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60 Minutes: More Protocols Broken In Epstein Death, Two Nooses Found, Note Found

   DailyWire.com
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 18: Jeffrey Epstein attends Launch of RADAR MAGAZINE at Hotel QT on May 18, 2005 in New York City.
Neil Rasmus/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

CBS News’s “60 Minutes” reported never before seen images of inside Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell where he was found dead, and showed photographs that were taken of Epstein’s body during his autopsy.

While showing the photos, 60 Minutes said, “There are dozens of photos taken by the medical examiner’s office that day. On the floor, a mattress and piles of sheets. Several nooses that appear to be fashioned from the orange bed linens are laid out. His medicines photographed but no body.”

60 Minutes host Sharyn Alfonsi asked Epstein lawyer Dr. Michael Baden: “Is there a photograph of when he was found dead in the cell?”

“No,” Baden responded. “There’s no photograph taken of Mr. Epstein in the cell.”

“Do you think there was foul play here?” Alfonsi asked.

“The forensic evidence released so far, including autopsy, point much more to murder and strangulation than the suicide and suicidal hanging,” Baden responded. “I hesitate to make a final opinion until all the evidence is in.”

“60 Minutes” later revealed that federal prison protocols were not followed in response to Epstein’s death because they took his dead body to the emergency room rather than leave him where he was.

“Bureau of Prisons protocol mandates a suicide scene should be treated with the ‘same level of protection as any crime scene in which a death has occurred,'” “60 Minutes” said. “60 Minutes reviewed hundreds of graphic photographs from the autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein and inside his cell. There are two nooses, a bit of orange sheet tied to the grate of a window. On the top bunk, bottles and medicines stand upright. Below it, another piece of fabric is tied through a hole on the bed about four feet from the ground.”

Sources told “60 Minutes” that “a second camera inside the tier, the one that could have seen Epstein’s cell door and the doors of other inmates, was not working that night.”

“60 Minutes” recovered a note from inside Epstein’s prison cell that stated: “[Name blurred out] kept me in a locked shower stall for 1 hour. [Another prison guard] sent me burnt food. Giant bugs crawling over my hands. No fun!!”

Baden said that if the prison was really convinced that Epstein was suicidal that they would not have allowed him to have a ballpoint pen because it could be used as a weapon to hurt himself or someone else.

“60 Minutes” noted that Epstein had a sleep apnea machine in his cell which featured a long electrical cord that he could have used to hang himself.

Baden said that the broken bones in Epstein’s neck, combined with things he deemed as being problematic with the noose that investigators said was used, pointed to a potential homicide.

“There were fractures of the left, the right, thyroid cartilage and the left hyoid bone,” Baden said. “This is an autopsy photo of Epstein’s broken hyoid bone, a U-shaped bone that sits under the jaw that part of the tongue attaches to. The thyroid cartilage sits at the front of the neck. I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging. Sometimes there’s a fracture of the hyoid bone or a fracture of the thyroid cartilage.”

“But not three?” Alfonsi asked.

Baden responded, “Very unusual to have two and not three. And going over a thousand jail hangings, suicides in the New York City state prisons over the past 40-50 years, no one had three fractures.”

Baden then pointed to the nooses that were found, saying, “What I see here is that this noose doesn’t match the ligature furrow mark. It’s wider than this.”

“To the naked eye, it looks like there’s some blood here,” Alfonsi said. “And it doesn’t look like there’s any blood on this noose.”

“That’s right,” Baden said. “This looks like a clean noose that was never used to compress anybody’s neck.”

“There’s also something that’s striking about the photos,” Alfonsi responded. “The wound is down here. You’d think if somebody hung themselves the wound would be maybe up here.”

“Yes,” Baden responded. “Most hangings – especially free hangings, the ligature slides up to beneath the jawbone, the mandible. Here it’s in the middle of the neck.”

“60 Minutes” said that Baden believed that a wound straight across a person’s neck indicated that they were the victim of a strangulation and not a hanging.

 

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