Jail officials let Jeffrey Epstein make an

unmonitored call on the night he died

by suicide. He claimed it was to his
mother, but she had been dead for
years.
Jail officials let Jeffrey Epstein make an unmonitored call on the night he died by suicide. He claimed it
was to his mother, but she had been dead for years.
Natalie Musumeci,Azmi Haroun
Updated Wed, June 28, 2023, 4:50 AM GMT+8
 Jeffrey Epstein.Kypros/Getty Images
 Jail officials let Jeffrey Epstein make an unmonitored call on the night he
died by suicide, federal investigators say.
 Epstein told them he was calling his mother, but she had been dead for
years.
 According to media reports, Epstein actually called his girlfriend.
Hours before convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in a
notorious New York City jail cell, staffers allowed him to make an
unmonitored phone call to his "mother" — but his mom had already been
dead at that point for 15 years.
Specifics surrounding Epstein's August 9, 2019 evening phone call were
detailed in a lengthy report released on Tuesday by a Justice Department
watchdog.
The scathing report from the Office of the Inspector General says that a
unit manager at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center let Epstein
make the phone call after he asked to call his mother, who actually died in
2004.
The staffer told investigators that he put Epstein in the shower area to
make the call "because that location ensured Epstein would not be able to
pull the phone cord into his cell and use it to harm himself."
The call violated prison policy, investigators said.
The OIG investigation found that Epstein, in fact, spoke to someone
identified only in the report as "Individual 1."
That person declined to be interviewed by the feds, but the person's lawyer
told the US Attorney's Office that during the call "Epstein told Individual 1
that the press had gotten crazy, and they discussed personal things such
as books, music, and hygiene while incarcerated."
According to media reports, Epstein called his girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak.
Investigators later spoke with a Northeast Regional Director, who said the
call should have been made on speakerphone with a jail staff member
listening in.
The director, who isn't named, said the secret phone conversation was
extremely concerning, according to investigators.
"[W]e don't know what happened on that phone call," the director told
investigators. "It could have potentially led to [Epstein's death], but we don't
— we will never know."
Epstein died by suicide on August 10, 2019, while he was awaiting trial on
sex trafficking charges.
The OIG report provides new details surrounding Epstein's last days,
namely the negligence that permeated Manhattan's Metropolitan
Correctional Center prior to his death.
Investigators said that the financier had made a prior suicide attempt weeks
before his death, but that inadequate measures were taken by jail officials
to monitor and prevent his eventual suicide.
The report found no evidence of foul play surrounding Epstein's death, and
noted that most security cameras in his unit were not recording as they
were due for an upgrade. Workers and inmates housed across from
Epstein's cell shared testimony with investigators, who found that one
worker clocked in for 24 hours around the time of Epstein's death, amid
staffing shortages in the facility.
Other guards botched their logs and overlooked that Epstein had secured
surplus linen in his cell on the night of August 9, 2019, the report added.
The financier was not assigned a new roommate on the night before his
death, when he ultimately killed himself using the extra bed sheets,
according to the report.
Read the original article on Insider
View comments

Updated Wed, June 28, 2023, 7:30 AM GMT+8