How Luigi Mangione compares to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski

Luigi Mangione was inspired by the so-called Unabomber, but he operated in a very different way, a former FBI profiler has said.

Jana Monroe, who coached Jodie Foster for her role in The Silence Of The Lambs, told Newsweek that Mangione and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski were both enraged by what they saw as the arrogance of big corporations, but Kaczynski was much more concerned about escaping and never got up close to his victims.

Kaczynski killed three Americans and injured nearly two dozen more in a 17-year bombing spree. He pleaded guilty to murder and other charges in 1998 and died in prison in 2023. Mangione has been charged with the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, 50, outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan on December 4 while the UnitedHealthcare CEO was on his way to an annual investor conference.

Mangione was arrested on Monday in Altoona, about 275 miles from Manhattan. The NYPD intelligence unit issued a report about him, in which it assessed that he was inspired by the Unabomber and shared the Unabomber’s hatred of corporate America.

In January 2024, Mangione wrote a lengthy review of the Unabomber’s book, Industrial Society and Its Future, on the book review site Goodreads, in which he said it was easy to dismiss the Unabomber as a mad man, but that he had raised important issues about society.

Newsweek sought email comment on Monday from Mangione’s attorney, Tom Dickey, who warned the media outside court on Tuesday that Mangione was innocent until proven guilty and would be pleading not guilty to the charges.

Monroe, who is now CEO of security consultancy JDMonroe Enterprises, told Newsweek that while Mangione wanted to get up close to his victim and cared less about his escape, he was motivated by the same hatred as the Unabomber.

“As far as his motivation, his inspiration for it, I think what they’re talking about is, hatred can be a real motivator, hated for the the big corporation, for the corporate arrogance, the egotisticalness, the narcissism, all those connotations you want to apply to it, but with totally different approaches for carrying out the crime.”

She said it is too early to know for sure, but Mangione’s severe back problems may have led him to hate the medical insurance industry.

One of Mangione’s main profile photos on X, formerly Twitter, is of the large pins placed on his lower back, which restricted his movements for several months.

“He’s young and his back problem may have been interfering with things that he wants to do in life. I don’t like the word privilege so much, but he certainly came from a family of means.”

“Even with that, he may have been having issues maneuvering and navigating through the health-care system and through insurance and those types of things.”

She said that most people experience similar problems with corporations, but don’t act out like Mangione and Kaczynski.

“I have angst with the insurance company. I think my first inclination is not to go out and shoot someone. And thank goodness that most of us do not have that kind of frustration.”

She said that Kaczynski and Mangione were becoming more detached from reality when they turned to violence.

“I’m not a psychologist, but when you do have a break with reality or kind of a mental decomposition on something, I think that manifests into some kind of myopia where this is the only thing that you can see.”

“And it appears that Mangione was obsessed with this. I certainly don’t know the details, but it must be derived from his back pain and perhaps nothing has been solved as far as he was concerned.”

As the move towards violence solidified, both Kaczynski and Mangione moved away from family and friends, she said.

“They start just backing away from their friends, their support system because the things that are going through their head and what they see is the right thing.”

“You’re talking about bright people. They know that others are not going to agree with them. In order to get your plan going, you need to isolate yourself from the people that are going to be obstructionists,” she said.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on December 10 that Mangione’s mother, Kathleen Mangione, filed a missing person’s report in San Francisco on November 18, having not heard from her son since July.

She had believed that her son was working in San Francisco at the time.
Kaczynski spent many years living in isolation in a wood cabin in Montana and had very little contact with his family, or the outside world.

Monroe spent several weeks coaching Jodie Foster for her Oscar-winning performance as FBI agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.

At the time, Monroe was the only woman in the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit at Quantico, Virginia. The unit is dedicated to studying the behavior of serial killers and other types of criminals.

She has spent many years talking to serial killers and building up profiles of their motivation and crimes.