When they were walking through [with] breakfast [lieutenant] REDACTED served food. “Dudes said you killed that dude.” She said “If he is dead we’re going to cover it up and he’s going to have an alibi. My officers.”

Whole H tier heard that REDACTED initiated [the conversation]

[On the] night it happened, someone yelled on his tier Epstein’s [number] “on the hang up”. That woke up [INMATE 7] and so he asked Noel to turn off [the] light. [The] yelling woke him up.

Noel didn’t turn off [the] light

Around breakfast time, [the officers] went up [to Epstein’s cell]. [The inmate] heard [an] officer yelling “breath” - [A] male officer yelled it.

…

That morning Lt. REDACTED [was] handing out trays. Lt. REDACTED said “don’t worry we have an alibi for you.” She was handing out trays on H-Tier.

Prison staff being directed to take actions that they knew would delete surveillance footage.

Accusations that prison staff were altering documentation from the night of Epstein’s death.

Accusations that Bureau of Prisons employees were shredding documentation leading one former prison employee to seek whistle blower protections.

Artifacts from surveillance footage that are highly suggestive of tampering.

All of the things presented above have one thing in common. None of them appear in the New York Times story The Untold Story of the Death of Jeffrey Epstein published on June 19, 2026.

For readers who don’t know, The Untold Story of Jeffrey Epstein’s Death is a roughly 10,000 word investigative piece concerning the death of Jeffrey Epstein. The article ultimately concludes that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. The new piece of information that the New York Times provides which is the closest it has to a ‘smoking gun’ is an alleged suicide note that the paper itself admits it could not verify.

The piece follows a similar narrative to what was presented by the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG’s) June 2023 report concerning its investigation into the death of Jeffrey Epstein. The report concluded that staff did not provide adequate care and attention to the indications of suicidal intent from Epstein. Staff incompetence gave Epstein the opportunity to commit suicide that a stricter adherence to prison policy would have prevented.

Former Attorney General, and person of interest in the FBI’s 2019 investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, William Barr called it ‘a perfect storm of screw ups’.

The allegations that Barr was present when Epstein abused victims were also left out of the New York Times piece.

Another piece of information that was left out of this investigation was that prison’s history of corruption which included a cover up for the murder of Roberto Grant in May of 2015. Diving into the murder of Roberto Grant is a rabbit hole within itself. I did a deeper dive myself in a past piece concerning inmate testimony not included in the OIG report. In sum, Grant was found dead in the prison with profound bruising on his torso, head and wounds on his neck suggestive of strangulation. Prison staff told his family that he died of a drug overdose and they even corralled inmate testimony to suggest the same despite the fact no drugs were found in his system whatsoever after a toxicology screen was done. Subsequent lawsuits concluded that Grant was assaulted.

The New York Times piece does mention the thriving ‘underground contraband economy’ that was uncovered at Epstein’s prison after the investigations into his death. What it does not mention is that one of the paper’s own sources in this piece, Robert Adams, was indicted for extorting sex from prison visitors in exchange for turning a blind eye to their smuggling of contraband.

People who have been following my blog for a while know that I have been in the habit of providing rigorous, and at times exhaustive, analysis of findings from the Epstein files. Much of the information I pursue was omitted from the public record before the EFTA was signed into law like the references at the beginning of this article. I don’t do this because I am trying to find a premise for some sort of grandiose conspiracy nor present myself as the only person on the planet ‘who knows what really happened’. I do this because there are far too many under investigated pieces to the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s death that need attention. I admit my suspicions, and if it wasn’t for those suspicions I would not be writing this newsletter but I don’t claim to conclusively know what happened in the summer of 2019 to Jeffrey Epstein nor should the New York Times. Doubly so for the Times based on the case they presented.

When the paper of record uses a man who was accused of murdering four people over a coke deal gone bad as one of their primary sources and another who was indicted for extorting sex from visitors to the prison in 2019 while not sharing this information with their readers I don’t believe that I can give myself license to leave this in ‘more capable hands’.

Believe me when I write this. I’d fucking love to.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment was how under investigated the missing surveillance footage of Epstein’s alleged first suicide attempt was. In my own investigations I was able to find that Epstein’s cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, mysteriously had his database cell record moved into the wrong cell the morning before the alleged suicide attempt occurred which guaranteed the wrong surveillance video would be preserved after the incident. That same footage was later erased by prison staff.

There was also no exploration of the other highly suspicious activities like prison staff being accused of tampering with prison documentation that may have been used to obscure an inmate transfer into Epstein’s prison block on the night of his death nor the allegations of abuse, corruption and murder that were leveled against prison staff members.

You can dismiss that as being ‘conspiracy minded’ if you wish but these are the sorts of things that need to be actively looked in to to have their relevance ruled out. This was not done by the New York Times nor was it done by the OIG in their report. If anything, there seems to be an implication that drawing attention to these blind spots makes one a ‘conspiracy theorist’ indifferent to tangible facts and evidence which is as false as it is condescending and insulting. It’s part of the reason I named this blog ‘Please Fact Check‘. I’m not asking for you to believe me. I am pleading for that fact check.

One last piece I’ll leave you with before signing off on this article is a challenge to the notion that entry into the prison tier holding Epstein’s cell would have required ‘mission impossible’ levels of coordination to pull off. The truth is a couple corrupt staff members would have sufficed.

Just like the New York Times reported, there is a path to Epstein’s cell that was not in view of prison cameras and you would need coordination with staff members to open several doors. In another article I wrote, I dive into how a prison staff member claimed a prison boss directed him to ‘ghost count’ an inmate as if he was being transferred back to that cell around the same time as the famous ‘orange flash’ appears in released surveillance footage. I go over how such a transfer would have been possible in section 7 on my article about that same prison boss who was tampering with prison documentation from the night of Epstein’s death.

Making this information palatable to a general audience is an often herculean task and I admit I’m not always the best at it. It’s a marathon that navigates mountains of poorly organized and heavily redacted tedium. Even when I do find pieces of information that seem germane or suspicious I will not publish that information unless I have an extremely high level of confidence that information is correct, relevant and as complete as it can be when presented.

If all I wanted was clout on social media I wouldn’t be writing 5,000 word plus long monoliths navigating bureaucratic minutiae.

We should be able to rely on government institutions and journalists at big name institutions like the New York Times to get to the heart of this matter and I wouldn’t wish the tedium I endured on my worst enemies. Despite the headaches and frustration I continue to do this because I believe it to be necessary. Given the rampant corruption that exists within the federal government of the United States and active flaunting of the Epstein Files Transparency Act by withholding over 3 million pages of material along with other alleged violations being litigated in court that work is more important now then it ever has been. This dereliction of duty from the powers that be and the institutions that are failing to hold that power to account needs to be recognized as the call to action that it is and I know I’m not alone in that view.

The going has been tough. I think we best keep going.

There will be more.

You can buy me a coffee here!

When [guards] were walking through [with] breakfast, [Lieutenant] REDACTED served food [and] dudes said “You killed that dude.” She said “If he is dead [we’re] going to cover it up and she’s going to have an alibi. My officers.”

Around breakfast time, [the officers] went up [to Epstein’s cell]. [The inmate] heard [an] officer yelling “breath” - [A] male officer yelled it.

…

That morning Lt. REDACTED [was] handing out trays. Lt. REDACTED said “don’t worry we have an alibi for you.”

That officer has been identified as Lieutenant Glenda Anderson-Layne. Anderson-Layne was working on the midnight to 8:00 AM shift on August 10, 2019 as an operations lieutenant.

Anderson-Layne confirms this in one of her interviews with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

It should be noted that she arrived at the institution at 10:00 PM on August 9, 2019 and was relieved from her post at 5:30 AM the following morning, an hour before Epstein was found dead in his cell. She stayed at the prison until around 9:30 AM.

New discoveries within the Epstein files show that not only was she accused of stating that she’d have an alibi ready for officers but she was also accused by then prison Captain Jermaine Darden of altering logs.

This article goes on a deep dive audit of the documents that were referenced by Captain Darden and how they relate to the events leading up to Jeffrey Epstein being discovered dead in his cell on the morning of August 10, 2019. Much of this ties in with the ‘9S+1’ markings that were made on a count slip around the time an orange flash was seen heading towards the tier containing Epstien’s cell. According to staff, those markings meant that a prisoner from another unit were supposed to be sent to Epstein’s tier after 10 PM. Other parts of the documents that were auditted show incorrect prisoner counts, falsified inmate checks (rounds) and errors that suggest Epstein’s cell mate Efrain Reyes was still being counted as present within the prison despite being transferred to another prison the day before he was found dead in his cell.

This article will be going over various prison logs and interviews conducted by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) with MCC staff. It can be quite dry at times but I believe being thorough is necessary to give an account that’s as full and accurate as possible from the available evidence.

The article is separated into 7 different sections to make the information more manageable and allow the reader to jump ahead to specific sections that they find more relevant to them.

SECTION 1

An overview of the testimony of Captain Jermaine Darden where he accuses Glenda Anderson-Layne of altering logs and entering improper inmate checks (rounds) into the prison logs

SECTION 2

An overview of a duplicated lieutenant log entry for the day watch shift of August 9, 2019 and the inaccuracies contained within

SECTION 3

A review of the incorrect counts found in the daily activity reports that were created by Anderson-Layne

SECTION 4

A review of the TRUSCOPE logging system and the round entries made by Glenda Anderson-Layne

SECTION 5

A review of TRUSCOPE entries that show special housing unit (SHU) staff entered an inmate count log that included Jeffrey Epstein’s cell mate Efrain Reyes after he was transferred to another prison and incorrectly marked as validated by control staff

SECTION 6

A review of Glenda Anderson-Layne’s refusal to provide a memo explaining the events that transpired on August 9, 2019 and August 10, 2019 in direct violation of Captain Darden’s order

SECTION 7

A review of what footage shows transpiring between 10:39 PM and 11:42 PM on August 9, 2019 and the staff responsible for opening each of the doors to SHU. This included the staff member who alerted the OIG to the fact that the ‘9S+1’ marking he wrote meant an inmate was to be transferred back to SHU at around 10 PM that night

There’s still much that needs to be investigated and it would be irresponsible of me to write anything that suggests I know exactly what transpired at MCC on the night of Epstein’s death. I don’t. But what I do know is that all of the information I present in this piece I present with minimal speculation and I don’t deny my suspicions.

I don’t write these articles expecting your credulity. I write these articles pleading for your critical thought and even push back where warranted. It’s why I named this blog ‘Please Fact Check’. As disturbing, salacious and outrageous that the information contained within the Epstein files is there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a rigorous, thoughtful, thorough and complete investigation of that information is necessary to bring justice to the victims of Epstein and his cohorts, even if it’s boring. Writing about this case focusing on engagement bait worthy sensationalism will not.

Now, without further ado, let’s dive in!

SECTION 1

An overview of the Darden Interview

On June 25, 2021 the OIG sat down with former MCC Prison Captain Jermaine Darden. The interview focused primarily on the events that led up to Epstein’s death and helping the OIG agents gain a better understanding of how the prison ran.

The interview shifts its focus towards Lieutenant Anderson-Layne and the anomalies in documentation she was responsible for. Darden says that documentation ‘didn’t jive’ and goes on to explain how he discovered Anderson-Layne was tampering with it. He tells the OIG that Anderson-Layne stayed at the prison hours after her shift had ended and he did not know why.

It should be noted that Captain Darden states that he does not believe that prison staff harmed Jeffrey Epstein during his incarceration and also believes that Epstein died by suicide. In spite of that, he accuses Anderson-Layne of tampering with prison logs.

PAGE 278

CAPTAIN DARDEN: The Lieutenant’s log. So, there was two different logs, and then, one of the logs wasn’t right. And then, when I went back, it had been deleted. And then, I see her leaving out the building at 9:15 a.m.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: Okay.

CAPTAIN DARDEN: On that Saturday morning.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: And when should have she left?

CAPTAIN DARDEN: She should have left at 6:00. Why was she in the building for another three plus hours? And I brought that up to the investigators, to the OIG.

PAGE 279

REDACTED OIG AGENT: And then, as far as going back to and this log book - when you saw that there was two - it looks like - duplicates, did you see what the discrepancies were, when you noticed that there were two of them for that daily log?

CAPTAIN DARDEN: Right. Because I’m going to tell you how I found out.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: Okay.

CAPTAIN DARDEN: So, when I went in TRUSCOPE, I told you I was looking for the rounds.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: Mm-hmm.

CAPTAIN DARDEN: Because I’m bouncing the log off of what the rounds was.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: Mm-hmm.

CAPTAIN DARDEN: Because all this stuff is going into evidence. So, I’m hurrying, I’m trying to gather this stuff. So, the log, I’m trying to compare it to the rounds, it’s not jiving. So, I’m reading the log, and the log is totally - it’s not jiving. The whole thing is - the times, the frames - it’s not jiving. So then, all of the sudden, when I’m printing out the paperwork from TRUSCOPE, I go back and I look at the log, boom, another log pops up. So, I’m reading this one, and then, the other log that was there before is deleted.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: And she has the ability to do that?

CAPTAIN DARDEN: Yeah.

SECTION 2

The Duplicated August 9, 2019 Lieutenant’s Log

There is a duplicated entry for for August 9, 2019 that is riddled with discrepancies but it should be noted that it’s impossible to confirm whether or not this entry was a duplicated log or a misstated and poorly documented log. It should also be noted I was able to find duplicate lieutenant’s logs for other dates as well.

The duplicated August 9, 2019 entries are contained within two different copies of documents known as ‘daily activity reports’. These documents include the lieutenant’s logs for the previous day and include other information such as the inmates who were released from MCC, inmates admitted to MCC, unit inmate counts and inmate transfers to the special housing unit (SHU) where Epstein was held. The first entry below was part of the daily activity report for August 9, 2019 sent on August 10, 2019 and the second is part of the daily activity report for August 10, 2019 sent on August 11, 2019. I highlighted relevant bits below.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that these logs share the same date and another thing you may notice is the bad formatting on the header for the second document.

I’d draw your attention to the first log where two important events that occurred: The transfer of an inmate from SHU to R&D, which will be discussed in depth later, along with the marking of Epstein’s cellmate, Efrain Reyes, as ‘PRE REMOVE’ which, according to prison staff, meant that Reyes was being removed from the institution.

The second entry is remarkable for the high number of errors it contains:

1. The duplicated date

2. The bizarre formatting of the header which suggests an attempted edit of the document which altered the template

3. The fact that the H/A OBS (i.e. inmates on psychological observation) count of 2 does not match the H/A OBS count of 4 from the previous shift but matches the count from the other log. It should also be noted that no inmates are noted as being taken off of psych observation on either shift

4. The 3:57 PM entry for the admission for inmate Mutimura without a count increment and no note for the NEW ADMISSIONS TO MCC New York section. It should be noted that an entry does exist in the original August 9, 2019 log.

5. The 3:59 PM entry for the bail of inmate Carreon-Macias with the proper count decremented but no entry in the RELEASED FROM MCC NEW YORK section.

6. The 11:24 AM institutional count value of 757 does not match the E1 count sheet value of 755 nor it’s H-A count of 4. I highlighted the entries for the G-S and Z-A unit counts for reasons I’ll make clear below.

For clarity, the date and time on the upper right of the countsheets (E-1 forms) show the date and time the document was printed. The highlighted bottom portion indicates the time a ‘good verbal count’ (GV) was completed, menaning each unit called into the control room reporting their count and control confirmed the counts were correct.

The count that was completed at 11:22 AM had a total census of 755 inmates. When Epstein is excluded from the count, that means there are two inmates that were removed from the institution between 5 AM and 11:22 AM, according to the documentation, and no indication in the lieutenant’s log for who these inmates would be.

You can see the count sheet for the previous count that occured at 5 AM below. The only units that have different count values are G-S changing from a value of 88 to 86 and Z-A (SHU) changing from a value of 72 to 71. In other words, Epstein was removed from the SHU count and two other unknown inmates were removed from the G-S unit according to the documentation.

The reasons for these discrepancies remain unknown.

You might have also noticed that I highlighted an 11 AM count for the August 10, 2019 for the second entry and a seeming count discrepancy in the total count. After looking through the logs it appears that the prison did an institutional count at 10 AM on Saturdays and Sundays but not weekends and the total count mismatch is likely due to Epstein’s removal not being deducted from the final count.

SECTION 3

The Incorrect Daily Activity Report Counts

Daily activity reports included a count summary for the midnight counts for each unit in the prison the previous day. One exception is a unit referred to as C-A in count sheets. The sample below shows the daily activity report for August 7, 2019 which was sent out on August 8, 2019 and the values match the midnight count for that shift. The units on the count sheet are highlighted.

The numbers shown in the daily activity report sum up to 752 but when the missing 10 inmates from the C-A unit are included the sum matches the count sheet total of 762.

I was able to find all count sheets for the midnight count from July 23, 2019 to August 14, 2019 within the Epstein files with the exceptions of July 27, 2019 to July 30, 2019 and August 11, 2019. When these midnight count sheets are compared with the numbers from the daily activity reports they all match with three exceptions. August 4, 2019 where an inmate appears to be miscounted as being in their unit when they’re in a hospital. The other two occur on August 9, 2019 and August 10, 2019 with 7 out of the 11 unit counts and 10 out of the 11 unit counts, respectively, are incorrect. The August 10, 2019 daily activity report counts are identical to the counts from August 9, 2019. These bad counts were not discussed in the OIG report nor in any of the interviews I’ve reviewed leading me to believe they were overlooked.

The August 10 count being incorrect in the daily activity report is remarkable because Anderson-Layne did the count herself according to prison staff interviews conducted with the OIG.

Anderson-Layne created that daily report according to OIG agents who interviewed her and lieutenant’s logs show that Anderson-Layne was on morning shift for August 11, 2019 when the report was sent out.

SECTION 4

Improper TRUSCOPE Lieutenant Round Documentation

In his interview, Darden mentioned how he found Anderson-Layne’s discrepancies using prison logging software called TRUSCOPE. TRUSCOPE was used by prison correctional officers to track daily activities such as cell searches, inmate transfers between units, inmate counts and even when inmates were being transferred out of the prison. You can see an example below where the user looks for all entries involving Jeffrey Epstein and his his cell numbered 220.

These entries correspond with documentation called TRUINTEL which allows for TRUSCOPE entries to be printed out for an audit. You can see the matching entry for the visual search of Jeffrey Epstein entered into the system on August 8, 2019 at 8:39 PM below.

If you feel like doing an audit yourself, be warned. I found over 1,800 pages of logs and had to write a computer program to help me analyze all of the information. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it if you feel so inclined but you should know what you’d be getting yourself into!

It’s common knowledge for people that have been following this story for a while that the conclusions made by the OIG concerning Epstein’s death center on the idea that Michael Thomas and Tova Noel failed to perform their mandatory 30 minute rounds. Their failure to do so prevented them from discovering Epstein was without a cell mate and then taking the necessary steps to secure a new one for him. What’s seldom discussed was that lieutenants were required to do a single round on Epstein’s unit during their shifts. The OIG even addresses this in its report but dismisses Anderson-Layne’s failure to conduct the expected rounds as a matter of poorly defined policy.

The report also mentions training material that includes instructions saying that lieutenants must physically see each inmate on a unit for a round to be considered complete.

Anderson-Layne made an entry into TRUSCOPE saying that she had completed a lieutenant round in the SHU at 05:21 AM. What Darden noted was that each of the entries for the Lieutenant’s rounds that shift were entered from the same computer located in the Lieutenant’s office and not from the computer located in SHU. He also noted that these entries were made right before Anderson-Layne was relieved at 5:30 AM by the incoming lieutenant.

You can see an example of a lieutenant who makes a TRUSCOPE entry from the SHU computers below. Despite the fact that Reyes’ transfer was noted in the lieutenant’s logs as having happened at 8:38 AM that morning, they still signed off on the SHU rounds and didn’t raise concerns about the fact that Epstein did not have a cell mate.

People in supervisory roles within the prison, including the Warden Lamine N’Diaye, Captain Darden, an associate warden and even Regional Director Ray Ormond all concurred that a lieutenant’s round entailed a physical check on each inmate which was even included in the OIG report.

Anderson-Layne apparently did not follow this directive despite having over 20 years of experience as a corrections officer, about 9 of which were as a lieutenant.

The OIG noted that Anderson-Layne did appear in the SHU at approximately 4:00 AM. You can even verify this in the surveillance footage released in July of 2025. In spite of this, Darden still believed this entries were erroneous due to the fact that a proper round was not conducted.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: When a Lieutenant has to do a round in a - let’s say any tier - and let’s say the SHU, what does that entail?

CAPTAIN DARDEN: They’re supposed to go door by door, just like I explained to you before. You’re supposed to go in the unit, go on the tier, and you’re supposed to walk and look at every cell.

SECTION 5

The Erroneously Validated Count that Included Efrain Reyes after he was Transferred

In the course of auditing this information in TRUSCOPE I made some new discoveries involving Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate Efrain Reyes. According to the OIG report Efrain Reyes was marked down in prison documentation as something called ‘WAB’ which stood for ‘with all belongings’. This meant that he was to be removed from the prison. The prison’s psychology department issued clear and direct instructions that Epstein was meant to have a cell mate at all times due to his suicide risk and Reyes’ departure was held up as one of the key failures that supported the OIG’s conclusion that Epstein committed suicide. Confusion over whether Reyes was actually being transferred or was temporarily out for court that day was one of the key sticking points for why Epstein never got another cell mate.

You can see an officer referred to in the OIG report as ‘Supervisory Correctional System Specialist’ go into the finer points concerning ‘WAB’ and ‘pre-remove’.

You can see the lieutenant’s log where Efrain Reyes was listed as ‘PRE REMOVE’, not court, along with two other inmates below and the transfer receipt for these inmates below.

Warden Lamine N’Diaye took the day off on Friday August 9, 2019 and claims that he had no idea Reyes was being transferred out of the prison that day. I wasn’t able to determine why the transfer receipts bare his name, i.e. if he approved the receipt himself or if the receipt was generated from a template. I couldn’t find any direct answers from the OIG’s investigation notes neither.

According to the prisoner schedule report, that was emailed to prison staff from the United States Marshal Service (USMS) on August 8, 2019, Booth and Reyes were scheduled for something called ‘Transfer Within’ and with a type labelled, confusingly, as ‘Court’.

The Judge in these transfers was listed as MCC TOT GEO. MCC is the prison codes for Manhattan Correctional Center and GEO is the prison code that references the the corporation named GEO Group who owns the Queens Detention Facility where Efrain Reyes was transferred. According to a staff member that worked in the receiving and discharge TOT meant that the inmate was to be transferred out of the prison. She also makes it abundantly clear that this all meant Reyes was being transferred to another prison and not being sent to court.

As clear as the MCC officer above was on the meaning of the transfer order the OIG report suggests that MCC staff were under the assumption that Reyes was merely going to court and would return later that day.

In the same report, an officer referenced to as the SHU Officer in Charge wrote a memo saying that he informed oncoming staff that Reyes was WAB and that Epstein would need a new cell mate.

Despite the copious warnings that Reyes would be removed from the institution, a lieutenant’s log entry saying that Reyes was no longer there and even an officer testifying that he knew that Reyes was transferred before leaving and warned Tova Noel along with her co-workers of this, none of it was entered into TRUSCOPE. In spite of this, there’s an entry in TRUSCOPE that claims a count was verified as if Reyes was still at the institution.

Pedro Garcia-Pena was the last documented inmate to be admitted into the SHU that day according to lieutenant’s logs and the official count for 10 PM shows 73 inmates being contained in SHU. 73 is an incorrect number as well given that one of those inmates was suppsed to be in a dry cell in the R&D unit. However, unlike the TRUSCOPE count this count does not include Reyes. The lieutenant’s log has the correct count of 72 where both Reyes and the inmate housed in R&D are excluded.

It’s tempting to think that maybe the two additional inmates could be the two inmates in TRUSCOPE could be the two redacted inmates sent to suicide watch. However, their transfer is recorded in TRUSCOPE and the count is updated to reflect this.

TRUSCOPE shows out counts for inmates Kerry Felix and Dayvon Williams to suicide watch occurring at 8:41 PM. This roughly matches the lieutenant’s log note for the two inmates sent to suicide watch at 8:21 PM and no other inmates are sent to suicide watch that shift. It’s a bit confusing to read because the out count is displayed in reverse order from 73 to 74 instead of 74 to 73.

Whether the staff member at SHU made a false entry into TRUSCOPE or whether the control officer responsible for the institutional count gave a false confirmation is unknown. What is known is that the counts in TRUSCOPE would be correct if Efrain Reyes had never left the institution and the inmate held at R&D was still present in SHU.

Another important thing to note about that false count of 74 is it matches perfectly with the mysterious ‘73+1’ count slip that was touched on in the OIG report.

Multiple staff affirm that the ‘+1’ is indicative of a ghost count which, according to those staff members, meant an inmate was supposed to be returning to SHU. To put it another way, according to these staff members ‘73+1’ meant an inmate was supposed to return to SHU.

Interestingly, when Anderson-Layne is asked about this ghost count she insists that it is nonsense and even goes so far as to suggest the officer who wrote the markings on the slips is a liar or that another lieutenant ordered the count despite the fact that she was the only lieutenant on shift.

If you’re actively reviewing these files or are just interested in getting a deeper feel for Anderson-Layne as a person I’d highly recommend reading her interview in its entirety.

The OIG agents were pretty convinced that Anderson-Layne noticed the R&D inmate discrepancy at 10PM and tried to alter documents to cover her tracks by correcting the mistake. Anderson-Layne flatly denies this.

The OIG asked Darden about this but he didn’t have much information to provide. He only told the investigators there were ‘all kinds of discrepancies’ in the log.

A past article I’ve written goes into more detail about how this discrepancy ties in with the 9S+1 marking made on one of the inmate count records, according to staff, meant an inmate was supposed to be transferred from the R&D unit of the prison to SHU. This marking was made was made on a slip for a count that was documented as cleared at 10:36 PM which is about three minutes away from the 10:39 PM mark when an orange flash is seen entering Epstein’s tier. The lieutenant log’s incorrect count of 73 on August 10, 2019 was necessary to make a forced entry into SENTRY to suggest an inmate was being housed in R&D starting from the previous day and was not in SHU. The entry was made at 12:35 AM that night despite lieutenant’s logs showing him as present in R&D section from 3:15 PM the previous day onward.

SECTION 6

Anderson-Layne’s refusal to recount the events before Epstein’s death

When given the chance to tell her side of the story to the Captain who demanded a memo explaining what had happened during her shift on August 10, 2019 she emailed a refusal to do so.

The email is referenced in the OIG’s interview with Warden Lamine N’Diaye and a copy of the email can be seen below.

Whether Anderson-Layne was simply being inconsiderate and lazy or actively hiding something is a determination that has to be left up to the reader. Despite the fact that she was relieved at 5:30 AM she was at the facility until 9:30 AM doing official duties, even helping on the SHU unit with breakfast feeding and told OIG investigators that she was still working on administrative work before sending her daily activity report at around 9:26 AM that morning.

REDACTED OIG AGENT: … you said you were working from approximately 5:30 a.m. until 7:00 a.m. on your paperwork and then again it sounds like from probably about 8:00 a.m. until you sent out the email at 9:26 a.m. on your paperwork. And we talked about this is the paperwork that you would have been working on. So for approximately three plus hours you may have been working on this.

SECTION 7

Revisiting Surveillance Footage and the Unrecorded entry into SHU

In light of this new information and how it relates to the 9S+1 and 73+1 ghost count I believe its relevance to the surveillance footage and the famous orange flash needs to be revisited.

As noted in SECTION 5 multiple prison staff clearly stated that ghost counts meant a count is done to include an inmate as being present within a unit even when they aren’t physically there because they’re about to be returned or sent there.

A picture of the SHU schematics from the OIG report can be seen below showing where cameras were not reocrding and highlighting a path from elevators to into the tier containing Epstein’s cell out of their view. Note that it is marked as M Tier which is one floor down from the L Tier which contained Epstein’s cell. The stairs provide access to both tiers.

You can see the same schematic with the elevators labelled below as well as markings showing the officers that allow for access to each door into SHU. The SHU officer holds the key that allows people to enter the interior door while the control officer must open the outside door.

The officer who wrote ‘9S+1’ on the count slip that he said meant an inmate from the R&D unit of the prison was to be moved back to the SHU was working the control position that shift and was responsible for opening the outside door.

Also remember that this officer said that he would not have done a ghost count without the express permssion of the shift lieutenant who was, at the time, Glenda Anderson-Layne.

Note that ‘Nine South’ is another name for SHU.

If this officer did open the door to SHU then all that would be needed for someone to enter SHU unnoticed by cameras is for Tova Noel to open the inner door. We can actually see her approach those doors at two important times. Once at 10:38 PM and another time at 11:33 PM.

You can see the first video of 10:39 PM here including the orange flash at the stairs.

You can see the second video of Tova Noel heading in the direction of the interior door at 11:33 PM below.

You can see a more detailed analysis of the video in my other piece (be warned, it can get quite technical) but there are artifacts highly suggestive of tampering in the video between 11:20 PM and midnight. Whether or not the video has been altered is not in dispute. The only question that remains is why that video was altered. Two mouse cursors can be clearly seen in the video at 11:42 and 11:43 PM about 10 minutes after Noel walked to the interior door to SHU.

That was a lot. If you read all of this or even just parts of it, thank you. I believe all of this detail to is necessary to help truly understand the events that happened at the Manhattan Correctional Center in August 9 and 10 of 2019 that led to the death of Jeffrey Epstein. I also believe that this information needs to be made as accessible as it possibly can. I promise I will be trying to write more digestable and shorter content in the future.

I’m not done and there will be more.

You can buy me a coffee here!

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CONTENT.

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

INMATE 14 worked in [the] cafeteria and heard guards talking about Epstein.

[INMATE 14 heard the following from] guards that work in SHU (Special Housing Unit) -

[The prison Guard known as “G”] - said “that chomo (prison slang for a child molester) is going to die in there” [but it] may have been [a] joke

…

[INMATE 14] asked Thomas why Epstein [was not] in gen pop. Tomas said that guy’s going to die in there. Laughing. [The conversation happened within] 1 week of Epstein dying.

Around breakfast time, [the officers] went up [to Epstein’s cell]. [The inmate] heard [an] officer yelling “breath” - [A] male officer yelled it.

…

That morning Lt. REDACTED [was] handing out trays. Lt. REDACTED said “don’t worry we have an alibi for you.”

Thomas

- Works in laundry. [INMATE 8] heard he brings in contraband [with] the cadre.
- He’s ‘hands on‘ and can be rough.

REDACTED OFFICER

- Will let inmates smuggle contraband through visit[s].
- Tries to talk to [the] female family/girlfriends of inmates.

- When [people form regions came through] inmates said “miss Noel killed Jeffrey“

On the way [to] the elevator INMATE 13 told guards “you better take that man out of there or he’s going to kill himself.”

…

Their answer was “he’s going to kill himself no matter what and he’s gotta pay for what he did. He’s going to kill himself anyway [because] he [cannot] put up [with] pressure. We don’t care either way. Let him kill himself.”

Accusations of officers involved with a contraband ring. Accusations of officers committing murder. Declarations that an alibi would be at the ready for the officers accused of murder. Guards expressing animosity towards Jeffrey Epstein with a demand for justice through his death. These are just some of the claims found within the interview notes of various inmates that were housed in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) shortly after the death of Jeffrey Epstein in August of 2019. What they all have in common is that none of them were referenced in the final OIG report on the death of Jeffrey Epstein which they ruled a suicide.

The OIG in their report claimed that they had interviewed 15 inmates and that none of them had any credible evidence to suggest that Epstein’s death was not a suicide.

Strikingly, the report was so transfixed on the investigation of the failures of Tova Noel and Michael Thomas to conduct mandated rounds and inmate checks that it failed to investigate any of the allegations of profound inmate abuse and staff corruption that was alleged by the inmates above. It’s not as though those accusations are without foundation. Perry Joyner, a former corrections officer who worked at MCC during the entirety of Jeffrey Epstein’s incarceration was convicted for accepting more than 70,000$ in bribes and had instructed other inmates to ‘slash’ another inmate for cooperating with the government. Officer Robert Adams was indicted for extorting sex from a prison visitor in exchange for turning a blind eye to the smuggling of contraband. Even officer Tova Noel was found to have accepted thousands of dollars from undisclosed sources including a $5,000 cash payment during Epstein’s confinement. Because this is never addressed directly by the OIG their reasons for excluding this information is left to the imagination.

According to an index found within the files released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) at least 14 inmates MCC inmates were interviewed. I was able to locate 13 of these numbered inmate interviews and they included 6 of the seven inmate interviews that were referenced in the OIG report.

I could not find an interview of Inmate 12 that was marked with that specific number. There is an inmate interview which was conducted on August 26, 2019 that could be a match for Inmate 12 based on the date it was conducted. While this is an inmate interview please note that this can’t be confirmed to be Inmate 12 with the information provided but will still be referred to as such throughout the remainder of the article.

I plan to get deeper into the material that was left out of the final OIG report but before I do I want to present you with the inmate interviews that were referenced by the OIG in their report and how some of those inmates were sent from general population to Epstein’s unit the SHU.

Within the OIG report you can see references to interviews from Inmate 5, Inmate 6 and Inmate 7. Their cell locations with respect to Epstein’s can be seen below.

Readers should note that the numbers used by the OIG to identify inmates do not match the numbers from the index above. E.g. Inmate 4 as referenced in the OIG report is not the same as Inmate 4 referenced in the index.

According to an August 9, 2019 locator form those cells are populated by Jhonny Contreras, Christopher Santos-Felix and Edward Jimenez.

Another inmate of interest is Inmate 4 who was detained in something called a ‘dry cell’ as noted by the OIG report. You can see inmate Leonardo Fernandez in cell 218 being marked with ‘Dry Cell’ in the locator form above.

Leonardo Fernandez, Christopher Santos-Felix and Edward Jimenez were identified early in the investigation as potential cooperating witnesses.

Oddly, Leonardo Fernandez was recorded as being off of the unit for the entire night. That oddity gets even stranger when taken together with the fact that a prison staff member told investigators that they marked a count slip with ‘9S+1’ which meant an inmate housed in the same prison unit was supposed to be returned to Epstein’s unit around the same time the famous ‘orange flash’ appears heading towards Epstein’s tier in the footage of the SHU common area that was released to the public in July of 2025 .

Using all of this along with other supporting documentation we can show that:

• Inmate 4 of the OIG report is Leonardo Fernandez who is referenced in the index above as Inmate 3

  • Referenced here as INMATE 3

  • Corresponding FBI 302

• Inmate 5 of the OIG report is Jhonny Contreras who is referenced in the index above as Inmate 2

  • Referenced here as INMATE 2

  • Corresponding FBI 302

  • Confirmed as cellmate of Christopher Santos-Felix through an unredacted reference in his 302 (JHONNY is misspelled as JOHNNY)

• Inmate 6 of the OIG report is Christopher Santos-Felix who is referenced in the index above as Inmate 11

  • Referenced here as INMATE 11

  • Corresponding FBI 302 reference

• Inmate 7 of the OIG report is Edward Jimenez who is referenced in the above index as Inmate 4

  • Referenced in this FBI 302 as INMATE 4

  • Unredacted FBI 302

  • Handwritten notes (Page 44)

The interviews of Jhonny Contreres, Christopher Santos-Felix and Edward Jimenez paint a similar picture of an uneventful night. No one entered the tier throughout the late evening, not even the guards who were supposed to be doing their rounds past a certain time. Contreras recalls one final count slightly before midnight, Santos-Felix recalls a check sometime between 12:30AM and 1:00 AM and Jimenez recalls ‘a few rounds’ but doesn’t remember when they were. Each of these inmates were awake to see guards trying to resuscitate Epstein.

The interview of Leonardo Fernandez is shockingly terse for someone who was identified as a cooperating witness. It provides no information aside from assurances that he was in the R&D unit of the prison the entire night and that Jeffrey Epstein was frequently in legal visits from 9AM to 9PM.

You can read the interview in its entirety on a single note pad page below.

The story of how these inmates came to SHU in the first place have some strikingly improbable coincidences. For one, each of them came from the exact same prison block, G10 of unit 7 SOUTH, where they were immediate cell neighbors. Santos-Felix and Contreras were even roommates. Edward Jimenez was sent to SHU on August 1, 2019. Santos-Felix and Contreras were documented as being sent to SHU at the same time on August 2, 2019 and Fernandez was sent to SHU a couple hours later the same day.

According to the lieutenant’s logs for August 1, 2019 Edward Jimenez was sent to SHU along with his then cell mate Oved Vega and co-named defendant on Oved Vega’s indictment Frankie Reyes pending an SIS investigation. Oddly, the SHU count in this log was not updated. Edward Jimenez and Oved Vega were documented as being housed in cell G10-773.

According to lieutenants logs Contreras, Santos-Felix and Leonardo Fernandez were also sent to SHU the following day. Contreras was housed in cell G10-779 along with Santos-Felix while Fernandez was in cell G10-777.

Contreras was sent to SHU for violation of code 113 which according to the Bureau of Prisons inmate discipline program is possession of drugs or other paraphernalia.

Santos-Felix was sent to SHU for violation of code 108 which is possession of hazardous materials including cell phones.

Fernandez was sent to SHU for violation of code 115, destruction of an item during a search and code 331, possession of non-hazardous contraband.

Block G10 consists of 8 cells numbered from 773 to 780. Using the roster data from the Epstein files below I made an outlay of the cells in the block to show the proximity of these cells and how these inmates were removed in pairs from the block with the exception of Fernandez between August 1, 2019 and August 3, 2019.

The remaining OIG inmate references from the index are:

• Inmate 2 from the OIG who matches the testimony of Inmate 9 and was a witness of Epstein’s first alleged suicide attempt on July 22, 2019

  • Referenced here as INMATE 9

  • Handwritten FBI notes (Page 85)

• Inmate 3 is Efrain Reyes who is referenced in the index above as Inmate 10

  • FBI 302 reference as INMATE 10

  • Unredacted handwritten reference

Inmate 1 from the OIG report is Nicholas Tartaglione who I was not able to locate an interview for. This could explain why the OIG report says it references 15 inmates as opposed to the 14 referenced in the index.

Inmate 2’s interview recalls Epstein’s first alleged suicide attempt as a suicide attempt with a high degree of certainty and recalls Epstein’s cellmate banging on the doors and screaming for the guards in a manner that sounds almost heroic.

Efrain Reyes’ testimony almost reads like a budding friendship with Reyes telling Epstein ‘not to do it’, Epstein expressing amicability towards Reyes by giving him money for commissary and commiserating about the fact that Epstein was placed in unit 5 NORTH on arrival which was, according to Reyes, ‘the hottest house’. Epstein even quipped ‘They threw me to the wolves!’ (there will be more on this later)

Reyes even suggests that there’s no reason for Epstein to consider suicide since he could pay protection money.

[Reyes talked with Epstein about the suicide] attempt one time. [Reyes] says ‘You tried to off yourself. Why? You got money. You can pay for protection.’ [Epstein] said no. That [was not] an option. He was in the house 1 day and they said you gotta pay 5k in each [account]. [Reyes asked] ‘Why [did] they put you in [5 NORTH]? That’s the hottest house.’ [Epstein] said ‘They threw me to the wolves.’

Now that we’ve gone over what was presented in the OIG report I’m going to dive into the inmate interviews that were not. I’ve found the best way to present this information is in the order for which these interviews were done between August 15 and September 13, 2019.

A complete timeline for when the interview were conducted can be seen below.

August 15, 2019

• Inmate 9 (in OIG report as Inmate 2)

August 16, 2019

• Inmate 3 (Leonardo Fernandez who is in the OIG report as Inmate 4)

• Inmate 4 (Edward Jimenez who is in the OIG report as Inmate 7)

• Inmate 10 (Efrain Reyes who is in the OIG report as Inmate 3)

• Inmate 11 (Christopher Santos-Felix who is in the OIG report as Inmate 6)

August 19, 2019

• Inmate 6

August 21, 2019

• Inmate 8

August 26, 2019

• Inmate 12*

August 28, 2019

• Inmate 5

September 3, 2019

• Inmate 2 (Jhonny Contreres who is in the OIG report as Inmate 5)

September 5, 2019

• Inmate 14

September 9, 2019

• Inmate 13

September 10, 2019

• Inmate 7

September 13, 2019

• Inmate 1

INMATE 6’s was conducted on August 19, 2019. He claims that it was common knowledge amongst other inmates in the tier that Epstein was suicidal and even shared a rumor that he had heard that Epstein wanted to pay his cell mate, “killer cop” Nicholas Tartaglione, to strangle him. He claims he did not know that Tartaglione was Epstein’s cell mate at the time.

One interesting tidbit from this interview is the claim that his neighbor INMATE 5 heard prison guards say ‘they were not doing rounds tonight’ as if not doing was an active decision and not a mere dereliction of duty due to exhaustion. He does not believe he was supposed to hear that.

[INMATE 6’s] neighbor INMATE 5 heard [the] female officer who got fired say to [the] male officer “we’re not doing the rounds tonight” after [the] 9:30 count. They didn’t walk [the unit and] REDACTED repeated it to the unit. [It] echos in there.

REDACTED said ‘Y’all heard that?’
[He was] on the gate at all times.
[He said this with regards to] what [the female] officer said. She said [this] to the male officer but [the inmate did not] think [it was] meant to be overheard.

On August 21, 2019 INMATE 8 was interviewed. He claims to have heard that many inmates were asking Epstein for money and Epstein refused. He offers no comment on Epstein’s suicidal intent and claims that people deliberately go to suicide watch to ‘get a break’ from SHU. He also backs up the claim that Epstein frequently had legal visits.

When asked about Epstein’s death he claims that he learned about it the following day and heard another inmate from M-Tier accuse Tova Noel of being a murderer.

When asked about whether or not Noel and Thomas did rounds he claims that he could not remember and was a heavy sleeper. He denied hearing either of them talking about rounds and did not know if they were sleeping.

What’s more striking about this interview is the allegations of guard involvement in contraband smuggling which he claims includes an officer named Thomas. It’s not immediately clear if Thomas is in reference to Michael Thomas, the officer that found Epstein dead in his cell on August 10, 2019, but the name is left unredacted along with Noel’s.

Thomas

- Works in laundry. [INMATE 8] heard he brings in contraband [with] the cadre.
- He’s hands on and can be rough
- Thomas responded to inmate Marc Webster’s threatened suicide with [lieutenant] REDACTED (short, dark hair)
- [Lieutenant] REDACTED is rough and has a low tolerance for inmates
- Thomas [and] REDACTED tossed the cell of Webster and were rough with him
- Thomas works with [the] cadre. Two [inamtes] were caught [with] contraband.

• Chris - Tier K

• Mike - Tier L

- They are cadre who work in laundry. They deal in cigarettes and K2 (synthetic marijuana)
- People place orders with cellphones and pay via CashApp. [The] cadre brings contraband [to] the insulin area and give[s] it [to a] runner from a unit.
- Cigarettes cost $300-500

While it is not immediately clear if ‘Thomas’ is in reference to ‘Michael Thomas’ it should be noted that managing laundry was a part of the material handler’s duties as per Michael Thomas himself and then Warden Lamine N’Diaye.

INMATE 8 goes on to name other officers he believes to be involved the contraband cadre. He claims one of those officers tries to talk with female visitors.

REDACTED OFFICER 1 does maintainence [and is] involved in contraband.
- [They] asked INMATE 8 for a bag of chips to fix his light

REDACTED OFFICER 2
- Will let inmates smuggle contraband through visit[s]
- Tries to talk to female family/girlfriends of inmates.
- REDACTED OFFICER 2 doesn’t search people he likes
- One day “Lucky” went to get contraband on visitor floor. He dropped it. REDACTED OFFICER 2 picked it up asked where [the] balloon [of] it was, and said he would flush it down [the] toilet.

• [INMATE 8 does not] know if he actually did.

• Lucky is in for “pimping” [and] went to SHU

Contraband generally
- [A] cellphone costs between $3,500 to 4,000, but people also bring in very small phones
- INMATE 8 told lieutenant REDACTED about an iPhone in SHU, hoping for preferential treatment. Inmate Ferrara/Ferrari had the iPhone. Lieutenant REDACTED found it.
- [The] recent search of SHU was not successful [because] it was too slow.
- People use CashApp, Western Union, MoneyGram

On August 26, 2019 an interview of an inmate who was presumably INMATE 12 occurred.

INMATE 12 claimed to know Reyes from the 7 NORTH unit of the prison and had even proposed bunking with him when they met in SHU. He also claimed Reyes told him he was in cell 212 at the time and that he had not heard from anyone on the unit about Epstein’s alleged suicide attempt.

Unlike all of the inmates that were interviewed before, INMATE 12 reports that there was a loud commotion the night before Epstein was found dead in his cell. Frustratingly, a fold in the page makes it impossible to determine what it was exactly he claimed to have heard the inmates screaming about.

[INMATE 12] heard commotion overnight before breakfast. [He] heard inmates banging on [their doors but] did not hear [the] guards yell anything.

[The noise from the] inmate[s] woke [INMATE 12] up, saying he [UNREADABLE FROM FOLDED PAGE]

The CO’s kept coming [and] going

[INMATE 12] saw different CO’s coming

Other inmates were saying “I’m going to [UNREADABLE FROM FOLDED PAGE]” commotion

On August 28, 2019 INMATE 5 was interviewed.

This particular inmate’s testimony made the news cycle with reporting from the Miami Hearld in their piece Prison guards discussed cover-up of Epstein’s death, inmate tells FBI.

When they were walking through [with] breakfast [lieutenant] REDACTED served food. “Dudes said you killed that dude.” She said “If he is dead we’re going to cover it up and he’s going to have an alibi. My officers.”

Whole H tier heard that REDACTED initiated [the conversation]

The same inmate also claims someone else, who he seems to suggest is a staff member, is a member of the Crips street gang who would allow contraband to be smuggled into the facility. The same person would also frequently talk with the visiting wives and family members of inmates while ‘rubbing it in their face’. He said other officers would also do it on the regular.

REDACTED (tall, brace) - he’s a crip from REDACTED area
When it comes to visits, he’s the reason phones [and] drugs come in.

He does not care [about] what comes in. He searches you but says “I don’t care what you bring in”. [INMATE 5] heard him say that.

REDACTED talks to wives [and] family members [and] rubs it in your face but other officers ([like REDACTED]) do it on the regular.

Considering other stories that came from these investigations like the conviction of Perry Joyner or the indictment of Robert Adams, the fact that the OIG did not feel the need to report such wanton corruption and abuse that was occurring in MCC around the time of Epstein’s death or at the very least prove these claims to be unfounded is absolutely gobsmacking. This is not the only inmate to report such corruption at MCC as we shall see.

There’s one more important piece to this testimony which ties into the ‘commotion’ reported by INMATE 12. INMATE 5 reports that around midnight inmates are screaming at a female officer to ‘turn lights out’ and scratched out parts of the notes suggest that she turned on a fan to drown out the noise. As told by INMATE 6, he tells the investigator that he heard the female officer instruct the male officer coming on shift ‘not to do rounds’.

When the fan is mentioned again in the interview it’s unclear the fan is turned on or off.

Night Epstein died

...

[At] around 12 everyone was kicking their door. Yelling. Calling her a bitch. Asking for lights to be turned out.

(THIS PART IS SCRACTCHED OUT) So she turns [the] fan o[n]

…

New officer comes in [and] she told him not to do rounds

…

After [the] new officer comes in at 12, she turns fan (or he did) and it blocked out [the] noise.

The physical assaults and abuse from staff reported by this inmate should not be overlooked neither.

REDACTED is the issue [because they beat] people up in [their] cell. When INMATE 5 [was] on suicide watch [they] told him ‘Don’t do that again [or] I’ll fuck you up.’

Officer REDACTED said ‘You told on REDACTED. You’re lucky I [don’t] punch you in your face.’

On September 5, 2019 INMATE 14 was interviewed. His interview is remarkable in that not only does he lay bare the seeming animosity the guards had towards Epstein and indifference to his death, as highlighted at the beginning of the article, but he also alleges that upon his arrival at MCC Epstein was being extorted by other inmates in general population. He also states that an officer, again identified as Thomas, was supervising a contraband cadre from the prison’s laundry facilities.

[Jeffrey Epstein] was initially placed [in 5 NORTH] but there’s always gang members there. People were coming into his cell and extorting him (per several people in [5 NORTH])

[Jeffrey Epstein] passed [a] letter to [a] guard explaining what happened [and was] moved to [the] box (SHU).

Hector Emilio Fernandez witnessed this.

Readers should note I was unable to identify whom ‘Hector Emilio Fernandez’ is and I was not able to confirm if it was in reference to one or multiple inmates.

Thomas supervises [the] laundry cadre

Many that work there have been sent to SHU [because they] were caught with cellphones or drugs

[INMATE 14 does not] know if Thomas allowed inmates in cadre to bring in contraband.

Thomas has been in laundry the longest.

On September 9, 2019 INMATE 13 was interviewed. This inmate expressed concerns over Epstein’s seemingly suicidal intent and voiced his concerns to prison staff. Prison staff responded that his death would be justice and ‘they don’t care’ if he kills himself as highlighted at the beginning of the article.

Like other inmates before him, he also heard a ruckus in the evening and that officers were not doing their count overnight. He also noted the fan was left which was unusual and typically done only when inmates were making noise.

On August 9, [the] fan was on. They [did not] do the 10 pm count. [INMATE 13] went to sleep [at] 3/4 am. Guards [did not] do count the whole time. [INMATE 13] was listening to music [with] one headphone in. [INMATE 13 was] in [the] 2nd cell on [the] left hand side. [INMATE 14] can see [the] highway from window.

[Guards] don’t usually leave [the] fan on. [The fan was] put on when inmates start making noise.

On September 10, 2019 INMATE 7 was interviewed. The date is confirmed on an FBI proffer document for the same interview here (see ‘Investigation on’ in bottom left corner of first page). The inmate claims he was assaulted at around three in the morning by an redacted corrections officer and lieutenant at 3 AM on July 14 or 15

The inmate further claims that there was an exchange between Epstein and Tova Noel about two to three days before Epstein died where Noel called Epstein a ‘child molester’ and something else that isn’t made clear. The note is difficult to read but it seems INMATE 7 claims to have heard this from an exchange Noel had with another male officer.

INMATE 7 also reports hearing a ruckus in the evening which woke him up but a new element is added where he claims to have heard someone from his tier shout “Epstein’s number on the hangup”. Whether that was in reference to Epstein’s cell number or his inmate number is not clear nor is whether the person who shouted this was an inmate or guard. He claims to have asked Noel to turn his lights off and being ignored.

[On the] night it happened, someone yelled on his tier Epstein’s [number] “on the hang up”. That woke up [INMATE 7] and so he asked Noel to turn off [the] light. [The] yelling woke him up.

Noel didn’t turn off [the] light

Like INMATE 5, INMATE 7 also claims to have heard a lieutenant say that she would have alibi ready as she was serving breakfast.

That morning [lieutenant] REDACTED [was] handing out trays. [Lieutenant] REDACTED said “don’t worry we an alibi for you.” She was handing out trays on H-Tier.

The inmate further claims that everyone from L-Tier, where Epstein was housed, returned to general population. He could not remember hearing a fan nor if officers told each other to not do rounds that evening.

On September 13, 2019 INMATE 1 was interviewed. He does not discuss Jeffrey Epstein but rather the machinations of the contraband cadre.

He claims that various inmates are involved with the ring and that one of them works in laundry. Claims are made that officers are involved in the contraband ring but it’s unclear who says they don’t believe that to be the case.

As the interview proceeds, he discusses what inmate Chris shared with him about how contraband was smuggled into MCC.

- Chris said people leave contraband in the garbage, and then sanitation workers bring it in. [The sanitation workers] aren’t getting searched, just pat down. He said they have one person doing it.

- [Chris] said [the] town driver has [a] gate pass [and] can bring stuff in/out.

- Doesn’t know about any cadre [members] working [with] CO’s to bring in contraband.

INMATE 1 denies hearing anything suggesting either Michael Thomas or Robert Adams are involved with the contraband cadre. He does, however, state that Robert Adams tried to speak with the girlfriends of inmates and his own cellmate (bunkie) complained about that in April of that year.

INMATE 1 then shares how the acquiring contraband works.

1. If you want a phone, you make a payment. Western Union, meeting on [the] outside [or] CashApp

2. Once money is there [you need to] then ask for something (like electrical) and they come to you

3. Orders are placed in person. Sometimes [an] order [can be] placed via text message

These interviews that were excluded from the final OIG report do not paint a picture of a prison that was run by good faith yet incompetent individuals. They paint the picture of an institution that was abusive, hostile, dangerous and corrupt. Sadly, these are allegations that have been raised against the MCC before.

In May of 2015 MCC inmate Roberto Grant was found dead in his cell. The Gothamist did an incredible exposé on his death and were able to recover his autopsy with the help of transparency advocacy groups. Grant’s body was found with contusions on his head and all along his torso along with injuries on his neck which, according to handwritten notes on the autopsy, were consistent with strangulation. MCC staff told Grant’s grieving mother in 2015 that he had died of a drug overdose.

It was a sad and sordid affair that ended with Grant’s family suing the prison for 20 million dollars over. The suit would later be settled for 75,000$.

While there’s a lot to be shocked about from this story such as the the refusal of authority figures in the Bureau of Prisons, members of congress and even medical authorities to answer direct questions from reporters the responses from the inmates who were interviewed about Grant’s death are something I wish to focus on here.

“Heard dude passed out from smoking K2,” one unidentified inmate is noted as saying.

“Dude just passed out,” another said.

A third describes Grant, who some of the prisoners knew by the nickname Panama, as “smoking with his cellie,” and states that someone whose name was redacted “got k-2 on the unit.”

…

“Heard over the last few days that there is real strong k2 going around,” another prisoner told BOP investigators after Grant’s death. “They been calling it death.”

None of these statements offer a clear explanation for how Grant could have sustained such profound injuries. They all paint the same picture of someone who ‘seemed fine’ and then, out of no where, ‘just collapsed’ similar to how you might expect someone who took a bad hit of drugs might. One inmate even claimed to have seen him smoking the drug k2 despite the fact that no drugs were found in his toxicology screens.

Another inmate even seems to suggest others that were present rushed to his aid.

On May 19th, 2015, at around 11:40 p.m., prisoners in Grant’s unit, 11 South, yelled to guards to come help “an inmate passed out,” according to a jail captain’s memo.

If one were to accept that Grant died after being viciously assaulted, as the preponderance of evidence clearly suggests, one would imagine that a well-meaning inmate would instead respond with something along the lines of ‘This dude just got jumped and is hurt real bad! He needs help!’ If one were to accept this account was falsified by MCC, it strains credulity to the point of absurdity to think otherwise, it also raises some doubts about other similar accounts and just how well intentioned the actors actually were.

It’s incredible how the four inmates selected by the OIG as references for their report on Jeffrey Epstein’s death all came from the exact same block, two of whom were cellmates, before being sent to SHU over a two day period. It’s even more incredible that one of those inmates was reported to have spent the entire night of August 9, 2019 in a different unit and a staff member presenting evidence to the contrary is ultimately dismissed as making a clerical error.

These particular inmates were selected to be placed in the final OIG report for their supposed credibility and their proximity to Epstein but the testimony of others who reported rampant corruption, abuse, accusations of murder and accusations of a cover-ups were not worthy of citation nor further investigation.

A loud ruckus was heard by various inmates around midnight.

What was it about and what were inmates screaming?

Inmates claimed that corrections officers stated they were not doing counts deliberately and gave other officers direction to not do counts as well.

Why would an officer give such a directive? Why were none of the officers asked about this? Had this happened before?

For an institution that relies on a foundation of public trust one can only imagine why they thought it acceptable to not divulge this institution’s history of corruption, abuse and ultimately decided not to dispel any concerns about how it could be related to the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

I’m not seeing evidence here that because a murder of Jeffrey Epstein would have required a substantial amount of coordination to execute that makes it unlikely or impossible. Quite the contrary in fact.

There will be more.

You can buy me a coffee here!

There’s a section of the report dedicated to the count that was scheduled to happen at 10 PM the night before Epstein was found dead in his cell. Within it, you can find two count slips with quixotic markings. One count slip is marked with ‘73+1’ and the other with ‘9S+1’.

The slip with the ‘Unit’ section marked as ‘R&D’ is in reference to the ‘Receiving and Delivery’ unit of the prison while the other, with it's unit section marked as ‘ZA’, is in reference to the SHU. The slip for the R&D count shows a single inmate being housed there with a marking that reads ‘9S+1’ while the slip for the SHU count shows ‘73+1’ inmates.

The report says that Senior Officer Specialist 6 told investigators that they believed that the ‘+1’ marking on the SHU count slip was in their handwriting and that the ‘9S+1’ markings on the R&D count was in their handwriting. It goes on to say that the marks were meant to suggest an inmate was moved from SHU to a different part of the prison that day and was ‘ghost counted’.

Stunningly, this report overlooks a far darker implication the officer reported to the OIG in their interview on August 5, 2021. According to Senior Officer Specialist 6, the mark was added to suggest an inmate that was currently in the R&D section of the prison was meant to be returned to the SHU and that only a lieutenant on shift could have approved this.

So basically, the numbers are here, the numbers are right, but on this specific unit, we have one in R&D, that needs to be moved to Nine South.

If you have been paying attention to this story for long enough you’ve likely heard of the flash of orange that was seen at the 10:39 PM mark in the footage released by FBI in July 2025 of the unit that housed Epstein on the eve of his death. Both the OIG and FBI analysis conclude that the orange flash indicates someone went up the stairs to the L Tier where Epstein’s cell was located. The OIG’s analysis dismisses an inmate as a possibility due to the unit being on lock down while the FBI’s analysis does not dismiss this possibility.

If you look at the count sheet for 10 PM, which is referenced as the E-1 form in other documents, you can see that the official 10 PM count was cleared at 10:36 PM. This is less than five minutes before the orange flash is seen heading towards the L-Tier in SHU. The form says that no inmates were marked as being present in the R&D section of the prison (‘R-A’) and 73 inmates are marked as being in SHU (‘Z-A’).

The OIG did ask Senior Officer Specialist 6 if the markings actually meant that an inmate was supposed to be transferred from the SHU to R&D but they state that based on what was written that that inmate was at R&D and was meant to be returned to SHU.

As the interview proceeds we learn that there was an inmate, referred to as Fernandez, who was marked as being sent to the R&D cell at 3:15 PM that day who was not correctly marked as being in that unit until 12:35 AM that night.

REDACTED: And then, at 12:35, number one, negative one SHU correction, Fernandez, dry cell. And if you go back to this, daily log from August 9th, at 3:15 p.m., it says, Fernandez was placed on dry cell from ZA. So, it looks like that was finally corrected at 12:35 a.m.

To sum it up quick, an inmate was sent to R&D (referenced above as the ‘dry cell’) from SHU at 3:15 pm uncounted, there’s a 10 PM count slip from the section where he’s housed with markings that indicate he’s meant to return to SHU sometime after 10 PM but before the next count that Senior Officer Specialist 6 claims a lieutenant would have needed to approve, and the documentation was changed at 12:35 am to suggest he had been at the R&D the whole time.

You could read that and think it might have been an honest mistake. After all, Fernandez wasn’t marked as being in R&D at all when he was transferred at 3:15 pm which would need to be corrected and that is exactly what the OIG concluded in its report. The report mentions how counts were not performed properly at 4:00 PM. This was reflected in the inaccurate count slip where 75 inmates were recorded as being in the SHU but the real count should have been 74 since Epstein was in a conference with his attorney and not physically in the SHU while the other inmate was in R&D.

You can also see the inaccurate count slip and E-1 form for yourself below.

Curiously, the lieutenant’s logs themselves account for an inmate being transferred out of SHU to a dry cell at 3:15 PM and even have the shift ending at midnight with the correct count of inmates in the SHU. The OIG even confirms this in its report saying that the correct counts in SHU for the 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM counts were 72 which is exactly what’s recorded in the lieutenant’s log.

Bizarrely, as noted above, the official count slip for that time did, indeed, show a value of 73 which does not match what was written in the lieutenant’s log.

These discrepancies were corrected in the E-1 count sheet for the midnight count and, as noted by the OIG, all count slips after midnight were correct.

In spite of these corrections, an even more bizarre error now shows up in the lieutenant’s logs. The prior lieutenant’s log from the 4:00 PM to 12:00 AM shift for August 9, 2019 shows the correct SHU inmate count of 72 but the 12:00 AM to 6:00 AM shift for August 10, 2019 log shows an incorrect count of 73. The lieutenant has to manually enter in the log that inmate Fernandez was in a dry cell in R&D subtracting the SHU count of 73 by 1 back to the correct count of 72.

The OIG had a long, and often times contentious, interview with the morning watch lieutenant about these discrepancies. They could not understand how the SHU count changed from the correct count of 72 on the evening shift of August 9, 2019 to the incorrect count 73 on the morning shift of August 10, 2019. They had taken care of the discrepancies in the midnight count for August 10, 2019 on the E-1 form but this did not explain how the count could be correct in the log for the previous shift on August 9, 2019.

The investigator suggested the morning watch lieutenant caught the mistake at 10:00 PM and altered the logs themselves which the lieutenant flatly denies.

One particularly interesting portion of this interview was the discussion of the time the lieutenant sent out the daily logs. The lieutenant consistently emailed daily logs between 5:00 AM and 6:30 AM from previous shifts but on the day that Epstein was found dead in his cell they did not send out those logs until 9:26 AM. The implication from the investigators seemed to suggest that they were editing the logs during this time which was why they were sent out so much later than usual.

The daily logs from August 9, 2019, which were sent out on August 10, 2019, are not remarkable. Aside from the anomalies already discussed and the fact that they were sent hours later than they usually were, there isn’t anything too interesting in them.

The daily logs from August 10, 2019 which were sent out on August 11, 2019 are quite a different matter.

In the day watch logs, one of the first thing that catches the eye is the garish formatting of the header of this document and you’ll likely notice the date is incorrect. It’s slightly difficult to see because it is partially blacked out but if you look under the Daily Sensitive Information section you’ll see the phrase INSTITUTION ON MODIFIED OPERATIONS which seems to line up with other documents stating the institution was placed on modified operations at 7:00 AM on August 10, 2019. Finally, there’s a re-insertion of an entry showing inmate Mutimura being admitted to the facility with an ID that matches another inmate that was admitted in the actual August 9, 2019 logs at 8:36 PM (76329-054) with the count being unaltered in the log that was sent with this report. You can also see an inmate being transferred from the dry cell back to SHU and the SHU count increasing by one.

In the evening watch logs you can again see the INSTITUTION ON MODIFIED OPERATIONS banner under the Daily Sensitive Information section. You can also see two inmates placed on psych observation that do not seem to be accounted for on the previous shift. Curiously, this matches the morning watch which suggests that these inmates weren’t included in the Daily Sensitive Information the August 10 day watch shift but were placed back into the evening watch shift with no corresponding lieutenant’s log entry to explain this.

I can understand why some readers could ponder this and think ‘yeah all of this is weird but the systems they used at that prison were quite old and who’s to say there wasn’t some technical issue that could help explain all of this?’ I have two more pieces of information to offer for your consideration and one involves some recent discoveries from the video released in July of 2025.

We’ve been talking repeatedly about how an inmate was sent to the R&D section of the prison to be placed in a ‘dry cell’ watched by staff. What’s not mentioned, however, is that placing any prisoner in the R&D section of the prison is not allowed by the R&D team according to the Supervisory Correctional Systems Specialist. They even went so far as to say that if they were on shift they would not have allowed any inmate into R&D to be placed into a dry cell and would have forced staff to place any such inmate in a dry cell in SHU.

Based on the resistance expressed by the person who’s in charge of the R&D section, placing this inmate in R&D in lieu of a SHU dry cell seems to be a very strange choice.

For the final piece, you may have heard about the ‘orange flash’ being an inmate entering the tier and dismissed it because there’s no evidence of egress. Indeed, the same inmate who was housed in R&D was found in the R&D section the following day. If they were to enter the L-Tier where Epstein was being housed why was there no evidence they left?

That’s an excellent point and I’d draw your attention to the two GIFs below. They were all extracted from the video that was released by the FBI in July of 2025 and each one shows a cursor appearing briefly before vanishing. You can see these cursors in the video at the time stamps seen in the GIFs for yourself. Some of them occur quite quickly and will appear like a flash on the screen so I’d recommend that if you have a way to slow the video down you do so. I do a deeper dive on this along with some other anomalies here if you’d like to read further but be warned it can get quite technical.

These cursors were caught from a screen recording of the original video as confirmed by the Epstein files. Aside from the fact that these are cursors appearing in a supposedly ‘raw’ video, which is damning in its own right and never mind the fact that one becomes a resize cursor, what’s even more damning is that these cursors disappear almost instantly which strongly suggests the footage was either cut at that point or sections of that clip were layered to hide something that was in view. Most of the other blips that are suggestive of discontinuity occur between 11:20 PM and midnight which is between the 10:00 PM and12:00 AM count. If you know what you’re doing you can make objects disappear entirely using the editing software that was used for the video.

To recap.

1. An inmate was sent to the R&D section of the prison to be detained while they were suspected of being in possession of contraband. This was done in spite of the fact that the SHU had its own dry cell and R&D management said they forbid inmates from being detained in their unit this way.

2. A staff member said that they wrote a note on a count slip that was meant to interpreted as saying that an inmate was supposed to be sent back to SHU from R&D after 10:00 PM but before 12:00 AM the night before Epstein was found dead in his cell.

3. That same staff member also said they would not have written that note without the express direction of the lieutenant who was on shift.

4. The lieutenant on shift manually made an entry into the prison’s database to show that an inmate was in R&D and not SHU more than 9 hours after they were logged as being transferred to R&D from the SHU.

5. The count for the SHU was wrong in the lieutenant’s logs for the shift starting at midnight August 10, 2019 in spite of the fact the SHU count was correct the shift prior even with the incorrect count slips completed during that shift.

6. No suspected log tampering from a lieutenant was mentioned at all in the OIG report with the closest reference to it being a section that suggests the logs are not a useful resource because they’re ‘subject to continuous modification’ on page 119.

7. A video released by the FBI in July 2025 showed a flash of orange which both the OIG and FBI agreed showed someone entering Epstein’s cell tier about twenty minutes before 11 PM which was a bit less than 5 minutes after the 10 PM count was completed with a slip marked to show an inmate was to be transferred to SHU from R&D.

8. The same video released by the FBI was confirmed to have been altered with the video editing software Adobe Premiere Pro almost a year ago by multiple experts with most of the points suggestive of discontinuity, as evidenced by vanishing cursors and a flashing tool panel in the upper right hand corner of the screen, occurring between 11:20 PM and 12:00 AM.

All of this paints a picture where an inmate was returned to SHU from another unit of the prison sometime between 10:30 PM and 12:00 AM. Perhaps some people can accept that alterations to the lieutenant’s logs meant nothing, the edits to the video released to the public were innocuous and without motive and the details left out of the OIG’s report concerning Epstein’s death were immaterial but I’m not one of them.

I’ve made my own conclusions but I can’t make yours. Even with all of that, I still haven’t played all of my cards yet.

There will be more.

You can buy me a coffee here

P.S.

Perry Joyner was a former MCC staff member who was convicted of accepting more than 70,000$ in bribes from inmates and conspiring to have one assaulted between October 2019 and February 2020. He joined MCC in June of 2019, a bit less than two months before Epstein died, and was on the 12:00 AM to 8:00 AM shift on August 10th, 2019 guarding the inmate who was being housed in the dry cell that night.

Make of that what you will.

Seems like an unfortunate event and something that could happen with an old camera system. Let’s see what this same electronics technician told the FBI about the matter on March 12, 2020.

If you read this closely enough the last, emphasized line should have triggered a loud record screech in your mind.

REDACTED also advised that he knew that by replacing both hard drives, the system would be wiped and that he advised personnel at MCC of that.

The electronics tech tells the FBI that his actions, at the behest of other MCC staff, resulted in the loss of all recorded video on the system. That’s a hell of a thing for the Office of the Inspector General to leave out of their report! Maybe there’s no violation of policy with the action since technically an FBI investigation might not have started at the time but having staff members take direction from a superior that would knowingly delete footage from an alleged suicide attempt is a hell of a thing to not investigate and a hell of a thing to leave out of your own report!

You may think that the warden told the electronics technician to simply start working on the system not knowing the end result of this. Perhaps, but it heavily strains credulity that the head of the prison would not be informed. This is especially so when the handwritten FBI notes from the same interview of that electronics technician on March 12, 2020 say quite plainly he advised MCC of the consequences of removing those two drives from the system .

I knew that by replacing both it would wipe system - I advised MCC of that

There’s also the fact he stated he’s pretty sure he told the warden in his OIG interview on September 29, 2021. It was a pretty big deal after all.

You may be wondering why removing two drives from the system would delete the system and that’s because the hard drives on the surveillance system were organized in a configuration known as RAID 5. It’s a fail safe configuration that allows for a single hard drive to fail in the surveillance system while the other hard drives in the system keep recording. It also allows for the bad drive to be replaced. The problem occurs when two drives fail. While in this configuration, removing two drives at the same time and starting to rebuild the system can corrupt the entire system leading to data loss as explained by the technician who worked for the company that installed the surveillance system, SigNet Technologies, in their interview with the OIG on September 22, 2021.

The electronics technician tells the OIG the exact same thing.

There’s room for some, admittedly absurd, good-faith assumptions here if the warden did know that the footage would be wiped. Perhaps the Warden did not know that wiping all of that footage would erase the footage of the July 23, 2019 incident where Jeffery Epstein was found unconscious with a noose around his neck while being housed with a man accused of quarduple homicide and waiting to be tried for the death penalty at the time. There’s also ignoring the fact that, you know, he was running one of the most dangerous prisons in the country and this decision would wipe video evidence that might be relevant for other investigations. Make of that whatever you will but he almost certainly knew that the investigation into the July 23, 2019 event was unable to determine if it was in fact a suicide attempt or an assault as written by the OIG itself.

And then of course there’s the seemingly performance art level of incompetence which conveniently saw to it that the wrong footage of the incident was preserved.

None of this, of course, tells us what really happened before Epstein was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019 but what it does show is a stunning lack of curiosity and thoroughness from the OIG in its reports and another entry into the long queue of profoundly convenient acts of gross incompetence that make it far more difficult to investigate any venues that could suggest that Epstein was assaulted on July 23, 2019 by a man who was sent to Epstein’s isolated prison unit for having a cell phone the very same day an arrest warrant was issued for Epstein. We still don’t know who he was talking to on that phone because the government never sought a warrant for that phone.

Words can’t do justice to the emotions all of this dregs up and I can’t imagine the frustration felt by other brave people trying to stand up and see these monsters held to account for their crimes only to be, repeatedly, let down by the system that we were all promised would do just that.

I’m not done and there will be more.

P.S.

The surveillance cameras stopped recording the very same day MCC staff were notified Epstein was taken off of suicide watch according to the OIG’s own report. Make of that what you will.

You can support my work here

If you read through the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) report on Epstein’s death you can find a passage concerning their interview with the medical examiner from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, City of New York who performed Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy. They discussed a certain injury, bleeding at the back of the neck, that would be present if Epstein was indeed murdered.

You can support my work here!

You can read the same thing in the OIG’s interview of the medical examiner that was released with the Epstein files.

If you look at Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy, which was done on August 12, 2019 and released with the Epstein files, you’ll see that, indeed, there was no hemorrhaging in the anterior (front) strap muscles of the neck. However, it also says there was hemorrhaging within the posterior (back) muscles of the neck. For reference, you can check the definition for posterior here and the definition for anterior here.

There are no hemorrhages of the anterior strap muscles of the neck. Posteriorly, there is a single hemorrhage in the left, deep, paraspinal muscles.

LEFT POSTERIOR NECK MUSCLE x 1 (#9): Intramuscular and fascial hemorrhages consisting of intact erythrocytes.

Why would the medical examiner tell the OIG Epstein didn’t have an injury the autopsy clearly says he had? More importantly, why would they say that because this injury was missing murder can be ruled out?

You may be thinking that they misspoke and meant that only one was present but take a closer look at their testimony.

They used the word those in reference to the injuries. Inclusive. As if to say neither of those injuries were present.

It’s not entirely possible to rule out that they misspoke or misremembered. But if you’re trying to convey to the OIG reasons someone was not murdered and your own autopsy contradicts you, that’s a hell of a thing to screw up! I’m trying my best to be generous because it is very, very, very illegal to knowingly lie to federal investigators.

Unfortunately, I’m not a forensic pathologist so I can’t offer you a confident and learned opinion on the medical relevance of how the hemorrhaging of the front and back of the neck are relevant to a murder investigation. What I can tell you is that either this Doctor misspoke about an injury that would be evidence of murder or they knowingly lied about it.

What I can also tell you is another forensic pathologist who was present at the autopsy concluded Epstein was murdered.

I would love to hear some expert opinions on this matter. The public is owed no less.

You can support my work here!

With that said though, there are some high-level things that are damning enough in their own right that can be presented to anyone without much technical acumen or those who do not feel that they have the energy to work through a piece like this. I’m going to start with those but do feel free to see my postscript at the end of the piece as well. What I present there deserves much more attention.

You can support my work here!

If you haven’t already seen it, CBS did a piece where they had forensic analysts watch the Epstein video released by the FBI in July of 2025 and share their findings. This piece made the ‘orange flash’ that appears going to the L-tier where Epstein’s cell is located at around 10:39 PM famous with many people believing it showed an inmate entering his cell block after lockdown. But there’s another thing that was made famous from that piece and that’s a mouse cursor appearing on screen at 11:21:34 PM.

This is bad enough in its own right. Doubly so given that the FBI claimed this footage was ‘raw’ so that you can see there were no ‘shenanigans’. But several months later I’ve uncovered it wasn’t the only time a mouse cursor appears in the video.

You can check the video itself to see these cursors (and I hope you do!) but bare in mind they might be easier to spot if you have the means to slow the video down. They appear for fractions of a second.

The second cursor example, disturbingly, shows a resize cursor. Unfortunately I couldn’t determine what it would be used for and whether or not it came from video editing software but it’s appearance (then sudden disappearance) is troubling.

There are some other engaging and easy to follow pieces in this article similar to what you saw (e.g. a missing piece of the video that was cropped out) but I’m writing this to go deeper. I am writing this with the full intention to have it shared as widely as I possibly can but by that same token I feel I have a responsibility to present this information as completely and thoroughly as I can.

I’m starting off with these cursors because their fast appearance and then disappearance from view is extremely convincing evidence that that footage was either cut at these points in time or they were hidden under another clip layer. You might think ‘Surely there’s another explanation!‘ and you’d be right. There are other explanations. They’re contrived and make a mockery of Occam’s Razor but they do exist.

I’d love to be proven wrong but until the DOJ releases the actual raw footage (provided they haven’t destroyed it) I don’t think that will be possible.

Now that the easy part’s over let’s get a bit more serious and thick. This piece is going to dive into the actual metadata from the video to layout a few discoveries about how the film was edited, inconsistencies that exist within the film and artifacts that made their way into the final product that were not supposed to be there.

For you fellow nerds out there who have a terminal with the grep command and want to extract the raw metadata you can download the video file (be warned, it’s 20GB) and run the following command.

grep -a ‘x:xmpmeta ‘ -A 200 ./video1.mp4

Let’s start with uncovering how the video was extracted and give some experts the confirmation they deserve.

Shortly after the July 2025 Epstein video was released several experts thought this video was made with a screen recording and those suspicions were confirmed with the release of the Epstein files.

You can find references to two video files in the metadata that are named in a way that matches how OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) names the screen recordings it creates (see ‘Advanced Settings’) where files are named with the date and time the recording started. One file is named ‘2025-05-22 21-12-48.mp4’ and the other is named ‘2025-05-22 16-35-21.mp4’. While the filenames clearly show the date May 22, 2025, it’s unclear what timezone is represented by the times in the filenames.

There are four entries but if you examine their contents you’ll see each file has a duplicated entry. Pay attention to the documentId values. It will come up later.

From there, the footage was further processed using a software tool called Fast Forward Moving Picture Expert Group (FFmpeg) so it could be passed into the video editing software Adobe Premiere Pro. Curiously, the metadata said that these files were already saved as mp4 files which is natively supported by Adobe Premiere Pro however issues importing video created by OBS into Adobe Premiere have been known to come up from time to time..

FFmpeg is a very powerful tool capable of joining two videos together. It takes much less time to join clips with FFmpeg than it does using Adobe Premiere Pro. It strains credulity to believe that this technician would know how to use this tool to modify a video created by screen recording software like OBS to make it compatible with Adobe Premiere Pro would not know how to use it to join two clips together.

Joining two videos together with FFmpeg takes seconds but analysis of the metadata with the famous ‘saved, created, saved, saved’ actions found that the time between the project being created and the first save occurring was almost three and a half hours later. Why do all of this extra work if the end goal is to merely stitch two clips together?

An important thing to highlight here is that even though ‘saved, created, saved, saved’ makes a great headline, and seems to imply the project was saved multiple times all of the save instances occur at the same time on May 23, 2025 at 4:16 PM EDT (EDT is the timezone represented by -04:00) which suggests that it was saved only once after the project was created on May 23, 2025 at 12:48 PM EDT. However, even if the project was only saved once, the fact the project was created in Adobe Premiere Pro at 12:48 PM and then saved later at 4:16 PM is very suspicious. If all that was needed was stitching two clips together why would it take three and a half hours? Why not use FFmpeg and get the job over and done with in a matter of seconds?

If one were to be charitable, one could argue the tech created the project at 12:48 PM and left it alone for a while before coming back to it around 4:16 PM. It’s not impossible but it is very strange.

One of the other justifications for this workflow found in the Epstein files was the need to remove ‘padding’ from the first clip which WIRED found to have had 2 minutes and 54 seconds removed.

Assuming there actually was 2 minutes and 54 seconds of padding, using Adobe Premiere Pro to cut this padding out is a bizarre choice when FFmpeg is right there.

If you look in the metadata, you can find the timestamps from when these clips would have been imported into Adobe Premiere Pro the first time before being run through FFmpeg. This can be confirmed by matching the DocumentID values with the documentID of the OBS recordings referenced in other sections of the metadata. You can see the videos were imported into Adobe Premiere Pro and saved on May 23, 2025 at 9:57 AM EDT.

One of the more curious features from this section of metadata is noting both of these clips were saved at around 9:57 AM EDT from within Adobe Premiere Pro before they were even imported into the main project together. There is no way to determine whether or not they were tampered with before they were exported to the main project that tied them together.

You may also have noticed I highlighted the duration tags of the metadata. These tags tell you how long each clip is in milliseconds. You can see one clip has a duration of 23760550 while the other has a duration of 15556150. When you convert these values to hours, minutes and seconds you find that the longer clip is 6:36:00 long and the shorter clip is 4:19:16 seconds long (you can confirm that here). When you cross reference the DocumentID values with the documentId values for the OCB files mentioned earlier you find the 4:19:16 long clip matches the clip started recording on May 22, 2025 at 4:35 PM while the 6:36:00 long clip started recording about four and a half hours later on May 22, 2025 at 9:12 PM.

If you check the video, midnight starts at the 4:16:23 mark and the video is 10:52:23 long. That is a time span of 6:36:00 which matches the length of the longer clip exactly.

As for the second clip, it is 4:19:16 long but midnight is reached at 4:16:23 seconds. This time difference is 2 minutes and 53 seconds which is exactly the amount of time WIRED discovered was missing.

If ‘padding’ was removed from the 4:19:16 long clip it begs the question why no such padding was removed from the tidy 6:36:00 clip. But let’s consider something else. The video was supposed to be from 7:40 PM to 6:40 AM the following day. That should be 11 hours of content. The video is only 10:52:23 long.

That means 7 minutes and 37 seconds of content is missing.

The clip containing footage from 12:00 AM to 6:40 AM is only 6:36:00 minutes long but it should be 6:40:00 long.

That’s 4 missing minutes explained. Now for the remaining 3 minutes and 37 seconds.

As noted by WIRED, 2 minutes and 53 seconds of film was removed from the first clip which when taken away from the missing 3 minutes and 37 seconds leaves only 44 seconds are left to explain.

44 seconds isn’t a minute but it’s pretty darned close.

Now you may be confused by this when the clock in the video clearly shows that a minute is missing, not 44 seconds. That is understandable but the more pressing question is why are the clocks showing that 10 hours, 58 minutes and 59 seconds have passed when the video is only 10 hours 52 minutes and 23 seconds long?

There is one possibility that should be countenanced which is that OBS dropped frames when the initial screen recordings were made which resulted in the original screen recordings being shortened. It’s an idea that does raise an eyebrow considering how the video was being created locally and not streamed over a network, how cleanly the second clip is cut at 6:36:00 and how close the first clip is to matching the 4:20:00 needed to capture the stretch of time from 7:40 PM to midnight but it’s not definitively ruled out.

With that out of the way though, there’s one other thing I’d draw your attention to and it involves the clocks in the video.

If you look at the footage you can see text in three areas including a clock and date in the bottom left. The text displayed closely matches with the Arial narrow font.

That might seem like a trifling detail but compare this font with an image taken from the same recording in files shared with the FBI.

You’ll see that the fonts do not match.

These screen recordings were made was as a work around for the fact that the video needs a proprietary player to play. If a proprietary player for legacy software is required to view this footage why would the font change if they’re both being played by the same player? Perhaps there’s another version of the player that hasn’t been made public knowledge but there’s also the possibility Adobe Premiere Pro was used to add a CCTV-like clock to your video.

Sure would be nice if that information was made public.

Aside from differences in hue and the font, sharp-eyed readers might have caught another difference between these two images. If you compare the ceiling light in the photo from the Epstein files with ceiling light from the released footage you can see that the released footage has a portion of the ceiling light cut off.

If you look back at the email explaining how the video was managed that appeared earlier in this article you may have noticed that a specific portion mentions how the aspect ratio (how wide and how tall the video is) was adjusted to create a more ‘uniform appearance’.

That sentence alone is a ‘there in black and white’ proof that the footage was altered by the FBI. I guess we’d just have to take the same people who promised us ‘raw’ footage but instead provided us an edited end product under the guise of improving the viewing experience at their word. Perhaps these aren’t ‘shenanigans’ but favors served with a heaping side of ‘trust me bro’.

What I’m going to talk about next is going to make that a lot harder to do though.

If you read the forensic experts analysis I linked to earlier you’ll likely remember that he mentioned ‘playback’ buttons in the upper right portion of the screen. In the video you can see this button panel displayed at various times between 11:20 PM and midnight. Sometimes it will only appear for 1/15th of a second. It’s very difficult to make out what these buttons do but there’s another section of the video that gives a much better view at the point in the video marked as 6:36:17 AM mark. This was the only time I was able to find these buttons after the 12:00 AM mark.

It’s difficult to make out what exactly these buttons are and do but I was able to find the program these buttons belong to and they’re not for playback control. If you look below you’ll see a section of the NiceVision Pro system that was used at MCC. This was found in a promotional video from Qognify for the NiceVision system that was installed at Baylor University. If you look in the screen in the bottom left you’ll notice some buttons in the upper right corner of that camera view.

All but one of these buttons match with the button panel found in the ‘raw’ video released by the DOJ.

Throughout that video. If you look at the screens on display that contain font you’ll notice a much closer match to the pixelated font from the image of the video retrieved from the Epstein files where the font is more pixelated than you do the font from the released footage.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find an instruction manual for the video management system (VMS) to definitively answer what each of these buttons do but they’re certainly not playback buttons.

Here’s a list of all of the points I found with the button panel appearing on the upper right by timestamp.

• 03:38:39 (for 1/15 of a second)

• 03:38:43 to 03:39:38

• 03:40:56 to 03:41:43 (quick break)

• 03:41:43 to 03:44:34

• 03:44:51 (for 1/15 of a second)

• 03:49:05 to 04:00:52 (quick break)

• 04:00:53 to 04:16:22

• 10:48:42 (for 1/4 of a second)

• 10:48:45 (for 1/10 of a second)

What’s striking is how these buttons will frequently appear and then disappear within fractions of a second. It’s difficult to come up with any reasonable explanation for why this happens outside of the video being altered to either cut the film at that point or the buttons being placed under another clip layer making them invisible. In other words, either a different part of the original video is playing or an overlay was placed in that section to hide what was originally shown.

Here’s the first appearance of these buttons in the video only showing up for 2 frames (about 70 milliseconds) of footage slowed down for visibility. Each frame can be thought of like a picture and there are 30 (technically 29.97 when filmed in NTSC) frames for every second of footage.

Here’s another example I captured in a video where there’s a brief break after having been displayed for over a minute.

It might be possible to dismiss the prolonged display on screen as the viewing software innocuously displaying tools on the screen as part of its UI if you’re feeling generous. What’s not easy to dismiss is the flashes that occur for fractions of a second which seem to be clear indicators that either the film was cut at these points or it’s an artifact from layering clips. If you know what you’re doing, you can even remove items from video.

Its been common knowledge that this video has been altered for some time now and there are very few serious people who accept the narrative that the video was ‘raw’ and unaltered. We know more now then we did in July of 2025 and the conclusion of other media outlets that there is no evidence deceptive manipulation is flatly untrue. There’s several pieces of evidence ranging from signs of footage being cut, as evidenced by artifacts spontaneously entering and leaving the screen, to clocks that don’t sync with time correctly and don’t match the style of other videos using the same system that would be highly suggestive of deceptive editing.

When the original pieces were written that analyzed this footage came out, they were done before the release of the Epstein files and there were several questions that could not be answered back then that can be answered now. The public and the victims of Epstein and his associates are owed explanations and answers.

There’s still a lot more to come.

P.S.

There is a section of the video where you can clearly see Tova Noel using the work station computer at around 11:35:51 PM according to the clock in the video. However, the computer logs show she did not start to use the computer until 11:40 PM. Make of that what you will.

You can support my work here!

The SHU was a closely monitored and highly restricted unit. It served as punishment for inmates who committed serious rule violations, such as assault or possession of a weapon, while simultaneously providing a protective environment for vulnerable inmates at risk of harm from others.

Some of these restrictions included 23 hour lock-downs and multiple inmate counts throughout a 24 hour period according to the OIG report.

Nicholas Tartaglione, Epstein’s former cellmate on the night he was found unconscious at 1:27 AM with a noose around his neck and later convicted of a quadruple homicide, was sent to the SHU on July 2, 2019 for being in possession of a cell phone.

This was also the same day Jeffrey Epstein was indicted for sex trafficking crimes according to the OIG report.

The contents of the phone are unknown and the only known direct reference to the contents of that phone in the released Epstein files were redacted.

On August 1, 2019 a disciplinary hearing was held for Tartaglione’s contraband violation. In the report, Tartaglione gives a full confession but, curiously, the report states that the phone was discovered on June 26, 2019 and not July 2, 2019, the date he was transferred to SHU.

According to open court documents that were released with the Epstein files no warrant was ever sought nor issued for Tartaglione’s cellphone. To date, nothing in the documents has been found indicating the status of that phone.

It’s hard to not raise an eyebrow trying to understand why the prosecution would not want to secure this evidence. This could have been used to determine whether or not Mr. Tartaglione was in contact with others that were involved in the drug trade circles he ran in. For all we know somebody could have used that phone to order a hit on Epstein before he arrived in prison on July 6, 2019. Now we may never know.

There’s a lot more to this story and I plan to write more articles to bring that information to light. The research and notes I’ve collected on the events before and after Epstein’s death are voluminous and it would take me an entire book to layout my findings and string together a complete narrative. Unfortunately, I do not believe that I have that kind of time given the import of the investigations surrounding Epstein and I fear a delay would only help his collaborators and associates escape justice.

What I can do is try and shine a light on the absurdity of this ‘series of incompetent events’ and draw attention to how those grave misfortunes kept happening to the supreme benefit of powerful men who were about to be investigated for their connections to Jeffrey Epstein (including the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the then Attorney General of the United States William Barr who refused to recuse himself from the investigation).

I’m not finished and there’s a lot more to come.

P.S.

Infamous prison guard Tova Noel who was on duty when Epstein was discovered dead in his cell and had taken thousands of dollars in cash and Zelle payments with the largest being $5,000 just days before Epstein’s death was asked to sign off that she had completed her special housing unit (SHU) training even though she never did on June 26, 2019. This was the same day that Nicholas Tartaglione’s hearing report said that he was found in possession of a cellphone despite being sent to the SHU on July 2, 2019 when Epstein was indicted. Make of that what you will.

You can support my work here!

There’s been a lot of stir about the suicide note allegedly written by Jeffrey Epstein in July of 2019. But what about the events that led up to this moment? Why was Jeffrey Epstein housed with a man who was accused of four murders? Why was the footage of the original incident deleted?

The note was released on May 6, 2026 with the only reference to it in the Epstein files being this two page chronology presented with highlights some points below.

The individuals in this file are referenced by their initials: JE for Jeffrey Epestein, NT for Nicholas Tartaglione, BB for Bruce Barket (Nicholas Tartaglione’s defense attorney) and TR for Tony Ricco (Barket’s co-counsel).

Jeffrey Epstein was found unconscious in his cell on July 23, 2019 later claiming his cell mate Nicholas Tartaglione had tried to kill him.

The media started publishing stories wondering how the world’s most infamous sex offender who was still under active investigation for trafficking minors to some of the world’s most powerful men to be sexually exploited was found unconscious in his cell while being housed with a man who was accused of (and later convicted for) murdering four people, one by strangulation.

Nicholas Tartaglione claims he found the alleged suicide note in one of his own books.

Tartaglione’s defense counsel attempted to authenticate the note twice but was unsuccessful both times.

Tartaglione reveals again to his trial team that he found the note in his book.

A 60 minutes special which aired on January 5, 2020 showing a different note with the same hand writing.

It’s hard to make heads or tails of this. Did Jeffrey Epstein actually attempt suicide or was he assaulted by Nicholas Tartaglione? Did Jeffrey Epstein write the suicide note? Did Tartaglione write it? Did somebody else write it?

These questions I can’t answer but I can answer how Nicholas Tartaglione became Epstein’s cell mate and describe the suspicious sequence of events that follow.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released its report on Jeffrey Epstein’s stay and death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in June of 2023.

In that report, the OIG states that Warden Lamine N’Diaye hand-picked Nicholas Tartaglione (inmate 1) to be Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate upon his arrival at MCC because he “believed [Nicholas Tartaglione] to be the least likely SHU inmate to harm Epstein.”

Warden Lamine N’Diaye determined that the man who was accused of and later convicted for the slaughtering of four men in a drug deal gone bad and torturing one of them for over an hour was the least likely man on the unit to harm Jeffrey Epstein.

Several Department of Justice employees did not seem to share his assessment.

You can’t make this stuff up.

You might think it’s a strange choice of cellmate but if you actually look at the quartering reports themselves they’d suggest that Nicholas Tartaglione and Jeffrey Epstein were never roommates at all!

Quartering report for Jeffrey Epstein

Quartering Report for Nicholas Tartaglione

Not easy on the eyes but there are three things to focus on here:

1. Nicholas Tartaglione is listed as being in cell Z01-106 from July 2, 2019 to July 22, 2019

2. Jeffrey Epstein is listed as being in cell Z02-201 from July 7, 2019 to July 8, 2019 then he’s listed as being in Psych observation from July 8, 2019 to July 10, 2019 before finally landing in cell Z05-124 from July 10, 2019 to July 23, 2019 when he was found unconscious in his cell with a noose around his neck

3. Nicholas Tartaglione is moved to cell Z06-215 on July 22, 2019

I emphasize point number three because the transfer occurs on the eve of July 23, 2019 when Jeffrey Epstein is found unconscious in his cell. Suspicious as hell by its own right but there’s more.

Adam Johnson, who was the supervisory attorney for MCC at the time, writes an email responding to a request from Aida Leisenring, who is an attorney working for Bruce Barket’s law firm, to retrieve footage from the July 23, 2019 incident hoping it would show Tartaglione’s innocence.

Jeffrey Epstein is documented as being in cell Z01-124 at the time and Nicholas Tartaglione is in cell Z06-215.

Adam Johnson sends footage for cell Z06-215

If you’ve been following this story closely enough you’ll likely know they kept footage from the wrong cell and deleted the footage from the correct cell where the incident actually occurred.

All of this begs the question why was Nicholas Tartaglione transferred to the wrong cell on the morning before Jefftey Epstein was found unconscious in his cell?

Discrepancies between quartering logs and where inmates actually resided were noted in the investigation done by the OIG.

If you’re willing to put suspicions aside, you might even think it was good-faith showing of incompetence.

But there’s more.

In this email, the Supervisory Attorney of MCC is responding to a series of grievances enumerated by Mr. Tartaglione’s defense attorney Bruce Barket on July 19, 2019. (Page 660)

In the email Nicholas Tartaglione is noted to reside in cell Z01-106 which matches what his quartering reports say but take a look at the other highlighted portion.

Can you also look into whether the alleged rodent on his bed might have been his cellmate accusing him of being an snitch?

His cellmate at the time was supposed to be Jeffrey Epstein. It strains credulity to think this guy would need protection from Jeffrey Epstein but perhaps he was actually bunked with a more dangerous inmate at the time?

If the findings of the OIG report are to be believed as correct that cellmate would have to have been Epstein.

All we can say for sure is that if Z01-106 was not Tartaglione’s cell at the time that mistake was metamorphosed into another mistake on July 22, 2019 when Tartaglione was documented as being moved to cell Z06-215.

Epstein was found unconscious in his cell on July 23, 2019 at 1:27AM with a cloth around his neck in cell Z05-124 matching his quartering records.

There comes a point where repeated accidents and misfortunes cease to be mere misfortunes and become a pattern. This case is riddled with tragic and unfortunate events and many would like to have you believe they were due to mere chance rather than malfeasance masquerading as incompetence. None of this, of course, proves anything about what really happened to Jeffrey Epstein before he was found dead on August 10, 2019 but it does show a pattern of failures which would be much to the convenience of Tartaglione if he did assault Jeffrey Epstein and certainly to the convenience of others who may have been actively plotting to have the man killed. When a Warden concludes that Nicholas Tartaglione is the safest inmate you could have in the prison, I don’t think people should be judged for having questions.

This is only scratching the surface of what I’ve found throughout my research but I believe these findings needed to be made public with the release of the alleged suicide note. You should also know the 'shoot three and strangle one' cocaine dealer is angling for a pardon.

There will be more.

P.S.

Nicholas Tartaglione was moved back to the ‘right cell‘ on August 8, 2019. Jeffrey Epstein was declared dead on August 10, 2019. Make of that what you will.

You can support my work here!