Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at what’s known about Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the murder of a health care executive outside a Manhattan hotel. We’ll also get details on the city’s plan to close a shelter to head off concerns that it could be targeted by the Trump administration.
Despite a torrent of information that surfaced about the suspect in the murder of an insurance executive on a street in Midtown Manhattan, questions about the motives remained largely unanswered. But some hints came in the 262-word manifesto that the suspect, Luigi Mangione, was carrying when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania — and in an internal report from the New York Police Department.
Mangione is fighting extradition to New York from Pennsylvania, which could leave him in custody there for weeks. He struggled against officers leading him to the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pa., near Altoona, for a hearing on Tuesday. He shouted at reporters before he went into the building. On his way out after the hearing, he was silent.
“He views himself as a hero of sorts,” the police said. According to my colleague Chelsia Rose Marcius, the police “intelligence analysis report” said that the suspect considered himself a hero fighting a “parasitic” health insurance industry. Mangione did not explain why he had allegedly singled out Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare.
But the police analysis said that the suspect had “appeared to view the targeted killing of the company’s highest-ranking representative as a symbolic takedown.”
The police report also referred to Mangione’s other complaints in the manifesto. Mangione wrote that health care in the United States was expensive and that corporate profits had risen, while “our life expectancy” had not.
He posted about continuing health issues. On Reddit, Mangione described back problems. Some of his posts appeared in a Reddit community about spondylolisthesis, a sometimes painful condition that occurs when a vertebra in the spine slips out of alignment.
He wrote that back pain, once a minor issue in his life, became more extreme in 2022 — the year he turned 24 — after he went surfing. The pain worsened still more a few weeks later, when he slipped on a piece of paper. He said that sitting down hurt and that his leg muscles had become twitchy. An X-ray that he posted on another social media account showed a spinal fusion.
An operation for that problem in July 2023 seemed to make a difference. “The surgery wasn’t nearly as scary as I made it out to be in my head,” he wrote in one Reddit post, “and I knew it was the right decision within a week.” He said that he was comfortable sitting down, standing up and moving about — so comfortable that he had stopped taking pain medication.
Back pain was not his only struggle. At times he wrote about “brain fog,” which he said became so troubling during his college years that studying was difficult. He said that doctors could not figure out what was causing it.
He made only one mention of insurance coverage. He said on Reddit that Blue Cross Blue Shield had covered a test for irritable bowel syndrome in 2018. That would have been when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. The school said he graduated in 2020 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering.
He had worked for a nursing home network. The company, Lorien Health Services, said that he worked as an IT technician for a month in 2015 and performed community service work as a volunteer before that. My colleague Amy Qin writes that Lorien has a dozen facilities in Maryland and is owned by Mangione’s relatives.
He echoed the Unabomber. The police analysis noted that Mangione’s manifesto cited Ted Kaczynski, who killed three people and wounded 22 with pipe bombs mailed to scientists and executives, as sharing “the need for unilateral action to bring attention to abusive corporate actions.”
Mangione wrote about Kaczynski and discussed him with a writer in England this past spring. The writer, Gurwinder Bhogal, said that Mangione had mentioned health care only briefly, complaining that it was too expensive in the United States. According to my colleague Jacey Fortin, Mangione said he admired the national health care system in Britain.
The investigation appears to be continuing. Even after Mangione was apprehended, the authorities continued trying to retrace his steps. People who work at the Greyhound bus terminal in Pittsburgh said that an investigator had asked for surveillance footage that might show Mangione passing through.
Weather
Expect heavy rain at times with temperatures in the low 60s. For tonight, showers continue with temperatures in the high 30s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect through Dec. 25 (Christmas Day). Today is also a Gridlock Alert Day.
The latest New York news
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Hard line on migrants: Mayor Eric Adams is examining whether he could make changes via executive order and overturn New York’s sanctuary laws. Since President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, the mayor has been leaning to the right on the migrant issue.
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Refunds for New York taxpayers? Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed sending refunds of up to $500 to taxpayers, thanks to higher than expected sales tax revenues.
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New president for Storm King: The Hudson Valley sculpture park, Storm King, will celebrate its 65th anniversary with an inaugural executive director: Nora Lawrence, the artistic director and chief curator. She will succeed the institution’s president, John P. Stern — the first time that the outdoor museum will be led by someone outside the founding family.
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Met’s new wing: The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled the design for the Tang Wing for Modern and contemporary art. The wing was designed by Frida Escobedo, an architect from Mexico City who is the first woman to receive such a commission in the museum’s 154-year history.
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A great day in Harlem: Sonny Rollins looks back at a classic photo of the day when 58 jazz luminaries gathered on a Harlem sidewalk to pose for Art Kane’s portrait “Harlem 1958.”
The city is closing a shelter to protect migrants from Trump
The city is shutting down a tent complex that houses some 2,000 migrants in Brooklyn.
It’s a pre-emptive move intended to dispel fears that the Trump administration would target the shelter because it is on federal land. Mayor Adams’s administration was increasingly concerned that President-elect Trump would either end the city’s lease once he takes office next month — or assert the right to launch immigration raids on federally owned property.
After a steady decline in the number of migrants arriving over the past five months, the city plans to close 25 shelters. They include hotels across the city, two college dormitories in Upper Manhattan and a warehouse turned shelter at Kennedy Airport, as well as 10 hotels the city was paying to house migrants upstate.
My colleague Luis Ferré-Sadurní writes that the closings are yet another signal of how the migrant crisis, which prompted the city to spend more than $6 billion over two years, has continued to wind down. Adams, a Democrat who has been cautious about antagonizing Trump, did not name the president-elect as a reason for shutting down the shelter at Floyd Bennett Field.
It is the only one in the city on federal land and has housed migrant families with children since November of last year. The city entered into a lease with the Biden administration to erect the tent dormitory, where families sleep in cots, at the height of the influx.
METROPOLITAN diary
Keep on moving
Dear Diary:
I was doing my morning tai chi warm-ups outside my home in Carroll Gardens when I noticed a flatbed truck loaded with building supplies parked nearby.
To my surprise, there was a man on the back of the truck vigorously doing push-ups and other calisthenics.
We caught each other’s eye, and when he finished his workout, he jumped down from the truck and approached me.
“Good for you,” he said. “You have to keep on moving all the time.”
“Good for you,” I said. “Now that I’m getting older, I try to do that.”
With that, he jumped up onto the back of the truck, climbed on the forklift that was mounted there and got to work.
— David Werber
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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