Jeffrey Epstein was alone in his prison cell the night of his death, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday, casting doubt on the notion that the disgraced money man and sex offender was murdered.
Prosecutors said security camera footage showed Epstein, 66, who was found dead in his Manhattan federal prison cell this past August, was alone in his cell the night officials said he killed himself.
In an exclusive interview on “Fox & Friends” last month, pioneering forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden revealed Epstein’s body bore telltale signs of homicide, despite the official ruling that he had killed himself.
The bombshell claim by Baden, a former New York City medical examiner who has worked on high-profile cases during a five-decade medical career, reignited suspicions that surfaced immediately after Epstein, who was awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges involving underage girls, was discovered dead in his cell on Aug. 10.
New York City Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson ruled Epstein’s cause of death to be a suicide by hanging.
In announcing a case against two guards accused of falsifying records, prosecutors said Tuesday that video surveillance showed that nobody had entered the area housing Epstein.
Baden, the pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother to investigate his death, said he still was not convinced and wanted to know more from guards about the position of Epstein’s body when he was found.
Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s next of kin, had hired Baden to perform an independent investigation because the family wasn’t getting answers, the pathologist told Fox News.
Last month, Baden, who observed the autopsy, told Fox News its findings were more consistent with homicidal strangulation than suicidal hanging. He noted that Epstein had two fractures on the left and right sides of his larynx, specifically the thyroid cartilage or Adam’s apple, as well as one fracture on the left hyoid bone above the Adam’s apple, Baden said.
“Those three fractures are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation,” Baden, who is also a Fox News contributor, said at the time.
Baden previously had probed cases involving O.J. Simpson, President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, record producer Phil Spector, New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez and many others.
“I’ve not seen in 50 years where that occurred in a suicidal hanging case,” the 85-year-old medical legend said.
There were also hemorrhages in Epstein’s eyes that were common in homicidal strangulation and uncommon, though not unheard of, in suicidal hangings, the forensic pathologist said.