Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty on Friday in a federal case in relation to the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson in 2024. Mangione confessed that he shot and killed Thompson outside a New York City hotel on 4 December 2024. In his federal case, he faced stalking charges, after other charges, including murder, were dropped.
He added: “I knew what I was doing was illegal” but did not say that what he did was wrong or that he had any regrets. The judge, Margaret Garnett, scheduled his sentencing for 18 December. Mangione’s federal trial had been due to begin next year but will not now happen, while state charges against him were still in the balance on Friday afternoon.
In the separate state case, Manhattan prosecutors have charged Mangione with murder and weapons counts and that trial is scheduled for 8 September. He had previously pleaded not guilty in both cases. Within minutes of the guilty plea to stalking charges in the federal case and his admissions in court on Friday morning, Mangione’s defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said she had filed a motion to dismiss the state murder case against him.
Federal prosecutor Jamie McDonald told the court the government would seek life imprisonment for the killer. Maryland-born Mangione, 28, came into court on Friday morning in beige jail scrubs with his ankles shackled, a change from recent appearances where he was in a jacket and shirt. He had been brought to the Manhattan courthouse from custody in Brooklyn.
Relatives of Thompson were in court in a rare occurrence, sitting in the front row, and some of the family members began crying as Mangione told the judge what he had done. Among the relatives in court was Brian Thompson’s widow, Paulette Thompson, who was breathing heavily and grasping a loved one’s arm as Mangione described shooting her husband on a busy city sidewalk. Other family members held each other’s hands.
Mangione told the court that “after years of enduring severe pain from a broken back, navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system and witnessing similar experiences of countless others”, he learned that UnitedHealthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in December 2024. The location was not public but he traveled to New York City and emailed UnitedHealthcare leadership, posing as an institutional investor, to get more information, getting a response within an hour. He also researched who would be attending.
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