Jeffrey Epstein’s last hours before his death and the chaotic aftermath: Did he commit suicide?

Two weeks before ending his life, Jeffrey Epstein he sat in the corner of his Manhattan cell with his hands over his ears, desperate for the sound of a toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing.

epstein was restless and could not sleepprison officials noted, according to documents recently seen by The Associated Press.

He called himself a coward” and complained that he was having difficulty adjusting to his life behind bars following his July 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, which he turned a life of luxury in one within a concrete and steel cage.

A first suicide attempt

At the moment, the disgraced financier he was under psychological observation for a suicide attempt a few days earlier, which he passed visible marks on the neck. However, even after spending 31 hours under observation, Epstein insisted that he was not suicidal, telling the prison psychologist that had a “wonderful life” and “I’d be mad” if you wanted to call it quits.

On August 10, 2019, Epstein died.

What happened?

Nearly four years later, the AP gained access to more than 4,000 pages of documents related to Epstein’s death from the Bureau of Prisons under the Freedom of Information Act.

Records include a detailed psychological reconstruction of the events leading up to Epstein’s suicide, as well as your medical historyinternal agency reports, emails, memos and other documents.

Taken together, they provide documents obtained by the PA on Thursday the most complete count to date on Epstein’s arrest and death, e the ensuing chaos.

The logs help deny the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s suicide, revealing how fundamental flaws at the Bureau of Prisons – including a severe shortage of staff and employees who have not done their jobs – contributed to Epstein’s death.

They also shed new light on the federal prisons agency’s botched response after Epstein was found unconscious inside his cell at the now-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.

In one of the emails, a prosecutor involved in the criminal case against Epstein complained about the lack of information from the Bureau of Prisons in the critical moments after his death.

wrote that it was “simply incredible” that the agency issued public press releases “before giving us background information so we could pass it on to his lawyers, and they, in turn, to relatives” of Epstein.

In another email, a senior Bureau of Prisons official pitched a false insinuation the director of the agency that reporters would have to pay prison employees to receive information about Epstein’s death because they were exposing details about the agency’s failures.

From one pedophile to another

The documents also offer a new look at Epstein’s behavior during his 36 days in prisonincluding previously undisclosed information about an attempt to contact another known mail-order pedophile: Larry Nassar, the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team doctor who was convicted of sexually abusing a a large number of athletes.

Epstein’s letter to Nassar has been found return to sender in the prison post office weeks after Epstein’s death. “It appears he mailed it and it was returned to him,” said the investigator who found the letter, in an email to a prison official. “I’m not sure if I should open it or if I should give it to someone else.”

The letter it was not part of the documents which were given to the PA.

Last night

The night before his death, Epstein left a meeting with his lawyers to go a phone call to your family. According to a memo from a unit chief, Epstein told a prison employee that he was going to call his mother, who had been dead for 15 years.

Epstein’s death led to increased scrutiny of the Bureau of Prisons and forced the agency to close the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2021.

It also sparked an AP investigation which uncovered new and serious problems within the agency, the largest in the Justice Department with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of $8 billion.

An undated internal memo sent after Epstein’s death attributed the problems inside the prison to “severely reduced staffing levelsinadequate training or lack of training, follow-up and supervision”.

The memo also detailed the measures the Bureau of Prisons has implemented to address the flaws that the suicide exposed from Epstein, such as requiring supervisors to review surveillance video to ensure officers make requested cell visits.

“Medieval Conditions”

Epstein’s attorney, Martin Weinberg, said people detained at the facility experienced “medieval confinement conditions that no American defendant should pass”.

“It’s sad, it’s tragic, and it took such an event for the Bureau of Prisons close this pitiful institutionWeinberg said in a telephone interview Thursday.

The employees assigned to monitor Epstein the night he took his own life, Tova Noël and Michael Thomasthey were accused of lying on prison records to make it look like that they had made their rounds required before Epstein was found dead.

Epstein’s cellmate did not return after showing up a day early for a court hearing and prison officials they have not assigned another partner cell, leaving him alone.

Prosecutors noted that the guards were sitting at their desks just 4.5 meters from Epstein’s cell, they bought furniture and motorcycles online and they circled the unit common area instead of conducting their own rounds every 30 minutes.

Over a period of two hours, both they seemed to be asleep, according to his indictment. Noel and Thomas admitted to falsifying records but avoided jail time thanks to a deal with federal prosecutors. Among the documents released on Thursday were copies of some registers, with the censored signatures of the keepers.

An independent investigation by the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general is still ongoing.

I arrive in prison

Epstein arrived at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on July 6, 2019. He died 22 hours with the general population from prison before the authorities transferred him to a special unit “due to the significant increase in news coverage and the recognition of your person among the prison population”, according to the psychological reconstruction of his death.

Epstein later stated as much he resented having to wear the orange uniform detained within the special unit, and complained that he was treated as if he were a “bad” despite his good behavior behind bars. He has requested a brown uniform for his near-daily visits to his lawyers.

ten sexual partners

During an initial health check, the 66-year-old man said he had more than 10 sexual partners in the past five years. Medical records indicated that she suffered from Sleep apneaconstipation, high blood pressure, back pain, prediabetes, and who had previously received treatment for chlamydia.

Epstein tried to fit in to his prison environment, according to the files. Asked for kosher food and told prison officials, through his attorney, that he wanted permission to do so exercise outdoors.

Two days before his death, Epstein made $73.85 worth of purchases inside the prison store, including an AM/FM radio and headphones. She had $566 in his account at the time of his death.

Epstein got worse when he was a judge bail denied on July 18, 2019, raising the possibility that he would remain locked up until the day of his trial, and possibly longer. If found guilty, He faced a sentence of up to 45 years in prison. Four days later he was found on the floor of his cell with sheets tied around his neck.

Epstein survived. His injuries did not require hospitalization. He was placed under observation for his suicide attempt and subsequently under psychiatric observation. Prison officials noted in their records that they saw him “sitting on the edge of the bed and staring into space” and sitting “with his head against the wall.”

Epstein expressed his frustration with the noise inside the prison and his lack of sleep. During his first few weeks in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Epstein didn’t have the respiratory system that he did used for his sleep apnea. Then the toilet in his cell started having problems.

“I was still in the same cell with a broken toilet,” the prison psychology director wrote in an email the next day. “Please move it to the next cell once back, as the toilet is still broken.”

One day before Epstein took his own life, a federal judge opened about 2,000 pages of documents in a sexual assault lawsuit against him. Which, according to prison officials, it further undermined Epstein’s status.

This, combined with a significant lack of interpersonal connections and “the idea of ​​possibly spend the rest of his life in prison perhaps they were contributing to Epstein’s suicide,” the officials wrote.

___

ap​