If Luigi Mangione, alleged killer of the United Healthcare executive in New York City, was a member of one of those stereotypical crime families, his nickname would have been “Brows.”
Those gangsters all seem to have nicknames, right? And Mangione absolutely would have had to have been called “Brows,” a reference to his prominent, bushy eyebrows.
Mangione looks like the love child of Joan Crawford and Groucho Marx, so prominent are his eyebrows. They are like a couple of solid black woolly bear caterpillars pasted to his forehead. I’ve seen plenty of moustaches (some on women) with less thickness.
And while we’re on the topic, why did none of Mangione’s family members or close associates recognize those distinctive eyebrows and rush to the proper authorities to identify him?
It causes one to wonder why it took a customer at an Altoona McDonald’s to make the identification and have someone contact police.
I’m also wondering about a report from my brother, seen on YouTube, that Mangione supposedly passed through Johnstown on a bus on his way to Altoona, where eventually he was captured. This seems to fly in the face of Greyhound bus schedules and I can find no confirmation of it.
But, it would not surprise me if it somehow, inexplicably, were true. Johnstown has a habit of making its way into national stories.
Ironically, a cousin and I were discussing this sort of thing just two days back. I noted it was a near-miss this time with the supposed assassin being captured in Altoona. When I worked at the local newspaper – it wasn’t the Woke Gazette then – it was a running joke in the newsroom how many national or international events had Johnstown area connections.
Here are just a few prominent examples. The iconic Iowa Jima flag-raising photo has immortalized Sgt. Michael Strank, a former resident of nearby Franklin Borough.
Sgt. Regis Ragan, one of the hostages seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in late 1979 and held until early 1981, was a Johnstown native.
It seemed that any time there was a natural disaster, revolution or some other news event, there was someone with a Johnstown connection involved.
Just this past election, Cambria County, of which Johnstown is the largest town, was an embarrassment for being unable to accept and count votes for a time and was mentioned repeatedly in national election reporting due to the failure.
Johnstown has been tied to infamous acts. White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin committed two of his murders in Johnstown, gunning down Arthur Smothers and Kathleen Mikula near Point Stadium on June 15, 1980.
Franklin never was arrested for those murders, but he confessed to them after he was apprehended for other crimes.
Back in the days when I traveled the country covering sports, particularly the Steelers, I often ran into Johnstown natives. One time, during a cab ride in San Diego with other sports writers, chitchat with the driver turned to hometowns.
I told him I was from a small town he probably never had heard of, Johnstown. Turns out, so was he.
It was my theory at the time, and remains so, that if all the people born here had stayed around, we’d have a population approaching that of New York City.
Instead, we’re an outpost with declining population, where the growth industries are crime and begging money from the government to fund nonprofits, not-for-profits, charities, foundations and other operations with only a passing acquaintance with free enterprise.
And yet, we seem able to find ways to have our area connected with major events. All this is notable, if nothing else.
Sam Ross Jr's site 