Luigi Mangione has been locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his arrest for the December 4, 2024, murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Although former inmate Gene Borello, who spent time at the same jail while awaiting trial on racketeering charges from February 2023 to September 2023, describes the facility as “laid-back,” he also exclusively reveals to In Touch that those living there weren’t able to go outside.
“When you’re in there, you don’t see the sun,” Borrello shares.
There is just a small recreation room, says Borello, now a podcaster and author in Miami. Still, there seems to be a certain freedom to living on that side of the jail.
“It’s like a big dormitory. There are dorms with bunks and lockers. There is only ever 20-something people in there at most at once,” Borello continues. “You are not confined, it’s open.”
Borello explains there’s one guard in the office and the inmates are free to “come and go” unless they’re on lockdown.
“The rule is that if someone is killed on the other side, we are supposed to get locked down. But a lot of times they don’t because we don’t do anything wrong on that side, so they’ll just let us be,” he adds. “It is a laid-back, cool spot if you have to do time, it’s really easy. There’s no violence on that side or anything.”
Borrello notes that Mangione “has to be on that side” because his high profile crime put him “in the limelight.” In contrast, he describes the “other side” of the prison as “brutal,” citing “stabbings, cuttings all day, crooked cops, cell phones—anything you can think of.”
“It’s like being on the street,” he says.
According to his lawyers, Mangione has his own cell — and they’ve asked the judge to allow him to have a laptop so they don’t have to print out the more than 15,000 pages of discovery related to his case for him to review. A trial date has not yet been set, but U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
Still, experts have said prosecutors will have a difficult time finding a jury to convict him. His supporters have raised more than $800,000 for his defense and have been known to perform TikTok dances outside his jail, where his fellow inmates, whom he’s called his “brothers,” are also reportedly fans.
“I have never seen a criminal defendant, much less an accused murderer, receive as much sympathy,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek. “He is a folk hero of sorts to many.”
Despite the public support, Borrello speculates that Mangione will “end up going to a penitentiary” after his trial.
“Right now, it’s cool, but obviously, he is going to get life in prison,” Borrello says. “He doesn’t know where he is going to end up because he has state cases and federal cases. Wherever he ends up doing life, penitentiaries and maximum security prisons don’t really care who you are. Everyone in there is a killer.”
“When you are sentenced to life like Luigi, you start out with the big boys,” he adds. “You would rather be dead than go there.”
Borello calls a regular penitentiary “hell on earth” where inmates are on lockdown “most of the time” and the people living there skip “cutting” and go straight to riots, “gang wars” and “killing each other.” Due to the dangers, Borrello says inmates might be out of their cells for only “three or four months out of the whole year.”
Borrello suggests that Mangione has “no idea what he’s about to run into” if he’s sent to a “horrific penitentiary” like the ones he described.
“If he doesn’t go to a federal [prison], he’ll be at Clinton, Elmira, Sing Sing, a horrible maximum security prison,” he adds. “There’s no protective custody.”
This article originally appeared as part of the April 28, 2025, cover story “Life Behind Bars.”
