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‘Hannibal Lecter’ treatment of Luigi Mangione ‘backfired’, says fundraising organizer

The organizer of an online campaign that has raised more than $700,000 for Luigi Mangione’s legal defense in connection with the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, believes the accused killer’s infamous, post-arrest “perp walk” may have “backfired” on New York authorities and spurred some of his financial support.

In remarks on an upcoming podcast exploring Mangione’s case, Sam Beard says the campaign eclipsed its goal by more than double after the public saw authorities “treating him like Hannibal Lecter”, referring to the fictional serial killer antagonist in the film The Silence of the Lambs.

“To just demonstrate the sheer power of this state and … to really just show how captured and how small this person is … a lot of us feel like that maybe backfired,” Beard says on Luigi, a four-episode Law & Crime podcast set to premiere on Monday – and an excerpt of which was shared with the Guardian.

Beard’s comments are some of the most extensive yet about his work on the Luigi Mangione Official Defense Fund, which had raised about $748,000 as of Friday morning on the GiveSendGo platform.

As the podcast notes, critics of the campaign say it dangerously glorifies vigilante violence and disrespects the family of Thompson, whose killing on 4 December 2024 was