During the morning of Jeffrey Epstein’s death, there were reportedly shrieks and shouts coming from his jail cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
A CBS report claims that after the billionaire pedophile’s alleged suicide, guards rushed to resuscitate Epstein, screaming “breathe, Epstein, breathe.”
Following guards’ attempts at reviving him, Epstein was brought to a hospital and pronounced dead. His estranged brother Mark Epstein reportedly identified the body.
Officially, Epstein used a bedsheet to hang himself in his cell after being removed from suicide watch for unclear reasons. In response to the billionaire’s untimely death, Attorney General William Barr vowed to “get to the bottom of what happened.”
Barr also commented that there were “serious irregularities at this facility that are deeply concerning and demand a thorough investigation” and that he was “appalled and frankly angry to learn of the MCC’s failure to adequately secure this prisoner.”
Compounding this new information is a recent claim by the Associated Press that one of the people who were guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he died was not a correctional officer.
According to the report, federal prisons routinely face shortages of fully-trained guards and have been known staff under-qualified workers. Still, this raises the question: why would prison managers at the MCC divert resources away from the country’s highest-profile prisoner, one who had recently tried to hang himself?
Epstein was meant to be checked every 30 minutes, but investigators have learned that these checks weren’t performed in the hours leading up to Epstein’s death.
Add to this the questionable circumstances of Epstein’s original alleged suicide attempt — during which he was confined to a cell with Nicholas Tartaglione, a former cop awaiting trial for quadruple homicide and who was caught with a cellphone weeks before Epstein’s arrival — and a conspiratorial web practically weaves itself.
That said, as of right now, there is no hard proof of foul play and no evidence that Epstein’s death was the result of anything other than his own desire to end his life (and some possible negligence on the part of guards in his cell block for failing to monitor him).
Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi is now in private practice. He also serves as a legal analyst on the Law&Crime Network. Rossi shredded prison officials on Monday for their lack of ethics and professional standards.
“I think they gave him the opportunity to take his life by recklessness, deliberate ignorance, willful blindness, and heads have to roll,” Rossi said. “This is disgraceful, not only for the justice system, but for the hundreds of victims.”
[Image via Mugshot.]
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