UnitedHealthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. In a statement to other media outlets, a company spokesperson said: “Our hope is that today’s concerns bring some relief to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy. We thank law enforcement and will continue in working with them on this investigation. We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy as they grieve.”
A search of Mangione’s online footprint paints a picture of a typical thief, including accounts on Pinterest, Skype, Instagram and Facebook. On X, what appears to be his account included a photo of what appears to be an X-ray after major spinal surgery, one of the few explicit references to health care in his online account history.
A GoodReads account with a picture of the suspect that also shares a username with an email address and GitHub account linked to Mangione includes several books related to back pain, including Crooked: Outsmarting the back pain industry and getting on the road to recovery. Other titles include Hillbilly Elegyby US Vice President-elect JD Vance, and “Industrial Society and Its Future”, the anti-technology diatribe colloquially known as the Unabomber Manifesto. The GoodReads account has since been set to private.
Mangione, who was valedictorian of his private high school in the Baltimore area, appears to have been an avid gamer, with dozens of game titles listed on an Xbox Live account that shares his name. In 2018, Mangione described himself as passionate about making video games and co-founded a game development club at Penn, which quickly gained a membership of about 60 students, according to a since-deleted article on the university’s news center.
On a GitHub page believed to belong to Mangione, he shared code repositories that focused on machine learning and human-computer interaction. Among these is a project titled “Meccanoid-Imitate,” which apparently uses Arduino — an open source and easy-to-use electronics platform — and a programmable Meccanoid robot. The repository, last updated four years ago, contains animated GIFs showing Mangione in what appears to be a classroom, moving his arms while a mecanoid robot behind him mimics his movements.
Updated at 5:30 PM EST on December 9, 2024 to include additional information about Mangione’s employment history.