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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.
A judge denied him bail in mid-July — rejecting his request to remain under house arrest at his Upper East Side mansion, one of the largest private residences in Manhattan. Epstein was set to go to trial at some point next year.
US Attorney General William Barr said Saturday that he was “appalled” to learn Epstein died of an apparent suicide in federal custody. The Justice Department’s inspector general will investigate the circumstances of his death, Barr said.
“Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered,” Barr said in a news release. Separately, a source familiar with the situation said Barr was livid at the events surrounding Epstein’s apparent suicide and is determined to get to the bottom of what happened.
A spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan, which was prosecuting Epstein, declined to comment on Saturday.
An attorney for Epstein, Marc Fernich, called for a “full investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr. Epstein’s death.”
Fernich said he was speaking personally, not as a representative of Epstein’s defense team. He said several parties can be blamed for the death, including “overzealous prosecutors,” “pandering politicians,” compliant judges” and a “hysterical press corps.”
“The public needs to know exactly what happened and why — and how his custodians could have let it occur,” Fernich said.
He was put on suicide watch in July, but was taken off days later
It was not clear in July to jail officials if those injuries, which were not serious, were self-inflicted or the result of an assault, the sources said. Epstein told authorities he was beaten up and called a child predator, they said.
Daily psychological assessments were conducted on him, and at the end of the month, psychologists with the Bureau of Prisons took him off suicide watch, according to a source familiar with the matter.
July indictment followed 2007 plea deal
Federal prosecutors said he used employees and associates to lure the girls to his residences and then paid some of his victims to recruit other girls for him to abuse.
Epstein faced similar accusations in Florida in 2007 but signed a plea deal that year with Miami prosecutors allowing him to avoid federal charges and plead guilty to lesser state prostitution charges.
Fernich, Epstein’s attorney, referenced former prosecutor Acosta and the plea deal in his personal statement, slamming numerous parties for his client’s death.
“Among those who share blame in Epstein’s death, he said, is a “hysterical press corps clamoring to recharge Mr. Epstein with dated crimes for which he’d long since paid his debt to society under an arm’s length plea deal — just because he had the misfortune to be a wealthy man in the #metoo era whose former prosecutor happened to take a job with President Trump,” Fernich’s statement reads.
Civil lawsuits could continue
Though criminal charges won’t be pursued against a deceased defendant, accusers still could file civil lawsuits seeking money from Epstein’s estate, CNN legal analyst Paul Callan said.
“(Epstein’s) estate, you can imagine, would be sued by a lot of potential victims. So, his suicide will not end coverage and the interest in the Jeffrey Epstein case,” Callan said.
The financier owned properties in Manhattan, Palm Beach, New Mexico and Paris, as well as a private island in the Caribbean, according to court filings. He owned at least 15 vehicles and a private jet.
The accuser in that pending lawsuit, Jennifer Araoz, said Saturday that she is “angry Jeffrey Epstein won’t have to face his survivors of his abuse in court.”
“We have to live with the scars of his actions for the rest of our lives, while he will never face the consequences of the crimes he committed the pain and trauma he caused so many people,” she said in a prepared statement.
Robbie Kaplan, an attorney for one of the alleged victims in the criminal case, said Saturday that “the many victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices should not lose hope.”
“We will continue to fight tirelessly on their behalf not only to seek justice, but also to ensure that all of the facts of his monstrous crimes become known to the world,” she said. “… We need to expose the whole truth here so that crimes of this scale and scope never happen to any young girls (or boys) ever again.”
CNN’s Sonia Moghe, Kara Scannell, Evan Perez, Josh Girsky, Michelle Krupa and Eric Levenson contributed to this report
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