Since convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, there have been rumors swirling around his death despite the official determination that he died of suicide. This week, new details about his death were released.
Here’s what we’ve learned, per a report in The Washington Post.
More light shed on Epstein’s previous alleged suicide attempt
At the time of his death, Epstein was 66 years old. He had already pleaded guilty in 2008 to state-level charges of procuring a child for prostitution and was indicted shortly before his death on federal sex trafficking charges that could have resulted in a 45-year sentence.
Epstein had already been held at the now-closed New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center for weeks when he was found semiconscious on the floor of his cell with a makeshift orange noose around his neck on July 23, 2019, per the Post’s article citing “an investigative report from the Federal Bureau of Prisons included in Monday’s batch of documents,” from the Department of Justice.
These documents are being released following calls from lawmakers and backlash to a memo issued this July that indicated no further files related to the Epstein case would be released. Epstein’s ties to rich and powerful figures, including current U.S. President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten (formerly Prince Andrew) and more, have heightened speculation about the case.
“That previous apparent suicide attempt had been widely reported, but the newly released documents provide new details,” said the Post.
It said that staff members put Epstein in hand and leg restraints and carried him out on a gurney after struggling to stand him up. A subsequent medical assessment found redness and abrasions around his neck, the outlet added.
“Photos in the report, time-stamped 1:45 a.m. and labeled ‘possible suicide attempt,’ show a disheveled Epstein in a blue anti-suicide smock, his skin faintly red above the collarbone,” the Post continued.
According to a report issued by the DOJ in June 2023, Epstein had denied having thoughts or a history of attempted suicide earlier in July. Following the July 23 incident, he was placed on suicide watch. An observation log from the morning of the apparent July 23 suicide attempt was among the documents the Justice Department released this week, the Post said.
Nicholas Tartaglione – a former police officer who was later convicted of a quadruple murder and sentenced to life in prison – was Epstein’s cellmate at the time, the Post reported. Although Epstein did claim at one point after the apparent suicide attempt that his cellmate was trying to kill him, the two men later said they did not have problems with each other and investigators did not find any evidence that Tartaglione assaulted Epstein.
“Epstein told investigators in a July 31 interview that he hadn’t slept in ‘approximately 20 days,’ according to the investigative report,” said the Post. “He said he had woken up on the floor to the sound of snoring that turned out to be his own.”
Other documents indicate that Epstein avoided questions about the incident later and said it was against his religion to kill himself. Some notes said that he did not display signs of suicidality. An associate warden noted that acts of self-mutilation could have come with a disciplinary hearing since they were prohibited at the prison.
“Disciplinary charges against Epstein for alleged self-mutilation were not sustained due to insufficient evidence,” said the DOJ in 2023.
In a July 26, 2019, email the prison’s chief psychologist indicated that he had removed Epstein from suicide watch. According to the Post, the Bureau of Prisons did not respond to questions about Epstein’s confinement and death.
Epstein complained about being held in ‘special housing’
Per that 2023 DOJ report, Epstein was assigned a cell in the prison’s “special housing units’ or SHU on July 7, 2019, due to media coverage of his case and his notoriety. These units are “securely separated from general population inmates” and inmates in them are kept locked in their cells for approximately 23 hours a day, the DOJ noted.
A July 27 email cited by the Post said that Epstein complained about being housed in SHU. The sender of that email said Epstein was “anxious about it and not being able to sleep there because of the noise of inmates banging and screaming at night.” The Post also cited an exchange that suggested Epstein “complained about being dehydrated because of limited bathroom breaks.”
A July 28 email also said that Epstein seemed “psychologically stable,” but he was sent back to SHU on July 30.
“Over the following days, Epstein’s lawyers wrote to prison officials with complaints about his conditions,” said the Post. “They said he had no toilet paper, that his CPAP machine, used for sleep apnea, had been disconnected and that he had been allowed only two 15-minute calls on speaker phone with officers present, according to redacted emails.”
New details do not support of murder theories
Tens of thousands of new files have been released by the DOJ, and the Post said nothing in them challenges the ruling that Epstein died by suicide.
Prison staffers found Epstein hanging in his cell at around 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 2019. Federal judges had just unsealed around 2,000 pages of records containing allegations regarding his abuse of girls and young women as part of a civil lawsuit.
Two days before his death, Epstein met with his attorneys at the prison and signed a new Will and Testament, according to the 2023 DOJ report. MCC New York Staff allowed him to make an unrecorded, unmonitored telephone call in violation of Bureau of Prisons policy the following day – the same day the documents were unsealed.
“Although Epstein said he was calling his mother, in actuality he called someone with whom he allegedly had a personal relationship,” said the DOJ. It also noted that Epstein was without a cellmate at the time of his death. A search of the cell revealed that there were excess prison blankets, linens and clothing inside, with some ripped to create nooses.
Following the discovery of Epstein’s body, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy and determined the cause of death was hanging and the manner of death was suicide on Aug. 11, 2019.
“Blood toxicology tests did not reveal any medications or illegal substances in Epstein’s system,” said the DOJ.
According to the Post, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Barbara Sampson, whose office had issued a finding six days after his death that Epstein had hanged himself. In that controversial joint memo issued by the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation this July, it also said that “FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019,” after a thorough investigation.
However, a video released by the DOJ Monday that purported to show Epstein taking his own life was a fake, according to a TIME magazine report. It was later taken down, TIME said.
“The fake video apparently made it into the FBI’s Epstein files because someone had emailed it to the bureau with a query asking if it was real,” the outlet explained. “According to analysis by Wired magazine, the 12-second video appeared to match footage uploaded to YouTube in 2019 with a description that read ‘rendering 3D graphics’; other outlets, including the BBC, said they had traced the video back to footage posted on the platform in 2020. A document that was posted just before the video in the Department of Justice’s initial release includes a message from outside the government asking if the video is real, Wired wrote.”
That’s not the only “fake” evidence released by the DOJ this week. The department said in an X post that the “FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE,” referring to a latter that appeared to be sent to the convicted sex offender and former national gymnastics team physician.
Support of previous allegations that jail staff failed to watch him
While the new information does not support theories that Epstein was murdered, it does support previously reported issues with adherence to prison policy and monitoring of Epstein, the Post said.
“Two jail staff members were charged after Epstein’s death with failing to watch him. Prosecutors said they slept through part of their shift, whiled away time shopping online and falsified log books to conceal their failure to conduct rounds every 30 minutes,” the outlet said. “They ultimately reached a deal to avoid trial. Jail officials also left Epstein alone in his cell, despite strict instructions not to do so.”
Per the 2023 DOJ report, the Office of the Inspector General found that SHU staff “did not conduct any 30-minute rounds after about 10:40 p.m. on August 9 and that none of the required SHU inmate counts were conducted after 4 p.m. on August 9.” It also said that “count slips and round sheets were falsified to show that they had been performed.”
Furthermore, that report said that recorded video evidence for the SHU area where Epstein was housed was only available from one prison security camera due to a malfunction of MCC New York’s Digital Video Recorder system that occurred on July 29, 2019. It was not fixed until after Epstein’s death.