It was well before sunset on Thursday when the first young woman took her place at the front of the line outside a federal courthouse in Manhattan.
“I would prefer not to talk to members of the press,” she said Friday morning, giving an apologetic smile.
Luigi Mangione was in court Friday to enter a plea of not guilty in the ambush shooting murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The “Luigi Girls,” a term used with fondness and sometimes derision by others in line, had waited upward of 12 hours to see Mangione in his jail khakis and ankle shackles.
As this macabre fandom kept their long vigil — eating takeout and grabbing naps on the pavement — the name Brian Thompson was never spoken, two frequent denizens of the line told Business Insider on Friday.
“It’s all talk of ‘Luigi,'” said John McIntosh, 43, of Manhattan, who said he waits in lines for money.
“I’ve never heard his name mentioned once,” said McIntosh. He was referring to Thompson, the 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota who Mangione allegedly gunned down on a Midtown sidewalk in December.
This was McIntosh’s third time waiting in line for a Mangione court date, he said Friday. The self-appointed line administrator kept a handwritten list of names and numbers for those in line. He himself was number 5, having staked his claim on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
“I’m hoping to sell my spot — I did very well with the Trump trial,” he told Business Insider, referencing President Trump’s hush money trial from last year.
Number one on the list had given her name as “C.M.” Number two declined to give a name. Number three gave the name “R.J.”
McIntosh wanted it to be clear that he is not one of them — he is no Luigi Girl. “I don’t think the guy deserves any sympathy,” he said of Mangione with a laugh.
“For the most part, people are more interested in caring about Luigi than about Brian,” agreed Jarva Land, a sketch artist from Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood who made number 6 on the wait list.
Land said she had also waited in line — and then sketched — two of Mangione’s prior appearances and had a good sense of “line culture.”
Her sketches from the line document snippets of overheard conversations.
“I’m not doing any interviews today,” she quoted one woman in line telling another in a sketch from the morning.
“Try dry shampoo,” read another overheard snippet from Land’s sketchbook. “Dry shampoo is my life saver.”
At some point in the morning Land jotted down a conversation between the line waiters and a passing federal Marshall who asked, “How long you all been waiting here for?”
The line waiters jokingly responded, “Two days!” according to Land’s sketch. “3 weeks! All our lives in a way!”
“Don’t bust my chops in court,” he joked back.
Land, too, is no Luigi Girl, she said. Though she admitted, “I love the Luigi Girls — even the mean ones.”
She said there was more to them than people may think.
“I’ve heard there’s this impression of these girls that are obsessed with Luigi and think he’s just a heartthrob criminal or something,” she said. “But that’s the thinnest layer of it — I think the appeal is not that basic at all. It’s ideas about this country and justice and systems of power.”
As for herself, “I’m excited to be in the hearing and get to see Luigi — and sketch his eyebrows,” she said. “Of course.”
Most of the women at the front of the line obscured their faces with scarves or paper medical masks. By the time the courtroom opened, fewer than half of the 40 or so women in line would get inside.
Unlike on line, Thompson’s name was mentioned multiple times in court, including when US District Court Margaret Garnett asked federal prosecutors if the healthcare executive’s family members were being kept apprised of what is happening in the case.
They were, Assistant US Attorney Dominic Gentile assured the judge.
Mangione, 26, crisply responded “Not guilty” to the indictment charging him with stalking, murder, and the deadly use of a firearm.
His lead defense lawyer, Karen Agnifilo, told the judge that one of her private phone calls to Mangione, who remains jailed pending trial. had been inadvertently listened to by prosecutors. The judge asked prosecutors to inform her by next month of how that had happened.
The judge also reminded both sides of their obligation to limit their public statements on the case, so as not to “impede or affect Mr. Mangione’s ability to get a fair trial and the court’s ability to select a fair jury in this case.”
The judge instructed prosecutors to pass that reminder on to Jay Clayton, the interim US Attorney for the Southern District of New York — which includes Manhattan — and to US Attorney General Pam Bondi “and any of her subordinates.”
Mangione’s next court date was scheduled for December 5, on which date a death-penalty trial date may be set.
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