In my day job as an immigration law legal research specialist, I contributed work to a case wherein the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) was calling into question the bona fides of a marriage between a U.S. citizen and an alien. The Service did its own investigation into the matter and, based on that investigation, decided to revoke the previously approved marriage petition. Some of the Service’s concerns were stronger than others. One of the weaker concerns goes something like this. The U.S. citizen lived apart from the alien due to their work circumstances. USCIS investigators contacted the person who was the U.S. citizen’s landlord at the time. The landlord believed that the U.S. citizen was in a romantic relationship with another individual who stayed over at the U.S. citizen’s house on occasion (both the U.S. citizen and the alien insisted that the man was a mutual friend of the couple). The USCIS unequivocally took the view that the landlord would obviously have knowledge of the tenant’s romantic relationship status. The U.S. citizen reasonably countered that there existed a normal landlord-tenant relationship and that the landlord had no knowledge of the U.S. citizen’s personal affairs. Now without getting into the claim as a whole – the U.S. citizen’s counter to that specific allegation was entirely fair. Outside of cases where a landlord is renting to a married couple, I do not think it follows from the existence of a landlord-tenant relationship that the landlord knows about his or her tenant’s romantic entanglements. In fact, I will venture that most landlords and tenants are more concerned with whether the other side is upholding the terms of the pertinent lease, not their relationship status. I dare say that many tenants may consider undue interest from a landlord in their romantic entanglements to be something of a red flag.
Or so I thought until I read a December 10, 2024 report by Ronny Reyes for the New York Post titled Luigi Mangione’s back pain was so intense that he couldn’t be ‘physically intimate’ with anyone, former landlord says.
What in the world? I quote from the article:
RJ Martin, who owns the ‘co-living’ space in Hawaii where Mangione lived for six months, said the murder suspect revealed to him that he was in constant pain over a pinched nerve and ‘misaligned spine,’ the New York Times reported. ‘He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,’ Martin told the outlet. ‘I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.’
Mr. Mangione is of course the gentleman charged with the murder Brian Thompson, who was then the CEO of UnitedHealth Group and who leaves behind a wife and two children – before evading authorities for several days after the murder. While all those criminally charged are entitled to the presumption of innocence, I do suspect that Mr. Mangione’s case may be undercut by the contents of the so-called manifesto he was carrying at the time of his arrest – I describe it as a so-called manifesto because a couple of pages of scribbles hardly matches my mental image of a manifesto.
But I digress. Let us return to the original prompt for this article.
According to Mr. Mangione’s former landlord, Mr. Martin, Mr. Mangione had confided in Mr. Martin that he was suffering from severe back pain. I suppose that makes sense. Assuming arguendo that Mr. Martin’s account is accurate, I suspect that there would have been obvious signs that Mr. Mangione was suffering from back pain, thus making the back pain an obvious topic of conversation. But according to Mr. Martin, their conversations about the back pain went further – and by further we mean that Mr. Mangione had complained that he was unable to be “physically intimate” because of his back. Would most people talk to their landlords about how their back makes it difficult or impossible for them to be “physically intimate”? I would not think so – but Mr. Mangione is a bit younger than me, so “O tempora! O mores!” and all.
In any event – while Mr. Mangione may have been in too much pain to be physically intimate during his stay at Mr. Martin’s “co-living” space in Hawaii, he would have had to have recovered decently well assuming arguendo that, as alleged, he made his way to New York City, staked out and murdered a man after months of planning, and then avoided arrest until he was found while dining at a McDonald’s in a different state several days later. Had he done something in New York other than allegedly murdering an unarmed man by shooting him in the back, it could have been an inspiring recovery story – assuming arguendo that his former landlord has accurately represented their past conversations.
(PS: Can I call this article a manifesto?)
