Was Epstein's death suicide?Questions raised over 'missing CCTV'

Was Jeffrey Epstein’s death really suicide? As questions are raised over ‘missing CCTV’ and ‘unusual neck injuries’ and Ghislaine Maxwell insists he was murdered, read our gripping account of paedophile financier’s final hours

• The paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell 
• Here are the final days and hours of Epstein’s life to find out what happened

Ever since the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell in a New York prison on August 10, 2019, conspiracy theories have abounded.

Officially, the 66-year-old tycoon committed suicide. But, given that he was facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, and the number of high-profile and powerful people, from Prince Andrew to Bill Gates, he had associated with, conspiracists believe some would have preferred him dead before he testified.

Last month, his former companion and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell made a frank intervention from her prison cell.

‘I believe that he was murdered,’ she said in a TV interview. ‘I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened because . . . I was sure he was going to appeal.’

Using written records that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has released, we reconstruct the final days and hours of Epstein’s life to find out what really happened on that fateful night in jail…

Ever since the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, 66, was found dead in his cell in a New York prison on August 10, 2019, conspiracy theories have abounded

Last month, his former companion and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell made a frank intervention from her prison cell

Saturday, July 6, 2019, Past 4pm

FBI agents are waiting on the Tarmac as Epstein’s private jet lands at Teterboro airport, New Jersey. He has flown from Paris and has already confided to his butler, Gabriel, that he is about to be arrested.

Epstein is taken to New York’s notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a grim 12-storey concrete building that is overcrowded, understaffed and infested with cockroaches and rats.

It’s a spectacular fall from grace for a man used to mixing with the rich and famous, counting the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, Prince Andrew and the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak among his close associates.

There were rumours that Epstein had considered hiding in Israel, but is now hoping the American authorities will offer him a plea deal, like the controversial bargain he struck in 2006 after his arrest for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. (He pleaded guilty to that charge and served only 13 months.)

Oddly, the prison’s ‘intake screening’ describes him as a black male with no previous sexual convictions. This leads to Epstein being categorised as low- risk, so he is held with the ‘general inmate population’ in the area with the lowest level of security.

His cell is an 8ft by 8ft room with no direct sunlight and bare white walls, toilet and sink — a far cry from the luxurious homes he owns in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, or his private island in the Virgin Islands.

Past 7pm

An administrator reports that Epstein seems ‘distraught, sad and a little confused’. She emails three officials: ‘He seems dazed and withdrawn . . . Just to be on the safe side and prevent any suicidal thoughts, can someone from Psychology come and talk with him?’

Sunday, July 7, about 10am

The head of the prison, Lamine N’Diaye, realises the initial screening error and transfers Epstein to the Special Housing Unit (SHU) due to ‘concerns for his personal safety’ as a high-profile inmate. Epstein is put in a cell with one inmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, who is awaiting trial for four murders.SHU inmates have to wear orange jumpsuits and are given orange bedding. They are allowed three showers a week and are taken to the shower block in handcuffs. Most spend 23 hours a day in their cell, but Epstein will find a way around this.

A photo of the noose found on the floor in Jeffery Epstein’s cell after he died

The cell he was in should have been treated as a crime scene and his body photographed before removal. The medical examiner at the hospital pronounces Epstein’s death and rules that the cause is suicide by hanging leading to a cardiac arrest 

Monday, July 8, 9.30am

As is normal procedure, before the cell door is opened by staff, Epstein offers his hands through the food slot to be cuffed.

He is taken for psychological evaluation. The examining team fear he could be suicidal: he has a court hearing later and is unlikely to be granted bail. They don’t know how he will cope.

Past 11am

Epstein meets his legal team. He will pay them to visit all day, every weekday, during his stay in prison, enabling him to get out of his cell and out of his cuffs.

Past 2pm

Looking exhausted, his grey hair a mess, Epstein arrives at court and holds his head high as he pleads not guilty to charges of sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking. A journalist says he maintains ‘a stoic air’.

Bail is denied.

Past 7pm

As A result of this setback, Epstein is put under ‘psychological observation’. Specially appointed inmates record his behaviour every 15 minutes.

This is a less stringent regimen than full ‘suicide watch’, which the prison psychology team have decided is unnecessary.

The inmates’ short, handwritten notes reveal Epstein’s unwillingness to let go of his life outside prison: ‘Inmate Epstein is talking about business and investing’; ‘Inmate Epstein and I are talking about the escort business’; ‘Inmate Epstein is talking about celebs he knows.’

Tuesday, July 9, 1.52am

A Twitter user called ‘JJ Truth’ posts a picture of Bill Clinton with a young girl called Rachel Chandler, allegedly taken on Epstein’s private plane.

Thousands reply, calling for his famous friends — chief among them Clinton and Donald Trump — to be charged.

Past 9am

Epstein is assessed for potential suicide risk. The psychologist doing the assessment finds him polite, cooperative, humorous and ‘future-orientated’.

He seems to be in an ebullient mood — he calls himself a banker with a ‘big business’ and declares that ‘being alive is fun’. He requests a phone call, a meeting with his lawyer, a shower and to be able to brush his teeth.

Prince Andrew with his arm around the baremidriff of Ms Virgina Roberts, while Ghislaine Maxwell is grinning in the background which is believed to have been taken inGhislaine Maxwell’s Belgravia home, by Jeffrey Epstein. His cell is an 8ft by 8ft room with no direct sunlight and bare white walls, toilet and sink — a far cry from the luxurious homes he owns in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, or his private island in the Virgin Islands

Wednesday, July 10

Epstein asks to be moved to a single cell. The request is denied.

Thursday, July 11, Past 9am

Epstein meets the psychologists again. This time he has a long list of complaints: he has slept badly; it is cold in his cell; there isn’t enough water in the room where he meets his lawyers.

Despite these frustrations, the psychologists report that Epstein is not in distress. He is given some coping strategies and appears to be receptive. He assures them that he is definitely not suicidal and would never be.

Monday, July 15, 10am

Another court appearance. Epstein’s lawyers make a further application for bail. They argue for house arrest, at his expense, and offer a bond on his New York home, which is valued at $56 million.

But Alex Rossmiller, the prosecutor, has a dramatic announcement. That very morning, investigators broke into a safe in Epstein’s New York property and found piles of cash, ‘many, many’ photographs of young-looking girls, dozens of diamonds and ‘a passport appearing to be issued from a foreign country with a photo of the defendant and a name on that passport that is not the defendant’s name’.

Rossmiller insists that Epstein poses an escape risk.

Epstein shows no emotion as two of his accusers give evidence.

Courtney Wild, 31, tells the court that when she was 14 years old, growing up in poverty in Florida, a friend asked her if she’d like $200 to give an old man a massage. She didn’t hesitate. The massage led to sexual assault.

Then Annie Farmer, 42, tells the court she was 16 when Epstein flew her to his New Mexico ranch, where she met Ghislaine Maxwell. The couple showered her with gifts, but in this isolated setting, sexual assaults — by both — began. She had nowhere to run.

Epstein’s accusers expressed their disappointment that he will never face them in court

Thursday, July 18, 9.30am

Judge Richard M. Berman rejects Epstein’s bail application, citing the powerful testimonies of the women. He doesn’t believe Epstein’s ‘excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls . . . is likely to be controllable’.

Post 7pm

Epstein returns to his cell. No one assesses the psychological impact of the bail rejection. It’s a strange omission. For the next four days, Epstein has minimal attention from officials, so what happens next apparently takes everyone by surprise.

Tuesday, July 23, 1.27am

Prison officers find Epstein semi-conscious on his cell floor, in a foetal position with a strip of bedsheet round his bruised neck. He is taken to the hospital wing.

Prison officials open an investigation into whether this was a suicide attempt, a staged incident or an assault. Rumours circulate on social media that Epstein has been attacked by his cellmate, the multi-murder suspect Nicholas Tartaglione.

Tartaglione’s lawyers deny their client is involved and claim he tried to resuscitate Epstein. They try to obtain video footage taken outside his cell that day but the tape is lost, then apparently found. It turns out to be from the wrong video camera.

Officials finally admit that the footage from outside Epstein’s cell that night has been permanently deleted and the mystery remains unsolved.

An anonymous source suggests to NBC news that Epstein staged the incident in an attempt to be moved to another cell, as he was scared of Tartaglione.

Wednesday, July 24, Past 9.30am

Despite his ordeal, Epstein appears chipper. He is still denying having suicidal thoughts.

He tells the psychology team that he has a ‘wonderful life . . . I have no interest in killing myself’. He calls himself a ‘coward’, insisting he doesn’t like pain: ‘I would not do that to myself.’ He reminds them that he is Jewish and suicide is against his religion.

Monday, July 29, every 15 minutes

Epstein has returned to ‘psychological observation’ by fellow inmates. He seems low. A prisoner observing him notes: ‘Inmate Epstein is sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in the palms of his hands.’

Tuesday, July 30

Epstein returns to SHU. He is put in the cell closest to the correctional officer’s desk, with a new cellmate, Efrain Reyes.

The toilet in the cell is leaking. Epstein sits with his hands over his ears. He cannot stand the sound of the running water. He speculates to the psychologist that his sensitivity to noise could be a sign of undiagnosed autism. He compares himself to Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Rain Man: a highly sensitive, autistic savant.

He phones his Belarusian girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, 30. They have been together for ten years, ever since she moved to America, and Epstein has paid for her to train to be a dentist.

She was reportedly ‘madly jealous’ of him and known as ‘the inspector’ for investigating everyone he had contact with. None of his high-profile friends visits him in prison.

Ghislaine Maxwell has gone into hiding. There are alleged sightings of her in London, the South of France and New Hampshire but none is confirmed.

Wednesday, July 31, 11.30am

Epstein returns to court for another hearing.

This time he appears despondent but the prison psychologist is convinced that suicide watch is unnecessary: ‘He stated he lives for, and plans to finish, this case and to go back to his normal life.’

Epstein complains that he is tired and sleeping badly. His new cellmate, Reyes, keeps him awake with his talking.

Thursday, August 8, 9am

Epstein meets two of his lawyers, Gulnora Tali and Mariel Colón Miró, to sign a new will.

It puts assets of $577 million into a trust fund. His girlfriend Shuliak is one of the main beneficiaries. The trust structure will make it more difficult for alleged victims to make successful claims against his estate.

Friday, August 9, 8am

Epstein’s cellmate, Efrain Reyes, is released. Staff note that Epstein should expect a new cellmate but no one is transferred to share his cell.

9am onwards

Epstein spends the day with his lawyers. (One of his defence attorneys, Reid Weingarten, will later question the suicide ruling, insisting that Epstein did not appear despondent, suicidal or in despair.)

In a development of a civil case against Maxwell and Epstein brought by Virginia Guiffre — who claims she was trafficked by the pair and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew at Maxwell’s house in Belgravia, London — a federal appeals court unseals 2,000 pages of confidential documents. They include graphic testimony from victims of both Maxwell and Epstein.

Guiffre’s lawyers accuse Maxwell, who is still on the run, of ‘acting as a madam’ for Epstein, ‘recruiting, maintaining, harbouring and trafficking girls’.

4pm

Despite being just 15 ft from Epstein’s cell, Tova Noel, a 31-year-old female officer, and ‘Officer 1’ (whose name is redacted from the record) fail to check on Epstein as part of the 4pm ‘inmate count’, a physical cell-by-cell check to confirm that every prisoner is alive and accounted for.

Video evidence later confirms this. The pair falsely sign a slip to say the check has been completed. Noel will falsify 75 records during this 16-hour double shift.

7.49pm

Epstein returns from meeting his legal team and is escorted to his cell by Noel. He asks to call his mother. She died in 2004, and he really phones Shuliak.

10pm

Noel and ‘Officer 2’ falsify the slip for the 10pm count as cells are locked for the night.

10.30pm

Video footage shows that Noel briefly walks to and away from the entrance door on the floor where Epstein’s cell is. The tycoon has just hours to live.

Still huge questions remain: why did they fail to check up on Epstein during the night he died and why wasn’t he on suicide watch, despite one previous attempt to take his life, for which the video evidence has disappeared?

Saturday, August 10, 12am

Michael Thomas, a 41-year-old officer, begins an eight-hour shift. Thomas and Noel falsify the slip for the midnight count.

3am

Officers Noel and Thomas falsify the slip for the 3am count.

4am

The overnight supervisor visits Noel and Thomas in the SHU and chats with the officers briefly.

5am

Noel and Thomas falsify the slip for the 5am prisoner count.

The inmate in the cell next to Epstein’s will later recount that he hears him tearing his sheets at some point during the night.

5.30am

Video footage shows that an officer walks through the common area of the SHU. They don’t enter the floor of Epstein’s cell; indeed, no one else enters SHU all night.

Noel and Thomas have falsified entries for every one of the rounds they are meant to carry out every 30 minutes. Instead, they have spent the night on their computers and sleeping. Noel browsed furniture sales; Thomas looked at motorbike sales and sports news.

6.05am

The breakfast carts arrive in the SHU. Noel and Thomas begin the round of passing trays of milk and cereal through the food hatches of the cells in the wing.

6.30am

Officers Noel and Thomas enter Epstein’s floor.

6.33am

Noel and Thomas discover Epstein unresponsive on his cell floor. A noose made from his orange bedsheet is tied around his neck. They sound the prison alarm.

6.35am

A supervisor arrives at SHU. Noel tells them: ‘Epstein hung himself.’ She immediately admits that ‘we did not complete the 3am nor 5am rounds’. Thomas says: ‘We messed up,’ and then corrects himself: ‘I messed up, she’s not to blame, we didn’t do any rounds.’

6.39am

Epstein is clearly dead but is rushed to New York Downtown Hospital, the haste of which would later be criticised, as it violated prison protocol. The cell he was in should have been treated as a crime scene and his body photographed before removal.

The medical examiner at the hospital pronounces Epstein’s death and rules that the cause is suicide by hanging leading to a cardiac arrest. It is the first suicide at Metropolitan Correctional Center for 14 years.

8.16am

News of Epstein’s death appears on 4chan, a notorious social media site whose anonymous users are known to post conspiracy theories.

Just before 10am

The U.S. Attorney General, William P. Barr, issues a statement officially announcing Epstein’s death ‘from an apparent suicide’.

10am

The news of his death is on national public radio. Twitter explodes with disbelief. One tweet from @RealMattCouch receives 7,920 likes. In it, he writes: ‘Raise your hand if you don’t believe for one second that Jeffrey Epstein died of suicide.’

Late morning

Epstein’s accusers begin to express their disappointment that he will never face them in court.

Jennifer Araoz, who accuses Epstein of raping her when she was 15, sums up the frustration of many: ‘We have to live with the scars of his actions for the rest of our lives, while he will never face the consequences of the crimes he committed, the pain and trauma he caused so many people.’

There are thousands of calls for his friends and enablers to be brought to justice.

Meanwhile, in his cell, a note is found in which Epstein accuses Noel of burning his foot in an undated incident. The note also complains that his bed is crawling with bugs and that another guard intentionally left him naked in a shower for an hour.

Sunday, August 11, early morning

In Australia, Virginia Giuffre’s husband wakes her to tell her the news. She is shocked, tearful, relieved that he won’t hurt anyone else but furious that he will never answer his accusers.

Monday, August 12

The Attorney General refers to ‘serious irregularities’ at the MCC. He later describes the events as ‘a perfect storm of screw-ups’.

Thursday, August 15, 4.06pm

The New York Post publishes a picture of Ghislaine Maxwell sitting in a branch of In-N-Out Burger in Los Angeles. She is alone with her dog, reading The Book Of Honor: The Secret Lives And Deaths Of CIA Operatives. She looks the photographer in the eye and sighs, ‘Well, I guess this is the last time I’ll be eating here!’

Friday, August 16

Dr Barbara Sampson, New York’s Chief Medical Officer, rules that Epstein’s death was suicide. But if the authorities hoped that would put an end to the rumours, speculation by a forensic pathologist, Dr Michael Baden, will pour fuel on the fire. He attended the four-hour autopsy on behalf of Epstein’s brother Mark.

Baden will tell CBS News: ‘There were fractures of the left, the right thyroid cartilage and the left hyoid bone . . . I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging . . . Going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 40-50 years, no one had three fractures.’

He suggests the injuries are more commonly found in strangulation, although other pathologists point out that these bone breakages occur in the suicides of older men.

Aftermath

A fever of suspicion continues to surround Epstein’s death, with some convinced that a murky cabal of the rich and powerful somehow precipitated his hanging to protect their reputations.

In January 2020, a CBS documentary, 60 Minutes, shows photos of the tycoon’s body, his cell, the noose and ligature marks around his neck, which only fuels claims of a conspiracy.

The New York Metropolitan Correctional Center is heavily criticised for its involvement, and is closed down in October 2021.

The following January, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas are let off charges of falisfying prison records by a Manhattan judge as part of a plea deal after they admitted their guilt and completed 100 hours of community service.

Still huge questions remain: why did they fail to check up on Epstein during the night he died and why wasn’t he on suicide watch, despite one previous attempt to take his life, for which the video evidence has disappeared?

Mismanagement or something more malign?

Mystery continues to swirl about this extraordinary death.

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