Luigi Mangione’s cellmate has revealed details of the alleged CEO killer’s new life as a prison shower cleaner.
Inmate Michael Daddea, 29, spent two nights with the ‘super nice’ suspected shooter who he claimed is obsessed with scouring news reports for his name from behind bars.
Daddea was briefly jailed for allegedly 3D-printing more than 25 untraceable ‘ghost guns’ before being bailed from Mangione’s Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center’s 4G unit on March 7.
This is in contrast to Luigi Mangione, 27, who was arrested and charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.
The arrest sparked a media and social media frenzy, with fans swooning over the ‘hot’ suspect.
However, his looks haven’t granted the Ivy League-educated suspect any privileges, as he scrubs the floors of the jail’s communal showers.
‘He’s the guy who cleans the washrooms,’ Daddea said in a video post on X: ‘Not what you’d expect from someone who allegedly assassinated a CEO, right?’
Other roles on offer for ‘collies’ – prison slang for inmates who are assigned jobs – include preparing meals and cleaning food trays, he said.
He also claimed Mangione often jogs around the unit and has been caught scouring the local New York Daily News and New York Post for mentions of his name.
‘He’d have me help look through some to see if there are articles about him,’ he wrote in a now-deleted comment.
Daddea spoke of his disbelief when a ‘friendly and calm’ Mangione greeted him in their secure prison unit.
(Picture: Theodore Parisienne/TNS via ZUMA)
Daddea first described his surprise when he bumped into the infamous inmate, saying ‘I look out the cell, Luigi is standing there and he’s like, “Hey, how’s it going?” Like, super nice.
‘Introduced himself to me first thing. I’ve been in the unit for 10 minutes.’
He said the pair quickly palled up: ‘I go to shake Luigi’s hand, I’m like, “‘Yo, it’s an honour to meet you.”. . . He turns around and he goes to me, “You two are the first kids that came in here who knew who I was or even cared about it”.’
The 29-year-old even said they shared meals together and, both Catholics, ‘did Ash Wednesday,’ with a priest putting charcoal crosses on their foreheads on March 5.
‘So we sat together. Luigi would come sit with us every day. We would just eat,’ he added.
The original video has now gone viral on TikTok, after first racking up 800,000 views on X.
Mangione’s lawyers have painted the suspected killer as a ‘model prisoner’ during his 175-day detention before his trial.
At the beginning of June the accused CEO shooter wrote a letter listing things he was thankful for on his 27th birthday.
The 27-point list included ‘Chicken Thursdays and Sweet Baby Ray’s bbq sauce’ and his cellmate J, who he said ‘tolerates the clutter of all my papers, shares his unique wisdom, and doesn’t hesitate to humble me when I need it’.
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, five days after Thompson was gunned down while walking to his company’s investors’ conference at the New York Hilton Midtown.
CCTV footage appears to show a man alleged to be Mangione shooting at the healthcare CEO.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty and is due to appear in court again on Thursday, June 26.
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