Corrections officers had not checked in on financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for “several” hours before he was found hanging in his cell Saturday, a person familiar with the matter said, just one in a series of missteps in the hours leading up to his death.
Officers should have been checking on Epstein, who was being held in a special housing unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, every 30 minutes, and, under normal circumstances, he also should have had a cellmate, according to the person familiar with the matter and union officials representing facility employees.
But a person who had been assigned to share a cell with Epstein was transferred on Friday, and — for reasons that investigators are still exploring — he did not receive a new cellmate, the person familiar with the matter said Sunday night. That left Epstein, who had previously been placed on suicide watch, alone and unmonitored — at least in the hours before his death — by even those officers assigned to guard him.
The person familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.
The revelations are sure to increase scrutiny of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a high-rise facility in Manhattan where Epstein, 66, was found unresponsive in his cellSaturday while he was awaiting trial on new, federal allegations that he sexually abused dozens of young girls in the early 2000s. After being found, he was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The incident, which authorities had classified initially as an “apparent suicide,” triggered multiple investigations of how such a high-profile inmate, who was supposed to have been carefully monitored, could have died in federal custody. It also caused outrage among his victims and their representatives, who had hoped that Epstein’s trial next year would produce the justice they thought he had long evaded. – READ MORE