Luigi Mangione, who is charged with the murder of a US health insurance executive in New York, has apparently been posting on Reddit for several years about his chronic back pain and spinal surgery.
Mangione, 26, is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan last Wednesday.
He was charged on Monday in New York with one count of murder, three counts of criminal possession of a weapon and one count of possession of a forged instrument.
Luigi Mangione. Image: Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
The suspect’s attorney said he planned to plead not guilty to all charges.
According to Sky’s US partner NBC News, Mangione, who attended an Ivy League university, appears to have been active on Reddit since 2016 under the username Mister_Cactus, where he posted about spinal health, gaming and travel.
Activity on the now-deleted account, which has been archived, matches events from Mangione’s life, friends confirmed.
The posts focused on a condition called spondylolisthesis.
Mister_Cactus said in an exchange with another user in April that his condition had become “so bad that I felt it every day.”
In 2018, the account owner wrote about “restless sleep” and described waking up frequently throughout the night and feeling “unrefreshed no matter how much sleep I got.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Healthcare CEO murder suspect screams loudly
According to a July 2023 post, Mangione appears to have struggled with back pain since childhood, but the problem arose in recent years when he went surfing.
“I slipped on a piece of paper, my right glute locked and my right leg was out of commission for a week,” one post reads.
Read more:
What do we know about Luigi Mangione?
Shooting sparks US health debate
Mister_Cactus wrote back then that he had been having problems with his right hip for a year and a half.
He wrote that he experienced pain when sitting and twitching leg muscles, as well as sometimes numbness and tingling in the groin area.
“When my spondylolisthesis worsened last year, it was completely devastating for me as a young athlete,” Mister_Cactus wrote in an August 2023 post.
The Reddit posts indicate that the account holder underwent spinal fusion surgery in 2023.
Other posts suggest that he saw positive results after the surgery – he wrote that after a week he was “literally off of painkillers” and was able to sit, walk and stand.
A Reddit spokesperson told NBC News that the platform works to suspend accounts that may be connected to suspects in high-profile criminal investigations, a common practice among tech companies to prevent identity theft or interference in such cases.
