Luigi Mangione read a book about himself in jail before confessing to shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, according to a fellow inmate.
Linus Fu shared in a new interview that he developed a “really good relationship” with Mangione, 28, while behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where they both read author John H. Richardson‘s 2025 biography, Luigi: The Making and the Meaning.
“He’d check my progress all the time,” Fu, 32, told Courthouse News on Tuesday, August 18. “He said, ‘What page are you on right now?'”
Fu recalled asking Mangione whether the information about him in the book was true, to which the Ivy League graduate teasingly confirmed one detail: His favorite video game was Terraria.
Fu, who has since returned home to China after serving time for his involvement in a bank fraud scheme, noted that Mangione became somewhat of a celebrity after arriving at their jail.
“Most people, they know Luigi,” he said of their fellow prisoners. “Some people ask for autographs, some people want to talk to him.”
Mangione has also received an onslaught of support outside of MDC Brooklyn, with many people who are frustrated by the American health insurance system and corporate greed viewing him as a folk hero. An online fundraiser for Mangione’s legal expenses has raised more than $1.5 million as of press time, and his lawyers have stated that he has received thousands of letters in jail.
“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 described Mangione as “funny” but “quiet,” revealing the Maryland native mostly worried about his “own business” while incarcerated. Fu added that he once flat-out asked Mangione whether he had murdered Thompson, which led to a telling response.
“He said, ‘I didn’t do that for the fame,'” Fu claimed. “He basically admitted he did it.”
Mangione initially pleaded not guilty to both federal and state charges related to the December 2024 shooting, but he copped to the crime while reading a statement in court on Friday, August 14.
“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, I learned that UnitedHealthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in New York City on December 4, 2024,” he began.
Mangione went on to recall using a 3D printer to make a gun and then traveling to Manhattan “with the intent to shoot Brian Thompson,” which he admittedly knew was “illegal.” (The executive, who was 50, is survived by his wife, Paulette Thompson, and their two sons.)
Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in his federal case on December 18. He faces a maximum of life in prison. The former software engineer’s state case was recently delayed from September to December as his attorneys fight to have it dismissed entirely, citing “double jeopardy” laws that typically bar a defendant from being tried twice for the same offense.
