Epstein

by Dylan Howard

  “For someone this high profile, with these allegations and this many victims, who has had a suicide attempt in the last few weeks, you can take absolutely no chances,” Lindsay explained. “You leave him on suicide watch until he’s out of there.”

  For Epstein, that would be a while. During a brief hearing on July 31, the FBI confirmed that they were actively analyzing the evidence taken from Epstein’s Manhattan residence and needed time to thoroughly explore all the material. Judge Berman set Epstein’s trial date for June 2020.

  Physically, Epstein showed up for the hearing that day; but mentally, the criminal mastermind seemed to be elsewhere. The defendant’s notorious smirking lips were stuck in neutral position. He wore thin-framed glasses and a dark blue prison uniform. His elbows rested on the courtroom table and his hands remained locked as if involuntarily begging. He said nothing, he did nothing, and he showed no reaction to the proceedings. For those present, it was a jarring transformation from the super-villain they’d seen before.

  “When I saw him come in, he looked out of it,” victims’ attorney Gloria Allred told reporter Jen Heger about that day in court. “He looked tired, a little bit confused. That’s not a surprise given conditions of jail, which are very different than the home of a billionaire.”

  As FBI agents described the blackmail treasure trove they’d found in Epstein’s New York home and on Little St. James, perhaps Epstein was conducting a mental tour of his other properties and hideouts, inventorying what investigators would find at each location—or rather, what he hoped they wouldn’t find.

  With lots of powerful friends, and even more powerful enemies, Epstein had to wonder if someone would find it all and turn it in to guarantee their freedom. If the situation were reversed, he had to know he would.

  Less than thirty minutes after he arrived in the courtroom, Epstein was taken back through the passenger tunnel and locked in his cage.

  Summoning a desperate resolve, however, the evil sex villain decided that he still had one more fight in him.

  On August 1, Epstein was granted a meeting with his longtime friend David Schoen, an Atlanta-based attorney.

  “Mr. Epstein had asked me to take over his defense and I agreed,” Schoen told reporter Andy Tillett, “but subject to meeting with his longtime lawyers to see if they would accept me in that role, or if I would have to put together my own team.”

  When Epstein and Schoen finished their lengthy meeting, they agreed to meet again the following week.

  Schoen told Tillett: “We never had that meeting.”

  Schoen says Epstein was in good spirits, but several witnesses contend that over the next few days, Epstein lost his grip. They described him as “disheveled” and reported that he was “sleeping on the floor . . . like a pig in a sty.”

  Had he lost it, or was that all another act? Or was he worried about something else entirely?

  Whether he knew it or not, Epstein had only forty-eight hours to live.

  On August 8, he met with his attorneys to update his last will and testament. Epstein’s legal declaration protected his fortune in a sealed trust that could only be distributed to a named Trustee (or Trustees). That meant that only authorized people were allowed to touch what was left of his estate—still a healthy $500 million or more. Unless his victims were named as Trustees, they wouldn’t be able to recover any court settlements. It was the perfect plan.

  The executors would be his longtime lawyers, Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn. Each would receive $250,000 for their efforts. Oddly, Epstein named biotech entrepreneur and Harvard immunologist Boris Nikolic as a backup. Nikolic claims he has no idea why Epstein would have named him in the document.

  However, the men once moved in similar circles. Nikolic was chief scientific adviser to Epstein friend Bill Gates, who had close ties to Epstein for many years.

  Gates has insisted, “I didn’t have any business relationship or close personal friendship with him,” but a recently uncovered photograph shows Gates with Nikolic inside Epstein’s NYC mansion, alongside former Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard, Larry Summers. The New York Times found that that visit was one of several during 2011, with at least one continuing “late into the night.” The paper reported that Gates emailed colleagues at the time: “His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me.” (A rep claimed his email referred to Epstein’s interior design.)

  After his first visit to Epstein’s home, on January 31, 2011, Gates reportedly emailed colleagues: “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.”

  That woman was reportedly former Ms. Sweden Eva Andersson-Dubin, and her fifteen-year-old daughter. Epstein appeared to have had an affinity for the girl. At least two times in documents obtained from his home, the handwritten phrase “Eva’s little girl on the boat,” appears, totally without any other context.

  The next month, Gates and Epstein were spotted chatting in Long Beach at the TED conference. They were back in New York by May, when Gates again visited Epstein’s home and bragged about it over email.

  Also at the May meeting was James Staley, a high-ranking JP Morgan official. JP Morgan and Gates’s foundation were then in talks to create the Global Health Investment Fund, which would support the development of health-related technologies around the world. Epstein was desperate to get involved, reportedly insisting to potential partners that his status as a registered sex offender should not affect the potential deal: According to the New York Times, he said at one gathering that his crimes had been “no worse than stealing a bagel.”

  That deal never materialized, but Epstein and Gates saw each other several times in New York and Palm Beach as late as 2014. They did not see each other in the years leading up to Epstein’s most recent arrest.

  Did Gates’s adviser stay in touch? He insists he was “shocked” to find himself named as a backup executor for Epstein’s estate. No matter the logic behind that choice, Epstein’s decision to put his assets in a trust would lock the money in a special account. Its origins would be untraceable, and his agents could utilize the funds for his defense, comfort, or even bribes. Epstein was taking positive action, putting players and pieces in motion.

  The very next day, on August 9, Epstein was blindsided by a new threat: a court had voted 2-to-1 to unseal all files relating to Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s 2017 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine. The voluminous document dump was fast and furious, exposing the shocking extent of Epstein’s perversions and his network of rich, famous, and powerful sexual predator pals. Everyone from Prince Andrew to the Palm Beach police were about to get taken down.

  Reporters scrambled to comb through the documents, finding new allegations and new names, such as former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, billionaire Glenn Dubin, and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. Roberts claimed Epstein forced her to have sex with all those men—a claim they all denied. The unsealing seemed like a shot across the bow to Epstein and his coconspirators. It was about to get ugly. Most of all, for Epstein.

  In his cell that evening, as Epstein pondered what horrors were to come, his cellmate was not there. For some reason, Tartaglione had been moved to another unit, and Epstein had not been assigned another. Both of those developments were highly unusual, and the reason for those decisions is unclear. No matter why, Epstein was alone—and no one was watching.

  During the overnight shift, MCC had eighteen guards holding down the entire facility. Built for just 474 souls, the facility was known in recent years to be stuffed with up to eight hundred. As a result, many of the workers had to put in overtime. That night, the 9-South guards tasked with watching Epstein were on that list. One had logged eighty hours that week working “doubles.” The other was a former correctional officer who volunteered to pick up shifts at the understaffed institution.

  Although both men were low-level staff members, they had to have known that Epstein was
the most vital to prosecutors. In addition, they could not have been ignorant of the fact that Epstein had almost died just days ago. Unfortunately, both coincidentally decided that something else was more important.

  For three hours beginning at 3:30 a.m., the 9-South guards failed to do six mandatory visual checks on Epstein. These rounds were to occur every thirty minutes. Not one happened. According to Bureau of Prisons officials, the two guards happened to fall asleep at their posts, at the exact same time and for the exact same duration.

  At approximately 6:20 a.m., the guards awoke and began their breakfast rounds. When they looked in on Epstein at 6:25, they saw the full weight of his body suspended by a bedsheet that was twisted around his doughy throat.

  The guards hurriedly entered the cell. One of them severed the knotted sheet that connected the inmate to the top bunk while the other guard triggered an alarm.

  They let Epstein drop like an anchor.

  The sex felon’s cold, rigid body had turned a chilling blue and he was unmistakably lifeless. He had been dead for a while.

  Radios throughout the prison blasted, “Body alarm on South. Body alarm on South.”

  At 6:33 a.m., EMS took control of the situation and administered CPR. They knew immediately, however, that there was no bringing him back.

  Nevertheless, Jeffrey Edward Epstein was taken to New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:36 a.m.

  Even though Epstein was found hanged, his cause of death was listed as: “Pending Further Study.”

  As his body was being wheeled to the medical examiner, a New York Post street photographer managed to snap one last scandalous photo of the monster.

  But even that would not be enough to convince the world that Epstein was dead.

  A verdict of suicide was not sufficient to answer the many lingering questions.

  Why was Epstein on suicide watch one week—and remarkably, off of it the next?

  Why, on the night of Epstein’s death, was his cellmate gone?

  Why would a suicidal man ever have been left alone?

  Why was the camera outside Epstein’s cell “broken”?

  Why did the guards fall asleep at exactly the same time, and then later falsify their logs?

  When the autopsy report was finalized, there were even more questions.

  New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson completed her examination in roughly twenty-four hours, but then announced she was not ready to release her findings.

  “The ME’s (Medical Examiner’s) determination is pending further information at this time,” she said in a public statement. “My office defers to the involved law enforcement agencies regarding other investigations around this death.”

  The examiner also added this unusual tidbit: “At the request of those representing the decedent (Epstein), and with the awareness of the federal prosecutor, I allowed a private pathologist (Dr. Michael Baden) to observe the autopsy examination.”

  Epstein’s lawyers had asked Dr. Baden to confirm their client’s cause of death. The infamous former New York chief medical examiner had also been an expert witness for O. J. Simpson during the football legend’s high-stakes murder trial in 1995, and was chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ Forensic Pathology Panel that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

  The question on many minds was this: Why would Dr. Sampson need an observer?

  Did the dead man’s representatives fear she would tamper with the findings for some unarticulated reason?

  Or did the estate hope to have a hand in shaping those findings for some purpose of their own?

  After carefully reviewing “all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings,” Dr. Sampson declared on August 16 that Jeffrey Epstein had, in fact, hanged himself.

  “In all forensic investigations, all information must be synthesized to determine the cause and manner of death,” she stated. “Everything must be consistent; no single finding can be evaluated in a vacuum.”

  The official story was that Epstein had secured one end of his bedsheet around his neck. It would have been sturdy enough to do so, since he had been moved off suicide watch, with its paper sheets. Then, the ME claimed, he tied the other end to the top bunk in cell #123, and leaned forward.

  In the process, sources told the Washington Post, Epstein broke several bones in his neck, including his hyoid, a small U-shaped bone above the Adam’s apple that helps keep your throat open.

  That particular detail was explosive. Although a broken hyoid does occur in 27 percent of suicides by hanging, it’s more often seen in cases where there is great force applied during the event, such as someone jumping from a height. That is, a hanging unlike Epstein’s supposed lean into death.

  Hyoid breaks are much more common in other incidents; they occur in 50 percent of all murders by strangulation.

  Questions swirled even faster with that revelation. Adding tension to the doubt and fear in the air, Epstein’s own family was not given a copy of the autopsy report, leaving them unable to confirm or rule out the Post’s bombshell reporting.

  “We are not satisfied with the conclusions of the medical examiner,” Epstein’s attorneys said in a statement. “We will have a more complete response in the coming days.”

  Even with so much at stake, the world and even Epstein’s family was forced to wait. Nearly two weeks after the medical examiner released the findings of the report, we learned from a source close to Epstein’s legal team that his family had not been given a copy of the official report.

  “Family lawyers were calling the NYC Medical Examiner daily,” the insider told investigator Jen Heger. “It is extremely unusual to have issued a death certificate, but not to have given a copy of the autopsy report to the family.”

  “The family is entitled to a copy per New York law before it’s made public,” the source added. “Clearly that did not happen in this case.”

  “The Medical Examiner just kept putting off the lawyers, saying, ‘It’s not ready yet,’ but the death certificate couldn’t have been issued without a completed autopsy report. It was clear they were stalling.”

  In the meantime, in response to growing public demand, United States Attorney General William Barr took action. Barr—the son of Epstein’s old Dalton pal—reassigned MCC Warden Lamine N’Diaye and the acting head of the US Bureau of Prisons, Hugh Hurwitz.

  The MCC put the two negligent 9-South guards—whose names have been kept confidential—on administrative leave. Criminal investigators subpoenaed over a dozen MCC employees, as the Department of Justice vowed to uncover the truth.

  “We will get to the bottom of what happened, and there will be accountability,” an angry and embarrassed Barr told the public. “Let me assure you that this case will continue on against anyone who was complicit with Epstein.”

  In the months to come, however, the news of the DOJ investigation was minimal. The public was left to decide on their own what really happened inside the Metropolitan Corrections Center that fateful night.

  In the course of this investigation, we spoke to dozens of people. When asked, every person close to the case believed at the time of this writing that his death was NOT a suicide.

  EPSTEIN VICTIMS’ ATTORNEY GLORIA ALLRED: “At this point, I don’t feel there are enough facts to say definitively that it was suicide. Even though the medical examiner for the city of New York, who did the autopsy, has ruled that the cause of death was suicide, I’m not prepared to say without knowing all the facts and that we can 100 percent conclude that it is suicide.

  “Again, there are more questions than answers, and I’m not going to engage in a conspiracy theory, but I would like to know what all the facts are. Now in court, I did agree with the defense that their needs to be more of an investigation.

  “Even if we thought it was an attempted suicide attempt [the first time], that should have been a red flag to protect him. So, there are more ques
tions than answers at this point.

  “Why the three fractures in his neck consistent with suicide, but also consistent with strangulation?

  “Why were the guards not checking every thirty minutes?

  “Why did he not have a cellmate at that time?

  “Were the guards’ records where they were supposedly monitoring him tampered with and changed?

  “Why would the guards, some of them, claim the Fifth and not provide interviews to the investigators?

  “This is a major, major problem.

  EPSTEIN VICTIMS’ ATTORNEY LISA BLOOM: “I’m not ready to conclude that it was suicide. The fact that he had just changed his will, I think a couple days before, is significant to me that does point toward suicide. But . . . I’m going to take it at face value, say, “He sure wasn’t acting like somebody who was going to kill himself!” . . .

  “The injuries to his neck could have been from suicide. It also could have been from somebody strangling him. I know from the many, many murder cases that I used to cover on Court TV where I for eight years watched murder cases, a medical examiner saying it’s suicide, it’s really an opinion. And there are probably also medical examiners who would say, “Well it’s not suicide.”

  “So I think there should be at least a second or a third opinion by an objective medical examiner. I think we should get to the bottom of it and there should be a full investigation.

  EPSTEIN VICTIMS’ ATTORNEY SPENCER KUVIN: “When Mr. Epstein was reported to be deceased, my clients, obviously had some hesitation as to whether or not it was accurate or whether or not this was another disappearing act by Mr. Epstein, some elaborate scheme to be able to get out of all of this. . . .

  “Personally, knowing what I know about the system and about the jail that he was in, there are a number of things that I question. Professionally and speaking with people that have worked inside jails like this, I question, number one, how is it possible that they don’t have video of what occurred? I was contacted even after his supposed death by a guard that worked inside of the MCC that was adamant that every section and square inch of that jail is covered by cameras.