Luigi Mangione revealed in a letter to one of his supporters that he is expanding his music taste while awaiting his trials for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“Last week, I downloaded a bunch of Taylor Swift and Charli XCX [songs] onto my tablet,” Mangione, 27, wrote to the owner of the X account The Mangione Trial, who shared a photo of the handwritten letter on Tuesday, October 28.
“I’ve never really listened to either of them, but some phony list of my favorite music circulated on social media,” he continued. “Rather than be a buzzkill and set the record straight, I figured I’d see what all the hype was about.”
Mangione, 27, shared that one day he was listening to “Cardigan” from Swift’s 2020 album Folklore while “walking laps on the top tier” of his unit at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn when a fellow inmate known as “King” called him over to ask what he had been playing.
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“He scolds me for a while, then replaces all my music,” he wrote. “Now I listen to ‘Lil Durk‘!”
Mangione concluded his June 3-dated letter by saying he was particularly “grateful” for Durk’s 2013 song “Dis Ain’t What U Want,” which notably includes the lyrics, “F*** breaking news” and “They say I terrify my city.”
Mangione’s team says they “do not have a method to verify the authenticity of letters or emails attributed to Luigi,” but a source confirms to Us Weekly that it is legitimate.
Inmates at MDC Brooklyn can buy internet-free tablets from the jail’s commissary. Us exclusively reported in August that a federal judge also allowed Mangione to receive a laptop behind bars to access case-related information so he could begin preparing his defense.
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Mangione has been accused of fatally shooting Thompson, 50, in New York City in December 2024. He was indicted on 11 state charges, two of which were dismissed in September due to insufficient evidence, in addition to four federal charges, one of which carries the death penalty.
Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland family, has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. His supporters have raised more than $1.3 million for his legal fund.
Lawyer Arthur Aidala told People on Tuesday that Mangione has been a “model prisoner” in the 10 months since his arrest in Pennsylvania.
“My understanding is that he is a rule follower, unlike a lot of folks in there,” Aidala said. “A lot of folks in there, you know, they figure out a way to get in contraband, whether that be drugs or unauthorized cellphones and things like that. But my understanding is that he’s not like that, and he hasn’t been written up for any violations of any sort.”
Aidala shared that Mangione has even become an “ambassador” for new inmates, explaining, “When people get there and they don’t know what the heck is going on, he is kind of the one who welcomes them and does his best to allay their fears and, you know, kind of shows them the ropes of what life in the Metropolitan Detention Center is like and what to do — and sometimes, more importantly, what not to do.”
