10 Facts about the Last Man to Be Hanged for Treason in the UK
10 Actors Who Returned to Roles after a Long Absence
10 Clever Creatures That Don’t Have a Brain
10 Evil Pastors Who Killed Their Family
10 Politicians Who Beat a Future President
10 Wild Facts about the Crazy First Years of the Tour de France
10 Great Songs by Fictional Musicians in Movies
Ten Astonishing Stories about Underwater Life
10 Strange and Unexpected Things Smuggled into Strict Authoritarian Countries
10 Startling Cases of Jurors’ Mischief
10 Facts about the Last Man to Be Hanged for Treason in the UK
10 Actors Who Returned to Roles after a Long Absence
Who's Behind Listverse?
Jamie Frater
Head Editor
Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.
More About Us10 Clever Creatures That Don’t Have a Brain
10 Evil Pastors Who Killed Their Family
10 Politicians Who Beat a Future President
10 Wild Facts about the Crazy First Years of the Tour de France
10 Great Songs by Fictional Musicians in Movies
Ten Astonishing Stories about Underwater Life
10 Strange and Unexpected Things Smuggled into Strict Authoritarian Countries
10 Facts That Will Make You Believe Jeffrey Epstein Was Murdered
To men in power, Jeffrey Epstein was incredibly dangerous. He’d been a pimp supplying child prostitutes to the wealthy elite, and he’d been caught. He knew things that could bring down some of the most powerful people on earth.
SEE ALSO: Top 10 Murder Victims Who Solved Their Own Murders
He was tied to princes, presidents, and multiple billionaires. He’d been spotted at parties with with some of the biggest names imaginable. If he’d shared everything he knew, there’s no telling how many people could have been taken down.
And then, suddenly, he died. Under constant watch in a maximum security prison, Jeffrey Epstein’s life in ended in what’s officially been called a “suicide”. And somehow, nobody saw it happen.
At a glance, it sounds a little suspicious. And when you look into the details, it just gets worse.
10 Epstein claims he was attacked in his cell
On July 23rd, Jeffrey Epstein was found in his cell, unresponsive, with injuries around his neck. According to the official report, he had hanged himself—but many weren’t convinced. Epstein’s “attempted suicide”, some believed, was really an attack.
Sound like a familiar story? It’s not the one you think. Epstein didn’t die until Aug. 10th. But less than three weeks before his death, he was found in nearly the exact same state.
Just like on Aug. 10th, he was unconscious and badly wounded. And, just like they would on Aug. 10th, his guards claimed that he’d tried to kill himself. The only difference was that, on July 23rd, Epstein survived. He could tell his own side of the story.
Epstein denied that he’d ever attempted suicide. Instead, he claimed that he’d been beaten half-way to death by his cellmate, a former police officer named Nicholas Tartaglione.[1]
His Defense Attorney, David Schoen, still insists: “It was not a suicide attempt.”
“He was afraid he would face consequences if he implicated anyone,” Schoen says,[2] “so he kept his mouth shut and told investigators he couldn’t remember what happened.”
9 Tartaglione was never questioned
Prison officials claim that Tartaglione was cleared of any wrongdoing in the July 23rd incident through an internal investigation—but if they did conduct an investigation, it couldn’t have been a particularly thorough one. Tartaglione himself says that he was “has not been questioned by any law enforcement official since July 23rd.”[3]
Tartagoline denies ever having hurt Epstein. He says that he found Epstein lying in the fetal position, unconscious, on the ground, and helped him. The accusations against him, he says, were cooked up by guards who were tired of him complaining about the conditions in the prison.
But he also claims that guards have told him to “shut up” about Epstein and not to talk to the press.
“The clear message Mr. Tartaglione has received is that if he conveys information about the facility or about [Epstein’s] recent suicide, there will be a price to pay,” his lawyer claims.[4]
“The correction officers know he has information [that is] potentially very damaging.”
8 Epstein was taken off of suicide watch
Epstein was taken off suicide watch just 12 days before his death.[5]
He was put on watch in late July—most likely on July 23, after he was found injured in what guards claimed was an attempted suicide. And, if he’d stayed on suicide watch, there’s almost a chance he would have died.
Prisoners on suicide watch are put under constant observation. They’re kept in a special cell that gives the staff an unobstructed view of everything the prisoner does, and they’re given daily evaluations by psychologists.
Whether he was suicidal or not, many experts agree that keeping Epstein under constant watch was just a good precaution. “I would have a staff member sitting there or have a camera on him 24/7 while he was in my custody,” one former warden told NBC, “purely to cover my butt.”[6]
Epstein, however, was taken off suicide watch after just 6 days of observation.
His psychiatrist, after interviewing him, said that suicide watch was not warranted. That’s a sentiment shared by those who saw him in his final days, who have consistently describe him as “very very upbeat”[7] and “not … suicidal.”[8]
Epstein was returned to a normal cell with a new cellmate.
He died less than two weeks later.
7 His cellmate was transferred out the day before he died
August 9th was the last day of Jeffrey Epstein’s life.
It was also the day a federal court released thousands of pages of sealed records on Epstein’s case. The names of men accused of being Epstein’s clients were exposed, with some of the names of the most powerful men in the world inside.
“A lot of important people are going to have a really bad weekend,” one article[9] quipped.
Even though Epstein was no longer on suicide watch, he was supposed to be under constant surveillance. But hours before his suicide—and right afer the court documents were released—his cellmate was suddenly transferred.
No one was assigned to replace him. A man who was on suicide watch just days ago was left completely alone.
No explanation for the transfer has been given.[10]
6 Epstein was left unobserved for hours
Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t supposed to be left alone, and his guards knew it.
There were orders to keep camera surveillance on him at all times, to check on him every 30 minutes, and never to leave him alone in his cell for even a second. But on the night he died,[11] every single one of those rules were broken.
Not only had Epstein’s cellmate been transferred out, leaving him alone in his cell, but the guards weren’t even checking in on him.
On the night Epstein died, the prison was short-staffed. Only 10 of the 18 people who were supposed to be on duty had shown up to work, and the two men in charge of monitoring him were both working overtime.
Allegedly, both men fell asleep and didn’t bother checking in on him for a full three hours. And they falsified the logs to claim that they’d been doing their duty.[12]
Even then, there were two separate cameras that should have caught anything happening in Epstein’s cell—and both simultaneously malfunctioned on the night he died.[13]
5 Epstein’s suicide may have been physically impossible
According to the official report, Epstein was found dead in his cell on Aug. 10th and 6:30 AM. The six-foot-tall man had alleged fashioned a noose out of a bedsheet, tied it to his bedframe, and knelt down to hang himself.
“No way,” an ex-inmate of the facility told the New York Post nearly as soon as the story broke. Suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the ex-inmate claims, is effectively impossible.
“Could he have done it from the bed? No sir. There’s a steel frame, but you can’t move it. There’s no light fixture. There’s no bars,” the inmate says. “They don’t give you enough in there that could successfully create an instrument of death.”[14]
The statistics back up the claim. In the past 21 years, the prison has only seen one other successful suicide.[15]
At least one other former inmate has voiced agreement: “It’s next to impossible to kill oneself in jail.”[16]
4 Epstein’s death was reported on 4chan before it was in the news
At 8:16 AM, just a little over an hour after Epstein was found dead in his cell, the first post about his death broke out into the world with the title: “Jeffrey Epstein Dead.”
“Don’t ask me how I know,” the message read, “but Epstein died an hour ago from hanging, cardiac arrest.”[17]
It was posted on 4chan, 38 minutes before the first report hit the news.
The poster appeared to be a first responder, as the post was full of information about how they’d tried to resuscitate him. “Was called out as a cardiac arrest at the manhattan federal detention facility,” one post said. “Worked asystole for 40 mins.” Epstein was in the hospital for 20 minutes, the post claims, before his death was called.
The FDNY has denied that the post could have come from one of their staff, saying the account “doesn’t match our medical records.” But whether the details are right or not, somehow, this person knew about his death before the press.
“Let’s just say I know,” is the only explanation the post provides. “Don’t need a glowie [federal officer] coming to my crib.”
3 His sex ring was successfully covered up years earlier
ABC News anchor Amy Robach, in a leaked video that came out earlier this month, bitterly complained: “I’ve had the story for three years. I’ve had this interview with [Epstein accuser] Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air.”[18]
She wasn’t exaggerating. Back in 2015, Robach had a story ready that would have exposed Epstein’s prostitution ring. She had all the major details—even his connections to Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. But somehow, the story never made the news.
Robach has since released a statement saying that the story wasn’t censored and that it simply didn’t offer enough evidence to meet “ABC’s editorial standards”, but her own, unedited statements in the leaked video tell a very different story.
In the video, she says was threatened the UK’s royal family, who threatened to cut off their ability to cover their family if Prince Andrew’s secrets came out. And other networks have since corroborated that, in 2015, Epstein’s lawyers contacted them and asked them to keep the story from reaching the news.
They succeeded. In 2015, powerful people were able to keep stories about Epstein’s ring quiet.
“So do I think he was killed?” Robach says in the tape. “One hundred percent. Yes I do.”
2 Epstein had injuries on his wrists and arms
It was Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark, who collected his body. But when he found him, he had far more than just injuries to his neck. There were wounds on his wrists.
Mark’s description is backed up by the autopsy. When he died, the autopsy says, he had contusions on both of his wrists, an abrasion on his left forearm, and deep muscle hemorrhaging of his left deltoid.
“Those are unexplained,” Mark Epstein says. “Was he handcuffed and struggled? Was someone holding his wrists?”[19]
Mark says that he’s requested the details from his brother’s file multiple times, and has asked the investigators to explain how they ruled out the possibility that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. But months later, he has yet to receive a response.
“I was told someone was looking into it.”
1 Experts say his wounds are “more consistent” with murder
Dr. Michael Baden, who sat in on the autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein, initially refused to talk to the press about what he’d seen. He was under a gag order, he told them, and it wouldn’t be right for him to comment.[20]
But when the news started reporting that his death was being ruled a suicide, Baden stopped holding it in. He told the press that, from what he’d seen, Epstein’s injuries were “more consistent” with murder.[21]
He points to fractures on Epstein’s neck, which he says are “extremely unusual in suicidal hangings.”
Indeed, medical researchers say that these types of fractures are about twice as common in homicides as suicides.[22] According to one study, they can occur in about 25% of suicides—but even then, usually only occur when the hanging is particularly violent.
According to one medical textbook, a drop of about 5 to 9 feet is required for these types of injuries.[23] They’re not typical when a man chokes himself with a sheet tied to a bed frame.
Baden says that ruling Epstein’s death could have been a mistake.
“There’s evidence here of homicide that should be investigated.”
For more lists like this, check out 5 Suicides That Were Almost Certainly Murders, and 10 Cases Of Murder By Suicide.
About The Author: Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to Listverse. His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.