NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty on Friday to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, admitting matter-of-factly that he trailed the executive to an investor conference and gunned him down on a New York City street in 2024.
Mangione, 28, said he even used a ruse to glean information about the event, contacting the health insurance company ahead of time under the guise of being an investor at a multibillion-dollar firm.
"On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione told the Manhattan federal court, which he entered shackled at the feet but not handcuffed in his beige jail uniform.
Listening in the audience, Thompson's wife, Paulette, took several deep breaths and repeatedly wiped tears from her eyes.
Prosecutors plan to seek a life prison term at Mangione's sentencing, set for Dec. 18. When U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett asked whether he understood that he could spend the rest of his life behind bars, Mangione answered neutrally: “Yes.”
In a statement, Thompson’s family called the plea “an important step toward justice” and noted that Mangione still faces other cases, including a New York state murder prosecution. It carries the potential for a separate long sentence.
Federal prosecutors didn’t give Mangione any deal or incentive to plead guilty, they and his lawyers said. Nor did Mangione plead guilty to avoid a potential death sentence. That possibility was taken off the table when a federal murder charge was tossed out this winter.
But after Mangione entered the plea at Friday's hastily scheduled hearing, his lawyers quickly sought to have the New York case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds. The state’s double jeopardy protections can kick in if a prior prosecution ends in a guilty plea.
“Mr. Mangione has accepted full responsibility for the death of Brian Thompson,” defense lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said outside court, arguing that her client shouldn’t face two prosecutions over a “single tragic event.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is handling the state prosecution, said it remains committed to its case and would contest the defense’s efforts to shut it down.
Surveillance video of the ambush showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson, 50, from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
That detail — and revelations that Mangione's private writings lambasted health insurers as greedy, according to authorities — made the case a fulcrum for debate about the industry and made Mangione a cause célèbre for some of its critics.
A University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, Mangione told the court Friday that he pursued Thompson “after years of enduring severe pain from a broken back and navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system.”
Friedman Agnifilo later said her client “believed that the system had failed him and destroyed his life.”
Mangione never was a UnitedHealthcare customer, according to police and the company.