MANHATTAN (CN) — It was on Jan. 6, 2025, that Linus Fu, then a fresh arrival at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, first saw Luigi Mangione in the infamous federal facility.

“Is that Luigi?” Fu recalled asking a prison guard. The guard confirmed it was, but instructed Fu not to speak to him.

By that point, Fu had seen countless news stories about the man accused of murdering the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Midtown Manhattan a month prior. Fu was shocked to see him in the flesh — he didn’t know Mangione was in the same federal prison as him.

More than a year and a half later, much has changed. Fu wound up pleading guilty to a low-level role in a bank fraud scheme and, after spending January 2025 to July 2026 in federal custody, was removed to his home country of China earlier this summer. Mangione himself admitted to the December 2024 shooting of health executive Brian Thompson in federal court last week and is awaiting sentencing.

But before that, Fu, who spoke to Courthouse News on the phone about his experience, said he spent a considerable amount of time with Mangione at the intake wing of the MDC, where he formed a “really good relationship” with the 28-year-old and saw him on a daily basis.

“He’s a funny guy. He always jokes,” Fu said. “He’s young, he’s creative.”

Fu, now 32, said he initially connected with Mangione since they were close in age, recalling Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, carrying himself “like a college student.” Like Mangione, Fu is educated. He has a master’s degree from Nanjing Normal University in the Jiangsu province. His father works for the Chinese government.

He came to the United States in 2022, eventually winding up in Flushing, Queens. He was arrested by the FBI in early 2025 while trying to fly back to China, and was taken to the MDC just two weeks after Mangione was first booked there.

Everyone knew Luigi

According to Fu, Mangione has ascended to celebrity status at the Brooklyn prison already known for housing a number of high-profile inmates.

“Most people, they know Luigi,” he said. “Some people ask for autographs, some people want to talk to him.”

Fu said he didn’t see much of Mangione initially, but last summer, he got a job as an orderly at the MDC’s intake unit, where he moved and eventually befriended Mangione, who Fu said was never in general population.

“That’s the decision of MDC, because they want to protect him,” Fu said he was told. “He has a lot of money on the commissary book. A lot of people will rob him for the money [in general population.]”

Fu said it wasn’t up to Mangione, who frequently complained to him about having to stay in intake. But Fu said it was probably for the best.

Veteran criminal defense attorney Ron Kuby told Courthouse News on Tuesday that the MDC’s general population contains inmates accused of crimes from murder to bank fraud. It usually only separates them if they’re co-defendants or in rival gangs, he said. As for Mangione, he said it wouldn’t shock him to hear the shooter had an arrangement to stay in intake.

“As a general rule, celebrity prisoners get better treatment if they don’t cause trouble in the institution,” Kuby said.

A photo from Linus Fu inside Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. (Courtesy of Linus Fu)

Mangione was “really quiet,” Fu said, and mostly just “did his own business.” But the two bonded over books while in intake, each reading the same one about Mangione’s case: John H. Richardson’s “Luigi: The Making and the Meaning.”

Fu said he’d often ask Mangione if details from the book are true — Mangione confirmed to him that his favorite video game was indeed Terraria.

“He’d check my progress all the time,” Fu said. “He said, ‘What page are you on right now?’”

The swell of public support surrounding Mangione’s case produced an influx of reading material.

“A lot of people sent books, different kinds of magazines,” Fu said. “I don’t know why they sent travel magazines to Luigi, that made no sense. He can’t travel, why would you send him a travel magazine?”

Fu said Mangione’s supporters subscribed him to the New York Times, but Mangione never read it. He gave the newspapers to Fu instead to help him practice his English. Mangione’s preferred news publication, Fu said, was The Week magazine.

GQ and Esquire subscriptions also made their way to Mangione’s inbox, Fu said, but those didn’t appear to be up his alley. Fu recalled saying that many of Mangione’s Chinese supporters joked that his orange prison jumpsuit looked like it was from Hermès.

“He said, ‘What’s Hermès?” Fu said. “I was really surprised. Luigi doesn’t know Hermès? That’s funny. He said he never bought those designer clothes.”

Books, magazines and newspapers aside, Fu said Mangione spent a sizable chunk of his days reading the abundance of letters and emails sent to him from around the world.

“I don’t know what he does with all those letters,” he said. “He really replies to those.”

Meanwhile, Fu befriended another high-profile inmate: Hugo Carvajal Barrios, a former high-ranking Venezuelan military official and co-defendant in ousted president Nicolás Maduro’s narco-terrorism case.

Fu said he’d do puzzles with Carvajal, who embraced Fu and cried when he left for China in July.

“People like Luigi, like Hugo, they’re really good people,” Fu said. “They’re just normal guys.”

Fu took a photo of a birthday card he wrote for his girlfriend while in the MDC. Both Carvajal and Mangione signed it.

According to Fu, Mangione left his mark on another birthday card, this one by Fu’s cellmate.

“His wife’s birthday was coming, so he was trying to make a birthday card,” Fu said of his cellmate. “It was winter, there was some snow on the deck because there was a storm at the time. Luigi made a snowball and threw it into our room, but he didn’t see my roommate was inside making the card. The snowball hit the birthday card, and my roommate was pissed off.”

Fu said Mangione’s face turned red immediately.

“I couldn’t stop laughing,” Fu said.

After the MDC

Mangione is generally respected and well-liked at the MDC, according to Fu. But some inmates told Fu they found Mangione to be arrogant and aloof — including Fu’s bunkmate, who told him that he thought Mangione “just wants the attention.”

Fu didn’t think so. So he asked Mangione, who at the time hadn’t pleaded guilty to shooting Thompson, if that was why he did it.

“He said, ‘I didn’t do that for the fame,’” Fu said. “He basically admitted he did it.”

On Friday, Mangione entered a guilty plea to two counts of stalking with the intent to kill. He told a judge that he shot Thompson on Dec. 4, 2024, “after years of enduring severe pain from a broken back and navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system.”

Fu said he thought Mangione saw himself as a Robin Hood figure. He said Mangione was “proud” when he discovered UnitedHealthcare’s stock price dipped after Thompson’s killing.

“He was smiling,” Fu recalled. Other than that, Fu said he never discussed Mangione’s case with him — a standard courtesy in prison, he said.

After serving his time, Fu is now a free man in his home country. An internet content creator with a sizable Chinese following, Fu said he intends to start a podcast about his experience in detention and how he wound up on the path that led him there. Mangione is aware of the plan, he said.

Court records reviewed by Courthouse News confirm aspects of Fu’s story, including his work as an orderly and time spent at the MDC. His legal team declined to comment.

Mangione likely signed away at least the several decades of his life with his guilty plea last week — a move Fu said stunned him.

Now, Mangione’s days at the MDC are likely numbered. He will be sentenced on Dec. 18, and is expected to be moved to a long-term federal facility after that.

His state-level case for Thompson’s murder remains up in the air.

Luigi Mangione walked into a Manhattan federal courtroom earlier today to plead guilty to interstate stalking charges. In the process, he admitted that he killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, stating “on the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died.” The stalking statute does not require a dead body… he just volunteered this fact in court. As soon as he did, his lawyers reportedly ran over to the state courthouse and filed a motion to get out of the New York state murder trial claiming that those charges now amount to double jeopardy.

The gambit stinks of a Justice Department more interested in scoring political points than honoring the rule of law.^([1]) From the beginning, federal law enforcement tried to snake the case away from the Manhattan DA’s office — likely owing to the president’s lingering resentment that the DA successfully got Donald Trump convicted of multiple felonies because Donald Trump committed multiple felonies. In its quest to steal the DA’s thunder, federal prosecutors tried to use federal murder law to saddle Mangione with the death penalty.

After a federal judge tossed the capital counts, the Department of Justice lost its death penalty leverage and found itself left with substantially lesser stalking charges. Rather than give up at this point, the federal government apparently convinced Mangione’s team to plead to federal stalking — and admit that it resulted in death — to secure a sentencing enhancement to a life term. Whether the judge honors that enhancement at sentencing will be determined down the road.

Stalking is not murder. But Mangione will argue — and the Trump administration will hope — that this plea will put a legal bar on the New York prosecution, preventing the state from putting a man on trial for a murder committed in New York.

From the Mangione camp, this isn’t a surprise. They have attempted to cast this case as a double jeopardy matter from the start. “One plus one is two,” as Mangione himself put it. His attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo has also framed the case as “two bites of the apple.” For the Department of Justice to give aid to this strategy — using lesser charges to affirmatively cut off a murder case to spite local prosecutors — achieves a new, if unsurprising low for the “president of law and order”:

This argument should be a nonstarter. Dual sovereignty exists, and the DOJ explicitly lost its bid to charge Mangione under federal murder laws. The state should be more than free to prosecute the act of murder in its own borders where there is legally no federal case.

But New York does not run on the common standard of double jeopardy. Criminal Procedure Law § 40.20 provides far broader protections for previously convicted defendants. Under New York’s statute, double jeopardy attaches if the two charges — including if one of the cases was brought by the feds — took place as part of the same “criminal transaction.”

The defense will argue that because Mangione followed Thompson around before killing him, this amounts to the same criminal transaction. The state will, instead, point to the several exceptions provided by Section 40.20. For instance:

(a) The offenses as defined have substantially different elements and the acts establishing one offense are in the main clearly distinguishable from those establishing the other; 

Stalking and murder seem pretty different! The defense will argue that because the sentencing enhancement involves admitting to the killing, that enhancement’s elements make it not substantially different from the state’s second degree murder charge. That smacks of “lawyerball,” but may be sufficient to defeat the state. This exception though…

(b) Each of the offenses as defined contains an element which is not an element of the other, and the statutory provisions defining such
offenses are designed to prevent very different kinds of harm or evil;

Murder includes many elements that are not an element of the federal stalking offense. Stalking requires an intent to take actions that create or, if known, would create a reasonable fear of bodily harm or death. Actually doing that is not an element. It’s also not the same “kind of harm or evil.” The stalking charge exists to stop people making interstate threats, and murder charges exist to punish killers. A sentencing enhancement does not change the charge’s design.

That Mangione admitted to the killing as part of pleading to a non-homicide charge doesn’t magically transform it into homicide. Turning a volunteered fact into a get-out-of-murder-trial card is a heavy lift.

The DA’s office hasn’t laid out its arguments yet, but appears prepared to push back:

"While nothing will ease the pain of losing him, we are grateful that the federal justice system has held the person responsible for this heinous act accountable. Now we look to the court to ensure that sentencing reflects the severity of this crime."

That said, if Mangione gets a life sentence for stalking, New York might decide it’s not worth the resources to add years to Luigi’s corpse. On the other hand, there’s the principle of the thing… and the very real risk of corruption.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, if a future defendant commits a crime in a Democratic jurisdiction, the feds can vaporize the pending state case by manufacturing a low-level federal plea while making the defendant gratuitously allocute to the elements of the bigger state crime. That seems like a valid concern when dealing with a Justice Department that’s already tried to substitute itself into Trump cases. This would become another arrow in the quiver to upset legitimate prosecutions to shield the administration’s cronies.

Better yet, federal pardons don’t cover state crimes. Envision the DOJ bringing some tenuously interstate crime, the defendant pleading guilty, using this as the basis of nuking the state case, and then pardoning the federal crime. Pardons under this administration have already raised “pay-to-play” concerns. If double jeopardy becomes an avenue to skirt dual sovereignty, it doesn’t take much imagination to see where the pardon market would go.

That’s what makes this such a dangerous test case. Mangione is the ideal test subject precisely because there’s no reason to push the state case if he’s already going away for life. But that’s the thing about crossing the line… once it succeeds, the DOJ is free to try it elsewhere.

[1] Conservative media — through analysts like Jonathan Turley — are trying to clarify that Mangione changing his plea in this way is not a “deal” with the government. It’s true that this isn’t like a typical plea deal where the government offers a better outcome in exchange for a guilty plea. But that doesn’t make the government any less an accomplice in this strategy. The government could’ve dropped its case once it lost the murder charges. That it didn’t already raised red flags that the DOJ wanted to undermine the actual murder case. The defense’s state motion notes that the federal government has agreed to seek the maximum at sentencing, something the government apparently told them, and a key factor for the Mangione motion.

Mr. Mangione must still be sentenced in federal court. And his lawyers are seeking to have a state case thrown out before the trial starts next month.

After nearly two years, Luigi Mangione on Friday finally spoke about what led him to a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan on a December morning in 2024, masked, dressed in black and carrying a firearm.

For nearly 10 minutes, Mr. Mangione, 28, spoke in federal court, where he pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking that led to the death of Brian Thompson, a health care executive.

Mr. Mangione told a federal judge how he endured years of severe pain from a broken back. He talked about the obstacles of navigating health insurance and how he witnessed others going through similar experiences.

It was the first time Mr. Mangione has admitted to killing Mr. Thompson. But there are many questions that remain, here’s what you need to know:

How much time will he spend in prison?

The federal judge overseeing the case, Margaret Garnett, scheduled Mr. Mangione’s sentencing for Dec. 18.

At the hearing on Friday, Judge Garnett said she would decide how many years Mr. Mangione will spend in prison based on her calculation of federal sentencing guidelines.

Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan prepared a letter putting forth their interpretation of the guidelines, Judge Garnett said, which is roughly 24 to 30 years in prison. However, she said, that is not binding.

Mr. Thompson was killed in Midtown Manhattan, one of the city’s busiest areas. The brazenness of the killing shocked New Yorkers.

“I’m not saying that I will come up with a range that is different from what’s in the government’s letter,” Judge Garnett said. “I may agree with them or I may not.”

She added that she will not let Mr. Mangione withdraw his plea even if she calculates a sentence that is higher than what the guidelines recommend. His lawyers could also submit their own recommendation, Judge Garnett said. But a report from the probation department, who will want to interview Mr. Mangione, will be important in her calculations, she said.

She also warned Mr. Mangione that if he is convicted in a separate state case, that could result in him serving his federal and state sentences consecutively.

The legal battle is not over.

Five days after killing Mr. Thompson, Mr. Mangione was arrested while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa. Several days later, he was extradited to New York to face charges of murder filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. As he was awaiting his arraignment in state court, he was charged by federal prosecutors.

From nearly that point onward, Mr. Mangione’s lawyers, led by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, have said that the dual charges against him violated his protections against double jeopardy, which generally bars someone from being tried twice for the same offense.

The judge overseeing the state court case, Gregory Carro, said last year that the double jeopardy argument was premature without a conviction in the federal case, but the question is back in front of him. For now, the state trial is set to start on Sept. 8.

Mr. Mangione and his lawyers have not said why he decided to plead guilty to federal charges this week. Within an hour of Friday’s hearing, his lawyers filed a motion in state court, saying that his plea had triggered double jeopardy and his state case should be dismissed.

The argument from Mr. Mangione’s lawyers is likely going to delay the state case and lead to months of litigation between the parties. Any ruling Justice Carro makes on the issue could also lead to appeals.

Within an hour of pleading guilty in federal court, Mr. Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, filed a request to prevent a separate trial from starting next month in state court.

In state court, he is charged with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years to life, among other counts. Mr. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the state charges.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Alvin L. Bragg, is likely to fight Mr. Mangone’s double jeopardy claim to preserve the state case. In a statement on Friday, the office said state prosecutors have been preparing to win a conviction against Mr. Mangione at trial.

“While federal sentencing is pending, we are prepared to litigate the defense motions,” the statement said.

In a statement released on Friday after the plea, Mr. Thompson’s family acknowledged pending cases against Mr. Mangione in New York and Pennsylvania, saying “we will continue to seek the justice Brian deserves.”

Legal experts said Mr. Bragg’s office might be able to rescue the state case — or portions of it — using an exception to New York’s law where they could argue their case is meant to address a very different kind of harm from the federal case.

If Mr. Mangione’s efforts to dismiss his state case fail, the federal court hearing on Friday could impact his state trial, said Barry Kamins, a defense lawyer and former New York state judge. “His admission of guilt in federal court would be admissible against him in state court,” Mr. Kamins said.

What happened before the plea?

In the days after Mr. Thompson’s killing, and even before Mr. Mangione’s arrest, the case had tapped into nationwide frustrations on dealings with health insurance companies. While the killing led to horror and grief, some others began rooting for the gunman to evade capture.

In the nearly two years since Mr. Mangione’s arrest, his supporters have attended court hearings, raised funds for his legal defense and sent items to the federal jail where he is being held. Mr. Mangione’s lawyers created a website for him with instructions on how to contact him.

Since his first court appearances in New York City, supporters and journalists have flocked to the courthouses in downtown Manhattan.Credit...Anna Connors for The New York Times

Initially, Mr. Bragg’s office charged Mr. Mangione with two terrorism charges saying that his actions were “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” and to “affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder.” Those charges were later dismissed by the judge.

In federal court, prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty against Mr. Mangione. At the time of the announcement, then Attorney General Pam Bondi said the “murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, coldblooded assassination that shocked America.”

The death penalty charge, along with another firearms charge, was later dismissed in federal court.

But after Mr. Mangione’s plea on Friday, the head of the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, James M. McDonald, said Mr. Mangione’s actions were to “draw public attention to his dislike of certain businesses.”

“But we live in a civilized society, governed by the rule of law,” he said, adding: “There can be no celebrity in assassination.”

 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/nyregion/luigi-mangione-brian-thompson-guilty.html

I didn’t think a deal would be offered because of the politics around the case. But I changed my mind when the state prosecutors wrote that letter to Carro saying they will interfere if there is a deal they don’t like. I am sure they have connections and trusted sources (spy buddies) among the Feds who gave them a heads up. But surprised it’s an open plea, so like a 7 on the scale for me.

I believe that once it became certain that Carro refuses to let the Feds go first, Luigi’s team ran him through all possible outcomes. I think his lawyers would have been ok to go through trial and appeal but my impression is he doesn’t want to hand Joel or the Feds all of the control and rather puts his life into Garnett’s hands. That’s why I think he was driving that decisiony.

Mr. Mangione faces stalking charges in connection with the killing of an executive in Manhattan. Mr. Mangione could always change his mind at the last minute. A separate murder trial is set to begin next month.Mangione’s

Luigi Mangione is expected to plead guilty on Friday in Manhattan federal court, where he faces stalking charges in connection with the assassination of a health insurance executive in 2024, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The move comes less than a month before Mr. Mangione, 28, is scheduled to go on trial in a separate murder case in New York State court for the death of the executive, Brian Thompson. The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing talks, which could always fall apart before or even during a scheduled hearing in federal court on Friday.

Mr. Mangione’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked at an unrelated news conference on Wednesday about a potential plea, Jamie McDonald, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said there was a court conference scheduled for Friday, adding, “That’s all we can say at this time.”

The specifics of Mr. Magione’s plea, including what charges, weren’t immediately clear., He could reverse his decision at the last minute, even during the court hearing itself. He faces two stalking charges that could result in a life sentence.

From the moment Mr. Mangione was charged by state and federal prosecutors, his legal team has argued that being tried in both jurisdictions violates his rights. The state trial is scheduled to start next month, and the second would start in January in federal court. Legal experts have said that the timing of any potential guilty plea in the federal case would be crucial to Mr. Mangione’s legal strategy. A resolution in the federal case, however, does not mean the state prosecution is over, according to legal experts.

In his federal case, Mr. Mangione faces two stalking charges resulting in death, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. A judge dismissed two other charges, including one that carried a potential death penalty if Mr. Mangione was convicted.

In state court, Mr. Mangione is charged with several counts, including second-degree murder, which could lead to a possible sentence of 25 years to life.

If he does plead guilty in federal court, his lawyers are expected to argue that under New York’s double jeopardy law, state prosecutors may not try him for murder because the state charges stem from the same criminal act as the federal case.

However, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, could counter that the state murder case addresses a different harm than the federal stalking case, and that it should therefore be allowed to proceed to trial.

Luigi Mangione is in the news today because he admitted to killing the healthcare ceo. From what people have pieced together, the motivation for this was related to finding it difficult to get treatment/surgery for his back condition, spondylolilsthesis.

I have Spondylolysis, which is when you have a pars defect (fracture in lower back) that, if not managed properly, can lead to the more seeious condition Spondylolisthesis. I stupidly didnt address my lower back pain when it first started hurting and after it became debilitating, the GP I went to got an X Ray done and it showed the pars defect. Ive been dealing with pain for years and always wanted a fix, but the doctors (GP, orthopedic surgeons) all told me the same thing: unless its really bad (eg a bad grade of spondylolisthesis, and even then, wait till your older), surgery on a young persons back is not something they will consider, hell even guided x ray pain relief injections was not an idea they were fans of (because I only cared about my back for sports and physical activity which is when it flared up, same as Luigi, so it wasnt hugely impacting daily normal life). They said that solutions for back problems arent perfect and even that the procedure for repairing the pars defect (eg before spondylolisthesis) doesnt always work.

Again and again, they said physical therapy (not just lifting weights, but boring glute and core exercises) is the best tool. And honestly they were right, I may not be the sportsperson I once was, but I can feel how my backs better supported now.

So what gives? Luigi is young as hell, has spondylolisthesis, what did he expect out of the healthcare system? I remember when I saw the orthopedic surgeon, he was stern (which im grateful for) about not thinking about operating even if pain persisted and I kinda got the feeling he sees tons of patients who want easy fixes that just aren’t possible.

I agree with the conversations about the tordid US healthcare system etc etc, but it does puzzle me that this relatively manageable condition influenced him.

Luigi is back in state court for what should be his final pretrial status conference to tie up any loose ends before his New York trial begins on September 8.

We can expect any remaining jury-selection and motion issues to be discussed. Following a back-and-forth over the past week among the court, the prosecution, and the defense regarding media access, press selection, and overflow room availability, we will likely hear more on those matters, too.

Yesterday evening, just when the court was about to close, state prosecutors submitted a letter to the court, expressing concern about the possibility of an overflow room. They argued that any overflow room should only allow a live audio stream rather than a video stream to limit the damage in case of any clandestine recordings by Luigi Mangione's supporters. In addition, they advised that Carro make a record of the efforts he has undertaken to provide access to the trial to address any potential appellate concerns.

While the filing was too late in the day to allow the defense to respond before today's hearing, independent journalist Matthew Lee/Inner City Press has submitted a letter this morning to the Office of Court Administration (OCA) to be passed to Judge Carro which opposes the prosecution's argument.

The hearing will not be livestreamed as per the media access plan released last week.

But some of the reporters listed below will live-tweet from inside the courtroom.

• Erik Uebelacker, New York City Courts Reporter for Courthouse News
• Matthew Lee/Inner City Press, American public interest lawyer and founder and freelance reporter at Inner City Press and Fair Finance Watch
• Lauren Conlin, Podcaster, Reporter & Host: Pop Culture & True Crime. East Coast Contributor at LA Magazine
• Lorena O'Neil, Independent Reporter, Contributing Writer at Rolling Stone
• Frank G. Runyeon, NY Courts Reporter, Law360
• Molly Crane-Newman, Manhattan Courts Reporter, NY Daily News
• Alice Gainer, Journalist, CBS NY
• Chloe Atkins, NBC News National Security and Law Unit
• Kyle Schnitzer, Crime Reporter, NY Post

If you don't have an X account, you can follow along via https://nitter.net/