The Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson spent his first night, is known as hell on earth not for no reason. Earlier this year, an inmate was murdered and at least four inmates died by suicide in the past three years.
Uriel Whyte who had been awaiting trial on gun charges for more than two years was stabbed to death in the MDC on June 7. Edwin Cordero, another inmate, died from his injuries inflicted in a jail fight a month later.
In January 2019, there was a week-long blackout in the prison that left its inmates shivering in the cold.
The prison complex once housed other high-profile inmates like R Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell, Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli, rapper Fetty Wrap, Mexican drug lord El Chapo and FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
And now, Mangione will be living under the same roof as Sean Diddy Combs, three cartel figures, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Nestor Perez “El Nini,” and Genaro Garcia Luna.
This prison has been New York City’s primary federal detention center since 2021 after the Bureau of Prisons shut down Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center– where Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019 — over alarming conditions. This is mostly used as a post-arrest detention center for people awaiting trial in Manhattan or Brooklyn’s federal courts.
Associated Press reported that the condition of the prison is so disastrous that some judges have been refrained from sending defendants to the facility and the poor living situation of the jail was referred to by Diddy’s lawyers too.
Luigi Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania on December 9 where he was slapped with gun charges. New York charged him with first and second-degree murder and Mangione did not fight the extradition. As he arrived on New York, he was charged with federal murder which makes him eligible for the death penalty.