Two weeks before ending his life, Jeffrey Epstein sat in the corner of his Manhattan jail cell with his hands over his ears, desperate to muffle the sound of a toilet that wouldn’t stop running.
Epstein was agitated and unable to sleep, jail officials observed, in records newly obtained by the Associated Press (AP). He called himself a “coward” and complained he was struggling to adapt to life behind bars following his July 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges – his life of luxury reduced to a concrete and steel cage.
The disgraced financier was under psychological observation at the time for a suicide attempt just days earlier that left his neck bruised and scraped. Yet, even after a 31-hour stint on suicide watch, Epstein insisted he wasn’t suicidal, telling a jail psychologist he had a “wonderful life” and “would be crazy” to end it.
On August 10, 2019, Epstein was dead.
Nearly four years later, the AP has obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents related to Epstein’s death from the Federal Bureau of Prisons under the Freedom of Information Act. They include a detailed psychological reconstruction of the events leading to Epstein’s suicide, as well as his health history, internal agency reports, emails, memos and other records.
Taken together, the documents the AP obtained Thursday provide the most complete accounting to date of Epstein’s detention and death and its chaotic aftermath. The records help to dispel the many conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein’s suicide, underscoring how fundamental failings at the Bureau of Prisons – including severe staffing shortages and employees cutting corners – contributed to Epstein’s death.
They shed new light on the federal prison agency’s muddled response after Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
In one email, a prosecutor involved in Epstein’s criminal case complained about a lack of information from the Bureau of Prisons in the critical hours after his death, writing that it was “frankly unbelievable” that the agency was issuing public press releases “before telling us basic information so that we can relay it to his attorneys who can relay it to his family”.
In another email, a high-ranking Bureau of Prisons official made a spurious suggestion to the agency’s director that news reporters must have been paying jail employees for information about Epstein’s death because they were reporting details of the agency’s failings – impugning the ethics of journalists and the agency’s own workers.
The documents also provide a fresh window into Epstein’s behaviour during his 36 days in jail, including his previously unreported attempt to connect by mail with another high-profile paedophile: Larry Nassar, the US gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing scores of athletes.