New details of Jeffrey Epstein’s death and the frantic aftermath revealed in records obtained by AP

Two weeks earlier than ending his life, Jeffrey Epstein sat within the nook of his Manhattan jail cell together with his palms over his ears, determined to muffle the sound of a bathroom that wouldn’t cease working.

Epstein was agitated and unable to sleep, jail officers noticed in information newly obtained by The Associated Press. He known as himself a “coward” and complained he was struggling to adapt to life behind bars following his July 2019 arrest on federal intercourse trafficking and conspiracy fees — his lifetime of luxurious decreased to a concrete and metal cage.

The disgraced financier was beneath psychological commentary on the time for a suicide try simply days earlier that left his neck bruised and scraped. Yet, even after a 31-hour stint on suicide watch, Epstein insisted he wasn’t suicidal, telling a jail psychologist he had a “wonderful life” and “would be crazy” to finish it.

On Aug. 10, 2019, Epstein was useless.

Nearly 4 years later, the AP has obtained greater than 4,000 pages of paperwork associated to Epstein’s demise from the federal Bureau of Prisons beneath the Freedom of Information Act. They embrace a detailed psychological reconstruction of the occasions resulting in Epstein’s suicide, in addition to his well being historical past, inner company studies, emails, memos and different information.

Taken collectively, the paperwork the AP obtained Thursday present essentially the most full accounting thus far of Epstein’s detention and demise, and its chaotic aftermath. The information assist to dispel the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s suicide, underscoring how basic failings on the Bureau of Prisons — together with extreme staffing shortages and workers chopping corners — contributed to Epstein’s demise.

They shed new gentle on the federal jail company’s muddled response after Epstein was discovered unresponsive in his cell on the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.

In one e-mail, a prosecutor concerned in Epstein’s prison case complained a few lack of understanding from the Bureau of Prisons within the crucial hours after his demise, writing that it was “frankly unbelievable” that the company was issuing public press releases “earlier than telling us fundamental info in order that we are able to relay it to his attorneys who can relay it to his household.”

In one other e-mail, a high-ranking Bureau of Prisons official made a spurious suggestion to the company’s director that news reporters will need to have been paying jail workers for details about Epstein’s demise as a result of they have been reporting particulars of the company’s failings — impugning the ethics of journalists and the company’s personal staff.

The paperwork additionally present a recent window into Epstein’s habits throughout his 36 days in jail, together with his beforehand unreported try to attach by mail with one other high-profile pedophile: Larry Nassar, the U.S. gymnastics crew physician convicted of sexually abusing scores of athletes.

Epstein’s letter to Nassar was discovered returned to sender within the jail’s mail room weeks after Epstein’s demise. “It appeared he mailed it out and it was returned back to him,” the investigator who found the letter told a prison official by email. “I am not sure if I should open it or should we hand it over to anyone?”

The letter itself was not included among the many paperwork turned over to the AP.

The night time earlier than Epstein’s demise, he excused himself from a gathering together with his legal professionals to make a phone name to his household. According to a memo from a unit supervisor, Epstein advised a jail worker that he was calling his mom, who’d been useless for 15 years at that time.

Epstein’s demise put elevated scrutiny on the Bureau of Prisons and led the company to shut the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2021. It spurred an AP investigation that has uncovered deep, beforehand unreported issues inside the company, the Justice Department’s largest with greater than 30,000 workers, 158,000 inmates and an $8 billion annual price range.

An inner memo, undated however despatched after Epstein’s demise, attributed issues on the jail to “seriously reduced staffing levels, improper or lack of training, and follow up and oversight.” The memo additionally detailed steps the Bureau of Prisons has taken to treatment lapses Epstein’s suicide uncovered, together with requiring supervisors to evaluate surveillance video to make sure officers made required cell checks.

Epstein’s lawyer, Martin Weinberg, mentioned individuals detained on 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 mentioned Thursday in a cellphone interview.

The staff tasked with guarding Epstein the night time he killed himself, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, have been charged with mendacity on jail information to make it appear as if they’d made their required checks earlier than Epstein was discovered lifeless. Epstein’s cellmate didn’t return after a court docket listening to the day earlier than, and jail officers didn’t pair one other prisoner with him, leaving him alone.

Prosecutors alleged they have been sitting at their desks simply 15 ft (4.6 meters) from Epstein’s cell, shopped on-line for furnishings and bikes, and walked across the unit’s widespread space as a substitute of constructing required rounds each half-hour.

During one two-hour interval, each appeared to have been asleep, in response to their indictment. Noel and Thomas admitted to falsifying the log entries however prevented jail time beneath a take care of federal prosecutors. Copies of a few of these logs have been included among the many paperwork launched Thursday, with the guards’ signatures redacted.

Another investigation, by the Justice Department’s inspector normal, remains to be ongoing.

Epstein arrived on the Metropolitan Correctional Center on July 6, 2019. He spent 22 hours within the jail’s normal inhabitants earlier than officers moved him to the particular housing unit “due to the significant increase in media coverage and awareness of his notoriety among the inmate population,” in response to the psychological reconstruction of his demise.

Epstein later mentioned he was upset about having to put on an orange jumpsuit offered to inmates within the particular housing unit and complained about being handled like he was a “bad guy” regardless of being nicely behaved behind bars. He requested a brown uniform for his near-daily visits together with his legal professionals.

During an preliminary well being screening, the 66-year-old mentioned that he had 10-plus feminine sexual companions inside the earlier 5 years. Medical information confirmed he was affected by sleep apnea, constipation, hypertension, decrease again ache and prediabetes and had been beforehand handled for chlamydia.

Epstein did make some makes an attempt to adapt to his jailhouse environment, the information present. He signed up for a Kosher meal and advised jail officers, by means of his lawyer, that he needed permission to train outdoors. Two days earlier than he was discovered useless, Epstein purchased $73.85 value of things from the jail commissary, together with an AM/FM radio and headphones. He had $566 left in his account when he died.

Epstein’s outlook worsened when a choose denied him bail on July 18, 2019 — elevating the prospect that he’d stay locked up till trial and, probably longer. If convicted, he confronted as much as 45 years jail. Four days later, Epstein was discovered on the ground of his cell with a strip of bedsheet round his neck.

Epstein survived. His accidents didn’t require going to the hospital. He was positioned on suicide watch and, later, psychiatric commentary. Jail officers famous in logs that they noticed 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 on the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Epstein didn’t have his sleep apnea respiratory equipment he used. Then, the bathroom in his cell began appearing 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 earlier than Epstein ended his life, a federal choose unsealed about 2,000 pages of paperwork in a sexual abuse lawsuit in opposition to him. That improvement, jail officers noticed, additional eroded Epstein’s earlier elevated standing.

That, mixed with an absence of serious interpersonal connections and “the thought of probably spending his life in jail have been doubtless components contributing to Mr. Epstein’s suicide,” officers wrote.

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Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, Sam Metz in Salt Lake City, Jake Offenhartz and David B. Caruso in New York, Russ Bynum in Savanah, Georgia, Gene Johnson in Seattle and Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

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