Officials cautioned that their initial findings about his detention were preliminary and could change.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has already come under intense criticism for not keeping Mr. Epstein under a suicide watch after he had been found in his cell on July 23 with injuries that suggested he had tried to kill himself.
The law-enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said that when the decision was made to remove Mr. Epstein from suicide watch, the jail informed the Justice Department that Mr. Epstein would have a cellmate and that a guard “would look into his cell” every 30 minutes.
But that was apparently not done, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the death was still under investigation.
The city’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, announced on Sunday night that her office had conducted an autopsy of Mr. Epstein, but she declined to release a determination about the cause of death.The story goes on to make a convincing case that Epstein should never have been taken off suicide watch, particularly given that by Friday "thousands of documents from a civil suit had been released, providing lurid accounts accusing Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing scores of girls." What The Times fails to mention, but Patrick Martin of World Socialist Web Site does, is that
The documents released Thursday named a number of prominent political and society figures as patrons of Epstein’s sex ring, including two top Democrats, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former governor and Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson, a one-time presidential candidate, as well as Prince Andrew, second son of the Queen of England.
Whatever the truth of the allegations against these individuals, there is no question that Epstein was for many years an integral part of the financial and political elite in the United States, hobnobbing with former presidents like Bill Clinton and future presidents—and equally corrupt billionaires—like Donald Trump.Bill Richards, George Mitchell -- these are Clinton people.
In order for the Epstein suicide narrative to hold together the guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center will have to take the blame. The Times reports that
The two guards on duty in the protective housing unit where Mr. Epstein was housed were both working overtime, the prison official with knowledge of the incident said.
One of the corrections officers was working his fifth straight day of overtime, while the other officer had been forced to work overtime, the official said.The implication here is that working overtime is synonymous with not performing one's regular duties, which is ludicrous. Working overtime is not unusual for a prison guard.
Clearly a decision was made at the supervisory level to leave Epstein alone in his cell undisturbed for long stretches of time with the expectation that he would kill himself.
Whoever made this decision -- why, and at whose behest -- should be identified.
Craig Murray, sharing his thoughts in "Epstein’s Death Must Be the Start, not the End, of the Investigation," is not hopeful:
The deeper question is why such a significant proportion of the rich and powerful have a propensity to want to assuage their sexual desires on the most vulnerable and powerless in society, as opposed to forming relationships among their peers. I suspect it is connected to the kind of sociopathy that leads somebody to seek or hoard power or wealth in the first place.
It is not necessary to develop that idea further, to understand that the Epstein case had given us a glimpse of criminal sexual behaviour which beyond doubt involves many powerful people. It is essential that the threads that can be grasped are now worked on assiduously to uncover the entire network.
I am afraid to say I suspect the chances of that actually happening are very slim indeed.
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