Luigi Mangione’s face is now familiar worldwide, following his arrest for allegedly murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan. But new details on the life and background of the Ivy League-educated 26-year-old are still emerging by the hour.

Mangione, in custody in Pennsylvania following a five-day manhunt and facing a second-degree murder charge in New York, struggled with police and yelled out as he entered an extradition hearing on Tuesday.

Those who knew Mangione are now trying to reconcile the friendly computer science major with the suspect who allegedly shot and killed Thompson last week, and was arrested carrying a short manifesto criticizing health insurance companies for putting profits above care and specifically singling out UnitedHealthcare, according to the New York Times and CNN.

Luigi Mangione was born in 1998 to Louis and Kathleen Mangione, and was part of a well-known family in Maryland that owned a wide range of businesses. Luigi’s grandfather, Nick Mangione Sr., and his wife purchased a golf course and country club in Howard County in the 1970s. It included a 220-room hotel, a 10,000-square-foot ballroom, and an 85-seat amphitheater, according to the Washington Post. They had five daughters and five sons, including Luigi’s father Louis.

They later bought another country club and a radio station in the 1980s. Mangione Sr. died in 2008, but his children have continued to run the family businesses.

Thomas J. Maronick Jr., a lawyer and radio host who knew Mangione Sr., praised the family, describing them as “incredibly generous.” He said they were generous with charities.

Maronick Jr. said he was shocked that Luigi Mangione has been named as the shooter. “Given the family, and how generous and supportive of charity they are, and the esteem their name carries in Maryland, it’s the last person you’d expect,” he said.

Former classmates at the Gilman School, an all-boys, $37,000 a year private school in Baltimore, told the New York Times that Luigi Mangione was intelligent. They said he made mobile apps before college, and participated in clubs including model U.N. and robotics.

Mangione was also an athlete, and was on the wrestling team. Former classmate Aaron Cranston told the Times he became friends with Mangione in high school, describing him as perhaps the “smartest” at the elite private school.

“He was a big believer in the power of technology to change the world,” Cranston told the paper.

In his senior yearbook page, Mangione thanked his parents for sending him to Gilman, saying the school was “the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Thanks for dealing with me these past 18 years,” Mangione wrote to his parents. “I cannot thank you enough for supporting me along the way.”

The yearbook page shows he fulfilled his community service requirement at the Maryland nursing home company Lorien Health Services, which his father was an owner of, according to the Times.

After graduating and giving the valedictorian speech at Gilman in 2016, Mangione attended the University of Pennsylvania where he majored in computer science. He later got his master’s in computer and information science. Mangione was interested in video game development, and his LinkedIn profile states that he fixed 300 bugs as an intern for the company Firaxis Games in the video game “Civilization VI.”

His LinkedIn page shows Mangione worked as a software engineer for the California-based company TrueCar for several years starting in 2020.

In recent years, those who knew him said Mangione was dealing with significant back pain. He lived for six months in Honolulu, moving into a “co-living” space called Surfbreak that caters to remote workers.

Surfbreak’s founder, R.J Martin, told the Times that Mangione was a smart, accomplished and upbeat engineer. Fellow Surfbreak resident Jackie Wexler told the Honolulu Civil Beat that Mangione was “just such a thoughtful and deeply compassionate person at everything he did.” He didn’t complain about his back pain, but it had a major impact on his life, Martin said.

“He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,” Martin told the Times. “I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”

The now-charged suspect’s GoodReads account paints a complex picture. It includes praise for a the book “Industrial Society and Its Future” by Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. His reading history included several books on dealing with chronic back pain, and his X profile shows an X-ray image of a spinal fusion surgery, though it’s unconfirmed if the image actually depicts Mangione.

Friends told the Times that Mangione’s family was unaware of his whereabouts prior to his arrest on Monday. His mother, Kathleen, reported to San Francisco police that her son was missing on Nov. 18, the San Francisco Standard reported. Public records suggest Mangione may have relatives in San Francisco, the Standard added.

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