Luigi Mangione viewed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing as ‘symbolic takedown’ of ‘parasitic’ healthcare industry: sources

Luigi Mangione raged in his manifesto that healthcare industry leaders were “mafiosa’’ and considers himself a “hero’’ for allegedly killing one of their CEOs in a “symbolic takedown,’’ sources said Tuesday.

The 26-year-old UPenn grad suggested that the brazen sidewalk slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week should be looked at as “a direct challenge” to the company’s corruption and “power games,” according to law-enforcement sources who reviewed the diatribe.

Mangione — whose Baltimore family runs a string of nursing homes and has been a multimillion-dollar hospital benefactor  — appeared driven to the violence by his perceptions that the healthcare industry was “parasitic,” sources said.

“Frankly these parasites simply had it coming,” he allegedly seethed in his manifesto.

The accused gunman also criticized the US for having the “most expensive healthcare system in the world,” according to the three-page handwritten manifesto found on him, sources said.

The onetime prep-school valedictorian from Towson, Md., referred to healthcare companies as “mafiosa” that get richer while Americans’ life expectancy lags behind other industrialized countries, sources said.

Investigators believe that Mangione views himself as a “hero” for killing Thompson, asserting in the document that he was taking on the healthcare industry’s injustices with “brutal honesty,” sources said.

Mangione may have found inspiration for his violence in “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, the extremist luddite who terrorized the country for nearly two decades by mailing deadly bombs before he was nabbed in 1996, sources said.

The suspect described Kaczynski as a “political revolutionary” in an online review of Kaczynski’s manifesto.

Thompson, 50, was gunned down as he walked alone to a Hilton hotel where UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was holding its annual investor conference.

Social media reactions to the brazen assassination have been alarmingly positive — leading law enforcement to fear that extremists may consider Mangione a “martyr’’ and pick up his cause, sources said.

Authorities believe corporate executives nationwide may face an “elevated threat” as a result, the sources said.

Former Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz shockingly said on TV that she felt “joy” over Thompson’s slaying, which left two children fatherless. 

Mangione apparently spiraled after undergoing “traumatic” back surgery and lost contact with his friends and family in the weeks before the shooting. His mother reported him missing from San Francisco on Nov. 18.

Follow the latest on the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson:

The suspect is accused of  killing Thompson in a pre-dawn ambush last Wednesday in Midtown and evaded law enforcement for five days until he was reported nearly 300 miles away at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Penn., on Monday.

He was found with several fake IDs, a ghost gun with a silencer and the manifesto. He was charged with weapons and forgery charges in Pennsylvania and later charged with second-degree murder in New York City.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” the family said in their first public comments on the murder, shared by his cousin Nino Mangione, a Republican Baltimore County delegate.

“We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news,” the Mangione family said.