Luigi Mangione’s extended family found success following the rise of the patriarch

When Nick Mangione Sr. asked how he bought a high-profile local country club in the 1970s, he had a ready answer: “They asked me what family I was from. I told them, “I’m part of the Mangione family.” “The Mangione family of Baltimore County,” he told The Baltimore Sun in 1995.

The patriarch of a sprawling Italian-American family, who died in 2008, was a self-made multimillionaire and real estate developer who owned country clubs, nursing homes and radio stations while supporting a range of civic causes.

His descendants – he and his wife Mary had ten children – went on to be successful in their own right, including excelling in athletics at Loyola University and taking over the family business, while a grandson is a state delegate. One of his 37 grandchildren is now implicated in the shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan.

Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old whose father ran Mangione Family Enterprises, had a stellar start of his own: He was valedictorian of the class of 2016 at Gilman School, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and an early-career data engineer.

Luigi Mangione was arrested for questioning Monday after he was recognized at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, police said.

Thompson’s killer reportedly wrote “deny,” “defend” and “depose” on bullet casings, and when Mangione was arrested, the NYPD said in a news conference that he had a handwritten manifesto denouncing health care companies.

Still, the Mangiones have a long history of supporting local healthcare businesses in Baltimore.

For decades, the Mangione family has been a major supporter of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center and has donated more than $1 million to the hospital. Beginning in 1983, every single grandchild in the family, including Luigi Mangione, was born at GBMC—a tradition so ingrained that, as one family member noted in a hospital blog post, “She becomes unconscious” of a delivery at GBMC “It’s not even possible to think about it.”

In recognition of their continued support, the hospital’s high-risk obstetrics unit is named Mangione. Beyond GBMC, the Mangione Family Foundation has expanded its philanthropy to institutions such as the Kennedy Krieger Institute, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center.

The gifts are a product of the success of the family patriarch.

Nick Mangione Sr. was born in Little Italy in Baltimore to a father who could neither read nor write. He enlisted in the Navy, fought in the South Pacific, attended college on the GI Bill upon his return and then worked as a contractor for two decades, according to The Sun.

He began building and owning nursing homes, office buildings and hospitals, including Fallston General Hospital in Harford County, which has since closed.

He and his wife purchased Turf Valley Country Club, now known as Turf Valley Resort, in 1978 and established the Ellicott City location as a golf course resort and residential community. The Mangiones developed the property into Howard County’s only full-service resort and conference center, with a 220-room hotel, a pro shop, a 10,000-square-foot ballroom, a European-style spa, an 85-seat amphitheater and a Gym Center, according to the Washington Post.

In 1986, they purchased what later became Hayfields Country Club, a golf and wedding venue on Hunt Valley farmland known for bringing the first Hereford cattle to Maryland in the 1840s.

In 1988, Mangione Sr. bought WCBM-AM 680, a conservative talk radio station, and later two others.

Mary and Nick Mangione Sr. also founded a nursing home and assisted living company called Lorien Health Services. According to a Gilman yearbook, Luigi Mangione volunteered at Lorien to fulfill a high school community service requirement.

Nick Mangione Sr. said in 1995 that he began passing the torch to his children, particularly his two eldest sons, Louis and John, who were described as civil engineers. Louis, Luigi Mangione’s father, became the managing director of Mangione Family Enterprises.

“When my father died when I was 11 years old, I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and I still became a millionaire,” Nick Mangione Sr. told The Sun. “In what other country can you do this? I can’t think of anything.”

Mary Mangione supported not only the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, but also the old Baltimore Opera Company and the Walters Art Museum, eventually becoming a Walters trustee.

The patriarch also sparked controversy. According to The Post, Turf Valley made headlines in 1998 when Mangione Sr.’s now-deceased nephew, then Turf Valley’s manager, accidentally left a message containing a racial slur on an NAACP member’s answering machine. Mangione fired his nephew but later rehired him as assistant manager.

And in 1989, he clashed with Howard County officials after sediment control officials accused him of excavating during the construction of a second Turf Valley golf course without county environmental permits. He went to court and ultimately agreed to make a $5,000 settlement donation to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Washington Post reported.

Nick Mangione Sr. died of complications from a stroke in 2008; Mary Mangione died last year from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

The pools at Loyola University bear Mangione’s name, and six of his ten children graduated there, some of whom were outstanding soccer players. Nick Mangione Jr. helped the Greyhounds win the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II championship in 1976, and Sam Mangione was a regular on nationally ranked teams in the late 1980s.

A cousin of Luigi Mangione, Nino Mangione, has been a member of the Maryland House of Representatives since 2019. The Republican is a member of the Appropriations Committee.

In recent months, Nino Mangione has joined the chorus of politicians concerned about the proposed Piedmont Reliability Project, writing in the Baltimore Sun this summer that construction of the power line has no place in his constituents’ backyards.

Nino Mangione also introduced a law this year banning “sexually explicit” material in public school libraries and media centers. The bill failed.

He previously sponsored a bill that would allow disabled service members and disabled veterans who qualify for property tax relief to refund previous payments under certain circumstances.

Banner reporters Hallie Miller, Cayla Harris and Pamela Wood contributed to this article