News of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide shocked the world this morning.
Jailed multimillionaire financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has died by suicide, two law enforcement sources said Saturday, one day after a court unsealed new details of the claims against him.
Epstein, who was awaiting trial on federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing underage girls, was found unresponsive in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal detention facility, around 6:30 a.m. ET., the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.
Staff at the facility started life-saving measures, and Epstein was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the bureau said in a news release.
No foul play is suspected in his death, a federal official told CNN. The bureau’s release called it “an apparent suicide,” and said the FBI is investigating. Authorities believe Epstein hanged himself, a law enforcement source said.
The New York City medical examiner’s office hasn’t determined his manner of death.
Source CNN
Epstein’s suicide robbed countless victims. His death eliminates the possibility of a criminal trial, however victims still have the chance to receive compensation for their suffering.
Still, a court filing Friday opened the door to new investigations into Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. Many new names have surfaced, of high profile individuals.
The documents raise new questions about whether powerful people pressured federal prosecutors in Florida to give Epstein a secret non-prosecution agreement in 2008 that not only granted him immunity, but allowed an untold number of other people who have never been identified to escape sex trafficking charges.
One of the men accused of having sex with one of Epstein’s victims is former Maine Senator George Mitchell, the once formidable Senate Democratic minority leader who in 2008 — the same year the Epstein deal was finalized — was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people.
Mitchell flatly has denied the allegations, which were buried amid the thousands of documents that were part of a 2015 federal defamation lawsuit brought against Maxwell by Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Giuffre, who turned 36 on Friday, names a number of other men in politics, academia and business that she says she was directed to have sex with. In a 2017 interview with the Miami Herald, Giuffre said that Epstein wanted her to please various influential people then so that he could learn about their sexual peccadilloes and use them as leverage if he needed to.
While there’s no direct evidence contained in the court record substantiating her accounts with prominent men, Giuffre did provide testimony and evidence to corroborate her claims of exploitation at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell through photographs, plane logs and even a medical record from Presbyterian Hospital in New York where Giuffre was taken by Epstein after a particularly abusive sex episode.
Her story was also supported by a sworn deposition from an ex-boyfriend, whom she told about the abuse at the time, and another woman who worked as an assistant for Maxwell and Epstein named Johanna Sjoberg. Sjoberg, who was a college student at Palm Beach Atlantic University when she was recruited by Maxwell, said that Maxwell’s primary role in Epstein’s life was to provide him with young girls at least three times a day.
“He explained to me that, in his opinion, he needed to have three orgasms a day. It was biological, like eating,’’ Sjoberg said in a sworn deposition in 2015.
The names of some prominent men Giuffre says she was directed to have sex with are spattered throughout the approximately 2,000 pages released Friday.
Besides Mitchell, they include: the late scientist Marvin Minsky, modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, 71, Hyatt hotels magnate Tom Pritzker, 69, and prominent hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, 62. Giuffre has previously identified Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, 80, and Prince Andrew, 59, as two of the people with whom she had sex.
All the men have issued denials, with some, including Dershowitz, insisting they never met Giuffre. No charges have been filed against anyone other than Epstein, who was indicted last month in New York on two counts of sex trafficking.
Source Miami Herald
Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide and the new accusations shift the focus of the ongoing investigation. While Epstein will never see his day in court, his accomplices may.
