Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself from prison bunk bed by wrapping bedsheet around neck and kneeling: Report
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, 66, who was being held at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) following his arrest on federal charges for sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York last month was found dead in his cell on August 10.
Epstein was found 'unresponsive' in his cell in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) at around 6:30 am and was rushed to the infirmary inside the jail after staffers failed to revive him.
He was then transported to New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
New York's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Simpson confirmed that an autopsy was carried out on the multimillionaire financier on August 11, but said that they would need more information before confirming an exact cause of death.
The circumstances surrounding his death, and how he managed to kill himself, remain a matter of speculation.
The New York Post, however, reported that the 66-year-old was found hanging with a bedsheet wrapped around his neck. The other end of the sheet was secured to the top of a bunk bed.
Epstein, who stands 6 feet tall, is thought to have killed himself by kneeling toward the floor and strangling himself with the makeshift noose.
However, there is no video of the moment he died at the jail as the cameras in the MCC only film the doors to each cell to show anyone who enters or exits, and not what's happening inside.
Questions continue to shroud Epstein's death, especially considering he had previously been placed on suicide watch after he was found unconscious in his cell with injuries to his neck just two weeks before his death.
He was removed from suicide watch just six days later and allowed to return to his cell after he was cleared by psychologists with the Bureau of Prisons, a move that would prove to be a fatal error.
Epstein is said to have survived his first suicide attempt because of the intervention of his cellmate, former cop Nicholas Tartaglione, who seemingly alerted the guards to the situation.
He would likely have survived the second attempt as well if he had a cellmate.
However, the inmate scheduled to move in with him was mysteriously transferred on Friday, hours before he killed himself.
It has also been alleged that two corrections officers who had been mandated to check on him every 30 minutes had not checked on him for several hours because they were working extreme overtime shifts to make up for staffing shortages.
Lewis Kasman, a former mobster and top associate of John Gotti Sr., who used to regularly visit Gotti Sr. at the MCC in the '90s, said he believed that Epstein had some help because the MCC "for years had issues of corruption."
"If he killed himself someone had to have helped him," he said. "There are cameras going 24/7 and they’re watching 24/7. Someone had to give [Epstein] the equipment to kill himself and he had to pay for it dearly."
Another source similarly told the Post, "There’s no way that man could have killed himself. I’ve done too much time in those units. It’s an impossibility."
"You have sheets, but they’re paper level, not strong enough," the source continued. "Could he have done it from the bed? No sir. There’s a steel frame, but you can’t move it. There’s no light fixture. There’s no bars. They don’t give you enough in there that could successfully create an instrument of death."
Attorney General William Barr, who Kasman alleged had visited the MCC two weeks before Epstein's death, said he was "appalled" by the multimillionaire's suicide and that it "raises serious questions that must be answered."
Barr said that, in addition to the FBI's investigation, he had consulted with the Justice Department's inspector general, who also would be opening an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Epstein's death.