's company, I think it made about $25 billion in profits last year. That has a profound reputational problem. And I think it's not something that's sort of easily moved past.