Two Successful Assassins

Last updated:5 novembre 2025

Preface

On December 4th, 2024, the CEO of the insurance company United Healthcare was killed in broad daylight. This man named Brian Thompson was on his way to a conference in New York City, when a masked gunman shot him dead, as he was entering a hotel.

His murder sparked an intense 5-day manhunt across the United States of America, which came to an abrupt end, when a McDonald’s employee alerts 911 about the presence of the alleged killer Luigi Mangione. Even though gun violence has become a recurring theme in America, the murder of a corporate executive perpetrated by a civilian is unprecedented, at least in the western hemisphere.

A similar incident occurred on the 8th of July in Nara, Japan, when former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead at a political rally by Tetsuya Yamagami. Although geographically separate, both followed nearly identical motives. And even more impressive, both achieved their ideological goal.

Murder as a Political Means

Ever since the first hierarchies were established, political violence was but another tool to bring about or hinder change. Be it the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, Stalin’s erasure of dissidents, or the murder of Doctor Martin Luther King, political conflicts were always fought with words and weapons alike.

Often, they are carried out by proxies of influential individuals, who then fill the vacuum of power left by their opponent’s deceased husk. Thus, political murder serves as a tool to advance an ideological agenda followed by the masses, because this strength in numbers makes it easier to fill the void of influence left behind by the dead. In turn, a political murder is usually only as successful as the number of people supporting the ideology that spurred the slaying.

Usually, this was the case because both the alleged Luigi Mangione and the convicted Tetsuya Yamagami lacked swaths of supporters to back them up; they were civilians relying on improvised weapons and public opinion to change the system. And surprisingly, it worked.

Two Men, One Motive

Tetsuya Yamagami was born to affluent parents who ran a local construction business; however, his mother adhered to the teachings of the Unification Church, a Christian sect, which collects donations through emotional extortion. She donated about 100 million yen, which equates to roughly 720,000 USD, a parcel of land, and the house she lived in with her three children to the church, which led the once wealthy family to bankruptcy.

Originally based in Korea, the Unification Church’s practices range from organized marriages between Korean and Japanese people, through emotional extortion via Spiritual Sales, to claiming reparations from the Japanese for war crimes committed during the colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

Like his father and grandfather, Shinzo Abe held long-standing ties to the Unification Church, whose founder, self-declared messiah and outspoken anti-communist Sun Myung Moon held good relations with Japanese conservative politicians.

Tetsuya Yamagami blames the Unification Church for the family’s descent into poverty and thus hatched the plan to assassinate its leader, Hak Ja Han. Once he caught wind of the long-standing relations between Hak Ja Han and Shinzo Abe, he decided to target the former Japanese prime minister instead.

On 8 July 2022, Shinzo Abe was giving a speech in Nara, campaigning for the election of an LDP official, when at 11:30 a.m. Tetsuya Yamagami snuck behind him and shot him with two rounds from a home-made shotgun. The former prime minister was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m. at Nara Medical University Hospital.

Tetsuya Yamagami, front right, holding a weapon, is detained near the site of gunshots in Nara, western Japan, on July 8, 2022. Photo: AP

Tetsuya Yamagami holding the improvised shotgun on the crime scene

On the other side of the globe, the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson may have been spurred by a similar motive: his alleged killer, Luigi Mangione suffers from Lyme disease and spondylolisthesis, and went missing on November 18, 2024, shortly after a trip to East and Southeast Asia.

On December 4, 2024, Brian Thompson was walking down 54th street in New York, on his way to attend a UnitedHealth Group investor’s meeting, when the alleged Luigi Mangione shot him three times with a partially 3D-printed Glock 19, equipped with a suppressor. Brian Thompson was pronounced dead at 7:12 a.m. at Mt. Sinai Hospital.

Luigi Mangione latest: Accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer marks 27th birthday with list of things he's grateful for from jail - ABC7 New York

Luigi Mangione during a court hearing

In a hand-written manifesto, he voices his disdain for corporate greed and power, as well as the exorbitant cost of health insurance in the United States of America. Furthermore, bullet casings found on the site of the assassination have the words “Deny, Defend, Depose” carved into them, alluding to the common practice of health insurance companies of not paying for their customers’ medical procedures, titled “Delay, Deny, Defend”.

Either of the two perpetrators seems to be motivated by a grave discontent with greedy institutions, overcharging for their services, and thus decided to act in a vigilante-like manner to make a statement against these parasitic practices. And most surprisingly, it worked.

The Aftermath

Following his arrest, Luigi Mangione was hailed as a hero and often depicted in graffiti and popular art. Furthermore, citizens gathered in the streets and in the courtroom to voice their support for the assassin, while conservative media outlets depicted him as a menace to society, claiming his fellow inmates would eat him alive in prison.

During his perp-walk, he was seen sporting a new haircut, while on his way to the courtroom, an indication of supposed care from other inmates, since jailed individuals are not entitled to visits to the hair salon. This is an important hint, that could help us deduce the rifts and contrasts between the incarcerated and the powerful. On December 9th, 2024, political commentator Jesse Watters said on Fox News that Luigi Mangione would “get annihilated in jail”, and that hopefully one of the inmates will do him justice. This is where the gaping rift between the wealthy and those beneath them in America becomes even more glaringly evident. Following the assassination, corporate executives have upped their personal protection entourages and expressed their condolences, which resulted in a huge backlash on the internet against healthcare corporations.

Tetsuya Yamagami was arrested on the crime scene and complied with the local authorities; he was charged with murder and violation of the gun control law. He subsequently underwent a six-month long psychiatric evaluation that deemed him mentally capable of standing trial and may have also served the double purpose of extending the actual trial until public discourse has quieted down.

The slaying’s consequences were manifold: immediately after, many LDP officials halted their campaigning efforts for a few days to mourn and reorganize within the party, while public outrage demanded change and disclosure of any relations with the Unification Church, held by LDP members. Deemed insufficient by many, the outcry prompted then-prime minister Kishida to prematurely reshuffle his cabinet, to establish a Spiritual Sales Review Committee and recognise the Unification Church as a cult. Furthermore, anti-Japanese rallies were held in Seoul and stronger preventative measures against cults were instated in Japan. The Unification Church’s dissolution was initiated by the Japanese government but it was immediately appealed in the Tokyo High Court.

What do we learn?

Assassinations are political tools. Though largely confined to the elites and upper crust, anonymous civilians are just as capable of bringing about change through violence, as large companies or governments. This is by no means a threat to every high-ranking executive of the world’s corporations, but it does recall the original message of protests, before they became riots and peaceful demonstrations. Protests are the public’s mouthpiece, but they also serve as a warning. The public trusts officials and executives with their funds and their votes, if they mess up, they can also be taken out of these positions. These two separate instances of political violence perpetrated by disgruntled and deceived individuals can be interpreted as warning shots. If a tossed coin lands on the edge, it’s an anomaly. But if it happens twice in two years with similar motives, it might indicate a trend.

Domenic Schwander