Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to two counts of stalking in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, avoiding a trial that had been scheduled for early next year and revealing for the first time how he tracked his target down.
Mangione, 28, entered what prosecutors described as an "open plea" — a guilty plea with no agreement in place and no concessions from the government — to interstate stalking resulting in death and stalking through the use of interstate facilities resulting in death. The federal murder charge that had carried a potential death sentence was dropped earlier in the case; the two stalking counts were the charges that remained when Mangione appeared before U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett.
Thompson's mother, Pat Thompson, sat in the front row alongside other family members and UnitedHealthcare executives as Mangione addressed the court. "On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan," he told the judge, according to courtroom accounts, adding that his "travel to New York and email to UnitedHealthcare was with intent to shoot" the executive.
A previously unknown ruse
That admission included a detail not previously made public: Mangione told the court he had posed in 2024 as a prospective investor overseeing more than $50 billion in assets and emailed UnitedHealthcare's leadership under that guise to confirm the location of an investors' conference the company was hosting — using the response to pin down where and when Thompson would appear. Thompson was shot outside a Midtown hotel where the conference was being held.
Manhattan's newly installed U.S. Attorney, James McDonald, attended the hearing and said afterward that prosecutors intend to press for the toughest sentence available. "We are free to seek the maximum penalty under the law," he told reporters. Judge Garnett accepted the plea and set sentencing for December 18. Federal sentencing guidelines point to a range of roughly 24 to 30 years, though the statutory maximum for the charges is life in prison, and prosecutors have signaled they will ask for exactly that.
State case still pending
The guilty plea resolves only the federal case. Mangione still faces a separate prosecution in New York state court, where he has pleaded not guilty to state murder and terrorism charges; that trial had been penciled in for next month, though defense lawyers have separately raised a double-jeopardy challenge to the state charges now that the federal case has concluded, leaving the state trial's timing uncertain. Mangione's case drew unusual public attention after his arrest, including vocal supporters who framed the killing as a protest against the health insurance industry — a reaction prosecutors and Thompson's family have said trivializes a premeditated killing.
Thompson, 50, was the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, when he was shot on a Manhattan sidewalk in December 2024. His killing set off a five-day manhunt that ended with Mangione's arrest at a Pennsylvania McDonald's. Friday's plea brings the federal portion of a case that drew national attention to the health insurance industry to a close, with Mangione's ultimate sentence still to be determined in December.
