By Steve Bohnel
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
HUNTINGDON, Pa. — Located near a borough of just under 7,000 along the Juniata River, SCI- Huntingdon is the state’s oldest continually operating prison, having first opened in 1889.
Earlier this week, the most recent high-profile inmate in the facility’s history arrived — Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk last week.
Mr. Mangione has been charged with the murder of Brian Thompson and has been held at SCI-Huntingdon since late Monday, when an employee at an Altoona McDonald’s called 911 after recognizing him from surveillance photos distributed nationwide by the New York City Police Department .
The facility, just a two and a half hour drive east of Pittsburgh, currently has over 1,800 inmates, and an overall capacity of 1,869. It was formerly a prison for juvenile delinquents before it became a maximum security prison in 1960, according to the state.
Maria Bivens, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Corrections, said Wednesday that Mr. Mangione is being held alone in a cell in the prison, which has 14 housing units and is 10 acres inside its perimeter.
Ms. Bivens said she could not discuss any extra precautions prison officials might be taking, citing security concerns due to high interest in the case.
But she said Mr. Mangione “will eventually get time out of his cell. All inmates are afforded time outside of their cells, even if they are a higher custody level.”
The prison has housed multiple serial killers in prior decades. More recently, Cosmo DiNardo, a 20-year-old man from Bucks County who killed four young men on his family farm in New Hope in 2017, spent time there. DiNardo has been serving a life sentence and is currently in SCI-Phoenix but was at SCI-Huntingdon from January 2020 to July 2021, according to the state.
Among the prison’s other famous inmates was William Dean Christensen, known as “America’s Jack the Ripper.” He was suspected of killing more than 20 people on the East Coast and in Canada and was serving a life sentence plus 30 years at Huntingdon before he died in October 1990.
Norman Johnston, who escaped the prison in August 1999 and was captured three weeks later, was also housed there. Mr. Johnston was convicted of the murder of four teenagers to cover up a family burglary ring in Chester County — where he and his brothers stole hundreds of trucks, cars, and farm equipment in the 1970s. Authorities captured him outside Kennett Square three weeks after his escape, according to the Associated Press.
Mr. Johnston’s crimes were later highlighted in the 1986 film “At Close Range " starring Sean Penn and Christopher Walken.
More than 200 inmates are afforded job privileges at the prison, whether making license plates, street signage, garments, soap/detergent or other materials inside a warehouse. The prison also has a community work program where inmates mow grass, paint, clean cemeteries, pick up litter and complete other work for nonprofit companies.
Even though Mr. Mangione is being held at a higher custody level, “SCI Huntingdon houses all custody-level inmates, which is similar to many of our other prisons,” Ms. Bivens said.
Mr. Mangione will be in custody there until his preliminary hearing on Dec. 23 at the Blair County Courthouse on felony forgery and firearms charges stemming from his arrest at the Altoona McDonald’s. He and his attorney are currently fighting extradition to New York , where he was charged with the murder of Thompson.
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