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Epstein’s lawyer, Martin Weinberg, said people detained at the facility endured “medieval conditions of confinement that no American defendant should have been subjected to.”
“It’s sad, it’s tragic, that it took this kind of event to finally cause the Bureau of Prisons to close this regrettable institution,” Weinberg said Thursday in a phone interview.
The workers tasked with guarding Epstein the night he killed himself, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were charged with lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made their required checks before Epstein was found lifeless. Epstein’s cellmate did not return after a court hearing the day before, and prison officials failed to pair another prisoner with him, leaving him alone.
Prosecutors alleged they were sitting at their desks just 15 feet (4.6 meters) from Epstein’s cell, shopped online for furniture and motorcycles, and walked around the unit’s common area instead of making required rounds every 30 minutes.
During one two-hour period, both appeared to have been asleep, according to their indictment. Noel and Thomas admitted to falsifying the log entries but avoided prison time under a deal with federal prosecutors. Copies of some of those logs were included among the documents released Thursday, with the guards’ signatures redacted.
Another investigation, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is still ongoing.
Epstein arrived at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on July 6, 2019. He spent 22 hours in the jail’s general population before officials moved him to the special housing unit “due to the significant increase in media coverage and awareness of his notoriety among the inmate population,” according to the psychological reconstruction of his death.
Epstein later said he was upset about having to wear an orange jumpsuit provided to inmates in the special housing unit and complained about being treated like he was a “bad guy” despite being well behaved behind bars. He requested a brown uniform for his near-daily visits with his lawyers.
During an initial health screening, the 66-year-old said that he had 10-plus female sexual partners within the previous five years. Medical records showed he was suffering from sleep apnea, constipation, hypertension, lower back pain and prediabetes and had been previously treated for chlamydia.
Epstein did make some attempts to adapt to his jailhouse surroundings, the records show. He signed up for a Kosher meal and told prison officials, through his lawyer, that he wanted permission to exercise outside. Two days before he was found dead, Epstein bought $73.85 worth of items from the prison commissary, including an AM/FM radio and headphones. He had $566 left in his account when he died.
Epstein’s outlook worsened when a judge denied him bail on July 18, 2019 — raising the prospect that he’d remain locked up until trial and, possibly longer. If convicted, he faced up to 45 years prison. Four days later, Epstein was found on the floor of his cell with a strip of bedsheet around his neck.
Epstein survived. His injuries didn’t require going to the hospital. He was placed on suicide watch and, later, psychiatric observation. Jail officers noted in logs that they observed him, “sitting at the edge of the bed, lost in thought,” and sitting “with his head against the wall.”
Epstein expressed frustration with the noise of the jail and his lack of sleep. His first few weeks at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Epstein didn’t have his sleep apnea breathing apparatus he used. Then, the toilet in his cell started acting up.
“He was still left in the same cell with a broken toilet,” the jail’s chief psychologist wrote in a email the next day. “Please move him to the cell next door when he returns from legal as the toilet still does not work.”
The day before Epstein ended his life, a federal judge unsealed about 2,000 pages of documents in a sexual abuse lawsuit against him. That development, prison officials observed, further eroded Epstein’s previous elevated status.
That, combined with a lack of significant interpersonal connections and “the idea of potentially spending his life in prison were likely factors contributing to Mr. Epstein’s suicide,” officials wrote.
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