NEW YORK: Jeffrey Epstein, the US financier facing federal sex trafficking charges, committed suicide in his lower Manhattan jail cell, several US media outlets reported on Saturday (Aug 10).
Epstein, who had hobnobbed with politicians and celebrities over the years and was already a convicted sex offender, hanged himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and his body was found around 7.30am on Saturday, The New York Times and other media said, quoting officials.
Advertisement
Advertisement
The FBI is investigating the apparent suicide, the Justice Department said.
The department’s Bureau of Prisons made the announcement as questions were raised as to how a high-profile inmate who had apparently attempted to kill himself last month could take his life in what is supposed to be a highly secure federal facility.
Epstein, 66, had been found in his cell in late July with marks on his neck after an apparent suicide attempt.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Epstein, who was arrested on Jul 6, had pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14, from at least 2002 to 2005.
Prosecutors claim that Epstein was “well aware that many of the victims were minors.”
The girls were paid hundreds of dollars in cash to massage him, perform sexual acts and to recruit other girls, prosecutors allege.
They say Epstein had an army of recruiters, often not much older than their targets, who would approach vulnerable teens.
Epstein is also accused of paying off possible co-conspirators to “influence” them, US media have reported.
Epstein, whose friends have included President Donald Trump, former president Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, was convicted previously of paying young girls for sexual massages at his Palm Beach mansion.
But he avoided federal prosecution under a plea deal that required Epstein to admit to a single Florida state charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor and register as a sex offender.
He served 13 months in a county jail before being released in 2009.
The new charges would have seen him face up to 45 years in prison – effectively the rest of his life – if convicted.
He was confined in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan while he appealed a district judge’s refusal to let him live under 24-hour guard in his home on the Upper East Side.
The Metropolitan Correction Center is considered one of the most secure penal establishments in the US.
The infamous Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman spent more than two years there before being convicted and transferred to a federal prison in Colorado.
