Bomb threats and cyberstalking: Wife and children of healthcare CEO killed by Luigi Mangione threatened and forced to keep a low profile after shooting

The widow of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson made a rare public appearance Friday to watch Luigi Mangione tell a courtroom that he’d shot her husband.

Paulette Thompson was photographed walking into Manhattan Federal Court in a navy dress and sunglasses, after she and her two sons suffered horrific stalking and abuse in the wake of their loved one’s killing.

Friday’s hearing sensationally saw Mangione admit to shooting and killing Thompson in New York City in December 2024. 

He told of how he’d decided to target UnitedHealth after suffering back pain, and said ‘I shot Mr Thompson and he died’, before pleading guilty to federal charges of stalking.

Mangione faces a state murder trial next month, but his lawyers have said that today’s admission that he killed Thompson mean that it is impossible to try him again because of double jeopardy laws. He faces between 24 and 30 years behind bars on the stalking charges.

Paulette has yet to comment on Mangione’s admission, but likely hopes for closure to an ordeal that has seen her family targeted by warped fans of the killer.  

The targeting of Thompson’s family began within 24 hours of his killing, as fake bomb threats were made against two of his family’s homes in Maple Grove, Minnesota the day after he was gunned down. 

Thompson was separated from his wife at the time he was shot, and the Maple Grove Police Department said bomb threats were sent to his and Paulette’s separate homes – a mile apart from each other. The perpetrators have never been caught.  

Ultimately, investigators said there was no evidence those bomb threats were real, and were instead an attempt at ‘swatting’ – the act of forcing a huge law enforcement presence to descend on a victim’s property. 

The incident was a terrifying omen for the ordeal Thompson’s family have been put through ever since, while the executive’s killer Mangione has gained a legion of twisted supporters. 

Thompson’s family have kept a low profile and have largely remained away from Mangione’s court appearances. On Friday, his widow Paulette attended Mangione’s federal court hearing, the first time she has come face-to-face with her husband’s killer. 

While many who have targeted Thompson’s family have not been prosecuted, earlier this year New York resident Shane Daley, 40, pleaded guilty in court to sending harassing voicemail messages to them. 

Daley’s campaign against the Thompsons also started within hours of the executive’s high-profile murder, and he bombarded the family for over three days with menacing calls and messages. 

In his voicemails to the Thompson family, Daley celebrated the CEO’s death and repeatedly cited profits made by insurance companies, prosecutors said. 

He hurled profanities at the family as he said Thompson’s two sons, now aged 19 and 16, ‘deserved to meet the same violent end’ as their father, documents showed.

‘(Thompson) got lit the f*** up cause he’s a f***ing a**hole. Profiting off the backs of poor Americans. This s*** is going to keep happening to you f***ing pricks. F*** you,’ he said in one voicemail. 

In March 2026, Daley pleaded guilty to cyberstalking the family, and he faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced. 

At the time Thompson was shot dead in New York City, he was separated from his wife Paulette, and they had reportedly been living in separate homes one mile apart in the Maple Grove neighborhood for several years. 

After his high-profile assassination, she revealed that Thompson had been receiving death threats, but decided to go ahead with his trip to New York for an annual UnitedHealth Group investors’ meeting anyway.

‘Yes, there had been some threats basically I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details,’ Paulette told NBC News at the time. 

‘I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.’ 

She added in a statement that her family were ‘shattered’ by Thompson’s death, describing him as an ‘incredibly loving father’ and a ‘generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest and touched so many lives.’ 

Paulette and the rest of the Thompson family have largely remained out of the spotlight in the time since the CEO’s death. 

On Friday, Paulette made her first court appearance, coming face to face with Mangione for the first time after previously avoiding the admitted killer’s court hearings at the risk of facing his fans and supporters.

In court, Mangione confessed to shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO as he pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges.

Mangione, 28, admitted to gunning down Thompson, 50, in Midtown Manhattan as he walked to a conference on December 4, 2024.

‘I shot Mr Thompson and he died,’ Mangione told the judge on Friday. ‘I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death of bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.’

The confession came as the Maryland native pleaded guilty to one count of interstate stalking resulting in death and one count of stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death.

Federal murder charges against Mangione were previously dropped, but he faces a state trial on charges of murdering Thompson next month.

Thompson’s grieving family watched as Mangione revealed that ‘after years of enduring pain from a broken back’ he learned about the UnitedHealthcare investor conference.

Mangione said he traveled to Manhattan and emailed the company posing as an investor managing $58 billion and got information about the location within an hour, then printed a gun with a 3-D printer.

Both stalking charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. His sentencing hearing has been scheduled for December 18.