A Convenient Death

by Alana Goodman

  In spite of public skepticism, there was certainly evidence to support the conclusion that Epstein took his own life. Suicides are not uncommon in prisons. He had revised his will just a couple of days before his death. He had, by the prison’s determination, attempted suicide just weeks before (although he had denied it to friends and lawyers). He was also accustomed to an extremely comfortable lifestyle and was disgusted with his new living conditions behind bars.

  “Mental abuse for a man that lived one of the best lifestyles in the world would have crushed him. He didn’t have the inner strength . . . few people would,” said Epstein’s former boss in the investment banking industry Steven Hoffenberg, who himself spent eighteen years in prison for financial fraud, including a stint at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

  Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz said he believes Epstein was distraught at the possibility of spending the rest of his life in jail.

  “I think he didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, and he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and that was not something he would want to do,” said Dershowitz. “I haven’t seen the [medical] evidence, and I have an open mind about everything, but I think the likelihood is that he took his own life because he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison and didn’t see any exit route.”

  Lending further evidence to the suicide theory was the earlier alleged attempt, in July. In that case, Epstein was found unconscious in his cell with pieces of fabric around his neck, according to Department of Justice officials. The responding guards reportedly dropped the unconscious Epstein on his face twice while carrying him out of the cell, one inmate told the podcast Epstein: Devil in the Darkness.1

  “When they carried him out of the cell, man, they dropped him on his face. Face-first. I heard it hit the floor with the loudest thud. I’ll never forget it because it was sickening. But Epstein didn’t make a sound ’cus he was out cold,” said the inmate.

  Prison officials determined that Epstein had attempted to commit suicide. But he denied it to his lawyers, telling them that he had some sort of clash with his bunkmate, the accused quadruple murderer and former cop Nick Tartaglione. His lawyers believed him.

  “Without going into the specifics of what he said in the conversation . . . my impressions are that it was not a suicide attempt,” said Epstein’s lawyer David Schoen in an interview. “It wasn’t an attempt to kill him, either. It was a prank gone wrong or an aggressive sort of thing from his cellmate that never should have happened.”

  Epstein received medical care and was placed on suicide watch. But prison psychologists took him off after just a week, although he was still required to participate in therapy sessions. He was returned to the Special Housing Unit, under doctors’ orders that he be placed in the cell closest to the guards’ desk so he could easily be monitored.2 He was also assigned a new bunkmate, and his medical file prohibited prison officials from putting him in a cell by himself. But when Epstein’s new cellmate was transferred out on the morning of August 9, 2019, no other inmate was transferred in.

  Dr. Thomas Caffrey, the former chief psychologist at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, said in an interview that it sounded “fishy” that the prison would put “negligent officers in charge of preserving the life of a very international and high-profile inmate.” He said he was surprised to learn Epstein had been removed from suicide watch after just a week.

  “Someone who attempted suicide, that’s very high probability of trying again, especially within the same couple of months. It sounds premature to end it after a week,” Caffrey said in a phone conversation.

  And yet no matter how much one could rationalize Epstein offing himself, none of those arguments should have prompted the coroner to change the official government findings.

  But Sampson appears to have overruled the pathologist conducting the medical examination of the dead body—despite there apparently being no new evidence presented to call into question the findings of the exam.

  “The usual information that is needed in a jail/prisoner hanging is . . . When was the person last seen, checked on? What was the position of the body when it was found? Was he dead, was he on the ground, was he hanging, was he seated?” Michael Baden said in an interview. “That’s very important.”

  Epstein’s lawyers asked Sampson for that information and were told the case was closed. Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s younger brother and his only living relative, said federal investigators have refused to provide him with medical records, names of first responders, and names of the other prisoners on Epstein’s tier. The feds cited the ongoing investigation into the two prison guards who were on duty that night and first found the body, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas.

  It turned out that Noel and Thomas had failed to check on Epstein for at least eight hours, despite requirements that they walk through and check on prisoners every thirty minutes. Noel, a thirty-one-year-old National Guard veteran, had been a correctional officer at MCC since 2016, a career change after brief stints at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and as a mail handler for the U.S. Postal Service. Thomas, forty-one, was a warehouse supervisor at the prison but often moonlighted as a guard for extra cash. He had worked at MCC since 2007.

  On the night and morning of Epstein’s death, the guards filed “more than 75 30-minute round entries” falsely claiming that they checked on Epstein’s tier, according to the DOJ.3

  “We messed up,” Thomas admitted to his supervisor after the body was found. “We didn’t do any rounds.”4

  The video also showed that Noel and Thomas spent most of the night sitting at the guards’ desk, which was in a common area ten to fifteen feet away from Epstein’s cell, within easy earshot of his death. For two hours, the guards appeared to be sleeping at their desks. At other points of the night, they surfed the web. Noel browsed furniture sales. Thomas shopped for motorcycles. They didn’t conduct any of the required checks on Epstein’s tier between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., although they did fill out logbooks claiming they made the checks. In fact, Noel, who had started working at 4:00 p.m., failed to conduct a single check during her entire time on the clock, according to the Department of Justice.

  Noel was the last person to escort Epstein into his cell for the evening at 7:49. At around 10:30 p.m., she walked up to the gate outside Epstein’s tier. His cell, which had a window to the tier hallway, was just a couple of feet from her. She stood outside the gate for a moment. Then she turned around and walked back to her desk.

  Epstein had a history of run-ins with Noel. In notes found after his death, he accused her of serving him “burnt food.” Epstein was not popular with many of the guards, who found him to be demanding and seemed annoyed by the special privileges he received—for example, the fact that he was allowed to meet with his attorneys for eight hours or more a day. The guards had to walk him back and forth to these meetings, up and down flights of stairs—more work for them.

  Guards at the prison were routinely overworked due to federal budget cuts, according to Eric Young, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, the union for correctional officers. They often picked up double shifts, working sixteen hours or more.

  “It wasn’t a matter of how [suicide] happened or it happening, but it was only a matter of time for it to happen. It was inevitable. Our staff is severely overworked,” Young said in a statement.5

  At midnight, Thomas arrived for his 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. shift. He and Epstein also had something of a history. Thomas was one of the MCC guards on duty who responded to Epstein’s alleged suicide attempt in July.

  Prison guards have strong union protections and are rarely prosecuted for negligence, but Noel and Thomas were indicted in November on charges of falsifying records and conspiracy to defraud the government. Thomas faces a maximum of twenty years in prison; Noel faces a maximum of thirty. Noel a
nd Thomas turned down plea agreements, according to the Associated Press.6 Lawyers for Noel and Thomas declined to make their clients available for interviews.

  Those who are familiar with the internal workings of MCC say it’s hard to believe such a high-profile prisoner as Jeffrey Epstein could have died—by either suicide or otherwise—without the knowledge or assistance of prison employees.

  “At nighttime like that, you can hear everything. You can hear a pin drop. Everybody’s sleeping; it’s quiet,” Albie Rivera, the former longtime MCC guard, revealed in an interview. “If they were ten, fifteen feet away from his cell, they should have been able to hear him. You could hear him get up; you could hear everything he’s doing. The window’s right there, to his door, you could look. You could see what he’s doing; there’s no way of obstructing the view.”

  Would guards have been able to hear the sound of someone ripping up strips of sheets, which he allegedly used to make the nooses? “Of course,” said Rivera.

  “I wouldn’t rule out foul play somehow,” he said. “To me it sounds like he could have been killed. It’s very hard to say that he killed himself.”

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  —

  There was more strangeness to come, in addition to the guards’ negligence and silence. In the days after Epstein’s death, news outlets reported that the surveillance camera monitoring his cell had malfunctioned the night of his death and no footage had been captured.7

  The news sounded peculiar, even to other correctional officers who had worked at the prison.

  “I find that so odd. So odd,” said one former longtime guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in an interview. “How do you not have a functional, working camera? Of all people, that man’s cell.

  “Does that raise a flag in your brain? I know it does in mine,” he added. “Why, in every other cell the cameras are operational, but Epstein’s was not?”

  Rivera said broken cameras would be quickly noticed and fixed if they were monitoring a high-value inmate.

  “If there were ones that were inoperable, they should have been inoperable for only a few minutes. They would have come in and fixed them right away. Of course, especially with a high-profile inmate like that,” Rivera said in an interview.

  Another longtime MCC guard questioned the lack of working cameras monitoring the inside of the tier, saying this was almost unimaginable for a high-value inmate.

  “There’s cameras in every cell,” said the correctional officer. “Now you get an individual like Epstein. Don’t you think his camera should have been working? Don’t you think he should have been placed in a cell that had a working, functional camera?”

  There was at least one functional camera, but it was outside Epstein’s tier. The footage indicated that nobody had entered or left the only door to his section the entire night, which housed eight two-man jail cells, according to the Department of Justice. However, it would not have shown the activities of any of the dozen or so inmates already on the cellblock.

  It would get yet stranger months later in November 2019 when Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press “that he personally reviewed security footage that confirmed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died.”8 Barr would conclude that while protocol was not followed, it was a suicide. But if he got to personally review the security footage, why were others apparently not able to see it? And, more surprisingly, why did the footage apparently disappear after his viewing? Officials would in January 2020 say the footage “no longer exists” due to “technical errors.”9

  * * *

  —

  Mark Epstein has been fighting to get more information on his brother’s death, without success. “He wasn’t close to his brother, but he loves his brother and he wanted to know what happened,” said Dr. Baden.

  Mark Epstein, a Manhattan real estate investor, said in a phone call that so far the feds have refused to provide him with medical records and the names of first responders.

  The younger Epstein said he hasn’t reached a conclusion on what happened to his brother. “I don’t have a theory. I’m not speculating,” he said. He has also been reluctant to talk to the press: “This is not about me. That’s why you don’t see pictures of me, I don’t go on camera for anybody.”

  But his own review of the evidence—at least the limited number of nonpublic records he has been able to obtain—has raised questions in his mind.

  Mark Epstein was able to get copies of photographs of his brother’s cell and body, taken by investigators after his death. He noticed at least one strange discrepancy in the pictures: the orange noose that officials identified as the one Jeffrey Epstein used to hang himself appears to have hemmed edges and does not look as if it were cut. Mark Epstein said that seems to conflict with the account from the prison guard Michael Thomas, who said he cut the body down from the ligature.

  “All we’ve heard from the guard is the guard said he cut him down,” said Mark by phone. “If you look at the picture of the ligature . . . it was not cut and it doesn’t look like it was tied to anything . . . Look at the angle of the ligature. It was a hemmed edge; it was not cut.”

  Autopsy photos also show dried blood on Epstein’s neck surrounding the ligature mark. However, there does not appear to be blood on the noose in the photos. The discrepancy suggests that this ligature was incorrectly identified as the object used in Epstein’s death.

  Some have speculated that Mark Epstein could have a financial motive for questioning the suicide ruling, including a wrongful death suit against the government. Dr. Baden disputed this, insisting there is no lawsuit on the table.

  “There’s no money involved with this; there’s no lawsuits involved in this. All that Mark wants to know is, what’s the accurate cause of death and if indeed his brother committed suicide,” said Baden.

  Some of Epstein’s close friends can’t comprehend him committing suicide for a different reason. They said it would be completely out of character.

  “Bullshit. He was murdered,” one close friend who knew him for decades asserted in an interview. “I can’t imagine that thought [of suicide] crossing his mind.”

  “The man could afford all the lawyers in the world. The day before that suicide, he had met with his lawyers for eight hours,” said the friend. “Those lawyers were certainly giving hope for what he could do, but more importantly, he knew he could buy his way out of a lot of shit.”

  4

  What Happened

  The Possibilities

  With a dead man at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and the world watching, immediately speculation grew about what actually happened that Saturday morning in August. There were only two possibilities: suicide or murder.

  No theory was without holes; none would fully account for the events that took place. And, importantly, evidence was scarce. But to many who read or watched the coverage, none of that would matter. They had already made up their minds.

  The official story would have the public believe that Epstein’s demise was the work of his own hands. According to the chief medical examiner, he died by hanging himself. The motive was clear: after years of getting away with crimes, he realized that the jig was up. Decades in prison for a sixty-six-year-old man meant a lifetime punishment, and he did not want to face that.

  “I don’t care about my legacy. The minute I’m dead, I’m dead. It’s over,” Epstein once told a friend and adviser. “I don’t care what people think of me. I only care about what’s happening to me while I’m alive.”

  According to the suicide theory, Epstein might have died still believing that he did nothing wrong. He was keen to protest his innocence to those around him. But he was also socially and politically intelligent enough to realize that he would never be exonerated by a court of law. He therefore came to the conclusion that his tawdry ways had caught up to him and that he would n
ever be able to escape the confines of lockup. His alleged suicide attempt weeks earlier had been his first attempt to get off easy.

  Those who believe he killed himself argue that after his suicide attempt Epstein used his masterful manipulation skills to convince everyone around him that in fact he was not actually interested in taking his own life. That it had been some sort of misunderstanding with his alleged-murderer cellmate.

  In this version of the story, Epstein got his way. He was alone, free to take his time to set up another suicide attempt. And this time he did it right. He quickly got his affairs in order, filing a new will two days before his death.

  With a cell to himself, he was more careful this time. He fashioned the bedsheets into a noose, positioned the noose on his bed frame, and then placed it around his neck. Finally, with a drop to his knees, the noose slipped tighter and tighter around his neck, before cutting off circulation and breaking his neck, becoming the first MCC prisoner to die by suicide in thirteen years.

  But that scenario did not sit well with a lot of observers. There seemed to be almost a comedy of errors that night—certainly a confluence of egregious mistakes.

  Just how could the most high-value criminal defendant in America kill himself while supposedly under twenty-four-hour surveillance in federal custody? How could he have known the guards would conveniently not check on him for more than eight hours? In response to this question, another theory began to emerge—that, yes, he killed himself. But he did not act alone.

  “It’s hard to do,” said Albie Rivera in an interview. “For him to do it that way, it would have to mean that he had this totally planned.”

  It’s plausible he had the assistance of others. Maybe some guards or fellow inmates had helped orchestrate Epstein’s final act. He needed help to get off suicide watch and return to the general prison population. He, the theory goes, used his connections within the confines of lockup to get his wishes. He needed time alone, in his own cell and without interference from prison guards. Here again, they say, he used the power at his disposal to get what he wanted.