'COLD-BLOODED, HORRIBLE KILLING': LUIGI MANGIONE CALMLY FACES FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY CHARGE
“IN OVER THREE DECADES OF PROSECUTION, I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS,” DEFENSE LAWYER SAYS
Dec. 19, 2024
Calm, clean-shaven, composed and sporting what looked like a fresh haircut, Luigi Mangione made his first appearance in a federal courtroom in downtown Manhattan where he was arraigned on four federal felony charges, one of which carries a potential sentence of death.
“In over three decades of prosecution I have never seen anything like this,” Mangione's lawyer, former prosecutor Karen Friedman-Agnifilo, told Magistrate Judge Katherine H. Parker Tuesday afternoon, after a world-wind day for Mangione that started before dawn in a Pennslyvania prison.
Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the midtown Hilton hotel, with a silenced 9mm handgun, as the sun rose on Dec. 4. After being indicted in New York State Supreme Court for first degree terrorist murder on Tuesday, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Edward Y. Kim on Wednesday charged Mangione in federal court with capital murder—plus interstate stalking and illegally possessing a gun and silencer.
Mangione was shackled at the ankles but not handcuffed when he was led into Magistrate Parker's courtroom by U.S. marshals. He looked around the packed gallery for the faces of friends or family, as others in his shoes typically do, but only the strange faces of reporters, police and court staff stared back.
Mangione wasn’t nervous or afraid. He seemed curious, if anything—and ready for whatever came next.
He was dressed in a white button-down shirt, navy three quarter zip pullover and khaki pants. The marshals sat him down at the defense table between his lead lawyer, Ms. Friedman-Agnifilo, and her co-counsel and husband, Marc Agnifilo.
As others spoke, Mangione listened closely and nodded along. When Magistrate Parker read him his rights and the charges against him, he looked solemnly down at the carpeted floor of the stately, wood-paneled courtroom. Occasionally he slowly raised a free hand to his head.
“Yes,” he answered, when Magistrate Parker asked if he’s seen the criminal complaint and whether he understood his rights and the charges.
Mangione’s lawyers did not ask their client be released on bail; Magistrate Parker remanded him into federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn at the end of the hearing.
“Mr. Mangione appreciates everyone’s support, ” Ms. Friedman-Agnifilo told reporters after the hearing, declining to comment further.
Kim, the federal prosecutor, confirmed observers’ suspicion Mangione intended Thompson’s killing to be “propaganda of the deed”—inspiration for at least debate about the efficiacy and fairness of America’s profit-driven health care industry, if not copycat assassinations of corporate CEOs.
“Thompson was allegedly killed just because he held the position of chief executive officer of a health insurance company,” Kim said in a news release. Kim called it “a grossly misguided attempt to broadcast Mangione’s views across the country. But this wasn’t a debate, it was murder, and Mangione now faces federal charges.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg focused attention on the dead man’s familiy.
“I want to extend my heartfelt prayers to Mr. Thompson’s loved ones as they continue to grieve,” Bragg said in his own news release.
Since Mangione allegedly assassinated Thompson, he's been an object of intense public interest. After escaping and successfully evading capture for five days, the 26-year-old was arrested in a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Dec. 9. Police said he was carrying a fake ID used by the killer to check into a Manhattan hostel before the murder, an entirely 3D printed ghost gun in 9mm, a suppressor that fit the gun, 9mm bullets and a 262-word note addressed “To the Feds.”
"Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” the note allegedly says. “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done."
To the horror of pundits and politicians nationwide, the American public turned Mangione into a saint.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump called the killing "cold-blooded. Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing." Trump will nominate the next U.S. Attorney who will decide whether to seek the death penalty against Mangione.
When Trump was president from 2017 to 2021, Trump executed 13 federal prisoners—more than any other U.S. president since the 19th century.
Federal prosecutors said it was “currently expected” that the charges against Mangione in state court would “proceed to trial before the federal case.”
Mangione started Thursday morning at a Pennsylvania state prison, where officials had jailed him since his arrest. He was taken shackled and clad in an orange prisoner jumpsuit to the Blair County Courthouse for two hearings before Blair County Judge David Consiglio.
Protesters gathered outside the courthouse greeted his arrival. One of them held up a sign that read "Murder for Profit is Terrorism! Free Luigi." Another sign called him a “hero.”
Inside the courthouse, Mangione waived a probable cause hearing to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to detain him on the charges filed against him by Pennslvania, the most serious of which is illegally possessing a firearm. In exchange for waiving the hearing, prosecutors gave Mangione a 20-page police report detailing their investigation.
Next, Mangione waived his right to fight extradition and agreed to be returned to New York.
About a dozen NYPD officers, who’d been in the courtroom, took Mangione, put him on a plane and flew him to MacArthur Airport on Long Island. From there, an NYPD helicopter ferried them to the Wall Street heliport where New York City mayor Eric Adams, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, NYPD Chief-of-Detectives Joseph Kenny, dozens of NYPD officers and an almost equal number of reporters and news photographers from the New York press corp waited.
Cops swarmed around Mangione as he was removed from the helicopter and slowly perp-walked down the pier toward an NYPD caravan including a black mariah that drove him the half-mile or so to the federal courthouse.
As he was paraded down the pier the heliport occupies by assault-rifle toting tactical police from the NYPD’s elite Emergency Services Unit, Mayor Adams and other officials followed solemnly behind. It was a bizarre procession—since Mayor Adams is facing his own federal charges for allegedly accepting illegal campaign donations.
The federal criminal complaint against Mangione reveals new facts and allegations not previously reported or officially confirmed for the first time.
Mangione hatched his plan to kill Thompson at least as early as last summer, based on a diary allegedly found in his possession.
The diary includes “several handwritten pages that express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular,” according to the complaint. It also includes entries dated Aug. 15, 2024 saying: “the details are finally coming together” ; “I’m glad—in a way—that I’ve procrastinated, bc it allowed me to learn more about [UnitedHealthcare]”; and “the target is insurance” because “it checks every box.”
Another diary entry, dated Oct. 22, 2024, “describes an intent to ‘wack’ the CEO of one of the insurance companies at its investor conference,” the complaint alleges. “1.5 months. This investor conference is a true windfall . . . and—most importantly—the message becomes self evident.”
At the time, the UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference was slated in begin Dec. 4.
Mangione arrived in New York City on a bus from Atlanta on Nov. 24, the complaint says. The first thing he did when he got off the bus at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan was take a cab to the Hilton hotel in mid-town, where the conference was scheduled to be held. After scoping out the hotel, he took another cab to a Upper West Hostel. He checked in with a fake New Jersey driver’s license in the name “Mark Rosario.”
Mangione wore a facemask almost the entire time he stayed at the hostel. The only time he removed it was when the desk clerk asked him to when he checked in, the complaint alleges.
The morning Thompson was murdered, Mangione allegedly left on a bike at 5:34am and peddled down Central Park West toward the Hilton, where the conference was set to begin at 8:00am. He got breakfast from a coffee shop and sat on a bench. He used a mobile phone as he waited.
Thompson walked passed Mangione on the sidewalk at 6:45am. Mangione approached him from the street, from between two parked cars, and fired three lethal shots from behind. Surveillance footage captured the killing.
Mangione escaped west on W.55th street, retrieved an electric bike, sped into Central Park, ditched his backpack and his bike then hopped in a cab to the Port Authority bus terminal at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in Washington Heights. No video was found capturing him leaving the terminal, suggesting he left the city by bus, the complaint says.
Two days later, police found the backpack Mangione ditched in Central park. It contained another message, this one presumably intended for them: it was a “fuck you" in the form of monopoly money.
Pennslyvania police found “several thousand dollars” worth of real cash on Mangione when they arrested him. The “To the Feds” letter they also allegedly discovered stated “I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: Some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience.”
“P.S. you can check serial numbers to verify this is all self-funded. My own ATM withdrawals.”