Shocking. 🤦🏻♂️
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
34 points (100.0% liked)
The Epstein Files
192 readers
1 users here now
A place here on Lemmy to keep track of the release of the files, but also to explore what’s already available, and why – with enough exposure – this could bring the man down (though probably not his regime).
Only rule is to add [TW] in front of your post title if you suspect that a survivor of sexual abuse might find your post triggering.
That and keep it civil and amicable.
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
Nearly two years passed before investigators interviewed the two key corrections officers on duty the night Epstein died in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown New York City, in what was later ruled a suicide, according to court documents. One of those officers was the only person to attest to seeing Epstein hanging by a bedsheet from his bunk.
And details pulled from 90 photos of the cell and other evidence collected in the hours after Epstein's death — but before FBI agents arrived to process the scene — appear to show a succession of basic oversights, ranging from an absence of evidence markers to items being moved, experts told CBS News.
"The FBI literally has all of the best tools. I mean, spared no expense. They have every tool you can imagine. And they used none of it as far as we can tell," forensic analyst Nick Barreiro said after reviewing the photos, many of which have never been published. "How are there not way more people pointing out the absurdity of this?"
The images were previously obtained by 60 Minutes. After the recent release of surveillance video from the night Epstein died, which appeared to show details that contradicted official reports, CBS News reviewed them and other documents with several forensic experts.
The results of the federal investigation were made public in 2023, four years after Epstein's death, in a report by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General. It concluded that the financier, who entered a guilty plea in 2008 on state-level charges of procuring a child for prostitution, died by suicide. That matched the findings shared by Attorney General William Barr, who told Congress in August he had no doubts that Epstein had taken his own life. But lingering questions, raised by individuals including Epstein's lawyers and brother, have fueled continued speculation and suspicion.
"I do not believe he died by suicide, no," Epstein's co-defendant, Ghislaine Maxwell, said this summer during her interview in August with the Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Epstein's brother, Mark, told "60 Minutes" in 2020 that, in his view, the evidence he has seen to date points more to murder than suicide. Five years later, he still questions the investigation.
"This was never properly investigated as a proper homicide, it was never investigated," Mark Epstein told CBS News recently.
Epstein's body was discovered at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2019 by corrections officer Michael Thomas when he arrived at his cell to deliver breakfast. Thomas said he found the accused felon in a near-seated position, suspended from the top of the bunk by a homemade noose, with his legs straight out and his buttocks approximately 1 inch to 1 and a half inches off the floor, according to the inspector general's report. Internal corrections department memos obtained exclusively by CBS News described him as "cold," with "no palpable pulses."
The first FBI agents arrived at the cell more than seven hours later, at 1:35 p.m., according to the 2023 report. But when they arrived, photos show they found a disorganized, rifled-through clutter. Crucially, Epstein's lifeless body had already been removed from the cell, eliminating a critical source of information investigators would need to determine how and when he died, forensic pathologist Michael Baden said.
"The fact that he was moved diminishes the ability to determine how long he was dead before he was found," Baden said.
Emergency medical technicians wrote in their report on the incident, which was obtained by CBS News, that the staff they interacted with could not say when Epstein was last seen alive or describe how he "was found in [the] jail cell other than to say 'we found him on the ground.'"
Inside the cell, piles of linens had been strewn about, mattresses were squeezed into a corner on the floor near his bunk bed and Epstein's personal items were rearranged or moved, photos from the scene show. Experts who reviewed photos of the scene for CBS News said there were also inconsistencies between the investigators' official reports and what the images show.
