Influential, wealthy and philanthropic. That’s how the family of Luigi Nicholas Mangione has been described since the 26-year-old from the Baltimore area was identified as the prime suspect in the December 4 killing of the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare in midtown Manhattan.

Though accurate, those descriptors fail to convey the fuller picture painted by reporting from the 1980s of his grandfather, the family patriarch, Nicholas Bernard Mangione Sr., who died in 2008.

The elder Mangione jokingly referred to Mexican workers who lived in the violation-ridden housing on his Turf Valley Country Club property as “the amigos.”

A builder and developer as well as nursing home operator and radio station owner, he was frequently found in violation of Howard County’s zoning rules, leading to complaints that he made a mockery of government regulations.

When Black residents called for a boycott of his businesses after the 1988 N-word incident, Mangione found ways to punish those who had dared to defy him.

These and other details can be found in this August 26, 1989 piece written by The Brew’s Fern Shen (then a Washington Post staff writer), reformatted with paragraph breaks and republished below:

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Last year, after a widely publicized racial incident at Turf Valley Country Club, the pillars of the Howard County community briefly shunned Nicholas B. Mangione’s property like an 800-acre leper colony.

Many groups boycotted the popular golf, hotel and conference center – from the Chamber of Commerce to high school prom committees.

Mangione, 64, a former masonry contractor who rose from poverty in Baltimore to the top of a huge family empire of nursing homes, apartments, office buildings and construction projects, had his own response to the boycott. He took names.

He rescinded a sizable pledge to Howard County General Hospital, ceased participation in some local school and charitable programs and stopped letting the high school golf team practice at Turf Valley for free.

“I stopped it all,” Mangione said recently. “It’s a two-way street. If I am judged guilty and I’m not guilty, then they’re not friends of mine.”

Revenge may not be a common form of public relations in this booming suburban county. But then, Mangione is not a common businessman.

One of the region’s bigger commercial developers, a philanthropist and an aspiring player in the county’s political and social scene, Mangione also owns a parcel of land destined to become Howard’s second largest development after Columbia.

Independent and outspoken, he has become a colorful figure on the Howard landscape.

“I try to give him advice, but sometimes he does things the hard way,” said C. Vernon Gray, the County Council’s sole Black member, who sought to advise Mangione during the Turf Valley racial incident.

That controversy, in which the club’s manager inadvertently left a message using the racist epithet n_____ on an NAACP member’s answering machine, was the most widely publicized of a dozen brushes Mangione had recently with building, zoning and fire codes, business associates and community sensibilities.

Defying Stop Work Order

Last week, for example, Mangione was again in court, this time facing charges of civil contempt – the latest clash in an ongoing battle with the county over his work on a new golf course at Turf Valley.

Sediment control officers have accused Mangione of excavating without a county environmental permit.

In June, a District Court judge found him guilty of grading without a permit and defying a stop work order.

At the time, Mangione’s conduct on the golf course project incensed county officials.

“It makes a mockery of the regulations,” said County Administrator Buddy W. Roogow.

“With all the building around here, there have been a lot of complaints about” environmental damage from improper grading,” Roogow said. Mangione’s actions make “companies and individuals think they can flout the regulations.”

Mangione’s actions make “companies and individuals think they can flout the regulations.”

But the county agreed last week to settle the civil contempt case filed after county officials said Mangione repeatedly violated Circuit Judge J. Thomas Nissel’s stop work order at the golf course.

County officials offered to drop the charges in return for a $5,000 contribution to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a statement by Mangione acknowledging his guilt.

However, Mangione, who subsequently obtained a permit, has refused to sign the statement as of Friday. He says he has violated no laws.

“We have a difference of opinion on how to go about construction jobs,” said John H. Dreisch, chief of the county’s inspections and enforcement, who said he has had numerous run-ins with Mangione. “Little things like whether you’ve got to get a permit before you start building.”

Mangione replied that it’s the county that has “an attitude.”

“They made me put in a storm water management pond big enough to float the Queen Mary,” he said, complaining that the county has been nitpicking over the details of his golf course project.

“Damn stupid publicity”

In many quarters of the local Black community, Mangione has not been able to shake a reputation for insensitivity since the racial incident, for which he publicly apologized.

Some Black residents are still angry because he eventually reinstated the club manager, his nephew, whose phone message provoked the controversy.

“I’m in business 39 years and I get more damn stupid publicity over that incident,” he said. “I knew down deep in my heart that I wasn’t a racist or a bigot.”

Some who have seen Mangione both on and off the job find him a warm and generous person.

“He’s a good man, a good family man. I’ve been to his house; I can’t say a bad word about him,” said Baltimore Blast coach Kenny Cooper, even though he was banned from Mangione’s country club after Mangione’s son, Nicholas Jr., was cut from the soccer team.

However he is viewed, Mangione is here to stay in Howard County.

His Turf Valley property was given its own special zoning designation, “Planned Golf Course Community,” which allows high-rise buildings and two houses per acre. The only other such zone is Columbia’s “New Town” designation.

With that status, Mangione is set for years of construction. And, with his five daughters and five sons all working for him, he has a ready-made management team.

Reduced Rent for Democrats

A gray-templed man with broad hands and features, Mangione reflected during a recent interview on his crazy-quilt empire and his growing presence in Howard.

Political fund-raisers, meetings and government conferences are often held at Turf Valley, including the county Democratic Party’s annual dinner.

Mangione is also close to council member Gray, who plays golf with one of Mangione’s sons and was first to reach Mangione in Florida when the racial incident erupted in February 1988.

For the past year, Mangione has provided office space in Ellicott City to the Howard County Democratic Central Committee at a roughly $18,000 annual discount – an arrangement that the Democrats did not report to the state in periodic filings.

State election officials said the deal appeared to be an in-kind contribution, which must by law be disclosed publicly, but the Democrats dispute that. The state has not yet ruled on the matter.

Asked whether other tenants in his Ellicott City building pay the same $300 a month rent, Mangione laughed and said, “It is a little bit of a reduced rent.”

In later interviews, he said the deal earns him no special treatment from Howard officials. In fact, he said that county officials have targeted him for harassment.

“I think a lot of people like to build their reputation by being able to say they took on a successful businessman,” he said.

County Executive Elizabeth Bobo counters, “Everyone in this county has to abide by the laws.”

Dreisch put it a little differently: “Lately, they’re on him like a cheap suit.”

“Unfit for human habitation”

County officials said Mangione is now correcting the last of a long list of building code violations at the half-dozen tenant houses at Turf Valley where some of his employees, including some Mexican workers to whom he jovially referred during staff meetings as “the amigos,” live rent free.

Last December, one of the houses was declared “unfit for human habitation” because of 30 violations, including holes in the wall and floors, moldy walls, defective electrical systems and insufficient water and heat. Those problems were corrected in April, officials said.

“In a year or so, we’re going to tear those houses down. They’re really shacks.”

A subsequent inspection found 10 more violations in four of the houses.

Mangione said he does not feel bad about having people live in the houses because “nobody’s paying me any [rent] and there’s no low-cost housing in Howard County.”

“In a year or so, we’re going to tear those houses down,” Mangione said. “They’re really shacks.”

Little Italy Supporters

While Mangione has riled some officials in the suburbs, his friends back in Baltimore cannot shower enough praise on him.

Last year, several hundred well-wishers gathered with the Sons of Italy to give him their annual “Good Citizen” award. Speakers stressed Mangione’s devotion to family and charitable activities.

Thomas J. D’Alesandro III, a former mayor of Baltimore, said those who criticize Mangione don’t understand what drives him.

“If he seems impatient sometimes,” D’Alesandro said, “it’s only because he wants the very best for his business, the very best for his family.

• To reach a reporter fern.shen@baltimorebrew.com