Did Jeffrey Epstein Really Kill Himself?

By Rich Lowry

Thursday, September 4, 2025

 

There wasn’t much news in the Ghislaine Maxwell interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently, but we did learn that Maxwell doesn’t think Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.

 

In this, she has lots of company.

 

The Miami Herald reporter who originally brought the Epstein story to light, Julie Brown, who knows more about the case than anyone else, doubts that he killed himself.

 

Jim Acosta had a respectful podcast interview with Epstein’s brother, Mark, who says Jeffrey was murdered.

 

Alan Dershowitz, not going that far, still thinks that prison personnel deliberately sought to make it easier for Epstein to kill himself.

 

A well-known pathologist, Michael Baden, says Epstein’s injuries are seen more often in a homicide than a suicide.

 

CBS News has cast doubt on the value of the jail video recently released by the Department of Justice to try to prove that no one could have entered his cell the night he died.

 

An August Economist/YouGov poll found that 50 percent of Americans think Epstein was murdered, while only 16 percent believe he killed himself. This is a bipartisan conviction — 53 of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans believe that he was killed.

 

Given the number of high-profile people who had dealings with Epstein and presumably had reason to fear what he had to tell authorities, given the mysteries of the case that will probably never be solved (where did Epstein get all his money?), and given the concatenation of odd things that happened in the prison before he showed up dead, it’s understandable that people have doubts that he really committed suicide.

 

“Asking questions” needn’t be only an excuse for spreading conspiracy theories, or airing antisemitic content; it can be a useful exercise in interrogating official stories and conventional wisdom. So, in that spirit, let’s ask questions about Epstein’s death.

 

What’s the Big Picture?

 

The broad-gauge context of the circumstantial evidence is this: If a high-profile inmate tries to commit suicide once, then signs a new last will and testament and is found dead a couple of days later in the cell where he was being held alone, shouldn’t the strong presumption be that he committed suicide?

 

All of the above applies to Jeffrey Epstein. It’s hardly unthinkable that someone in his circumstances would want to kill himself, which is why precautions were supposed to be taken to keep him from being alone with the means to harm himself.

 

(The French modeling agent Jean Luc Brunel, who was implicated in Epstein’s crimes, committed suicide by hanging in a French prison in 2022.)

 

None of these precautions were taken — in fact, best practices were flagrantly flouted. That naturally raises suspicions, but the most credible reason for every failure in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City where Epstein was being held was that the people running and staffing it were lazy, moronic, or both.

 

The mystery about Epstein’s death is a classic case where the answer is either “conspiracy” or “incompetence.” The overwhelming weight of internally consistent and highly credible evidence is that it was incompetence.

 

The Bureau of Prisons is like the DMV for confining people.

 

Judging by how it handled Epstein, if the bureau wanted to murder a famous prisoner, the order would get garbled; or the supervisor would be off that day and forget to tell his underlings; or the officers charged with carrying out the crime would fall asleep or get distracted by looking up news about the New York Knicks on their computers.

 

Epstein’s death, which cheated justice and contributes to a cloud around the entire case that will never dissipate, was the outcome of a conspiracy of dunces.

 

The answer to legitimate questions about the handling of his confinement is always failure — rank failure.

 

The basics are that Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019, and transferred to the correctional center. He was assigned a unit in the so-called SHU — the Special Housing Unit for inmates secured away from the general population and held in their cells 23 hours a day — on July 7. He was found dead in his cell in L Tier (which had eight cells total) on August 10.

 

In what follows, I rely heavily on the Department of Justice Inspector General report, published in 2023. It is exhaustive and unsparing. It makes no excuses for the significant derelictions of duty and broad dysfunction. And it rings true. Any experienced journalist will recognize how none of the stories are too “neat”; they involve contradictions and fuzzy memories but are broadly consistent and reflect how one expects such a highly bureaucratic, institutional setting to operate.

 

Even if you think the current DOJ is engaged in a cover-up of Epstein’s relationships or his supposed intelligence connection, this 2023 IG report and also the 2020 Office of Professional Responsibility report on the mishandling of Epstein’s initial prosecution both show a welcome impulse for accountability regarding these aspects of the case.

 

(A note on usage in what follows: With a couple of exceptions, the IG report refers to people anonymously by their roles and with a numeral if there is more than one, e.g., Corrections Officer-1, or CO-1, and so on.)

 

Why Didn’t the Jail Treat Epstein as a Suicide Risk?

 

It’s not just that Epstein was a suicide risk; he had tried to commit suicide once before, prior to his death.

 

On July 23, officers heard a noise around 1:30 a.m. in the tier where Epstein was being held. They found him on the ground with an orange cloth around his neck attached to the bunkbed ladder. His cellmate, who seemed shaken up, said Epstein had tried to hang himself. Epstein was unresponsive, although breathing, with his back against the bunkbed ladder. An officer began chest compressions.

 

Another officer said she first saw Epstein on the floor in the fetal position in his T-shirt and boxers, breathing heavily. When officers couldn’t get him to stand, they took him to the Health Services Unit on a stretcher. (His cellmate had been removed beforehand.)

 

Epstein was put on suicide watch, which entails being confined in a dedicated room.

 

In a laughable story, Epstein told an officer that his cellmate had tried to kill him after repeatedly extorting him. Epstein maintained that he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to get water and the next thing he knew he woke up snoring on the floor with prison staff there in his cell.

 

Epstein’s cellmate, on the other hand, said he’d been sleeping with headphones on and, awakened with a jolt, he saw Epstein on the floor with a string around his neck. He immediately called for the guard. Another inmate who was within earshot of Epstein’s cell confirmed this account from what he could hear during the incident, adding that Epstein’s cellmate told him in real time as he was being removed from the cell that his roommate had tried to kill himself.

 

Epstein would eventually claim in his conversations with the staff psychologist and other medical staff that he didn’t know how he got a mark around his neck and didn’t want to talk about it. He then told staff that he wanted to be housed with the same cellmate again, who supposedly had tried to extort and murder him!

 

Epstein was absolutely adamant from his initial intake to the end that he had no intention of committing suicide and was upbeat about his future — presumably because he was a sociopathic liar and knew that if he said he wanted to commit suicide, he might be prevented from committing suicide. He even agreed to self-report to psychological staff if he did begin to have any suicidal thoughts.

 

Incredibly enough, the chief psychologist considered the July 23 incident too ambiguous to make a judgment about it one way or the other.

 

(Psychological staff told the IG that if they’d known, which they didn’t, that Epstein had signed a new last will and testament with his lawyers on August 8, it would have been a red flag that likely would have meant keeping him on suicide watch or some form of observation.)

 

Epstein was removed from suicide watch the day after this first attempt, on July 24, although he stayed in the same dedicated cell while under psychological observation until July 30.

 

When he was removed from observation, he was supposed to get an appropriate cellmate. And therein lies another tale.

 

How Was Epstein Left Alone in His Cell?

 

Epstein got assigned a cellmate that the IG report refers to as “Inmate 3.” This inmate said an officer had told him he was going to have a “cool bunkie.” When he saw it was Epstein, the inmate said he told the officer that he’d “jammed [him] up” — meaning created problems for him, because Epstein had tried to commit suicide once and was coming from suicide watch. The officer told him that Epstein was fine, but that Inmate 3 should keep an eye on him.

 

Inmate 3 asked if he was being expected to serve as a “suicide prevention advocate,” or an inmate designated to help in the suicide-watch area. The officer laughed.

 

Inmate 3 told the IG that, when Epstein arrived, with two extra blankets usually not afforded other names, he asked Epstein not to kill himself because he didn’t want any trouble and might go home soon. Epstein said not to worry.

 

It was Inmate 3’s transfer out of the facility that set off the chain the events that left Epstein alone in his cell on the night of August 9 and the morning of August 10.

 

On the morning of August 8, the marshals service alerted the jail personnel via email that it was removing Inmate 3 and then it sent another notice in the afternoon. The afternoon email included the acronym, WAB, or “with all belongings,” meaning that Inmate 3 wouldn’t be coming back. Still, numerous staffers said afterward that they didn’t realize that Inmate 3 was leaving for another facility.

 

Supervisors and staff said they either knew Epstein needed a cellmate, but didn’t know that Inmate 3 had left, or they simply didn’t know that he needed a cellmate at all. Their accounts are contradictory and self-serving, although, no doubt, genuinely reflect the thumbless incompetence that characterized the MCC.

 

It may be that Epstein’s habit of meeting with his attorneys all day long in the attorney conference room and not returning to his cell until the evening made it easier for nearly everyone to neglect the cellmate issue.

 

The so-called Day Watch SHU Officer in Charge maintains that when his shift was ending at 2 p.m. on August 9, he told multiple people that Inmate 3 had left, possibly not to return, and Epstein needed a new cellmate. He said he informed — please, excuse the awkward names here — the Evening Day Watch SHU Officer in Charge, Senior Officer Specialist 5, and Corrections Officer-2

 

The Evening Watch SHU Officer in Charge, though, said he didn’t recall any such conversation (“I don’t necessarily want to call anyone a liar [] per se, but . . .”); Senior Specialist 5 said that when he got there, Inmate 3 had left and Epstein was meeting with his attorneys and no one told him Epstein needed a new cellmate; CO-2 said the same.

 

For his part, the Evening Watch SHU Officer in Charge said when he realized that Epstein didn’t have a cellmate after he returned from the meeting with his attorneys and from making a telephone call (which should have been monitored, but wasn’t), he talked to a corrections officer named Tova Noel and the so-called Material Handler about getting him one.

 

But Noel and the Material Handler, who gave Epstein his food after he was returned to his cell alone, said they didn’t know he needed a cellmate.

 

The Evening Watch SHU Officer in Charge also said he called someone he couldn’t remember to notify him that Epstein didn’t have a cellmate. The IG couldn’t identify any recipient of any such call, or anyone who witnessed the Evening Watch SHU Officer in Charge making it.

 

So, through a hellacious comedy of errors, Epstein was placed in his cell alone that night. At least staff was required to check on him regularly during the night, correct?

 

Why Did No One Check on Epstein?

 

The officers were supposed to conduct inmate counts at 12 a.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m., 4 p.m., and 10 p.m. And also conduct rounds, on average, every 30 minutes. The IG found that no counts were conducted from 4 p.m. until Epstein was discovered dead at 6:30 a.m., and no one did any rounds after about 10:40 p.m.

 

Instead, the count slips and round sheets were simply falsified. The 4 p.m. count was erroneous because no actual count was conducted, and the same error was made on the 10 p.m. count. It was fixed at 12 a.m., but only because someone realized how many inmates there were supposed to be, not because there was an actual count.

 

It was the duty of Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, a material handler, to conduct the counts at 12 a.m., 3 a.m., and 5 a.m.. They didn’t do them and didn’t conduct rounds, either.

 

This despite a sign in the officer’s area saying, “MANADATORY [sic] ROUNDS MUST BE CONDUCTED EVERY 30 MINUTES ON EPSTEIN # 76318-054 AS PER GOD!!!!”

 

Instead, they fabricated the count slips. The 12 a.m. slip said 73 inmates, and the two subsequent counts said 72. Noel doesn’t know why.

 

According to the IG report,

 

Thomas acknowledged that neither he nor Noel conducted any rounds or counts in the SHU during their shift between approximately 12 a.m. and approximately 6:30 a.m. Thomas said the August 10, 2019 round sheets were signed, but the rounds were not conducted because he was tired that day. Thomas recalled “dozing off from here and there” during his shift, but he did not know if Noel slept.

 

Video footage shows them sitting very still and apparently sleeping between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Meanwhile, they used the computer on and off during the night — Noel to search for furniture sales and look up an article about Epstein, Thomas to search for motorcycle sales and sports news.

 

Epstein’s cell was 15 feet away from their station and the cell door was visible from the station, and there was no way for the inmates to leave their cells or get into Epstein’s. In the normal course of things, anyone entering the SHU would have had to be let in by Noel or Thomas, and the person would’ve walked right by the officer’s station if he or she was going to the L Tier.

 

Noel denies that she slept, saying she was sitting still while she was on the computer. Regardless, it’s hard to believe the two would have been so soundly asleep that they would not have heard anyone open and close locked doors, walk by them, kill an inmate, and then leave, walking right past them again.

 

Moreover, nothing about these two suggests that they were criminal masterminds, and no one with anyone sense would have relied on them to be part of a risky criminal conspiracy.

 

When the officers discovered Epstein, they acted like careless public workers who had been caught neglecting their duties.

 

After the breakfast trays arrived around 6 a.m. on August 10, Noel and Thomas went to the L Tier at about 6:30 a.m. to deliver breakfast. When Thomas couldn’t get Epstein to respond — “Come to the door, come to the door” — he unlocked the door. He found Epstein hanging from the top bunk with an orange string around his neck (as in his earlier suicide attempt) barely suspended above the floor.

 

Noel recalled Thomas, who undertook chest compressions, saying, “Breathe Epstein breathe,” and, “We are going to be in so much trouble.” When a lieutenant arrived and asked Noel what happened, Thomas said, “Oh, it’s not her fault. We f***ed up.”

 

The stories of Noel and Thomas and the three other inmate in cells in proximity to Epstein’s are entirely consistent.

 

Inmate 5 in the cell directly across from Epstein’s said he didn’t see or hear anyone go into Epstein’s cell during the night. He said when Epstein was discovered in the morning, he saw Thomas giving him chest compressions and heard him say, “F***.” He also saw a correctional officer leave the cell with a sheet that had a loop and a knot.

 

Inmate 6, also in a cell across from Epstein, reported the same thing. He didn’t hear anything during the night and saw an officer leaving the cell in the morning with a noose.

 

Inmate 7, in a cell a little farther down, reported broadly the same thing.

 

(Noel and Thomas, by the way, were charged with making false records and defrauding the United States in 2019, in a case that the correction officers’ union maintained was unprecedented. Both were given a deferred prosecution agreement, and the charges were dropped in 2021.)

 

Not every aspect of this story could have been corroborated with the cameras around the facility, but they would have told us a lot — if they had been fully functioning.

 

Why Didn’t the Cameras Work?

 

The correctional center had about 150 video cameras overall. There were eleven in the SHU and one at the end of Epstein’s tier that showed all movements in and out of the cells and in the hallway of the tier. The cameras transmitted live video, and the video was also recorded.

 

As it turned out, the cameras in the SHU were operating in real time, but nothing was being recorded from many of them. The exception was a camera that showed the common area of the SHU, including the officers’ station, and part of the stairway leading to Epstein’s tier.

 

This recording confirms much of the eyewitness accounts of that night, but it has been oversold by the Trump DOJ officials and isn’t dispositive. It would have been possible, in theory, for someone to enter the door to the SHU, which isn’t shown on the video, and get up the stairs without being seen on the video, since the camera captured only one side of the stairs.

 

Why did the cameras fail? The system was, not surprisingly, antiquated and not properly maintained. The analog cameras recorded on a DVR system on hard drives. These frequently had technical problems, with the DVR hard drives a recurring trouble spot.

 

These technical issues weren’t limited to the MCC but are common throughout the prison system.

 

The warden at the MCC had applied for funding to replace the entire video system in September 2018, and contracts were awarded for equipment and wiring related to the upgrade.

 

But the project fell into a morass, held up by the fact that so much other maintenance work needed to be done at the MCC and also by a shortage of technologically proficient staff, who, even if available, were often pulled into different duties.

 

The upgrade was still languishing on August 10.

 

The disks failed in half of the system on July 29, which no one realized until August 8 when prison officials tried to look back through recorded videos (regarding a matter having nothing to do with Epstein). No one was checking on a regular basis to make sure the recording system was working.

 

The process of not getting the recording issue fixed in a timely manner is very reminiscent of how prison staff managed to return Epstein to his cell alone — laziness, poor communication, excuse-making, and a general cultural of incompetence all played a role.

 

At one point, in a very telling and typical incident, the so-called Electronics Technician couldn’t get access to the DVR room because no one had a key and the staffer who had one refused to help because his shift was about to end.

 

Amazingly enough, this Electronics Technician got to the facility at around 6 a.m. on August 10 and before he could actually begin work on the DVR system heard the alarm after Epstein’s body was found.

 

The inmates, as the IG report notes, all knew there was a camera in the hallway of Epstein’s tier. But they didn’t know it wasn’t recording. So, even if one of them had wanted to kill Epstein, and even if this inmate had been able to get out of his cell and into Epstein’s, he would have had to assume that his movements were being recorded by the camera, leading to an open-and-shut murder case against him.

 

After Epstein’s death, the camera upgrade understandably got more urgency. The planned new recording system was installed rapidly, with new cameras and the new wiring coming next. According to one technician, though, the wiring portion of the project still hadn’t been completed when the MCC closed altogether in August 2021.

 

Why Did They Give Epstein So Many Linens?

 

Anyone who has seen the photos of Epstein’s cell afterward will wonder why there was so much potential material for a noose left there. Linens had been ripped into strips and were tied to a small desk and the bunk bed.

 

Each inmate was supposed to have two sheets and a blanket (and in the winter, an extra blanket). There was much more than that in Epstein’s cell.

 

One staffer interviewed by the IG believes that Inmate 3’s material was never removed from the cell, when it should have been taken out as soon as it became clear he wasn’t coming back.

 

Additionally, according to Inmate 3, Epstein intimidated the correctional officers by telling them he was giving their names to his lawyer if they didn’t heed his requests and, as a result, they were on “eggshells” around him and let him have additional stuff. Inmate 3 said Epstein had two extra blankets and two pens, which other inmates weren’t allowed.

 

A piece of ripped sheet served as a makeshift clothesline in the cell. Inmate 3 said he woke up one night to find Epstein fiddling with it, and he took it from Epstein and flushed it down the toilet (perhaps, the IG report implies, because he was worried about him potentially attempting suicide again).

 

What About the Autopsy?

 

The medical examiner who conducted Epstein’s autopsy initially categorized the manner of death as “pending,” before New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson ruled it a suicide. This sequence has aroused suspicions, as well as the nature of Epstein’s injuries.

 

The New York City medical examiner is adamant that it was a suicide and that the bone fractures, hemorrhages on his face, and discoloration of his skin are consistent with hanging rather than strangulation.

 

Also, the shape of the ligature furrow around his neck indicates a hanging, and the breadth of the furrow suggests that the cloth noose killed him rather than the electric cord of the CPAP machine that Epstein was allowed to have in his cell.

 

Michael Baden, who was hired by Epstein’s brother to examine the case, has gotten attention calling into question the finding of suicide. He says that he’s never seen the three fractures present in Epstein’s case — fractures of the left and right thyroid cartilage and a fracture of the left hyoid bone — in a suicidal hanging. Other pathologists, though, say a suicide can produce those injuries, in particular in someone who is older.

 

Also, this wasn’t a typical hanging. Epstein was in an unusual position, hanging in a seated position just an inch or more above the ground. (We have no photograph to determine his position precisely — as noted, Thomas ripped down the noose and tried to revive Epstein immediately upon discovering him.)

 

Even Baden admits that Epstein had all he needed in the cell to kill himself in a matter of minutes, and says it’s “very easy” to commit suicide in prisons.

 

Finally, there are no signs of struggle that would almost always be evident in a homicide — Epstein had no bruised knuckles, no broken fingernails, and nothing under his fingernails.

 

What’s the Upshot?

 

Even if you accept that there are anomalies in Epstein’s injuries (and that’s a matter of debate), the weight of all the other circumstantial evidence pointing to suicide requires something dispositive to call the conclusion that he killed himself into serious doubt.

 

That someone snuck into Epstein’s cell, without anyone seeing or hearing him, and murdered Epstein by apparent hanging with no struggle or sounds is too much to believe. The same is true of a scenario where a murderer paid off, or otherwise gained the cooperation of, what would presumably be dozens of people, including people with an incentive to talk (various inmates, and Noel and Thomas when they were charged with crimes).

 

Regarding suicide, though, Epstein had a pattern of conduct, given his prior attempt; he had a motive, since it was likely he’d spend the rest of his life behind bars; and he had the means in his cell and ample opportunity in the early morning hours of August 10.

 

The FBI determined there was no criminality regarding his death. Even if you believe that the Deep State perhaps twisted this investigation to its purposes, presumably Kash Patel would want to reopen the investigation if he thought there was cause to — instead, he says he’s certain Epstein killed himself.

 

None of this matters, though. There will always be doubts. It would help if we had the recordings from the MCC video cameras and a photo of Epstein’s position upon his death. But even that, in a case involving someone who engaged in hideous wrongdoing and knew so many rich and famous people, wouldn’t put the suspicions to rest.

 

The cascade of failures in the prison alone is hard for many observers to credit — Baden has mentioned them repeatedly as a reason to doubt the official story that Epstein killed himself. But it was these failures that made it possible for Epstein to kill himself on that night.

 

The Trump officials now running the DOJ have sought to quell the doubts about Epstein’s death, but there is no substituting now for the one thing that the government could have done to avoid all the questions in the first place — namely, keep Epstein alive.