Luigi Mangione wrote about his plans to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a diary months before the killing last year, a court filing has revealed.
The legal document reveals that Mangione had written down his plans to kill Thompson in a red notebook, which was acquired by authorities during his arrest at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s in December. The entries, dating back to August 2024, laid out his reasoning for the shooting.
“So say you want to rebel against the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel. Do you bomb the HQ? No. Bombs=terrorism,” the diary entry read. “Such actions appear the unjustified anger of someone who simply got sick/had bad luck and took their frustration out on the insurance industry, while recklessly endangering countless employees.”
Rather than plan out a bombing, someone should instead “wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” one entry from October read, according to NBC News.
“The investor conference is a true windfall. It embodies everything wrong with our health system, and—most importantly—the message becomes self-evident,” the entry read. “The problem with most revolutionary acts is that the message is lost on normies.”
Mangione also allegedly wrote that the problem with “Ted K,” seemingly referring to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, is that he “indiscriminately mailbombs innocents” and committed “indiscriminate atrocities.”
As a result, the public viewed him as a “monster,” which the entry notes “makes his ideas those of a monster, no matter how true.”
“He crosses the line from revolutionary anarchist to terrorist—the worst thing a person can be,” the entry read.
Yet, according to the filing on Wednesday, the prosecution argued that the shooting was an act of terrorism, citing the circumstances of the shooting and what they claimed was Mangione’s motive, which was “to violently broadcast a social and political message to the public at large.”
“The particulars of the shooting itself—its target, its timing, its location, and the markings left on the ballistics—all made clear that defendant’s intent was not to settle a personal vendetta or to steal something, but to violently broadcast a social and political message to the public at large,” the prosecution claimed.
After allegedly gunning down the CEO, the 27-year-old escaped on a bike and was arrested five days later when a Pennsylvania McDonald’s employee called the authorities.
Mangione has denied murder in a New York State court. He has also been charged with murder by federal prosecutors and entered a not guilty plea. Attorney General Pam Bondi has also called for federal prosecutors to seek the death sentence for Mangione.
In the Wednesday filing, New York prosecutors said that “if ever there were an open and shut case pointing to the defendant’s guilt, this case is that case.”
“Simply put, one would be hard pressed to find a case with such overwhelming evidence of guilt as to the identity of the murderer and the premeditated nature of the assassination,” they said.
A manifesto that authorities found on Mangione at the time of his arrest was also included in the filing. The letter, which was addressed “to the Feds” and called out “corporate America,” was shared on Reddit before getting censored.
But Mangione’s team claims that the police “illegally recovered without a warrant” items from Mangione’s backpack during his arrest and that the evidence they retrieved, including the diary and homemade gun, should not be allowed at trial. A judge will rule on this motion at the end of June.
