联合保险CEO谋杀案嫌疑人放弃了享有特权和前途的生活
【中美创新时报2024 年 12 月 10 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）联合保险首席执行官(CEO)谋杀案嫌疑人路易吉·曼吉奥内（Luigi Mangione ）是常春藤盟校的一名技术毕业生，来自马里兰州一个显赫的家庭，近几个月来一直遭受着身体和心理上的痛苦。凭借他的资历和人脉，他本可以成为一名企业家，或成为他家族一家兴旺企业的首席执行官。但调查人员怀疑，他却选择了一条不同的道路。《纽约时报》记者Corey KilgannonMike BakerLuke Broadwater 和 Shawn Hubler对此作了下述详细报道。
Luigi Mangione 是他的网络版本，是一名常春藤盟校的技术爱好者，他在海滩照片和与穿着蓝色西装的兄弟会伙伴的派对照片中炫耀着他黝黑、轮廓分明的外表。
他是巴尔的摩一所著名预科学校的毕业生代表，在宾夕法尼亚大学获得学士和硕士学位，并担任斯坦福大学预科项目的首席顾问。
凭借他的资历和人脉，他本可以成为一名企业家，或成为他家族一家兴旺企业的首席执行官。但调查人员怀疑，他却选择了一条不同的道路。
警方现在认为，26 岁的曼吉奥内先生就是上周在曼哈顿中城的一条街道上冷静地拿出一把装有消音器的手枪，暗杀联合健康保险首席执行官布莱恩·汤普森的蒙面枪手。周一，麦当劳的一名员工认出了他并报警，他在宾夕法尼亚州阿尔图纳被捕。警方表示，他们发现他持有假身份证，武器与杀人视频中看到的类似，还发表了一份谴责医疗保健行业的宣言。
后来，他被指控谋杀，并被控伪造文件和非法持有武器。
周二，在宾夕法尼亚州的引渡听证会之前，曼吉奥内先生与警察发生冲突，警察将他带到法院入口，并对记者大喊大叫。“这完全脱离现实，是对美国人民智商的侮辱，”他说，但目前尚不清楚他指的是什么。
他的律师告诉法庭，曼吉奥内先生将反对将他引渡到纽约接受谋杀指控的审判。
在他被捕后的几个小时里，他从明星学生到谋杀嫌疑人的令人费解的旅程开始显现出来。
曼吉奥内先生一直与朋友和家人保持着定期联系，直到大约六个月前，他突然莫名其妙地停止了与他们交流。朋友们说，他一直患有痛苦的背部损伤，然后就失去了联系，他的亲戚焦急地向朋友询问：有人听到他的消息吗？
7 月，一名男子标记了一个似乎属于 Mangione 先生的社交媒体账户，并表示他已经几个月没有收到他的消息了。“你对我的婚礼做出了承诺，如果你不能兑现，我需要知道，这样我才能做出相应的计划，”这名男子在一篇现已删除的帖子中写道。
这六个月很可能成为调查人员的关注重点，因为他们试图收集更多证据，证明 Mangione 先生与谋杀案的关系，以及他在没有人找到他的时候做了什么。
Mangione 先生留下了一系列关于自我提升、健康饮食和技术的帖子——以及对 Unabomber 宣言的评论。现场留下的弹壳上潦草地写着“拒绝”和“拖延”等字样，让当局和公众怀疑，枪击事件是否是对医疗保险公司拒绝索赔的报复。
据《纽约时报》获得的一份警方内部报告显示，曼吉奥内被捕时携带了三页的宣言，他将这次杀戮描述为“象征性的打击”。这份长篇大论将这次杀戮描述为对医疗行业“所谓的腐败和‘权力游戏’”的直接挑战，警方调查人员在报告中表示，嫌疑人“很可能将自己视为某种英雄”，决定采取行动。
袭击发生后，社交媒体对保险业的怨恨情绪高涨，而这名身份不明的嫌疑人对某些人来说成了民间英雄。
曼吉奥内出身于一个优越的家庭，是巴尔的摩地区一个有影响力的房地产家族的成员。
他的祖父 Nick Mangione Sr. 和祖母 Mary C. Mangione 在 20 世纪 70 年代购买了位于马里兰州埃利科特城的 Turf Valley 乡村俱乐部，并开发了高尔夫球场社区。
20 世纪 80 年代，该家族购买了位于马里兰州亨特谷的 Hayfields 乡村俱乐部。它还创立了养老院公司 Lorien Health Services，Mangione 先生的父亲 Louis Mangione 成为所有者之一。该家族还拥有广播电台 WCBM，该电台播放政治保守派节目并拥有其他房地产。他的表弟 Nino Mangione 是马里兰州众议院的当选议员。
该家族的财富和慈善事业使其在巴尔的摩广为人知。Luigi Mangione 是“你最不可能怀疑的人”，律师兼电台主持人 Thomas J. Maronick Jr. 说，他认识 Mangione 家族的几名成员。
“这是一个备受尊敬的家族，也是巴尔的摩县的一个显赫家族，”他说。
Luigi Mangione 就读于巴尔的摩著名的吉尔曼学校的高中，在那里他摔跤并参加其他运动，并于 2016 年成为毕业班的毕业生代表。在毕业演讲中，他将自己的班级描述为“提出新想法并挑战周围世界”。
他感谢出席的家长将他和他的同学送到这所学校，他称这“远非一笔小额财务投资”。目前，高中生的学费为每年 37,690 美元。
在吉尔曼上学期间与 Mangione 先生成为朋友的 Aaron Cranston 说，他记得 Mangione 先生特别聪明——也许是这所精英私立学校中最聪明的。甚至在上大学之前，Mangione 先生就已经制作了一款移动应用程序，用户可以在其中驾驶纸飞机穿越障碍物。
克兰斯顿回忆说，曼吉奥内先生善于交际、友好，从不特别热衷政治。他雄心勃勃，将自己对计算机科学的长期兴趣带到了大学。
“他坚信技术的力量可以改变世界，”克兰斯顿先生说。
26 岁的弗雷迪·莱瑟伯里 (Freddie Leatherbury) 是一名会计师，住在马里兰州卡顿斯维尔，2016 年与曼吉奥内先生一起从吉尔曼学院毕业。他回忆起曼吉奥内先生在高中队踢足球，还参加田径或越野赛。
“这两项运动都非常有纪律。这在很大程度上说明了他作为学生的品格，”莱瑟伯里先生说。“他非常聪明，数学很好，读得很好，而且说实话，他很喜欢。我对他没有任何不好的记忆。他的社交圈非常健康。”
27 岁的雷斯·桑德斯 (Race Saunders) 现居加利福尼亚州，是一名软件开发人员，他回忆起高中时与曼吉奥内先生是“学习伙伴”。他记得曼吉奥内先生是个勤奋的人。
“我们都倾向于计算机科学，”桑德斯先生说。
在大学里，曼吉奥内先生在该领域表现出色。宾夕法尼亚大学 2020 届毕业典礼上，曼吉奥内先生被列为该校 Eta Kappa Nu 分会的成员，Eta Kappa Nu 是一个成立于 1904 年的电气和计算机工程专业学生学术荣誉协会。根据该协会的网站，该协会是经过严格筛选的，只邀请这些专业大三班的前四分之一和大四班的前三分之一的学生成为会员。
根据 2018 年宾夕法尼亚大学校园活动博客上发表的一篇现已删除的采访，曼吉奥内先生对电脑游戏的兴趣始于他很小的时候，当时他开始在网上探索社区。采访中说，从那时起，他就想开始自己制作游戏，并在高中自学编程。
“这就是我现在主修计算机科学的原因，我就是这样进入这个领域的，”曼吉奥内先生在采访中说。“我真的想做游戏。”
根据他的 LinkedIn 个人资料和前雇主，曼吉奥内先生大学毕业后曾在多家科技公司工作或实习。
曼吉奥内先生的个人资料显示，他曾在位于加州圣莫尼卡的在线市场 TrueCar 担任软件工程师。该公司在一份声明中表示，他自 2023 年以来就没有再担任过员工。
近年来，曼吉奥内先生在檀香山一个名为 Surfbreak 的“共享生活”空间住了六个月，该空间专门为远程工作者提供服务。
Surfbreak 的创始人 R.J. Martin 说，当他在 2022 年遇到曼吉奥内先生时，他正在面试成为最初 20 名左右的住户之一，每月支付约 2,000 美元来共享宿舍。
马丁先生将曼吉奥内先生描述为一位聪明、有成就、乐观的工程师。“我们寻找的是那些想要回馈社会的人。他符合条件。他是我们的理想成员，”马丁先生说。
但曼吉奥内先生患有背部疼痛的问题，他说。“他的脊椎有点错位，”他说。“他说他的下椎骨几乎错位了半英寸，我认为它挤压了神经。”
马丁先生说，他和社区里的其他人都明白，对于一个渴望正常生活方式的年轻人来说，疼痛不是小事。“他知道，在背部有病的情况下约会和亲密接触是不可能的，”马丁先生说。
六个月后，曼吉奥内先生离开了共享生活空间，回到了东海岸，他告诉马丁先生他打算去看医生。之后他回到了檀香山，在同一个街区租了一套公寓。
马丁先生说，曼吉奥内先生于 2023 年夏天离开夏威夷，大概是去做背部手术。马丁先生说，那年 8 月，他通过短信联系朋友，想看看他的情况，“他给我发回了他背部手术的照片。”
这些照片——曼吉奥内先生脊柱的扫描图——非常震撼，马丁先生回短信问曼吉奥内先生感觉如何。“所以，说来话长，”据马丁先生说，曼吉奥内先生回答道。“我会亲自告诉你的。我会尽快回到夏威夷，我必须先在这里解决一些脊柱问题。”
他说，曼吉奥内先生确实在 2023 年底报告说，他已经回到夏威夷，在 11 月和 12 月访问了毛伊岛、大岛和瓦胡岛，然后返回巴尔的摩看望家人。在瓦胡岛时，曼吉奥内先生因没有注意到努阿努帕里瞭望台的标志而被开具了非法侵入的传票，努阿努帕里瞭望台是可以一览瓦胡岛壮丽景色的地方。他被罚款 100 美元。
马丁先生说，他计划在二月份与曼吉奥内先生联系。三月来临时，马丁先生发短信说：“想你，兄弟。希望你基本康复了。我们尽快见一面吧。”
据马丁先生说，曼吉奥内先生在 4 月 15 日回复说：“是的，兄弟，我们打电话见一面吧。”
但他们没有联系上。（根据他与英国一位作家的电子邮件往来，曼吉奥内先生似乎至少在那年春天有一部分时间在日本度过。）5 月 20 日，马丁先生又想起了他的朋友，发短信说：“哟！你醒了吗？”
他说，曼吉奥内先生没有回复。一个月后，也就是 6 月 23 日，他又给他发了短信。 “你到底在哪儿？”
没有回复。
通过一系列帖子，曼吉奥内先生在互联网上的踪迹暗示了身体和哲学上的痛苦。
一月份，曼吉奥内先生在书虫社交媒体网站 GoodReads 上对一本包含大学炸弹客泰德·卡辛斯基漫无边际的宣言的书发表了评论。
“为了避免面对它指出的一些令人不快的问题，人们很容易迅速而轻率地将其视为疯子的宣言，”曼吉奥内先生在谈到这份文件时写道。“但人们根本无法忽视他对现代社会的许多预测是多么有先见之明。”
曼吉奥内先生最喜欢的名言之一是 GoodReads 上列出的宗教哲学家和教师吉杜·克里希那穆提的名言：“适应一个病入膏肓的社会并不是健康的衡量标准。”
GoodReads 页面还包含有关健康和人体的自助书籍，包括《扭曲：智胜背痛行业并走上康复之路》。
一个似乎属于 Mangione 先生的社交媒体帐户展示了一张脊柱的 X 光片图像，该图像通过外科植入物进行了加固。纽约医学院教授 Hasit Mehta 博士表示，X 光片显示了脊柱融合术，该手术使用螺钉和杆将两个脊柱水平融合在一起，以解决可能导致严重疼痛的错位问题。
这位校友 Cranston 先生说，他今年收到了 Mangione 先生家人转发的一条消息，称手术后几个月家人都没有他的消息。亲戚们希望朋友们能知道他的下落。
直到周一早上他被捕之前，几乎没有人知道。
这位高中朋友 Saunders 先生对这一消息感到震惊，但他怀疑他的同学是否遭受了心理创伤。
“如果这是某种精神崩溃，我会感到惊讶，”他说。
目前，调查人员将寻找任何可能将曼吉奥内先生与枪击案联系起来的其他线索。警方在逮捕他时发现的宣言似乎提供了一些线索。
整个 262 字的手写文件指出，随着联合健康保险的市值增长，美国人的预期寿命却没有增长。
据执法官员称，作者写道：“为了节省您的冗长调查时间，我明确表示我没有与任何人合作。”该信谴责那些“继续滥用我们的国家来获取巨额利润的公司，因为美国公众允许他们逍遥法外。”
它补充道：“坦率地说，这些寄生虫就是罪有应得。”
题图：Luigi Mangione 被带到宾夕法尼亚州阿尔图纳的法院，将于周一接受传讯。图片来源：Rachel Wisniewski 为《纽约时报》提供
附原英文报道：
Suspect in C.E.O. Killing Withdrew From a Life of Privilege and Promise
The suspect, Luigi Mangione, was an Ivy League tech graduate from a prominent Maryland family who in recent months had suffered physical and psychological pain.
Luigi Mangione being taken to the courthouse in Altoona, Pa., to be arraigned on Monday.Credit…Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times
By Corey KilgannonMike BakerLuke Broadwater and Shawn Hubler
Published Dec. 9, 2024
Updated Dec. 10, 2024
Luigi Mangione, the online version of him, was an Ivy League tech enthusiast who flaunted his tanned, chiseled looks in beach photos and party pictures with blue-blazered frat buddies.
He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore prep school who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a head counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford University.
With his credentials and connections, he could have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family’s thriving businesses. Instead, investigators suspect, he took a different path.
The police now believe that Mr. Mangione, 26, is the masked gunman who calmly took out a pistol equipped with a suppressor on a Midtown Manhattan street last week and assassinated Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare. He was arrested in Altoona, Pa., on Monday after an employee at a McDonald’s recognized him and called the police. Officers said they found him with fake identification, a weapon similar to the one seen in video of the killing and a manifesto decrying the health care industry.
He was later charged with murder, along with additional counts of forgery and illegal weapons possession.
Before an extradition hearing in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Mr. Mangione struggled with officers as they led him toward a courthouse entrance and shouted at reporters. “That’s completely out of touch, and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” he said, though it was not clear what he was referring to.
His lawyer told the court that Mr. Mangione would contest his extradition to New York to face trial on the murder charge.
In the hours after his apprehension, his baffling journey from star student to murder suspect began to come into focus.
Mr. Mangione was in regular contact with friends and family until about six months ago when he suddenly and inexplicably stopped communicating with them. He had been suffering from a painful back injury, friends said, and then went dark, prompting anxious inquiries from relatives to his friends: Had anyone heard from him?
In July, one man tagged a social media account that appeared to belong to Mr. Mangione and said that he hadn’t heard from him in months. “You made commitments to me for my wedding and if you can’t honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly,” the man wrote in a now-deleted post.
Those six months will most likely become a focus for investigators as they try to gather more evidence about Mr. Mangione’s connection to the killing, and what he was doing in the time that no one could find him.
Mr. Mangione left behind a long series of postings about self-improvement, healthy eating and technology — and a review of the Unabomber’s manifesto. Bullet casings left at the scene, scrawled with words like “deny” and “delay,” left the authorities and the public wondering if the shooting was payback for health care insurers rejecting claims.
In a three-page manifesto that Mr. Mangione was carrying when he was arrested, he described the killing as a “symbolic takedown,” according to an internal police report obtained by The New York Times. The screed described the killing as a direct challenge to the health care industry’s “alleged corruption and ‘power games,’” and police investigators said in their report that the suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts” who had decided to take action.
In the wake of the attack, social media seethed with resentment against the insurance industry, and the unidentified suspect became, to some, a folk hero.
Mr. Mangione came from a privileged upbringing, part of an influential real estate family in the Baltimore area.
His grandfather, Nick Mangione Sr., and grandmother, Mary C. Mangione, purchased the Turf Valley country club in Ellicott City, Md., in the 1970s and developed the golf course community.
In the 1980s, the family purchased Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley, Md. It also founded the nursing home company Lorien Health Services, and Mr. Mangione’s father, Louis Mangione, became an owner. The family also owned the radio station WCBM, which airs politically conservative programs and has other real estate holdings. A cousin, Nino Mangione, is an elected member of the Maryland House of Delegates.
The family’s wealth and work with charity made it well known in Baltimore. Luigi Mangione was “just the last person you would suspect,” said Thomas J. Maronick Jr., a lawyer and radio host who knows several members of the Mangione family.
“It is just such a well-respected family and such a prominent family within Baltimore County,” he said.
Luigi Mangione attended high school at the prestigious Gilman School in Baltimore, where he wrestled and played other sports and was the valedictorian of his graduating class in 2016. In a graduation speech, he described his class as “coming up with new ideas and challenging the world around it.”
He thanked parents in attendance for sending him and his classmates to the school, which he described as “far from a small financial investment.” Tuition is currently $37,690 per year for high schoolers.
Aaron Cranston, who became friends with Mr. Mangione during their time at Gilman, said he recalled Mr. Mangione as being particularly smart — perhaps the smartest at the elite private school. Even before college, Mr. Mangione had already made a mobile app where users could fly a paper airplane through obstacles.
Mr. Mangione was social, friendly and never particularly political, Mr. Cranston recalled. He was ambitious and carried his long interest in computer science toward college.
“He was a big believer in the power of technology to change the world,” Mr. Cranston said.
Freddie Leatherbury, 26, an accountant who lives in Catonsville, Md., graduated from Gilman with Mr. Mangione in 2016. He recalled Mr. Mangione playing soccer for the high school team and running track or cross country.
“Those are both such disciplined sports. It says a lot about who he was as a student,” Mr. Leatherbury said. “He was very smart, a pretty big math guy, really well read and quite well liked to be honest. I don’t have any bad memories of him. He had a very healthy social circle.”
Race Saunders, 27, now a software developer who lives in California, recalled being “study buddies” with Mr. Mangione in high school. He remembered Mr. Mangione as a hard worker.
“We were all definitely leaning toward computer science,” Mr. Saunders said.
In college, Mr. Mangione excelled in that field. The commencement program for the University of Pennsylvania’s class of 2020 lists Mr. Mangione as a member of the school’s chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, an academic honor society for students in electrical and computer engineering that was founded in 1904. The society is selective, inviting only the top quarter of the junior class and top third of the senior class in those majors for membership, according to its website.
Mr. Mangione’s interest in computer games started at a young age, when he began exploring the community online, according to a now-deleted interview published on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus events blog in 2018. From there, the interview said, he wanted to start creating games himself and taught himself to code in high school.
“That’s why I’m a computer science major now, that’s how I got into it,” Mr. Mangione said in the interview. “I just really wanted to make games.”
After college, Mr. Mangione worked for or had internships with several tech companies, according to his LinkedIn profile and a former employer.
Mr. Mangione’s profile said that he had worked as a software engineer at TrueCar, an online marketplace based in Santa Monica, Calif. The company said in a statement that he had not been an employee since 2023.
In recent years, Mr. Mangione lived for six months in Honolulu in a “co-living” space called Surfbreak that caters to remote workers.
R.J. Martin, the founder of Surfbreak, said that when he met Mr. Mangione in 2022, he was interviewing to be among the initial 20 or so occupants paying about $2,000 per month to share quarters.
Mr. Martin described Mr. Mangione as a smart, accomplished and upbeat engineer. “We look for people who are looking to give back. And he fit the bill. He was an ideal member for us,” Mr. Martin said.
But Mr. Mangione was suffering from painful back issues, he said. “His spine was kind of misaligned,” he said. “He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve.”
Mr. Martin said, he and others in the community came to understand that the pain was no small matter to a young man yearning for a normal lifestyle. “He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,” Mr. Martin said.
Mr. Mangione left the co-living space after six months to return to the East Coast, where he told Mr. Martin he was planning to see his doctor. He returned to Honolulu afterward and rented an apartment in the same neighborhood.
Mr. Martin said that Mr. Mangione left Hawaii in the summer of 2023, presumably for an operation on his back. In August of that year, Mr. Martin said, he checked in via text to see how his friend was doing, “and he sent me back pictures of his back surgery.”
The pictures — scans of Mr. Mangione’s spine — were so jarring that Mr. Martin texted back asking how Mr. Mangione was feeling. “So, long story,” Mr. Mangione replied, according to Mr. Martin. “Will fill ya in in person. Back in Hawaii as soon as I can, I have to figure out some spine stuff here first.”
He said Mr. Mangione did, in fact, report in late 2023 that he had gone back to Hawaii, visiting Maui, the Big Island and Oahu in November and December before returning to Baltimore to see his family. While on Oahu, Mr. Mangione received a citation for trespassing for having failed to observe a sign at the Nu’uanu Pali Lookout, a spot with a breathtaking view of the island. He was fined $100.
Mr. Martin said he made plans to connect with Mr. Mangione in February. When March came and went, Mr. Martin texted: “Miss you brother. Hope you are mostly recovered. Let’s catch up soon.”
“Yea dude let’s catch up on the phone,” Mr. Mangione replied on April 15, according to Mr. Martin.
But they did not connect. (It appears that Mr. Mangione spent at least part of that spring in Japan, according to emails he exchanged with a writer in Britain.) On May 20, Mr. Martin thought of his friend again and texted: “Yo! You awake?”
Mr. Mangione did not answer, he said. A month later, on June 23, he texted him again. “Where in the world are you?”
There was no response.
Through a series of posts, Mr. Mangione’s trail on the internet hinted at pain both physical and philosophical.
In January, Mr. Mangione left a review of a book containing the rambling manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, on GoodReads, a social media site for bookworms.
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,” Mr. Mangione wrote of the document. “But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”
One of Mr. Mangione’s favorite quotes, listed on GoodReads, was, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” from Jiddu Krishnamurti, the religious philosopher and teacher.
The GoodReads page also included self-help books about health and the human body, including, “Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery.”
A social media account that appeared to belong to Mr. Mangione featured an X-ray image of a spine reinforced with surgical implants. The X-ray showed a spinal fusion, a procedure that uses screws and rods to fuse two levels of the spine to address a misalignment that can cause serious pain, according to Dr. Hasit Mehta, a professor at New York Medical College.
Mr. Cranston, the school friend, said that he was forwarded a message this year from Mr. Mangione’s family saying that the family had not heard from him in several months after his surgery. Relatives were hoping friends might know of his whereabouts.
Few, if any, did until his arrest on Monday morning.
Mr. Saunders, the high school friend, was shocked by the news but was skeptical that his classmate had suffered a psychological break.
“I would be surprised if it was some kind of mental breakdown,” he said.
For now, investigators will be looking for any additional clues that might link Mr. Mangione to the shooting. The manifesto officers recovered during his arrest appears to provide some insight.
The entire 262-word handwritten document notes that as UnitedHealthcare’s market capitalization has grown, American life expectancy has not.
“To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” the writer wrote, according to law enforcement officials. The note condemned companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”
It added: “Frankly these parasites simply had it coming.”
