Two correctional officers who were responsible for guarding Jeffrey Epstein when he killed himself in his New York jail cell have been arrested.
The two federal Bureau of Prisons employees were taken into custody early Tuesday, sources told the New York Times.
They are expected to be charged in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan later on Tuesday over their alleged failure to check on the millionaire pedophile in his cell.
The officers on Epstein’s unit at the federal jail are suspected of failing to check on him every half-hour, as required, and of fabricating log entries to claim they had.
The pending charges are the first in connection with the 66-year-old’s death after he took his own life in August at the Metropolitan Correctional Center while awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls.
Both guards had been working overtime because of staffing shortages when Epstein was found.
The two officers were placed on administrative leave while the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general investigated the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death.
The warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center was also reassigned.
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Epstein had been on suicide watch after he was found July 23 on his cell floor with bruises on his neck. He was taken off suicide watch about a week before his death, which meant he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.
Investigators believe those checks weren’t done for several hours before Epstein was discovered in his cell with a bed sheet around his neck.
The city’s medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide but that didn’t stop the conspiracy theories from swirling.
Both Epstein’s brother and the lawyers who represented him in his criminal case have expressed doubts about the medical examiner’s conclusion.
His autopsy report found his neck had been broken in several places, including the hyoid bone located near the Adam’s apple.
Forensic experts said that breakages to that specific bone could occur when people hanged themselves but were more commonly seen in victims who had been strangled.
A source close to Epstein told DailyMail.com that he appeared to be in good spirits in the days before his suicide.
His brother Mark recently said he could not think of a single reason why Epstein would have taken his own life. He called the financier’s death ‘suspicious’ and said he has seen no evidence to support the official ruling on his brother’s cause of death.
Source: Daily Mail
