Epstein was 'suicidal', made to sleep on the floor by guards during final days in jail, claim fellow inmates
In the days leading up to Jeffrey Epstein's controversial death at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10 last year, the disgraced billionaire pedophile was allegedly extorted by prisoners and believed the government was "trying to kill him," according to his former inmates.
Despite murder conspiracy theories circulating widely online in the period following his death, Epstein's death was officially ruled as a suicide by hanging. However, interviews with Epstein's former inmates, obtained by the New York Daily News, suggest that it was widely known that Epstein was suicidal and cellmates warned him not to kill himself in their presence.
Four days after he arrived at the prison after his arrest on July 6, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, he was moved to the Special Housing Unit which separated him from the rest of the inmates. His cellmate at the time was Nick Tartaglione, a former police officer facing the death penalty on charges of killing four men in a botched drug deal. An inmate heard him warning Epstein not to kill himself while he was in the room, saying: "Listen, don't do that s**t in here... do it on your own."
When Epstein first attempted to take his own life by hanging himself using a strip of a bedsheet on July 23, Tartaglione was reportedly the one who alerted prison officers that possibly saved Epstein's life which in turn led the billionaire to declare that he was going to give him $2 million in his will because he was grateful. However, Tartaglione's lawyer said he would be "stunned beyond all imagination" if Epstein made good on his promise and his client was included in the pedophile's will.
Last year, a New York Post report said that Epstein signed his will just two days before he hanged himself in his jail cell — leaving behind a nearly $600 million fortune to a trust. “It’s done that way for privacy reasons,’’ a city estate lawyer told the outlet.
Apart from getting threats and extortion from fellow prisoners, it is reported that Epstein also was allegedly mistreated by guards who made him sleep on the floor. While some of the inmates would slide notes under his door saying: "We're going to kill you, you rapist, you pedophile," others offered him security in exchange for money." When he got there everyone was fighting over who would get him. ... He was getting ripped off left and right, " the inmates shared. They would also trick him into paying him a fee for using contraband cellphones. It was alleged by some of the former cellmates that Epstein ended up paying around $4,000 to inmates for the same while never actually receiving some of the promised cell phones. One prison inmate claimed that Epstein claimed before taking his own life that he was going to kill himself because "the government is trying to kill him anyway."
In a statement, Epstein's lawyer, Reid Weingarten said: "If your information is correct it is horrifying that such conditions are generally tolerated in a federal prison within the shadows of the federal courthouse, the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI. What would be even worse would be if federal law enforcement was specifically aware of the threats and extortions and did nothing to protect Epstein, but rather fought tooth and nail against any bail conditions so as to keep him in those conditions."
These remarks were made by the individuals and organizations, MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and nor does it support these claims being made on the Internet.