Guards gave Epstein too many bedsheets

The report finds no evidence to contradict the conclusion of the city’s coroner that the pedophile financier died by suicide.

Jeffrey Epstein listed as a sexual offender in Florida. Picture: AFP

Guards at a New York jail left Jeffrey Epstein alone in a cell with too many bedsheets and failed to monitor him for nearly eight hours, allowing the sex ­offender the opportunity to take his own life, a report released by the Department of Justice says.

Epstein, 66, a financier and convicted pedophile, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges and held in the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Lower Manhattan.

He was found dead in his cell a month later, prompting a welter of conspiracy theories.

The report by Michael Horowitz, the department’s inspector-general, found no evidence to contradict the conclusion of the city’s coroner that Epstein died by suicide.

It also supports the conclusions of the FBI, which found no sign Epstein had been murdered.

Instead, it found “negligence and misconduct” by staff allowed Epstein to take his own life.

He was held in the prison’s special housing unit, separated from the general prison population and confined to a cell for 23 hours a day.

Staff reported that video from half the prison’s 150 cameras was not being recorded.

On August 9, from 10.40pm until 6.30am, the night duty staff failed to make their rounds.

In the morning, they found that Epstein had hanged himself, according to the report.

The one working camera showed that no one entered the area between 10.40pm and 6.30am.

The report said the failures by staff had deprived Epstein’s ­“numerous victims their ability to seek justice”.

THE TIMES