The organizer of an online campaign that has raised more than $700,000 for Luigi Mangione’s legal defense in connection with the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, believes the accused killer’s infamous, post-arrest “perp walk” may have “backfired” on New York authorities and spurred some of the financial support effort.
In remarks on an upcoming podcast exploring Mangione’s case, Sam Beard says the campaign eclipsed its goal by more than double after the public saw authorities “treating him like Hannibal Lecter”, referring to the fictional serial killer protagonist in The Silence of the Lambs film.
“To just demonstrate the sheer power of this state and … to really just show how captured and how small this person is … a lot of us feel like that maybe backfired,” Beard says on Luigi, a four-episode Law & Crime podcast set to premiere on Monday – and an excerpt of which was shared with the Guardian.
Beard’s comments are some of the most extensive yet about his work on the Luigi Mangione Official Defense Fund, which had raised about $743,000 as of Thursday on the GiveSendGo platform.
As the podcast notes, critics of the campaign say it dangerously glorifies vigilante violence and disrespects the family of Thompson, whose killing on 4 December 2024 was seen by many as an extreme, illicit protest of both the US’s rapacious private health insurance industry and the wealthy executives who profit off routine coverage denials.
Yet Beard and those who have supported the Mangione fund launched by his December 4th Legal Committee counter that everyone deserves a fair trial, including him. And, as a high-profile defendant, Mangione is grappling with a disproportionately intense prosecution, they maintain.
A clear instance of that, Beard says on the Law & Crime podcast, was when Mangione was extradited to New York from where he had been arrested in Pennsylvania. Beard alluded to the way dozens of New York police officers – including ones equipped with body armor and long guns – greeted a shackled Mangione at the helicopter in which he arrived and then escorted him to a waiting vehicle.
The group surrounding Mangione – clad in an orange prisoner’s jumpsuit – was joined by the New York mayor, Eric Adams, as television news cameras recorded the dramatic scene, unfolding about 15 days after the Thompson shooting.
“We just saw how spectacular they really made that moment,” Beard remarks on the podcast.
Yet the show of strength did not isolate Mangione, who is facing state and federal charges of murder as well as terrorism – allegations which could mean the death penalty for him if he is convicted.
By late January, about 11,000 donors contributing roughly $30 each had helped the Mangione defense fund eclipse its initial goal of $300,000. That amount then more than doubled, prompting Beard’s group to increase the campaign’s goal to $1m.
In February, Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, announced that her client – who has pleaded not guilty in the case – would accept the money raised for his legal defense.
“I know [that was] extremely meaningful to the well over 12,000 donors,” Beard says on the podcast. “I’m really grateful for the opportunity to help.”
Authorities allege that Mangione, 26, shot Thompson, 50, to death in plain view of a surveillance camera as he walked to an investor conference in midtown Manhattan. A five-day manhunt led to Mangione’s arrest in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s.
Investigators say he had a gun that matched the one used to kill Thompson, fake identification that Mangione allegedly used to check into a New York City hostel before the deadly shooting, and a notebook expressing disdain for US healthcare companies’ practices.
According to the insurer, Mangione was never a client of UnitedHealthcare. But he had cut himself off from friends and relatives in the months before his arrest, posting frequently in online forums about struggling with back pain – details which are examined on the Luigi podcast.
A poll published in late December by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago concluded that most people in the US believe the health insurance’s frequent denials of coverage shared some responsibility for the death of Thompson, whose survivors include his widow and two teenage sons.
But the survey found most people in the US believed Thompson’s killer had either “a great deal” or “a moderate amount” of responsibility for his death.
“It’s horrible when anybody has their life cut short by another person, especially when it could have been prevented,” Beard says on Mangione. “But the same logic has to apply both ways, right?
“Preventing people from getting the healthcare that they need – that you and your company have access to and could provide them, but don’t do so because it would threaten your business model – that’s an act of violence too,” Beard says.
