Corrections officers testify about jailhouse conversations with Luigi Mangione at evidence hearing

While being held in a Pennsylvania prison following his arrest for allegedly shooting a health insurance executive dead on a Manhattan street, Luigi Mangione opened up to corrections officers about literature, the Unabomber — and that he possessed a 3D-printed gun, according to testimony at a Monday hearing.

Mangione was arrested in December 2024 in an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s days after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel. Police descended upon the McDonald’s after customers told employees that a man who resembled police descriptions of Thompson’s killer and a restaurant manager called 911.

Authorities held Mangione at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, for a week after the defendant’s arrest. While there, Mangione allegedly told corrections officer Matthew Henry: “‘I had a 3D printed gun,’” according to testimony that Henry delivered on Monday in the first day of evidence suppression hearings in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Henry’s statement drew pointed questions from defense attorney Marc Agnifilo during cross examination.

“You just told all of us today that you didn’t have a preexisting relationship with him…” Agnifilo said. “You weren’t saying anything to him and out of nowhere he said ‘I had a 3D printed pistol’?”

Mangione’s comment about the gun was a non-sequitur, according to Henry’s testimony. The corrections officer added that he felt “agitated” to be on the stand and denied having any rapport with the suspected killer at all.

“These different things that he would say to you — you’re not talking to him at all? He’s just saying these things to you?” asked Marc Agnifilo.

“Yes,” Henry responded.

A shackled Luigi Mangione is escorted by detectives at Manhattan Federal Court in December 2024.Photo by Dean Moses

Mangione, lawyers, spectators and Acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro also heard testimony on Monday from Thomas Rivers, another Pennsylvania corrections officer who says he also conversed with Mangione.

Rivers said Mangione was under constant watch, a type of confinement typically reserved for inmates who are believed to be suicidal or at risk of self-harm. In Mangione’s case, Rivers said, the suspect was given enhanced observation because the facility “did not want [a Jeffrey] Epstein-style situation” according to his supervisor.

Over his days in confinement, Mangione and Rivers had a wide-ranging series of conversations that spanned the difference between private and nationalized healthcare, Thai monkeys, a psychoactive herb called mugwort and Ted Kaczynski — perhaps better known as the “Unabomber.”

Rivers described Mangione as “logical,” “precise” and “unbothered,” during the conversations. Rivers said that he and Mangione talked about healthcare — specifically “the difference in private healthcare and nationalized [systems].”

Mangione later told Rivers that he was disappointed that online commenters were comparing him to Kaczynski. Mangione also conversed with Rivers about literature, citing George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Henry David Thoreau.

And according to Mangione’s lawyer Karen Agnifilo, Rivers in turn shared that he took a medical plant called mugwort “to have hallucinatory dreams.” Rivers said he didn’t recall that part of the conversation, but affirmed trying the herb.

Mangione’s suppression hearing continues on Tuesday.