Mangione Episode 3: "Mister Cactus"

Audio and 2020, Burton Approve, Luigi Manjioni. Remember, you can also listen and add free

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Less than a year before Brian Thompson was shot and killed in Midtown, Manhattan.

Luigi Manjioni was traveling through Asia. This is ABC News Contributor, Anna Garcia. Even writing about his experiences in Japan and enjoying his hikes in the mountains and sharing his experiences by posting on Reddit. In spring of 2024, Manjioni appeared to post to a Reddit channel called One Bag, the art of minimalist travel. Several details of the user's Reddit profile

“appear to tie it to Manjioni, including a post that contained a link to his GitHub profile,”

which had his full name on it. In one Reddit post, the user, Mr. Cactus, wrote about

fitting everything he needed to travel around Asia into a midsize backpack. He gave enthusiastic

detailed recommendations to follow light travelers and wax poetic about the philosophy behind caring just one backpack on his journey. In winter and spring 2024, Luigi Manjioni traveled to Thailand, India and Japan. Where, on his 26th birthday, the New York Times reported that he checked into a guest house near Mount Omine, a sacred mountain in Japan for bid into women. The innkeeper had told the Times that he took out his own trash and kept his room spotless.

“From Japan, he sent a friend of voice memo saying, "I want some time to zen out and do some Buddha."”

When Manjioni returned to the United States in summer, he became increasingly hard to contact according to authorities and seemed to stop posting on social media. In November, a month before Brian Thompson's murder, Manjoni's mother reported him missing. Had something happened during his travels, and Luigi Manjioni changed? In December, he was arrested in Altuna, Pennsylvania, with, according to authorities, one backpack. This time, the backpack didn't have a carabiner,

a packable parka and a microfiber beach towel in it. Instead, investigators say they found a 3D printed gun, a silencer, a letter to the fence, and a red spiral notebook that described whacking a health insurance CEO. Luigi Manjoni put a guilty to two counts of stocking in federal court and admitted to shooting Brian Thompson. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges in his state case, and his attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the state charges

citing double jeopardy laws. Manjoni's office said in his statement that it remains committed to seeking justice for Mr. Thompson and his family. Manjoni's state trial has been adjourned to resolve the defense's motion. From the very start of this case, and as it keeps evolving, people have poured over Luigi Manjoni's past. Who is Luigi Manjoni? What decisions, what ideas, what twists and turns in his life, led him to what he admitted to in federal court,

stalking and shooting a man? From ABC audio and 2020, I'm Brian Buckmeyer, an attorney and ABC news legal analyst, and this is burden of proof, Luigi Manjoni. Episode 3, Mr. Cactus. In 1998, Brian Thompson was one year of college. He was an audit manager at Price Waterhouse Coopers. It was the beginning of a resume that would take him to the sea suites. Also in 1998, in Maryland, the man who shot him on a Manhattan sidewalk was born.

While Brian Thompson was raised in a small farming community, Luigi Manjoni was born into a dynasty, according to people who knew his family. Manjoni's were wealthy, not only in money,

We are in a greatest neighborhood of the city, little Italy. She was a hairstyling in the area

“for decades. And I think in the 70s, I briefly did Miss Mary's here, who was Mr. Nick Manjoni's”

wife. She and Mr. Nick lived on the east side. I had a salon on the east side. Nicholas, known as Nick Senior, and Mary Manjoni are Luigi Manjoni's grandparents. To understand the life Luigi Manjoni was born into, we need to start with them. They were both born in Maryland to Italian immigrants. They got married in 1950. In a 1995 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Nick Senior, said he grew up extremely poor,

and was already working to provide for his family before he was a teen. He served in the Navy during World War II, and worked in construction when he returned home. Well, I believe Nick Senior was like a magician. He took nothing and he built a million dollar business. The seeds of the Manjoni business empire were planted in the 1970s, and it was a resort

“called Tur Valley that really put Nick Senior on the map. Here's a clip of Nick Senior”

talking about the resort in the 90s from a video on its YouTube page. We spent the last 13 years building this up to the beautiful resort that it is today.

It never enjoyed the opulance and the visual appearance that it has today.

When Manjoni's grandfather bought Tur Valley in the 70s, it was a simple golf club. Over the years, he added a hotel, a spa, ballrooms, a conference center, pools, and multiple restaurants. It hosted massive conventions, weddings, and PGA matches. The Manjoni's business portfolio expanded through the years. Public records show they also own a couple radio stations, hotels, construction companies,

and the real estate that surrounds the golf courses.

“They're considered a pillar of their community.”

That's Tom Aronic, another long time Baltimore resident. My experiences with the Manjoni family come from 20 years being a radio host on their station WCBM. But I, of the understanding they own, Tur Valley which is a great golf course, hate fields which is a great golf course, and a retirement home and other real estate.

And not just a retirement home, the Manjoni's own chain of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Nick Senior built a sprawling, multi-industry business empire, and it was a family empire. He and Mary had 10 children, five daughters, and five sons. They all got married at the Family Golf Club, all 10. And the children took over the businesses after Nick Senior and Mary passed away.

With the Manjoni's presence in the area goes beyond business. They've long had relationships with public officials all the way up to the governor's office. And they've had all kinds of leadership roles, seats on school boards, college boards, and tourism committees. Luigi Manjoni's cousin, Mino Manjoni, is a state delegate.

And the other thing I know is they are, no, they have a great reputation for being involved in charity. In the community being very supportive of charity. And that's a great thing about them. Read ass it. Many of their donations are made through the Manjoni Family Foundation.

The nonprofit was most recently valued at over $4 million.

It's now managed by Nick Senior and Mary's children. In fact, according to 2024 tax records, Luigi Manjoni's father heads in. The honors, awards, recognitions, the charity events where the Manjoni's are the esteemed guests. It's nearly impossible to list them all. Additional support for culinary and hospitality students comes from longtime donors the Manjoni family. Maybe take a visit to Howard Community College and check out the culinary suite

named after Nick and Mary. If you live in the area and have had a baby recently, maybe you've spent time in the Manjoni Family Center or the Manjoni High Risk Obstetrics Unit. Both are at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, where the Manjoni Family Foundation has donated

over a million dollars. According to an article on the hospital website,

all 30 something of Nick and Mary's grandchildren and over 20 great grandchildren were born there.

won that all the aunts, uncles, and cousins show up for it. Luigi Nicholas Manjoni was born to Nick and Mary's eldest boy, Lewis. He is the youngest and has two older sisters. By the sixth grade, Luigi Manjoni was enrolled in the Gilman School, an all-boys private prep school, another fixture in the Greater Baltimore area. Here's Tom Rohnick. Again, I went to Loyola High School and we like to say Gilman is the

second best school in the area. Some would consider it the best, but it's a very good school.

It's a school that's not easy to get into. It's not inexpensive to pay the tuition, but it is an absolutely beautiful campus. It looks like a college campus with well-maintained sports fields and a massive red brick colonial style hall as the centerpiece.

“You have to be certainly a little bit wealthy too to afford that. I think the high school tuition”

is close to $40,000 a year now, so it's a prestigious wealthy school with a lot of well-connected people. That's Freddie Latterberry. He's one of a few Gilman classmates ABCs interviewed, along with Hari, who asked to be identified by first name only. Yeah, we had uniforms too, so I was college shirts, dress pants, like khaki and boat shoes and stuff, so everyone kind of looked Luigi as hell. According to the Gilman website, around a thousand boys, a 10-k through 12 school,

and the entire high school has less than 500 students. It's very common for people to know everyone in their grade, and you know even more than that, right? Hari and Freddie say Luigi

Manjoni was down to Earth. Luigi was never someone who I would think off from the get-go was

super wealthy or anything like that. He never threw his money in your face. And that honestly speaks to his humility. He was not flashy at all. I did not know anything about his family's ownership of the country clubs. He was just Luigi to us. At Gilman, his classmates say he was really involved. He did a range of extracurriculars like Model UN, but also sports, like soccer, track and field, and wrestling. He even started a game development business, Apprar. From a young age, Manjoni was

really interested in game development. He picked up programming and coding because of it. His classmates say he was really good at STEM, including robotics. Hari showed ABC news the Gilman yearbook from Manjoni's senior year. Yeah, so there's the Luigi and I at a robotics competition, actually. He's probably looking at a computer screen because our robot started

“malfunctioning the little competition. And I think our arm fell off our robot in the middle of it.”

In the yearbook, there's a collage of photos of Manjoni, with the same dark curls and thick eyebrows at various ages. There's a photo of him fishing, a photo where he's holding paintball guns with his father, and a few photos with his mother and two sisters, and in the middle of the photos. And message from his parents, Luigi, you continue to astound us with the passion for knowledge, you generate respect for others and your courage and strength to be true to yourself.

We love you. Wow. Hari was a sophomore when Manjoni was a senior. As an underclassman, Hari said, you're very aware of the cool seniors who lead the clubs. You don't want to say too

much in annoy them. You want to be them. When I walked in there the first time, I didn't know

any of the kids in there, even in my grid. So I was, I didn't even, I was like thinking about walking out and then he was there and then he made me feel pretty comfortable at staying. And then I was there for like a whole two or three years in high school. Hari says Manjoni was a great team leader, talented, smart, and inviting. So this is a picture of Luigi and I, with other people, and we were qualifying for our first regionals. Our club hadn't done that before to my knowledge,

so it was a pretty big moment for us. I remember it was like a week before our last competition to qualify for like regionals, which is like the next level up. And R-O-Bot was non-functionals,

“like dead in the water, you know. Like, yeah, I think we had gotten busy with school and stuff like that.”

And he just, we just decided to have like a late night work where we would like go to someone's house with the robot, like the night before the competition and just sit there from like 5pm until the day of the competition just make it work. Hari says Manjoni stayed calm and kept the mood light. Plus, he was the best coder on the team. He was taking over like every lane, right? Like, whatever we needed something to get done and it was functional the next day.

No one was surprised when Manjoni was named Valedictorian. Just like Brian Thompson,

“he had excelled through all of high school and was respected by peers and teachers alike.”

Throughout his time here at Gilman, the class of 2016 has been coming up with new ideas and challenging the world around it. His speech was uploaded to Gilman's YouTube channel. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill valedictorian speech, lots of gratitude. Manjoni is standing at a podium flipping through his printed speech. He's wearing a blazer, dark blue tie, and light blue college shirt. The same blue button-up and tie combo can be seen on his classmates,

sitting in rows behind the podium. A friendships, values, and memories from Gilman

will always stay with us. Thank you.

Like many Gilman grads, Luigi Manjoni ended up at an Ivy League school. He attended the

“University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The campus is about three hours away from the McDonald's”

that years later, he'd be arrested in. His interest in STEM and computer science continued. A UPEN blog post reported on a new student club Manjoni founded in 2016. The paper said that it was a school's first ever video game development club, and within a year, the club had 60 members. Manjoni was in an electrical and computer engineering fraternity. In the 2020, he graduated with both a bachelor's and master's in engineering. Getting a bachelor's

and a master's from UPEN in four years is crazy. After graduating, he got a job as a data engineer. He could work remotely, so he moved to a cold living space in Hawaii. Online, there are photos of Manjoni's surfing, hiking, and attending community dinners, smiling ear to ear alongside

people his age. Surfbreak is basically like a Ohana, like a big family, that gathers all together,

and they do everything together, fun stuff, lots of cooking, lots of eating, lots of celebrating, watching TV together, just great hangouts. ABC News spoke to a resident who overlapped with Manjoni

“at Surfbreak. She has not to share her name. I remember there's a lot of volleyball games,”

especially during the Barbecue, Luigi was very competitive, and he's very positive, so if you wouldn't miss the ball or something, he'll say, hey, hey, good job, we can do it again, we can do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, we can win. Much like his Gilman classmates, this surfbreak resident recalls someone who was driven and involved in a variety of group activities.

I remember how intelligent he was. We were at the book club, that was my first interaction with him,

and he was sitting left of me, and he was the only one who really read the entire book. You know, I was shocked, I was like, wow, this person was like really serious. Everyone was there for wine and food, and he was the only one that was there for the book. From a well-manicured campus of a Maryland All-Boy School, to the high rise on the Oahu Shores, no one who spoke to ABC News thought of Manjoni as violent. No one could picture the person they knew,

killing a man. Manjoni's family released a statement, saying they were shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest, and they went on to say that they offered our prayers to the family of Ryan Thompson, and we asked people to pray for all involved. It appeared that no one, from Manjoni's family was there when he put a guilty into two counts of stocking in federal court. Luigi Manjoni seemed like a guy who had everything going from him.

So what happened? Three-trial. Terms apply. Two-poxicore. Now 30 years after he was gunned down in Vegas, a one-time reputed gang leader scans trial for his murder, follow every detail, streaming live daily on ABC News Live wherever you stream, and follow a burden of proof daily, wherever you get your podcasts. Everybody okay, and here? I'm Armono! Boohoo! We are all homeowner!

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“Luigi Manjoni is obviously a member of Generation Z. He was online all the time.”

This is ABC News's chief investigative reporter, Josh Margola. ABC News has identified several social media accounts of associate of Manjoni. Facebook, X, Instagram, Goodreads, and Reddit. Luigi posted a number of things on Reddit apparently he posted under the handle, Mr. Cactus. He talked about his plans, his travels, going to the gym, his reading materials. It seems that he posted a lot about physical appearance and health,

and it's perceived kind of like very bro-ish, like very masculine, focused.

On Reddit, Manjoni appeared to post regularly about his health. Here's an ABC News producer

reading some of those posts, like this one, about BrainFog. He simply chastily against my roommate. I used it as a metric to see how the BrainFog was improving. Eventually, I just stopped,

“since I could never remember any strategy. He would use the same moves against me day after day,”

and I just wouldn't remember them. It how tired he felt. I wake up feeling unrefresh, no matter how much sleep I get. But by far, the user seems to spend the most time posting about back pain. This issue of back pain seems to travel along with Luigi over recent years. From May 2022 to May 2024, the Mr. Cactus Reddit account commented regularly in the subreddit

for a spine condition in which one of your vertebrae slips and applies intense pressure

to the vertebrae below it. The user asks about treatments and other people's experiences with the spine condition. He even offers encouragement to others. Hope you are progressing while in your recovery. Mr. Cactus shares that they've had back pain quote from childhood up until age 23, but it wasn't too bad until a surfing accident in 2022. The same time, Luigi Manjoni was in Hawaii.

Authorities learned about the back injury from his friend, the RJ Martin who knew him in Hawaii. "Miner seen he to his spine was misaligned." RJ Martin ran the cold living community, Manjoni joined in Hawaii. "He did let me know that the severity of his back issue is such that it was very difficult to have physical relationships with women."

I got caught in this loop for a year. All the while put in my life on hold in my 20s and damaging my nerves while I waffled on the decision. When he was in Hawaii, people told us that he was planning to go back to the mainland for surgery to help alleviate his back pain. The ex-account believed to be operated by Manjoni showed an x-ray. He posted online an image that is believed to be an x-ray of his own spine with four surgical screws

in his spine that was a fusion surgery, which is often done on people who suffer extreme back pain to try to alleviate the back pain. In a press conference after Manjoni pleaded guilty in his federal case, his attorney is mentioned his back pain. As Luigi explained in court today, he endured years of severe debilitating pain following a broken

bag while struggling to navigate our health care and health insurance systems. Like the thousands of people who've reached out since his tragedy to share their own experiences, he believed that the system had failed him and destroyed his life. Mr. Cactus did not post complaints about the surgery or the medical system in general. There are obviously other factors at work that lead somebody to be with a

called radicalized to violence. Somebody who has animosity or a gripe or a grievous. To then take that, all those steps down the road and actually plan to kill somebody and then kill somebody.

“How did Luigi Manjoni become radicalized? Who were what had influenced him?”

He seemed to portray something of a sympathetic tone toward the end of our. The Unibomer, Ted Kazinsky. The NYPD said that based on Manjoni's social media profiles, he may have found inspiration in Ted Kazinsky. Kazinsky spent nearly two decades starting in the late 1970s, mailing or delivering bombs to his targets. He killed three people,

all that he wrote a few others in prison. The journalist, John H. Richardson, spent years reporting on Kazinsky. He says Kazinsky wrote about two main concerns.

First, he worried that technology was starting to control more and more of our lives, and second,

he worried that people were losing agency. We are not going to have make major decisions about our lives. It's going to be done by larger forces, by corporations, by governments, and algorithms. Richardson says that he had gone interested in why young people. People who aren't even born

“because his key was mailing bombs were flocking to his ideas. And as media tensions swirl”

around Luigi Manjoni, Richardson heard the early reports about Manjoni potentially being influenced by Kazinsky. That caught his attention. That was really what got me going. I was like, "Oh, he was one of these Kazinsky guys." According to the court testimony of a guard who monitored Luigi Manjoni while he was held in Pennsylvania, Manjoni said he was disappointed about being tied to Kazinsky. But he did appear to engage with Kazinsky's ideas. In a good

read's profile ABC News verified as associated with Manjoni, the user posted a review of the Unibomber Manifesto and gave it four out of five stars. The review said it's simply impossible to ignore how prescience many of his predictions about modern society turned out. It went on to

“say that he was a violent individual, rightfully imprisoned, who maimed innocent people.”

Ted Kazinsky also appears in Manjoni's alleged writings. The ones inside the red spiral notebook, found during Manjoni's arrest, and shared by prosecutors. The writer says Ted K makes some good points on the future of humanity. But to make his point, he indiscriminately male bombs innocence. Normies categorize him as an insane serial killer and dismiss his ideas. In the last time Manjoni appeared to post on Reddit, he posted to a Kazinsky related channel.

The post was titled "Streaming Overdose 2024" China, and included a video. It was of crowds of people in China posing for selfies. I think that sort of links a bunch of things. It's Kazinsky, it's technology, it's sort of self-involvement of a culture that's not committed to anything. How does someone go from posting about back surgery and traveling light to posting in a TED Kazinsky channel?

“That's what John Richardson explores in his book, Luigi, the making, and the meaning.”

Richardson examined the Goodreads profile associated with Manjoni, which included 240 books the user wanted to read, and 65 he had read. The user also marked 121 quotes from books. There's a big range of books on the reading list, sci-fi and fantasy novels like Brave New World and the Hobbit, self-help books like atomic habits and the Spartan way, philosophy classics, and books about depression, technology, and the history of humanity.

Not a lot of sociological books, books about psychology, about history, how did society get this way? What are the larger forces at work? I really think Luigi was a looking at society as a computer problem, like where the bugs, how can I fix this? How can I fix it before it's too late? Richardson says one of Manjoni's favorite writers, Tim Urban, encapsulates this kind of thinking. Urban wrote a book called What's Our Problem, a self-help book for societies.

Tim Urban is basically writing about how to America gets so divided. He's really trying to

wrestle with how can we stop dividing ourselves? To Richardson, that was very on brand for Manjoni. Fixing the bugs, trying to help, troubleshooting. But Richardson says in spring 2024, when Manjoni was traveling around Asia, he seemed drawn to a very different kind of book, a different kind of thinking. He got into a writer named Josh Delani. Delani writes a sub-stack newsletter called Old

Books Club. On X he has 100,000 followers in post quotes from Napoleon, Dosto Eski,

Iron Rand, and Nietzsche. He also post things like "Feminisms First Mistake."

Women weren't denied work, they were spared work, and why therapy often backfires. Delani has ran a few self-published books, including a book called "Hit Reverse,"

the dark side of a quality, and how to be a man of history. Richardson says he found hit reverse

disturbing. I hate to trash another writer, but this is an offensive book. It's full of really ugly ideas that sort of tend to the fascist side of things. That was quite a ways from Timmerman saying, "How are we going to seal the divisions in our society?" Josh Delani replied to Richardson criticism in an email. He wrote "Hit Reverse" is about creating beauty, pursuing excellence, and learning about human nature from old books. On the podcast chasing curiosity, Delani was

asked about a section of the book that argues that democracy represses excellence.

“What if there was a society with 300,000, 170 IQ geniuses? It might actually work because I think”

ultimately we should think about it and this was eugenics and it got super unpopular, but country

totally conveyed over having the dollar's book. Right? So why shouldn't we try to come up with more intelligent human beings? Richardson says Manjioni seemed hooked on this book. He was so interested in this book that he tried to buy $5,000 worth of copies online, and then he flew to Mumbai to talk to the author. Josh Delani wrote an ex that Luigi Manjioni ended up with just one copy of the book and that the two met once for an hour while Luigi Manjioni was in India and lost touch with in a few

weeks. To learn more about Manjioni's interests, Richardson spoke with another writer who Manjioni

“interacted with during his travels. Karwinder Bogol Richardson says Manjioni became a founding member”

of Bogol's blog and that it meant he got to have a two-hour call with the writer. Bogol told me that they talked mostly about Kazinsky and this question of agency. In a blog post about his interactions with Manjioni, Bogol said Manjioni was particularly interested in three of his pieces. The intellectual obesity crisis, why everything is becoming a game, and why you are probably an NPC. All pieces, according to Bogol, about threats to human autonomy. NPC stands for non-player character.

And if you've been online, you see it's like a blank face that is just watching other people actually do things. Richardson says Manjioni told Bogol that Japan was full of NPCs. She felt like it was the NPC paradise. You know, that a lot of people just followed the rules and they were just non-player characters. There's one thing that a lot of people have noticed that where he wrote about Japanese police officers stopping at the intersection on foot

and not Jaywalking while they were rushing to an accident. Bogol wrote that Manjioni felt that Japan was just a canary in the coal mine and that he believed people everywhere were becoming NPCs. Richardson spent a lot of time trying to understand what was going on in Luigi Manjioni's mind. Authorities say Manjioni didn't know Brian Thompson. He didn't have a personal vendetta against him. And according to United Health Group, he was not a customer and neither were his parents.

I mean, most people don't go to those kinds of lengths without a really profound personal injury to to drive them. I mean, to do it intellectually. Wow. In federal court, Manjioni said he emailed United Health Care and imposed as an investor

with more than $50 million in capital so that he could learn the exact location of the conference

Brian Thompson was attending. In a statement after Manjioni's plea hearing, United Health Care said, Brian Thompson's life was cut short by an active violence that devastated everyone who knew and loved him. We are grateful to law enforcement for bringing Brian's murderer to justice and our thoughts remain with Brian's family and loved ones during this difficult time. Then we now know a bit more about what Manjioni's motivations were in stocking and shooting

“Brian Thompson. There are still a lot of open questions. Why target United Health?”

Why target Brian Thompson? Why shoot him with a 3D printed gun outside of Manjano Hotel on the day when investors conference? Gosh, I'd sure like to ask him some questions.

Luigi Manjioni directly, but we talked to someone who got a rare glimpse into Manjioni's thinking, so and who did speak with him, who did hear him talk about healthcare in America. What do Luigi Manjioni say to him? It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Out there, scalar be killed, jick of the wordy. They're people out there. They need our help.

Josh Bulland. Shoot first, didn't acquire afterwards.

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Meeting Liji was a very, one and a million.

We were able to speak with someone who spent time with Luigi Mangione during his travels through Asia. He asked us not to share his name. I met Luigi Mangione in a random bar in Bangkok. He's American, but he moved to Thailand in 2020 to play professional soccer. In March 2024, he was showing one of his college friends around Bangkok.

At night, they went to a famous district called Soe Calboy. It caters the tourists. It's a place to go out and party. It's known for its bright neon lights and very narrow and crowded streets. He says he is friend picked a bar and once they sat down, they spotted a man sitting alone, according to him.

It was Luigi Mangione. He was on his phone in the corner. I just said, "Hey, what's up where you from?" That's when we started conversing and he said, "Oh, I'm from the US after I would say five or ten minutes of conversing. We decided to look at a round of beers together."

He says they ended up sharing three rounds of beers together and talked about a bunch of things. Mangione's computer science background, Pokemon, video games, I call of duty and his life in Hawaii. He got his phone and he was showing me pictures of him in the Hawaiian mountains. Eventually, he says Mangione asked him what life was like in Thailand. I gave him a specific story about how I had a pretty bad knee injury in a soccer game.

I went to the doctor. I got an MRI at X-ray. I got prescribed pain medication, and I had no insurance, no anything. I went to go pay the bill, and it was about $178. My younger brothers and nurse, so I sent him, I remember sending him the picture of the

“recie, and he couldn't believe it either. I think that's what really shifted the conversation”

to talk about the health care in the US. He remembers Luigi Mangione having a lot to say about health care. How it's all messed up in the US, like people take a health care company, taking advantage of the normal people, and it's not right. To him, it seemed like health care struck a nerve from Mangione. But while they talked to the bar over a few hours, he says Mangione didn't say anything about back pain or medical problems.

And says his impression of Mangione the time was that he was a good person, and a funny, smart, nice guy. He didn't seem angry or, you know, out for revenge or,

he just seemed like a normal chill guy. After the third round of beers,

he says that he, his friend, and Luigi Mangione left and walked around so a cowboy.

time I ever spoke or saw Luigi.

“That was spring of 2024. By summer when Luigi Mangione returned from Asia,”

that's when ABC news is Josh Margoan says, according to authorities, his behavior had noticeably changed. It seems that Luigi kind of went dark. In July, according to Rolling Stone, one of Luigi Mangione's childhood friends asked him if he was still going to his wedding, which was being held at one of the Mangione family's country clubs. According to Rolling Stone, he said, "No. Life had become difficult and nobody understood him."

On August 15, Mangione allegedly wrote in the red spiral notebook. I finally feel confident

about what I'll do. I'm glad in a way that I've procrastinated because it allowed me to learn more about UHC. The target is insurance. It checks every box. On August 31, according to a property manager interviewed by K.H. O.N. in Hawaii, he moved out of his apartment there. On October 22nd, according to the indictment, another entry in the red notebook starts with one and a half months. And goes on to say, "The investor's conference is a true windfall, and most importantly,

the message becomes self-evident." In December, the man who met Luigi Mangione and Thailand

“said his friend texted him an article with Luigi Mangione's photo in it. Do you remember this”

guy we met him in Bangkok? And then I took a closer look. And once I saw the picture and kind of

drew from memory, I couldn't believe it. Like that was him. With the first and last name too,

I was thinking first of all, like, "What are the odds of meeting?" Like approaching someone randomly in that night, and it happened to be the person being accused of this. Since that night in Thailand, Luigi Mangione has admitted to stalking and shooting Ryan Thompson, a CEO, husband, and father of two in cold blood. So why is he, from the moment he was arrested,

“captivated the attention of so many people, not just from this country, but from the world.”

Burtin of proof, Luigi Mangione, is a production of ABC audio and 2020, hosted by me, Ryan Buckmire. Produced by Vika Arenson and Audrey Maztek, our lead producer, is Camille Peterson, edited by Tracy Samuelson, music by Evan Viola, mixing by Bob Mallory, special things to Katie Dendos, Sasha's Lamian, Michelle Margallis, Tanya Simpson, Aaron Kutersky, Josh Margolan, Peter Harolombos, Jared Kovsky, Jake Leferman, Kenny Moldowni,

Anthony Ali, and Chris Loft. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Amen McNiff is our executive producer. On Reddit, true crime doesn't come from journalists. It comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves. Every Tuesday on crimes of Reddit, we read these posts out loud. I'm Sabrina Dianna Roga, and I'm Alexis Lindglutter. One of us brings the story, the other

goes in blind, reacting in real time, just like you. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Devastating comms, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories. So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Giann every Monday.