In the days following Luigi Mangione’s arrest, guards at the Pennsylvania prison where he was detained were told not to take their eyes off him, lest “an Epstein-style situation” occur with the most high-profile murder suspect in the U.S. on their watch, a Manhattan judge heard Monday.
The testimony was provided by Correction Officer Tomas Rivers from SCI Huntingdon, Pa., at an evidence hearing in the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Mangione, who’s accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Midtown sidewalk on Dec. 4, 2024.
Rivers told the court that he chatted with the jailed murder suspect at length while monitoring his eight-by-12-foot cell in a special housing unit for hours on end — chatting about literature, traveling in Southeast Asia, and the level of human suffering in underdeveloped countries compared to the West. The CO said Mangione took an interest in his British accent.
“From what I remember, we spoke about the difference between privatized healthcare and national healthcare,” Rivers said. “I’ve experienced both so I gave him my opinion.”
Mangione had been arrested days earlier at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., following a five-day manhunt that gripped the nation. The correction officer said prison guards were ordered to keep the young man from Maryland under “constant surveillance” prior to his extradition to New York City, invoking Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death in custody shortly after his high-profile arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Rivers said Thompson’s suspected killer, accused of gunning him down as he arrived for an annual investor conference, was curious about how the public had perceived the shooting.
He said he told Mangione that he noticed mainstream outlets were focusing on the crime, whereas social media discourse was centered on “potential wrongdoings in the health insurance industry.”
“He said he wanted … to make a statement to the public,” Rivers said, claiming he didn’t delve deeper because he wasn’t “an investigator.”
Mangione’s lawyers have asked state Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro to bar his chit-chat with Rivers and other statements he allegedly made in the days after his arrest from making it before a jury when the case heads to trial next year, because he wasn’t read his Miranda rights.
On cross-examination by Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Rivers claimed he couldn’t recall the opinions he’d personally offered on different healthcare systems. He also said he couldn’t recall chatting to the murder suspect about taking Mugwort, a type of herb, to experience hallucinatory dreams. However, the officer conceded he had done so.
During the cross-examination of another prison guard, Mangione’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo, peppered Officer Matthew Henry with questions about Mangione allegedly having “blurted out” that he’d had a 3D-printed pistol on his person when he was arrested. Henry maintained that Mangione had offered up the information unprompted.
Earlier Monday, Mangione watched stoically in court as prosecutors played surveillance videos showing the killing of Thompson outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown and his arrest five days later.
The videos, including footage from the restaurant previously unseen by the press or the public, kicked off a hearing on Mangione’s fight to bar evidence from his state murder trial, including the gun prosecutors say matches the one used in the attack.
Mangione, 27, pressed a finger to his lips and a thumb to his chin as he watched footage of two police officers approaching him as he ate breakfast at the McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., about 230 miles west of Manhattan.
He gripped a pen in his right hand, making a fist at times, as prosecutors played a 911 call from a McDonald’s manager relaying concerns from customers that Mangione looked like the suspect in Thompson’s killing. The manager said she searched online for photos of the suspect and that as Mangione sat in the restaurant, she could only see his eyebrows because he was wearing a beanie and a medical face mask.
Among the evidence Mangione’s defense team wants excluded are the 9-mm. handgun and a notebook in which prosecutors say he described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive. Both were found in a backpack Mangione had with him when he was arrested.
Defense wants to bar gun and notebook
After getting state terrorism charges thrown out in September, Mangione’s lawyers are zeroing in on what they say was unconstitutional police conduct that threatens his right to a fair trial.
They contend that the Manhattan DA should be prevented from showing the gun, notebook and other items to jurors because police didn’t have a warrant to search the backpack.
They also want to suppress some of Mangione’s statements to police, such as when he allegedly gave his name as Mark Rosario, because officers started asking questions before telling him he had a right to remain silent. Prosecutors say Mangione gave the same name when he checked into a Manhattan hostel days before the killing.
Eliminating the gun and notebook would be critical wins for Mangione’s defense and a major setback for prosecutors, depriving them a possible murder weapon and evidence they say points to motive. Prosecutors have quoted extensively from Mangione’s writings in court filings, including his praise for the late Theodore Kaczynski, the convicted murderer known as the “Unabomber.” CO Rivers on Monday said Mangione expressed that he was “disappointed” that some had likened him to Kaczynski.
Among other things, prosecutors say, Mangione mused in his diary about rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel” and wrote that killing an industry executive “conveys a greedy bastard that had it coming.”
An officer searching the backpack found with Mangione was heard in body camera footage saying she was checking to make sure there “wasn’t a bomb” in the bag.
His lawyers argue that was an excuse “designed to cover up an illegal warrantless search of the backpack.”
Pivotal pretrial hearing could last more than a week
Court officials say the hearings could last more than a week, meaning they would extend through Thursday’s anniversary of the killing. Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo told a judge in an unrelated matter last week that Manhattan prosecutors had indicated they could call more than two dozen witnesses.
Mangione was allowed to wear normal clothing to the hearings instead of a jail uniform. He entered the courtroom Monday in a gray suit and a button-down shirt with a checkered or tattersall pattern. Court officers removed his handcuffs to allow him to take notes.
The prosecution’s first witness, Sgt. Chris McLaughlin of the New York Police Department’s public affairs office, testified about efforts to disseminate surveillance images of the suspect to news outlets and on social media in the hours and days after the shooting.
To illustrate the breadth of news coverage during the five-day search for the shooter, prosecutors played a surveillance video of the shooting that aired on Fox News Digital, footage from the network of police divers searching a pond in Central Park and clips from the network that included images of the suspected shooter that were distributed by police.
Bernard Pyles, an installation supervisor who helped maintain the surveillance camera system at the McDonald’s, also testified Monday. He downloaded video clips for police after Mangione’s arrest.
A few dozen Mangione supporters watched the hearing from the back of the courtroom. One wore a green T-shirt that said: “Without a warrant, it’s not a search, it’s a violation.” Another woman held a doll of the Luigi video game character and had a smaller figurine of him clipped to her purse.
Mangione is also facing a federal death penalty case
Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges.
The state charges carry the possibility of life in prison, while federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Neither trial has been scheduled yet.
Mangione’s lawyers want to bar evidence from both cases, but this week’s hearings pertain only to the state case. The next hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Jan. 9.
Thompson was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s annual investor conference.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say the words delay, deny and depose were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Federal prosecutors, fighting the defense’s push to exclude the gun, notebook and other evidence from their case, have said in court filings that police were justified in searching the backpack to make sure there were no dangerous items, and that his statements to officers were voluntary and were made before he was under arrest.