Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Luigi Mangione Had Major Health Issues Before CEO's Murder

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, appears to have some major health issues. What were they and how did those possibly influence him? Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:24 We're learning a lot about Luigi Mangione's health history from what appears to be his own posts on Reddit. Those posts include information about back issues that have been in the news and more. Mangione is behind bars in a prison in Pennsylvania. He's fighting extradition to New York where he's charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. UnitedHealthcare is the biggest health insurance company in the country. When police took Mangione into custody at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, they said that he had writings on him, a manifesto of sorts. Ken Klippenstein posted the entire thing on his sub stack. Part

Starting point is 00:01:01 of it reads, I do apologize for any strife of traumas, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder, the U.S. has the number one most expensive health care system in the world, yet we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy. United is the largest company in the U.S. by market cap behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No, the reality is they have simply gotten too powerful and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public

Starting point is 00:01:34 has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I do not have space. And frankly, I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed, Rosenthal, Moore, decades ago, and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently, I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.

Starting point is 00:02:01 The manifesto doesn't discuss Mangione's health issues or his back surgery that it appears he had in the summer of 2023. Mangione posted an x-ray of pins in his back on his ex account. His Reddit account, which has now been shut down, said he suffered from spondylolisthesis. That's where a vertebrae in your spine slips out of place. it's very painful. A former roommate of Luigi Mangione in Hawaii told Law and Crime that there were days when Mangione was fine and other days when he was immobile. Mangione posted on Reddit using the name Mr. Cactus. In August of last year, the Mr. Cactus account posted about spondylolisthesis. The post reads, it can be easy to get caught up in the plethora of horror stories on the internet. When my spondy went bad on me last year, 23 male, it was completely

Starting point is 00:02:53 devastating as a young athletic person. Seemingly, all I could read on the internet was that I was destined to chronic pain and a desk job for the rest of my life. That representation was terrifying, inaccurate, and completely destroyed me until I realized the silent majority of fusions are highly successful, hoping this can help others who find themselves in the same place. This is not to encourage surgery per se, but just to provide reassurance that athletic life is totally normal after fusion if slash when the surgery is necessary. This list has more success stories than anyone probably wants to read through. That's kind of the point. There's tons.

Starting point is 00:03:32 ABC News reported that another post from February of this year appeared to confirm that Mangione had spinal fusion surgery and that it was successful. Yeah, I had L5 slash S1 spinal fusion six months ago after 1.5 years of failed conservative treatment. Within seven days of the fusion, I was on zero pain meds. That's probably faster than most folks, but my point is just that your body isn't supposed to be in pain and need meds. Even after getting my back sliced open and my spine drilled into, I wasn't in much pain. But there were older posts about health, one from 2018, in which the Mr. Cactus account posted about having trouble sleeping. My question, is this insomnia? Is there a name for this other than restless sleep? I'm a

Starting point is 00:04:19 healthy 20-year-old male. Basically, I'm in bed for eight hours every night, but my sleep is very restless and I wake up frequently. No problems falling asleep. I fall asleep within 15 minutes as long as I sleep at the same time every night. Usually, I'll wake up after four hours, then after another 1.5 hours. Then I wake up another eight or so more times during the last 2.5 hours in bed. When I wake up, I fall asleep within a few minutes. I just check the time to see if I can get up yet. And if not, I fall back asleep quickly. After the four-hour mark, I move a lot and my sleep feels very restless, almost like I'm half awake. In the last year, these problems have started to get significantly worse, and I wake

Starting point is 00:05:02 up feeling unrefreshed no matter how much sleep I get. Sleeping longer than eight hours has no effect, but getting any less than eight hours causes extreme exhaustion during the day. I track my sleep with Fitbit if anyone's interested in it. I have done an overnight sleep study, and I don't have sleep apnea. A few other things I do. Zero caffeine, zero alcohol slash nicotine, exercise regularly, zero stress, sleep at same time every night. 20 year old male, sleep for eight hours, but wake up frequently. Fall asleep quickly upon waking. Feel unrefreshed in the morning. No matter how much I sleep is waking throughout the night like this normal. What about waking only in the second

Starting point is 00:05:45 half of the night? Is there a name for this? Sorry for all the questions. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Having the career in journalism that I've had from covering Stephen Avery to the Johnny Depp trial and now covering Luigi Mangione, I know how slanted various outlets can be. That's why I'm thrilled we partnered with a company like Straight Arrow News, an app and website focused on objective, unbiased reporting. As someone always researching for Crime Fix, I use Straight Arrow News to cut through biased reporting so I can just tell you the facts. With their tools like the Media Landscape, which shows where outlets fall on the political spectrum, and the media mistool, highlighting stories mainstream media might be skipping. It's very effective for my research.

Starting point is 00:06:29 And you can check out Straight Arrow News for yourself for free by downloading the app with the QR code on screen or by clicking our link, sand.com slash crime fix in the description. Supporting them means supporting journalists like us committed to delivering the truth. Another post from 2018 talked about irritable bowel syndrome. A lot of people have issues with that. I have IBS but tested negative for SIBO. SIBO stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Would it still be worthwhile to pursue a low FODMAP diet?

Starting point is 00:07:01 Has anyone who tested negative for SIBO ever experienced a change in symptoms on a low FODMAP diet. Has anyone who tested negative for SIBO ever experienced a change in symptoms on a low FODMAP diet? Thanks. A FODMAP diet is actually an elimination diet where you try to eliminate foods to see what's triggering your IBS. Earlier this year, the Reddit account also discussed a trip to Asia and being obsessed with efficiency and liking traveling with a single backpack. Perhaps the ultimate vessel for minimal efficient living, surpassing even a tiny square home, is a single backpack. To be clear, I don't live out of a backpack full-time, nor do I want to, but I enjoy doing so comfortably for months at a time, for certain discrete periods of time when traveling and wanting to fully engage

Starting point is 00:07:45 in the experience. It's a useful practice. Why one bag? First, there are the practical reasons regarding air travel. No rushing to the airport early to check bags, no searching for an overhead compartment, no bag fees or worrying about stuff getting lost, and no adjusting plans to drop off luggage before an adventure, explains indefinite one-bagger Jeremy Maliff. Second, there are the more philosophical reasons. There is a sense of weightlessness, freedom, and self-sufficiency that accompanies one-bag travel. At some point, a bag becomes small and light enough that it can be carried without consequence, no longer of any meaningful concern.

Starting point is 00:08:24 Things are simply no longer a factor in mobility. Further, the constraint of a single bag is a useful practice in intentionality, and it's a good reminder that we're able to go long periods of time without needing many things. I want to bring in Chris Swecker. He's a retired FBI agent to talk about these health issues. Chris, this is somebody, Luigi Mangione, who was very active online. And it said that he was writing on Reddit about his health issues, especially the back issues that he was having. He had had surgery, and it sounds like he was in excruciating pain. And talk to me about how health issues could be a trigger, possibly, for somebody to maybe start spiraling out of control.

Starting point is 00:09:12 Yeah, I mean, I think health played a role here, as well as sort of his mental state over the last year or so, if you track his evolution. He apparently had terrible back pain, had for a while over the course of several years, came to a head. He had to have surgery. In that same time frame, he got laid off from his job. And it was a fairly – with all his education, all his family background, the success of his family businesses, his grandfather's businesses, he took a fairly mundane job, which he got laid off from. So I think, you know, post-college, post-secondary, you know,

Starting point is 00:09:52 or post-graduate work, he kind of ran into life and life didn't treat him the way he wanted it. He ran into obstacles and challenges and it just, I think, caused some mental sort of deterioration on his part. So he gets time to read, reads too much into what he's reading, if you will. And I think the combination of the health problems, this life's disappointment sort of crashing down around him, and you got to blame somebody or something. And that happens so often life's disappointment sort of crashing down around him. And you gotta get, you gotta blame somebody or something. And that happens so often. And he sort of pointed, he, he's decided that he latched on to the healthcare industry or the, you know, health, health insurance companies, and maybe even his own health, uh, insurance company. You know, you have to remember that

Starting point is 00:10:40 at age 26, you often get kicked off of your parents or your company's health insurance or someone else's health insurance. He didn't have his own health insurance, or maybe there was a COBRA problem with him getting coverage, which happens all the time. He wouldn't be the first person that got frustrated and angry at a health insurance carrier. Yeah, that's interesting you point that out about the age 26 and the fact that kids do get kicked off, even though they're not kids anymore, but they can get kicked off their parents insurance at that age if they're still on it. That hadn't crossed my mind. There was also some talk in his writings when he was younger about him. He was having sleep issues and he was saying he didn't use caffeine and that he was still having issues with sleep and he was waking up in the middle of the night. And that

Starting point is 00:11:33 makes me wonder, you know, he was talking about being tested for sleep apnea, but it just makes me wonder, is this somebody who maybe had mental health issues who wasn't diagnosed. It just didn't pop up on the radar for his medical providers. Yeah, I think that's highly likely. I mean, the act itself of stalking, researching, building a gun, and then executing someone on the streets of a major city is almost by definition, you know, a mentally unstable act. So, and when you look at his, you know, his digression, if you will, which ultimately came to sort of a crisis point. I'm not a psychologist, but I've been around behavioral science enough to know that this is often, this is not an infrequent scenario where mental illness sort of combines with a bitterness towards life in general.

Starting point is 00:12:34 And then you pick the culprit and direct all your energies, all your mental energies towards that culprit because it certainly can't be me. You know, I'm not a bad person. You know, this is not my fault. And do you find something or someone to blame? And that in itself, I think, is a mental illness. I mean, we don't know whether he was bipolar, was he schizophrenic? This is, he was displaying extremely erratic behavior in his writings, in his, you know, his behavior over the last year or so, which culminated in what happened in New York City. You know, it just sounds like he's had quite a few health issues. And there are a lot of people, you know, who have health issues. I mean, at one point, I think

Starting point is 00:13:18 he talked about, you know, some irritable bowel issues, irritable bowel syndrome issues, which a lot of people have that. You know, it just seems like he had, along with the back issues and the surgery that he had in 2023, a plethora of other issues that he was discussing online. You know, I just don't know, you know, all of that combining plus the job lay off, the chronic pain, and then he becomes kind of radicalized on his own. You mentioned his readings and we know he commented on the Unabomber's manifesto. Is this something you've seen before where, I mean, somebody, you know, it's almost like he became isolated, too. His family hadn't heard from him since July and they lost track of him. And his mother apparently reported him missing last month.

Starting point is 00:14:15 So it's just like he disappeared off the face of the earth. Yeah, I mean, this is common. I mean, in the common in the field of terrorism and in sort of mass shooters, people who go off the rails driven by some sort of personal or much broader personal experience or life is crashing down around them and a combination of the ideology that kind of evolves from that. So, yeah, I mean, this is not this is not uncommon at all. You can see the FBI did a study in 2019 on a lone wolf terrorist. And they you could you could read the study. It basically lays out this this spiraling, this digression over over a period of time. It's almost it's almost a common characteristic for all the mass shooters that we've seen, which, again, is and terror lone wolf terrorists. And even people who sort of they'll go out of the country and join up with a terrorist organization.

Starting point is 00:15:22 It's a it's a dynamic that it can't be my fault. There's got to be another culprit. And they direct all their energy and overactive minds towards that one target. You mentioned him not being able to sleep. That's kind of a sign of an overactive mind, overthinking everything. This is a guy who had means means apparently, and could live in Hawaii with without having a job. So he was getting some financial support, which gave him, I guess, the leisure time and the free time to just basically do nothing but sit around and plot

Starting point is 00:15:56 and think. Well, it is certainly so sad. I mean, somebody who was very intelligent, who had a lot of potential, he's innocent until proven guilty. But the manifesto, it sounds like, according to what we're hearing, it sounds like he took, he is taking credit for this. So much potential. And right now he's accused of murder. Thank you so much, Chris Wecker, for joining me. Thank you. One last, one last comment. I mean, I would look for a sanity defense to develop based, you know, based on the thread that you just mentioned, the potential for mental illness. We'll see if that comes out when it gets back in New York. Yeah, we well, we should look out for that, especially with the outburst outside of the courthouse on Tuesday. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:16:46 And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Luigi Mangione Had Major Health Issues Before CEO's Murder

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