Tales of mortal misuse of authority, medical and otherwise.
Mike Leibrandt has been thinking a lot about authority lately—how quickly it can shift from protective to destructive when left unchecked.
In this month’s historical roundup, he unpacks local tales of medical betrayal and institutional failure: a healthcare executive gunned down by a disgruntled patient, a U.S. president slowly killed by the very doctors sworn to save him, and the echoes of violent political backstabbing that have haunted Philadelphia since its founding.
What links them isn’t just blood—it’s the danger of people who believe they know better, acting alone or above reproach.
Co-pay with Your Life
When Luigi Mangione was arrested last year in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after fleeing New York, headlines followed him all the way to Altoona via Philadelphia. His alleged crime—murdering UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson—has captivated national attention, especially after reports that he was found with fake IDs, a wig, and possibly a plan to disappear.
Mangione, a 2020 University of Pennsylvania graduate with two computer science degrees, was no fringe drifter. He came from inside the system—educated, credentialed, and, allegedly, coldblooded. Prosecutors say he sought revenge after his healthcare claims were denied. The latest twist: his attorney now claims Pennsylvania police wrongfully used snacks to obtain DNA without his knowledge or consent. His trial is expected to proceed next year in federal court, where the US has announced plans to seek the death penalty.
It’s a disturbing modern case of betrayal from within an industry meant to protect life. But as strange as it seems, it’s not new.
The Doctor Will Slay You Now
On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield walked into a Washington train station and was shot in the back by a disgruntled office seeker named Charles Guiteau. But the bullet didn’t kill him—at least, not right away.
Garfield lingered for more than two months, suffering through the medical attention of America’s finest physicians. One of them was Philadelphia’s own Dr. David Hayes Agnew, a legendary University of Pennsylvania surgeon so revered he was later immortalized in Thomas Eakins’ The Agnew Clinic. But even Agnew, for all his prestige, couldn’t save the president. Or, some argue, he chose the wrong methods in trying.
Garfield’s doctors repeatedly poked and prodded his wound with unwashed hands and unsterilized instruments, failing to locate the bullet and introducing deadly infections in the process. Although Joseph Lister had already made a strong case for germ theory and antiseptic care, many American doctors—including those tending to the president—dismissed it as unproven nonsense.
In the end, Garfield succumbed not to the assassin’s bullet, but to sepsis—an infection bred by the very people tasked with healing him. Before he was executed, Guiteau delivered a now-infamous line: “Yes, I shot the President, but his physicians killed him.”
Philadelphia’s Hands in the Wound
Dr. Agnew’s role in Garfield’s death remains a point of historical debate. Some argue he was one of the more progressive figures on the president’s team, others that his reputation helped shield gross incompetence from public scrutiny. Either way, he became a symbol of a profession struggling to reconcile tradition with science—a struggle that continues to echo today.
The parallels to Mangione’s case are eerie. Again, we have a medical system under scrutiny. Again, a Penn-educated man is at the center. And again, public trust in medicine is being tested, not just by mistakes but by violence. While Mangione is no physician, his alleged motive—revenge against the healthcare system—forces us to ask: Who pays when belief in medical authority curdles into betrayal?
For now, Mangione is being held at Pennsylvania’s oldest operating prison, SCI Huntingdon in Smithfield Township. Meanwhile, the line between healer and harm-doer has never been as clear as we’d like to believe. Mangione may be on trial, but medicine itself has been in the hot seat for generations—and the verdict still isn’t in.
📢 All the Rogue People
It’s not just one industry, either. When power breaks loose anywhere, consequences turn deadly! Here are two more local tales of mortal fallout when authority goes too far: one from the earliest days of the republic and the other from the heart of Reconstruction.
🔹 1776: The Hickey Plot
As the ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence, General George Washington faced a chilling threat—not from the British Army, but from inside his own security detail.
In June 1776, a member of Washington’s elite Life Guard, Thomas Hickey, was arrested for conspiring with British loyalists to assassinate the General. The Life Guard was a special unit formed to protect Washington, drawn in part from Philadelphia’s First Troop City Cavalry, which still exists today.
Hickey’s betrayal rocked the fragile morale of the revolution. He was swiftly tried, convicted of treason, and hanged before a crowd of thousands in New York on June 28—just days before independence would be formally declared.
🔹 1871: The Murder of Octavius Catto
Nearly a century later, another betrayal would shake Philadelphia. Octavius V. Catto, a celebrated educator, Army veteran, and civil rights advocate, was organizing Black voters during a contentious Election Day marred by white supremacist violence.
Catto was gunned down near his home at 9th and South Streets, murdered by Frank Kelly, a Democratic ward thug with ties to local police. Despite widespread outrage, Kelly was acquitted—and Catto’s name faded from most history books for over a century.
Today, Catto’s legacy stands tall outside City Hall, where a bronze statue honors his fight for justice—and marks the spot where power, once again, turned on the people it was meant to serve.
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