On August 10th, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in a federal prison in Manhattan. The cause of death was declared a suicide by the chief pathologist, who was not present at the autopsy. Did he kill himself, as the government has claimed ever since, or was he murdered? We speak to Jeffrey's brother, Mark Epstein, who is the only surviving relative, to try to find out the truth about what happened to his brother, and why it could have been so close to the answers we all have been waiting for. This episode is brought to you by Unsolved Mysteries, a Parcast Original. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers Subscribe to our new podcast CRIMINALS on iTunes and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe, Like, and Share this episode with your friends and family to help spread the word about our new show. Thank you so much for all the support we've gotten over the years, and we can't wait to bring you more stories like this one! Your continued support is so appreciated. Please remember to tell a friend about this podcast and/or share it on your social media platforms so we can keep spreading the word to the rest of the world about what we're doing it. Thank you, and keep sharing it everywhere. We love you, everyone! Timestamps: - Tom Bell Tim Bells - Tom Bells Mark Epstein - . Thanks, Tim Bell - , . . . Tim, Jake, . , , and ( ) Chris, , & Thank You, Sarah ? Sarah, ( & , etc. - (Thank you, ) (Sue, ). (P. ) Thank you for listening to this episode? and . ( ) . (Song: ) & (Recorded by: (Music: "Thank You, My Brother's Song: "I'll See You Soon" by ) ( ) ( ) - Thank You ( ) - Thank Me, Thank Me For This Is My Name ( ) Thank Me ( ) & Thank You For This Song: , "Thank Me, God Bless You, Lord
00:02:43.880He has no children, and our parents are gone, and there's no other siblings.
00:02:47.200When did you start to think that he did not kill himself?
00:02:51.980Well, after the autopsy, and both pathologists, the city pathologist and Dr. Barton, came out of the autopsy, and they said, this doesn't look like a suicide.
00:03:36.220But then a few days later, it was declared a suicide by the chief pathologist, who was not at the autopsy.
00:03:44.020And the questions became what investigation was done in such a short period of time to make her determine it was a suicide, or was she basing it on Bill Barr's statement?
00:03:54.740And who was the chief pathologist who made that declaration?
00:05:22.080She refused to speak to us for reasons we don't understand.
00:05:26.100But in her official explanation, she suggested that she ruled it a suicide, effectively overruling the judgment of the people who actually were from the autopsy,
00:05:35.340because your brother had attempted suicide previously.
00:05:38.240Yeah, but that's been shown to be false.
00:05:41.920You can listen to David's show and his attorney on the podcast, the Crime Waves podcast.
00:05:47.380He explains that Jeff was attacked by his cellmate, but he didn't want to report it as such because he was afraid of retaliation.
00:05:53.880But every news account of his initial injuries in the weeks before his death said that he had tried to kill himself in a cell.
00:06:04.480He was found in fetal position on the floor after a failed suicide attempt, et cetera, et cetera.
00:06:08.340Well, once somebody says that, then everyone picks up the same story, and then it becomes the truth, just because it's been repeated so many times.
00:06:16.420But the fact is, he did not attempt suicide that first time.
00:06:22.040So if he didn't try and kill himself the first time, then the medical examiner had no basis to declare this a suicide.
00:06:29.400Plus, there's reasons why he wouldn't kill himself then.
00:06:31.460He had a hearing scheduled to appeal the bail decision coming up in a few days, and the bail was being increased.
00:06:41.360So there's a chance he could have got bail, even as unpalatable as that might have been to some people.
00:06:46.420You know, in the United States, you're entitled to bail under certain conditions.
00:06:51.280But, you know, so I could see if he went for the hearing for bail and it was denied, then I can see him taking himself out if he didn't want to spend a year in jail waiting for a trial.
00:07:05.440In all the, in your conversations with him and in your conversations with the people who were in contact with him at the final weeks of his life, was there any indication on all that he was suicidal at any point?
00:07:16.040No, I had no conversations with him once he was arrested.
00:07:18.840I spoke to him the day before he was arrested.
00:07:21.000He actually called me from Paris, just the usual, you know, how you doing kind of phone call.
00:07:25.260And the next day, his attorneys called me and told me he was arrested.
00:07:28.140And that was the last time I spoke with him.
00:07:29.880I didn't speak to him or see him while he was in jail.
00:07:31.920But having spoken to his lawyers and people whom he communicated with from jail, did anybody say that he seemed suicidal?
00:07:40.020No, everybody was shocked that it was a suicide.
00:07:42.620Nobody thought he was going to kill himself.
00:07:45.500So what's interesting is that the attorney general of the United States at the time, Attorney General Barr, said publicly and then wrote in his memoir that he had concluded conclusively that this was a suicide based on two pieces of evidence.
00:08:01.880One, the medical examiner, the person who performed the autopsy, declared it a suicide, which is a lie.
00:08:19.860Well, when I heard Barr's statement that he said he personally saw the videotape and he concluded it was a suicide because nobody went in or out, that's where it hit me that he's covering this up, because there's two sort of fallacies in that.
00:08:33.120One, I thought, why is the attorney general of the United States, who I imagine to be a busy guy, why is he personally watching the videotape?
00:08:41.560Couldn't he have two people in his office watch the videotape and say, hey, Bill, nobody went in or out?
00:08:47.780And two, to assume that somebody could get to that door, go inside, you know, kill somebody, get out completely undetected is just ridiculous, because I believe there are six levels of security before you get to that door.
00:09:04.700So to assume that somebody could do it that way is crazy.
00:09:08.420And any third-rate investigator will tell you that, you know, there was anywhere from seven to 14 people on the other side of that door, on the tear, that could have killed somebody.
00:09:17.780And I had been told from another source, I've been getting a lot of information from all sources, that cell doors were left unlocked that night.
00:09:25.360I don't know how many cell doors or whose cell doors, but if cell doors were left unlocked, then somebody could have went into Jeff's cell, killed them, went back into their cell, undetected.
00:09:35.400Now, in the Justice Department report, it says that from three cells, you could see Jeff's cell door.
00:09:43.860But if you look at the photographs of the tear, there's tiny windows in the cell doors.
00:09:48.680So in order to see Jeff's cell door from another cell, you'd have to be standing at that window inside the other cells in the middle of the night looking towards Jeff's cell.
00:09:59.940And if somebody crept low beneath the height of that window, you wouldn't see them.
00:10:05.680So the fact that, you know, to say that he could be seen from three other cells and they didn't see anything, chances are the other prisoners were sleeping in those cells if they had nothing to do with it.
00:10:16.000And so, again, it's just like a cover-up line.
00:10:20.140So in other words, the Attorney General said that nobody moved on to the cell block, according to the videotape, but that is irrelevant because if your brother was murdered, he was almost certainly murdered by someone who was already on the cell block.
00:10:32.400So given that, and it's obvious and logical when you think about it for about 10 seconds, the identities of the other inmates on that cell block are critical.
00:11:52.820Let's go down, um, the chain of documents that might explain this mystery.
00:11:57.860Um, so the first would be the records of the first responders, the EMTs, who arrived at the scene and moved your brother's body from the cell to...
00:12:09.500But when I spoke to an EMT, when they got to the prison, Jeff was already in the infirmary.
00:12:15.880They, the prison people moved him to the infirmary, which they were not supposed to do.
00:12:20.280Because when he was found, he was clearly dead.
00:12:23.360The autopsy showed he was dead for at least two hours before he was found.
00:12:26.700So, at that point, they're supposed to leave the body and call the medical examiner's office so they can come, take photographs, do the initial testing, whatever they do, when they find a dead body.
00:12:43.240They moved his corpse to the infirmary, but notified nobody else.
00:12:46.900Well, a 911 call was made to get the EMTs, and we can't get a copy of the 911 call, which is, you know, we had 911 calls for all sorts of other cases.
00:12:59.620When they got there, he was in the infirmary, and he was clearly dead, because, like I said, he'd been dead for two hours.
00:13:06.320And there was a photograph of him being wheeled out of the prison, where he was intubated and squeezing an air bulb to drag it.
00:13:14.260But, you know, so I was questioning, why are they trying to put, you know, pump into a clearly dead body?
00:13:20.460You know, were they trying to make it look like he was alive so that he could be declared dead in the hospital?
00:13:25.840Because what I've been told, normally when they find dead bodies in the prisons, they want to ship them to the hospital, so they're declared dead in the hospital.
00:13:34.860It was like an unwritten rule is nobody dies in prison.
00:13:39.800So they ship them to the hospital, where he's declared dead.
00:13:42.200And when I questioned the EMT, why they were intubating him, I said because he was dead for at least two hours, the response I got was, how do you know that?
00:14:08.620But I was also told that in the infirmary and in the hospital, there was somebody with a handheld video camera all the time running, videotaping everything.
00:14:21.040Despite the fact that your brother was dead in his cell and had been dead for two hours, at least two hours, somebody cut off his clothing and redressed the corpse in hospital scrubs, in a gown.
00:14:35.440Yeah, I have a photograph of him in a hospital gown on a gurney in a hospital where, you know, his arms were put through the sleeves.
00:14:42.320It's one of those gowns you're tying in the back.
00:14:44.280So the question becomes, you know, who decided to dress a dead body in a hospital gown?
00:14:48.120Normally, they're either in a body bag or covered by a sheet.
00:15:59.060Well, they came out with a report a few months ago, and for four years we've been trying to find out what position his body was in when it was found.
00:16:08.400And we couldn't get an answer to that either.
00:16:10.500But in the report, it described how he was found.
00:16:13.660It said that he was in a seated position with his legs extended in front of him, and he was hanging from the top bunk.
00:16:20.080So if you picture that, you know, basically all of his body weight or most of his body weight was hanging by the snooze around his neck or the ligature around his neck.
00:16:30.840He had some weight on his feet, but the bulk of his 180-some-odd pounds was hanging.
00:16:37.020And they said when they cut him down or tore him down, his buttocks was an inch or an inch and a half above the ground.
00:16:43.640Again, which means his body weight was on his neck.
00:16:45.980Now, if somebody's hanging like that, the noose or the ligature would ride up high on the neck and go high behind your ears to where it was tied to.
00:16:57.260But the autopsy photographs show that the ligature mark on Jeff's neck is in the middle of his neck and goes straight back.
00:17:06.180As if someone put a rope around his neck and strangled him like Carlo in The Godfather, in the car.
00:17:14.700Or the electrical cord or whatever was there.
00:17:16.920But it doesn't look like the fabric from a bed sheet.
00:17:21.260So if it seems clear just from the photographs of his autopsy that he was strangled with, say, a cord, wouldn't you test that cord for his DNA?
00:17:32.160Yeah, nobody seems to know where that is.
00:17:34.020Also, the way they said he was hanging, and again, he had to be there for at least two hours.
00:17:39.700When you die, the blood in your body settles to the, gravity takes the blood down to the lowest parts of your body.
00:17:46.180And they become blotchy from the blood pooling under the skin.
00:17:50.040So the back of his legs and his buttocks should have what's called lividity.
00:17:54.800They should have this blotchiness, like bruising look on the back of his legs and his buttocks.
00:17:59.440An autopsy photograph showing that his legs are clean, clear.
00:18:04.400So he couldn't have been hanging that way for more than, you know, for two-plus hours.
00:18:13.220So did the report explain the discrepancies from the autopsy, that bones in his neck were broken that are not seen in hangings but are seen in strangulations?
00:18:24.660Those broken bones, they're seen in strangulations, but because he had three bones, it's also from karate chop to the neck.
00:18:35.860And that seems to be what I've spoken to military people, a preferred way of killing people is you karate chop them in the neck really hard.
00:18:43.980You collapse their windpipe and that disorients them and incapacitates them.
00:18:48.080And then usually they just break their neck or you can strangle them.
00:18:52.360So the breaks in his neck are more consistent with a karate chop than what's called a soft hanging.
00:18:57.760You know, when you tie something around your neck and you sit down or hang yourself from something soft, like, you know, unfortunately, Robert Williams or Andre, you know, is it Bourdain, was it?
00:19:56.300He was holding off on that determination, pending determination of how the body was found, which we finally, now that they say the way the body was found, it just only shows that it was not that way.
00:20:08.400The autopsy shows it's not that way, which further convinced Dr. Bodden that this was not a hanging, not a suicide.
00:20:14.860So here's what we wind up with at the end of all this.
00:20:19.960We wind up with a high-profile inmate in the most secure federal facility in the country's largest city who was somehow murdered, clearly with the knowledge of the Justice Department.
00:20:32.220And the Attorney General of the United States lies about it, which he did, and there's no reason to do that except to cover up the crime.
00:21:07.340So in talking to all the people around him or people who were connected with him in one way or another in the final weeks of his life, have you detected a fear in those people in talking about this?
00:22:42.960Like I said, I wasn't involved with his day-to-day life.
00:22:45.520You know, and, you know, his troubles he had with the charges with the girls was from the early to, you know, 2006 is when he first got into trouble.
00:23:09.440I mean, from what I understand, that was going, he had a non-prosecution agreement with the federal government on that when he made his plea deal.
00:23:15.940Uh, so he believed he was safe from further prosecution.
00:23:21.320And then he flew home from Paris in July and they arrested him on the same charges.
00:23:26.920And his, I believe his defense was going to be, well, hey, you know, I have a non-prosecution agreement with the federal government.
00:23:33.240And supposedly they say, well, that was like the Southern District or some area.
00:23:36.500Well, as far as I know, we have one federal government.
00:23:39.580If you make a deal with the federal government, it covers the entire country.
00:23:42.740Um, has it occurred that maybe the point of re-arresting him on the same charges was to get him into a facility where he could be killed?
00:23:49.460Uh, you know, I, I, I've shied away from speculating about all of this.
00:23:53.560You know, I try to stick with the facts, but that's a possibility.
00:23:58.640Um, do you think other governments might've been involved in this, not just the U.S. government?
00:24:06.160Uh, I, I wouldn't on the surface say no.
00:25:16.600Well, I'm still trying to find the information.
00:25:19.680I have, you know, four years out to try to get the medical reports, to try to get the 911 call.
00:25:26.120And just to get people thinking about this.
00:25:28.480People shouldn't, like you said, people shouldn't be complacent with the fact that somebody was killed in a federal prison under federal protection.