Luigi Mangione’s final message to me appeared a cry for assist… If solely I had replied

A friend of Luigi Mangione has shared his last message to him over the summer and revealed it may have been a ‘cry for help’.

Gurwinder Bhogal fears Brian Thompson could still be alive today if he had not forgotten to respond to the Ivy League graduate, who is accused of shooting dead the United Healthcare CEO on December 4.

The pair began speaking earlier this year when Mangione, 26, took an interest in Bhogal’s blog about politics and ‘the digital age’. 

DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal the contents of dozens of private message shared by the pair between April and June this year. Bhogal has also recounted an hours-long video call with Mangione over the summer. 

Their exchanges and Bhogal’s subsequent posts to X provide a fascinating insight into what was going through the alleged killer’s mind in the months before the attack.

Bhogal believes that content on Mangione’s social media feeds could have played a role in radicalizing him in the months before the shooting. He revealed that Mangione had requested advice from him on how to better curate the posts that he was seeing. 

‘This was the last message Luigi sent me,’ Bhogal, who lives in Birmingham, England, wrote on X. ‘He wanted me to help him curate his information sources.’

‘I forgot to get back to him. Looking back, it may have been a cry for help. I wonder if I could’ve saved him and Brian Thompson if I’d just responded to the message.’

The emails between the pair seen by DailyMail.com show that Mangione had an interest in self-help books, ‘inherited trauma’, political power dynamics and concerns about political power dynamics.

The alleged assassin shared with Boghal a self-help book called ‘What’s our problem?’, by Tim Urban.

The publication discusses how modern societies work to both give and take power from individuals, complete with stick-man-style illustrations. It does not condone violence.

In turn, Bhogal recommended reading an essay by Razib Khan about the passing of trauma down a family lineage.

Mangione thanked his friend for sharing the essay, writing in a May 6 email: ‘I particularly appreciated Khan’s clear breakdown of intergenerational vs transgenerational epigenetic transmission.’

His interest in the damage parents can do comes as it emerged his mother used to make him eat in a certain way, as outlined by Mangione himself in an online review he left of the book The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris.

Her recalled how his mother Kathleen Zannino Mangione made him eat steak with his right hand ‘out of adherence to social norms.’ He also mentioned his disdain for ‘simply accepting things the way they are.’ 

During his court arraignment to face second-degree murder charges on Monday, Mangione appeared to scour the room for a familiar face, but he found none.  

He repeatedly turned around during his court appearance in Pennsylvania, looking towards the public gallery, but his mother did not show up – nor did any of his other relatives.  

Mangione also had no one in court to support him in his second court appearance on Tuesday to face identity fraud and gun charges in the state.

Describing his video calls with Mangione, Bhogal said: ‘Politically, he seemed disillusioned with status quo politics, but also disliked Trump.’ He added that Mangione was concerned with ‘corporate greed’.

‘He said the people around him were on a different wavelength and he was eager to be part of a community of like-minded people,’ Bhogal said. ‘[He] suggested I schedule group video calls as he really wanted to meet my other founding members and start a community based on rationalism, Stoicism, and effective altruism.’

The alleged assassin hails from a powerful Maryland family centered on the late patriarch Nicholas Mangione, a first-generation American who built a real estate empire in the state, including country clubs and media.

Nicholas, who died in 2008 aged 83 after suffering a stroke, was the owner of Turf Valley Resort and Hayfields Country Club, as well radio station WCBM-AM, which Mangione may inherit. 

Meanwhile, his mother Kathleen Zannino Mangione owns a boutique travel company, and his sister MariaSanta Mangione is a respected doctor.

She now works as a medical resident at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas after graduating from Vanderbilt medical school.

Bhogal previously gave DailyMail.com an insight into Mangione’s political views, including that he is, in his friend’s opinion, ‘anti-woke’. 

‘He was left-wing on some things and right-wing on others,’ Bhogal recalled. ‘For instance, he was pro-equality of opportunity, but anti-woke: for example anti-DEI (and) anti-identity politics.

‘He opposed woke-ism because he didn’t believe it was an effective way to help minorities. 

‘He expressed interest in more rational, evidence-based forms of compassion, like effective altruism.’ 

The pair began speaking when Mangione, 26, took an interest in Bhogal’s blog about politics and ‘the digital age’ called The Prism, and reached out to him on X. 

Bhogal said they exchanged more than a dozen emails, seen by DailyMail.com, before sharing a two-hour video chat while Mangione was traveling in Japan.

The England-based writer added that they ‘briefly touched on the differences between the UK and US healthcare systems’. 

‘Luigi complained about how expensive healthcare in the US was, and expressed envy at the UK’s nationalized health system,’ he said. 

They also discussed Ted Kaczynski, the ‘Unabomber’ who used terrorism to campaign against modern technology. Mangione had previously appeared to praise Kaczynski on Goodreads. 

‘Luigi disapproved of the Unabomber’s actions, but was fascinated by his ideology, and shared his concerns about rampant consumerism gradually eroding our agency and alienating us from ourselves,’ Bhogal said. 

‘He expressed fears over smartphone addiction. Luigi asked me how to maximize agency in a world constantly trying to deprive us of it, so we also discussed that.

‘Overall, the impression I got of him, besides his curiosity and kindness, was a deep concern for the future of humanity, and a determination to improve himself and the world.’

Bhogal said his overriding impression of Mangione was that he was ‘one of the nicest people I’ve ever met’, who even bought him a subscription to Readwise Reader, an app designed to help users retain more information from books. 

The writer said he was ‘bewildered’ when his friend was charged with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Monday.  

‘He was so thoughtful and polite that he seemed like the last person I’d suspect of murdering someone,’ Bhogal told DailyMail.com. 

Returning to his fears that he could have done something to prevent the shooting Bhogal said: ‘I’m probably overestimating my importance, but “what ifs” are persistent little things, especially at times like this.’ 

Ivy League engineering graduate Mangione was arrested on Monday morning moments after eating a hash brown in an Altoona, PA McDonald’s. 

Cops closed in on the alleged killer after an employee at the restaurant recognized him from surveillance images NYPD shared online in the wake of the Midtown Manhattan shooting. 

He was later charged with second-degree murder over the slaying of Thompson, 50, just before 7am on Wednesday outside the Hilton hotel where the exec had been set to make a speech to finance heavyweights later that day.

Cops closed in on the alleged killer after an employee at the restaurant recognized him from surveillance images NYPD shared online in the wake of the Midtown Manhattan shooting. 

Mangione appears to have led police on a 280-mile manhunt from New York City’s 6th Avenue to the small Pennsylvania city of Altoona, around 100 miles east of Pittsburgh.

He left a trail of overt clues about his motive, including ammunition etched with the words ‘delay’ ‘deny’ and ‘depose’ and a bag of Monopoly board game money in his backpack left in Central Park. 

Officials believe the bullet etchings refer to the ‘three Ds of insurance’ – tactics used by American insurance giants to reject patients’ claims. 

This motive appeared to be even more clearly outlined in a handwritten manifesto cops seized from Mangione during his arrest on Monday, which the NYPD’s chief of detectives Joseph Kenny said expressed ‘ill will toward corporate America.’

‘To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country,’ Mangione wrote in the three-page document. ‘To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone.’

‘I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done,’ Mangione added in the document. ‘Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.’

Mangione also allegedly had a ghost gun believed to be the rare World War Two era-inspired 9mm pistol used in Thompson’s murder, which the New York Post reported was a Swiss-made Brugger & Thomet VP9, and a silencer. 

He was denied bond and not represented by an attorney during his arraignment in the Blair County Courthouse in Pennsylvania on Monday night. Mangione will next appear in court in New York at a later date.