CEO Murder Suspect Was Ivy League Graduate Who Praised Unabomber

Mangione’s social media posting provided some insight into his life. He left reviews of Surfbreak and the Hub on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, praising the “community of travelers and entrepreneurs” at Surfbreak, a co-living space, and said the Hub, a co-working site, was a “warm, energizing place.”

“Both memberships have enabled me to meet so many interesting people, and the combination of the two has provided the perfect balance of work and life,” according to the review he posted as @luig.man.

Fun and enjoyment were paramount for Mangione, from his days at Stanford, to the video-game club he founded at Penn, to his living situation in Hawaii. But then, seemingly, things may have changed.

On Goodreads, Mangione posted a positive review in June 2021 of Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski, a mathematician and Harvard University graduate who became a domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber.

It would be easy to write it off “as the manifesto of a lunatic,” in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies, Mangione wrote. “But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”

“He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people,” Mangione wrote. “While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.”

Traffic on social media accounts seemed to indicate that family members were trying to locate Mangione as recently as two weeks ago, though it wasn’t possible to verify the accuracy of the posts which have since been taken down by X. Others speculated about a possible surfing accident and unsuccessful back surgery, which also went unconfirmed.

A Surfbreak spokesperson confirmed that Mangione stayed there, and said that he had been suffering pain from a misaligned vertebrae.

The Goodreads account in his name lists at least five books about chronic back pain and fitness, and his X account banner features an X-ray image of a lower back with spinal screws that are often inserted during surgery.

Back Surgery

Such operations are notoriously difficult and often ineffective. They can also be hard to get in some instances, as some studies show the pain may ease with time and insurance companies crack down on the use of procedures and medications that can come with serious complications.

Patients are increasingly frustrated with the role that insurers play as gatekeepers for certain types of medical procedures, according to Wendell Potter, a former Cigna Group communications executive who has written books that are critical of the industry.

“One of the biggest reasons that people have to access the health-care system is because of back and joint pain,” he said. “It can be expensive, and there are a lot of surgeries that are either delayed for one reason or another that should have taken place, or that have been approved and that weren’t necessary.”

While the effectiveness of surgery for back pain is disputed, “the insurance companies put themselves in the position of being the decision-maker here, and that may not be an appropriate role for them,” he said. “You often have someone at an insurance company making a determination that runs contrary to what a patient’s doctor says a patient needs.”

Social media was full of praise for Mangione, with Luigi the top trending topic on X and FREE HIM coming in at No. 7 on Monday evening. #FreeLuigi gained traction on Instagram. The McDonald’s in Altoona, where Mangione was caught, also was hit by one-star reviews after the arrest, with one poster criticizing the “class traitor” who turned him in and another calling him “one of the brightest minds of our generation.”

Luigi Mangione. Credit: Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

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