A heart-shaped note to Luigi Mangione hidden in a pair of socks provided to him before his last court appearance informed the high-profile murder suspect that “thousands of people” were rooting for him, prosecutors said in court filings Wednesday.
The love letter was secreted in cardboard stuffing inside the new pair of argyle socks, which a Manhattan Supreme Court officer passed on to Mangione from his defense team ahead of his Feb. 21 court appearance. Another cutout heart bore a message to an unknown person named “Joan,” according to prosecutors.
The note to Mangione partly read: “know there are thousands of people wishing you luck,” according to Wednesday’s filing.
“In spite of this, the defendant was permitted to wear the argyle socks, which he first changed into and later changed out of because he felt that ‘they did not look good.’ Fortunately, the items smuggled were handwritten notes and not contraband capable of harming the transporting officers,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann wrote.
The disclosure came in filings from the Manhattan district attorney’s office responding to requests by Mangione’s lawyers ahead of his trial on murder and terror offenses stemming from the Dec. 4 fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown.
Mangione, 26, of Maryland, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism, second-degree murder as a crime of terrorism, and nine related offenses and could face a maximum term of life without parole if convicted.
On the federal level, he’s been charged in a four-count complaint with murder with the use of a firearm, discharging a firearm with the use of a silencer, and two stalking offenses, with the top charge carrying a maximum sentence of death. In that case, in which an indictment has not yet been secured, he has not yet entered a plea.
An alleged manifesto carried by Mangione at the time of his arrest and the words “deny,” “depose,” and “defend,” written on shell casings recovered at the scene signaled Mangione’s anger toward the U.S.’s expensive health care system, prosecutors say. The alleged protest killing has provoked an unprecedented wave of support and seen the Maryland man hailed as a folk hero in some circles amid widespread frustration with the industry.