By Eric Levenson, CNN
(CNN) — “Katie” arrived at the Luigi Mangione protest in downtown Manhattan on Friday wearing a black shirt with a large photo of the 26-year-old suspected shooter. “But Daddy I Love Him,” the shirt read in pink, the title of a recent Taylor Swift song.
“I just thought it was fun and cute and something to show his face and show support,” she said.
Did she actually, as the shirt said, love Mangione?
“I don’t know if you can love someone you’ve never met,” she responded. “I love whoever made that action to stand for health care … They really took a stand. I’m actually surprised something like this hasn’t happened before.”
“Whoever did commit that act, I really do see him as a hero and a martyr.”
Katie – who declined to provide her last name – was one of a few dozen people who came to a protest outside federal court in New York City to express support for Mangione, the UPenn graduate accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a city sidewalk in December.
Mangione faces serious charges in two states and in federal court, where he could face the death penalty, and he has pleaded not guilty. Officials have roundly condemned the killing as a “frightening, well-planned, targeted” and “cold-blooded” murder.
Yet unlike most murder cases, others have expressed sympathy and even support for Mangione. Supporters at the protest Friday and a similar protest in February carried “Free Luigi” signs or wore green in a reference to Nintendo’s “Luigi” character. In his time behind bars, Mangione has received hundreds of letters from across the US as well as from Brazil, Japan and Australia. Two heart-shaped notes were even smuggled into a pair of his argyle socks prior to a recent court hearing.
His legal defense fund has raised over $950,000 from about 27,000 people as of April 25. A website set up by his legal defense lists 13 “Frequently Asked Questions,” and 10 of them relate to sending him letters or contributing to his fund.
Mangione himself has taken notice.
“I am overwhelmed by – and grateful for – everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support,” Mangione said in a note to supporters posted on the defense website. “Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions, as mail has flooded MDC from across the country, and around the globe.”
CNN spoke with a number of Mangione’s supporters to better understand their position on the man and on America’s health care system at large.
The crux of their support is based on a deep resentment and anger at the American health care system and insurance companies, but it goes well beyond that frustration. Others offered support in a show of opposition to the government’s aggressive charging decisions and the potential death penalty. Looming over it all is a belief that The Elites are cracking down on The People to uphold The System.
“They’re putting all of this effort and the death penalty behind one person who allegedly killed one CEO who is responsible and profiting off of the death of thousands upon thousands of sick people and bringing people into financial ruin as well as death,” said Tilly, a Mangione supporter wearing a lime green jacket and light green sunglasses. “They do not put this same effort behind, say, school shooters or people who shoot up concerts.”
“It shows that the state has more care for the uber-wealthy and the CEOs that are profiting off of people’s death and pain than they do for the people.”
Frustration with health care
The core reason for Mangione’s support is a deep dislike of American health care insurance companies, and this has curdled into disdain and resentment for the executives in charge.
“Sometimes, drug dealers get shot,” comedian Chris Rock succinctly put it when discussing the incident in his “Saturday Night Live” monologue last December.
Ico Ahyicodae, the project coordinator with the group People Over Profit NYC, attended Friday’s protest and said the shooting brought mass attention to the problems with the health care system.
“This is less about Luigi than it is about Brian Thompson,” Ahyicodae said. “Before Luigi was even a person of interest in the case, people exploded with health care stories.”
Thompson, a 50-year-old husband and father of two, was appointed CEO of UnitedHealthcare in 2021 and had worked at the company since 2004. UnitedHealthcare, part of UnitedHealth Group, is the largest health care organization in the US and was holding an investors’ conference in New York around the time he was killed.
Mangione was not insured by UnitedHealthcare, but he allegedly had a notebook that expressed “hostility toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular,” according to a federal complaint.
Notably, three 9 mm shell casings from the crime scene had the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” written on them, the NYPD has said, an apparent reference to a 2010 book critiquing insurance industry tactics to avoid paying for care.
UnitedHealthcare has defended the company and Thompson. In a December statement, UnitedHealthcare said “highly inaccurate and grossly misleading information has been circulated about our company’s treatment of insurance claims” and that it “approves and pays about 90% of medical claims upon submission.”
Still, even UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty acknowledged the health care system’s flaws.
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it,” Witty wrote in a guest essay in the New York Times. “No one would design a system like the one we have. And no one did. It’s a patchwork built over decades.”
At the protest Friday, Elena held a sign saying, “No more death by deductible$” and criticized the health care system’s “complete and utter failings.”
“I’m pointing to the high deductibles that everyday Americans have to face in order to get basic health care. Just going to the doctor for really simple procedures can end up being thousands of dollars’ worth of bills. None of it is very predictable, the system is obscured, and it’s intentional,” she said.
She said she goes “back and forth” on whether Mangione should really be set free.
“There’s a lot of sympathy for Luigi,” she said, noting his online posts about a back injury and surgery. “Seems to be like he was mad at the health care system, like we all are. I obviously don’t think anyone should be murdered, and I don’t think that’s a way to solve the problem, but I sympathize with the idea that we can actually make that happen and just to use this moment to make that happen.”
Dr. Shane Solger, an emergency and internal medicine doctor, came to the protest wearing blue scrubs on behalf of the Physicians for a National Health Program, a group supporting universal, single-payer health care. He said he did not support Mangione – but he understood why Mangione allegedly did what he did.
“We are certainly not pro-murder, but we do recognize that Luigi is standing as a surrogate for rebellion against the current health care system as it exists right now,” he said. He criticized the “for-profit health care system that isn’t taking care of people, that is doing what they can to try to siphon off as much money as they can, and we’re seeing people get hurt, with Luigi being a manifestation of that hurt.”
Critics of prosecutorial overreach
A second element of Mangione’s support stems from the aggressive legal prosecution and political posturing in his case.
After his arrest at an Altoona McDonald’s, Mangione was whisked from Pennsylvania to downtown New York on a jet and a helicopter in a remarkable spectacle in front of media cameras. Once in New York, a handcuffed Mangione was led on a lengthy “perp walk” by a swarm of heavily armed NYPD officers, with New York Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch right behind them.
Mangione faces charges in three different venues – Pennsylvania, New York and in federal court – and each count is more serious than the last. In New York, he pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder to further “an act of terrorism.”
Federally, Mangione was indicted on charges of murder, stalking and a firearms offense. Even before his indictment, though, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department would seek the death penalty against him.
Mangione’s attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo sharply criticized this decision in a statement earlier this month.
“By seeking to murder Luigi Mangione, the Justice Department has moved from the dysfunctional to the barbaric,” she wrote. “Their decision to execute Luigi is political and goes against the recommendation of the local federal prosecutors, the law, and historical precedent. While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi.”
Lindsy Floyd, a 40-year-old living in Connecticut, told CNN she made arrangements for her two children and drove to New York to be present for Mangione’s hearing Friday.
She criticized the health care industry and noted Thompson’s role in a company that she claims is responsible for countless deaths. Putting a twist on an old saying, she said Mangione was the proverbial “canary” sounding the alarm about the “coal mine” that is the for-profit health care industry.
“Do we just punish the canary in the coal mine, or do we look at whether or not a coal mine is a good idea in the first place?” she asked.
Bill Dobbs held a sign saying, “No Death for Luigi Mangione” and said he was there with the group Death Penalty Action to oppose capital punishment. A lawyer, Dobbs said he opposes the death penalty in all cases, saying it throws the whole justice system “out of whack.”
“Executions and the availability of them make things like life in prison without parole seem reasonable,” he said. “We’re crazy for punishment, and we’re also crazy for rich people.”
Chelsea Manning, the former US Army soldier and whistleblower convicted of violating the Espionage Act after leaking documents to WikiLeaks, attended Mangione’s court hearing and afterwards criticized the legal case against him.
“This case is being speed run in an unprecedented manner,” Manning said. “We don’t speed run justice.”
Asked if she is a Mangione supporter, she said, “I’m a supporter of the justice system being done in a fair manner. I feel it’s important for me to witness that and observe that, and now I understand why.”
Terrorist or Man of the People?
Finally, some supporters have positioned Mangione as a folk hero of sorts in the vein of Robin Hood or bank robber Jesse James standing up against the elites.
In an essay in The New Yorker, Jessica Winter placed Mangione in the context of the folk hero outlaw.
“Mangione allegedly took a human life, which is despicable,” she wrote. “This act did not justify itself. But this act also gave people permission to go far enough – to acknowledge their righteous hatred of our depraved health-care system, and even to conjure something funny or silly or joyous out of that hate.”
Several of the largest donations to Mangione’s legal defense relate to this broader point saying his shooting was a way of standing up to the elites.
“I am disturbed by what the government is doing to you,” said one anonymous donor who gave $5,000 to Mangione’s defense fund. “They are clearly making an example of you. For them, it was and always will be about protecting the 1%. I’m disgusted at this gross miscarriage of justice, so here I am again. This is not only your fight but ours as well. Head up, Luigi. We are right here with you.”
“Such ridiculous gov overcharging & overreach; the 1% lobbied for Luigi’s harshest charges,” wrote an anonymous donor who gave about $5,700 to his fund. “Social media companies censor sympathetic content, & the press vilifies him. Luigi’s (treatment) has been an affront to justice! He deserves a fair trial-not political persecution.”
Friedman Agnifilo, Mangione’s attorney, connected the decision to seek the death penalty to broader systemic failures in a recent statement.
“By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people,” she wrote.
Katie, the protester wearing the “But Daddy I Love Him” shirt, said she believed her position was bipartisan.
“This is just about humans. I think that’s why they’re so scared is because he’s getting so much support and it is uniting the right and left,” she said. “This is the one issue I find that everyone is like, ‘Yeah.’”
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