Suspect in UnitedHealth Killing Was Ivy Leaguer With Anticapitalist Leanings

Subscribe to a bundle to unlock all coverage by Caixin Global and the WSJ.

By Joshua Chaffin, Valerie Bauerlein and Scott Calvert

(The Wall Street Journal) — The all-out pursuit of the criminal suspect who gripped the public’s imagination for nearly a week ended on Monday at a McDonald’s in central Pennsylvania, about a half mile from the Greyhound bus station in a nondescript part of this town.

A worker there noticed something familiar about a lone customer on Monday morning and called the local police. Soon 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, the subject of a massive manhunt and the man police suspect murdered UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week in a targeted killing, was in custody.

When, at last, he was unmasked—and unhooded—the mystery man at the heart of the brazen and apparently carefully plotted attack was even more of a riddle than expected. Held up as folk hero by some for striking a blow against America’s health insurers, he turned out to be a high-achieving product of elite schools, an affuent Ivy Leaguer who harbored anticapitalist leanings that may have played a role.