The Issue: Luigi Mangione pleading guilty in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Luigi Mangione stalked and killed the innocent CEO of UnitedHealthcare, claiming he was a victim of a health problem, and you have idiots coming to his defense (“Sick cult of idiotic fangirls,” Kirsten Fleming, Aug. 15).
This is the most ridiculous story from start to finish. This man is a murderer and needs to go to jail for life.
These people, including his attorney, need to check themselves. Murder is murder and you do not get a free, pass. Young women sending money and love to this guy need to stop and get help.
Kate Phelan
Boca Raton, Fla.
Mangione is a diabolical murderer who is deserving of the death penalty. Any decent, righteous person should agree that this assassin should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yet he has become a darling to a cult of young, delusional people.
The visibly distraught widow of Brian Thompson had to come face-to-face with the sinister Mangione in court. Upon departing, she was disgracefully confronted by a cult of deviant misfits chanting “America loves Luigi.” What a toxic, morally toxic society we live in.
Denis David
East Rockaway
The lawyers for Luigi Mangione, who wasn’t even a customer of UnitedHealthcare, claimed his murderous rage was attributed to “chronic” back pain. Who doesn’t have back pain? Should everybody who has it kill a health-care executive?
As for the “Mangionistas,” when you come to your senses, if you ever do, you’ll be ashamed of what you’ve done.
This is really sick and abnormal behavior. I suggest you find a just cause to rally around — not a psychopath.
Louie Rey
Summerville, SC
Mangione’s court statement that he understood his action would place Thompson “in fear of death” is an egregious falsehood. This coward shot an innocent man in the back. Thompson was executed with absolutely no warning.
Mangione should never experience another day of freedom.
Chas Hunt
Sandy Hook, Conn.
Fleming’s account of the “Mangionistas” calls to mind a warning issued nearly 40 years ago by Allan Bloom in “The Closing of the American Mind.”
Bloom charged that universities, in the name of “openness,” taught relativism: distrust of objective truth, of the Western intellectual inheritance and of universal standards of moral judgment.
Mangione has admitted to killing Thompson. Yet fans can transform murder into an act of protest and its perpetrator into a martyr. Rather than asking whether the act was right or wrong, they ask who committed it and against whom.
Relativism did not open the American mind — it erased the standards by which a civilized society distinguishes grievance from justification and political protest from murder.
Candace de Russy
Fleetwood
Mangione should receive punishment to the full extent of the law, though I believe medical-insurance fees are getting out of hand.
I’m 77, and my wife is 73. I have Stage 4 cancer, and UnitedHealthcare is raising my premiums.
I feel the American people are victims of insurance companies and something must be done. That said, murder is wrong — even if you disagree with a company’s policies.
Frederick Bedell Jr.
Bellerose
There should be no doubt that Mangione should spend the rest of his life behind bars with no chance for parole.
Is our federal justice system so warped that an evil assassin who killed an innocent family man in cold blood would warrant any mercy?
Mangione showed no mercy to Thompson, and the court should treat him the same.
Gerald Jacobs
Boca Raton, Fla.
As an attorney, I wouldn’t have had Mangione make this plea deal because of all the people who expressed support for him. The outcome of any trial probably would have resulted in a hung jury.
Robert Berk
Manhattan
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