A former inmate claims Luigi Mangione grinned with pride when UnitedHealthcare’s stock dipped after he murdered CEO Brian Thompson.
Linus Fu, 32, who was held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center from January 2025 to July 2026, told Courthouse News he formed a “really good relationship” with Mangione, 28, in the intake wing and saw him daily. Fu has since been deported to his home country of China.
Fu said he believed Mangione saw himself as a Robin Hood figure and was “proud” after UnitedHealthcare’s stock price dropped following the shooting.
“He was smiling,” Fu recalled, noting it was the only time the pair discussed Mangione’s case. When Fu asked whether Mangione wanted attention, the Maryland native denied that was his motive.
“He said, ‘I didn’t do that for the fame,'” Fu said. “He basically admitted he did it.”
Though some inmates dismissed Mangione as aloof and arrogant — with his bunkmate even blasting the Ivy League graduate as someone who “just wants attention” — Fu described him differently. The former inmate said Mangione was “really quiet” but also a jokester who lobbed snowballs into Fu’s cell and autographed birthday cards for Fu’s wife and his bunkmate’s wife.
“He’s a funny guy. He always jokes,” Fu told the outlet. “He’s young, he’s creative.”
“Most people, they know Luigi,” he said. “Some people ask for autographs, some people want to talk to him.”
Fu and Mangione, who was kept in MDC’s intake unit for his protection, bonded over their education and books — including reading John H. Richardson’s “Luigi: The Making and the Meaning,” about Mangione’s case.
“He’d check my progress all the time,” Fu said. “He said, ‘What page are you on right now?'”
“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?”
Mangione’s supporters also subscribed him to the New York Times, but he passed the newspapers to Fu to help him practice his English, Fu recalled.
The former inmate’s account comes after Mangione matter-of-factly pleaded guilty last week to two federal stalking counts for fatally shooting Thompson, 50, on a Midtown street on Dec. 4, 2024. Each count carries a potential life sentence. Prosecutors plan to seek life in prison at his Dec. 18 federal sentencing.
In the viral moment that made Mangione a cause célèbre, surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind outside a Hilton hotel hours before the executive was to host an investor conference. Police found bullet casings with “delay,” “deny” and “depose” written on them, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims. Mangione was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a nationwide manhunt. Authorities said his private writings lambasted health insurers as greedy, and he told the court Friday he pursued Thompson “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.”
Mangione’s defense lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said outside court that her client “believed that the system had failed him and destroyed his life.” She argued he shouldn’t face two prosecutions over a “single tragic event.”
But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has said it will lobby to keep its state case alive, at least until it learns the severity of the federal sentence. After Mangione’s surprise federal guilty plea, Justice Gregory Carro on Monday pushed Mangione’s next state court appearance to Dec. 10, postponing the trial indefinitely. The CEO slayer now wants his state case tossed, arguing it would constitute “double jeopardy” in light of his federal plea.
Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court on Dec. 18.