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I don't know if Luigi was resigned to being caught, or just wiling to take the risk rather than laying low. It doesn't feel like he knew how to talk to police. I wish he had disappeared, not only for his own good, not only to encourage more action by others, but also because the reveal ruined the mythmaking.

The few days where he was anonymous felt like watching a legend. Calmly clearing the gun for the second and third shots was like a Homeric scene. The getaway on the bicycle, the inscribed shell casings, the Monopoly money, the unremarkableness of his appearance; no other words for it, it was the story of a hero. The "CEO shooter" was being stanned by everyone, by MAGA fascists and communists, by anarchists and centrists, even liberals were going like "I don't condone murder but...". The scarcity of details, necessary for a myth, let everyone project their hopes onto the masked figure. The assassination itself was a masterpiece, no notes.

But now we have just another 4chan shooter ig. All the epic fanart and memes suddenly became silly when we all know his name, politics, motive, profession, childhood school, mother's maiden name and preferred genre of hentai. I haven't looked deeply into the all-too-human actual reality, but from what I can see he doesn't look like a hardcore MAGA white supremacist or anything, just your average Elon Musk fan, edgy "apolitical" tech dude. (A comrade pointed out he could have left a doge or pepe in the backpack rather than Monopoly money and this would have made him a legend with that crowd). It seems that his only radicalisation was Kaczinsky, which he admired not for environmentalism or anti-civ feelings but for the "mathematical" nature of Kaczinsky's arguments in favour of violence (which, to be fair, are fully correct).

Now, instead of a shadowy Robin Hood+Punisher figure who would pop up on stickers and street art, the fallback of this in my circles will probably be a resurgence of Kaczinsky discourse, and I'll have to argue all over again that while Ted's commitment to direct action is commendable he's actually an asshole who sucks, and I expect I'll also have to do the same about Luigi, and we'll have to deal with boring things like the complexity of human beings and ethical nuance and how people who have bad beliefs and do harmful things can also be capable of brave and moral actions like shooting a CEO.

And of course that prison is wrong for everybody no matter if they're a transphobic misogynist joe rogan anti-woke etc. So, sigh, free Luigi Mangione.