A "hell on earth", the prison in which Luigi Mangione is imprisoned

The main defendant charged with the murder of the CEO of insurer UnitedHealthcare shares prison with other defendants such as Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering the CEO of insurer UnitedHealthcare, is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, which has come to be called a "hell on Earth," a federal prison famous for having housed other detainees in high-profile cases.

Charged with the shooting death of CEO Brian Thompson in New York, the 26-year-old shares a prison, as well as an attorney, with controversial rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs, Marc Agnifilo, who is teaming up with his wife Karen Agnifilo to defend him.

Mangione and the rapper are the latest in a long line of "notorious inmates" at the prison who have traded their lives for "the white-painted cinder block walls" of the facility, as described by another tenant, former President Donald Trump adviser Michael Cohen, to CNN a few months ago.

Cohen himself was an inmate at the facility in 2020, charged with tax evasion, among other charges, and recalled his time at the prison on the occasion of Combs' time there.

"(Combs) wakes up in a steel bed with a one-and-a-half-inch mattress, no pillow, in an eight-by-ten-foot cell that I can assure you is disgusting," assured the former Trump adviser, who added that in the first stage of confinement there is no access to books.

The facility has also been home to singer R. Kelly, investor Martin Shkreli, 'socialite' Ghislaine Maxwell, former cryptocurrency wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried and rapper Fetty Wap, among others.

Currently, alleged Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada Garcia is another prisoner being held at the facility as he awaits trial on murder and drug trafficking charges.

Maggots, Stabbings and Cold

The detention center where Mangione is being held is the only federal prison in New York City where inmates await their respective federal court trials since the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan closed.

The latter is where sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in 2019, a case that was associated with systematic neglect, misconduct and general under-resourcing of the facility, which temporarily closed its doors in 2021 due to its deteriorating state.

The Brooklyn prison, which holds some 1,200 inmates, is not in very good condition either. Described as "disgusting" and "horrible," it harbors stories of attacks between inmates, complaints about water and heating problems (which caused several inmates to fall ill in 2019), and maggot-infested food.

The 2019 incident prompted a Justice Department investigation to assess whether the Bureau of Prisons had "adequate contingency plans" to address inmates' living conditions.

For their part, prisoners filed a class action lawsuit, which resulted in 1,600 inmates being compensated some $10 million for enduring cold and inhumane conditions due to the power outage.

This same year, there have also been several stabbings inside the facility that have left several dead.

A few months ago, Mangione's attorney, Marc Agnifilo, acknowledged in court for the Combs trial that the prison is "a very difficult place to be incarcerated."

Mangione has been charged with one federal murder, one federal weapons and two federal harassment charges in New York, but was also charged by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office with a total of 11 counts, including one count of first-degree murder that could be counted as a "terrorist act," and weapons charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested.

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