Luigi Mangione’s gigantic perp walk through Manhattan, in which he was flanked by dozens of heavily armed officers, garnered a mix of reactions online, but body language experts said there is more to the moment than meets the eye.
Mangione arrived via helicopter in the Big Apple after being extradited from Pennsylvania—where he was recognized at a local McDonald’s on Dec. 9 as the prime suspect in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson .
According to forensic psychiatrist Carole Lieberman , M.D., M.P.H., Mangione’s face during his perp walk held a “mixture of his emotions.”
“On the one hand, he’s not a happy camper being under the control of all these law enforcement officers,” Lierberman explained. “But, on the other hand, his smirk reveals that he’s happy and proud of himself to have necessitated so many officers to escort him.”
Mangione “is not a sociopath,” posited Lieberman. “He is someone who had big dreams to change the world and realized that his brain fog and back pain were going to hamper him from accomplishing them.”