Mark Epstein 26:09

It's interesting to learn who Jeffrey Epstein hung around with while he was alive. People who flew on his airplane, people who stayed on his private island in the Caribbean, those who had dinner at his home on Fifth Avenue in New York. And to some extent, those names are coming out, not all of them. But we know a lot of the people who are in Jeffrey Epstein's life, and we have for several years now. But on another level, that whole story seems like a bit of a sideshow.

because it doesn't answer the main mysteries surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's life or death. And there are three of them, almost none of which is ever discussed in the media. The first is who did Jeffrey Epstein work for? What did Jeffrey Epstein do for a living and on whose behalf? We don't know. The second question is where did all the money come from? Hundreds of millions of dollars that passed through his hands over many years. And where is it now? We don't know that either.

And the third question may be the most pressing of all, which is what happened to Jeffrey Epstein? On August 10th, 2019, he was found dead in the federal correction facility in Manhattan, one of the most secure places in the world. Did he kill himself, as the government has claimed ever since, or was he murdered? Well, the overwhelming evidence suggests that he was in fact murdered and that the U.S. government, including the Attorney General of the United States, covered up that murder.

These are the questions that matter most, and they're exactly the ones not being addressed in the news media. Why is that? We decided to speak to someone who has insight into this question, and that is Jeffrey Epstein's only surviving relative. His name is Mark Epstein. He was Jeffrey Epstein's brother, separated by 18 months. He's a successful real estate developer in New York, and he's very concerned for his own safety.

So the interview that follows is one that you will listen to rather than see. Mark Epstein refused to appear on camera, but we think what he has to say is worth hearing. Here it is. Do you think your brother killed himself? Not now. No. When I first heard he was dead from suicide, I had no reason to doubt it. So I accepted that. But then after the autopsy and after Bill Barr made that asinine statement, I said, this was not a suicide.

But when you first heard the news, you thought it was a possibility that he killed himself? Yeah, I accepted it as a fact. I heard it on the news. The government didn't notify me, as they said. I heard it on CNN in the morning of the 10th. And you're his only survivor. You're the only surviving relative. Yes, yes. He has no children and our parents are gone. And there's no other siblings. When did you start to think that he did not kill himself? Well, after the autopsy and the

Both pathologists, the city pathologist and Dr. Barton, came out of the autopsy and they said, this doesn't look like a suicide. It looks more like a homicide. So what did you do then? Well, okay, I figured I'd have to look into this and see what's going on. Were you shocked that he might have been killed? It came as a surprise, yeah. So as his only surviving relative, what did you do

to find out what happened to him? Well, I started to inquire about what took place. The Justice Department was supposedly investigating. The initial death certificate said pending when it said cause of death, which means pending further investigation. Yes. But then a few days later, it was declared a suicide by the chief pathologist who was not at the autopsy. And the questions became, what

investigation was done in such a short period of time to make her determine it was a suicide, or was she basing it on Bill Barr's statement? And who was the chief pathologist who made that declaration? Dr. Roman. That was the pathologist who was there? No, no, no. That was, oh, Samson. Barbara Samson was the chief pathologist. Dr. Roman did the actual autopsy with Dr. Barr. So Barbara Samson is the person who declared it officially a suicide, and she was not, as you said,

The autopsy. I mean, she was not present for it. Correct. And, you know, when they call it a suicide, they stop investigating. Because if there's a suicide, there's really nothing to investigate. Right. If it's a suicide. Because somebody killed themselves, case closed. So that's how they can just sort of cover it up. They never did an investigation. They never interviewed the EMTs that were called to the jail. They never interviewed the hospital personnel where his body was shipped.

I can't get any answers as to what investigation was done. When I met with this Justice Department people a few months after the death, every question I asked was answered by saying, after a thorough investigation, we determined it was a suicide. It was like them pleading the fifth. I got the same answer to every question I asked. So did you speak to Barbara Sampson, the official who ruled this? No, I haven't been able to get to her. She never called you?

No. So in her public explanation, she has been asked about this. We tried to reach out to her. She refused to speak to us for reasons we don't understand. But in her official explanation, she suggested that she ruled it a suicide, effectively overruling the judgment of the people who actually were from the autopsy because your brother had attempted suicide previously.

Yeah, but that's been shown to be false. You can listen to David Schoen, his attorney on the podcast, the Crime Waves podcast. He explains that Jeff was attacked by his cellmate, but he didn't want to report it as such because he was afraid of retaliation. But every news account

of his initial injuries in the weeks before his death said that he had tried to kill himself in a cell. He was found in fetal position on the floor after a failed suicide attempt, et cetera, et cetera. Well, you know, once somebody says that, then everyone picks up the same story. And then it becomes, you know, the truth just because it's been repeated so many times. But the fact is he was not, he did not attempt suicide that first time.

So, if he didn't try and kill himself the first time, then the medical examiner had no basis to declare this a suicide. Exactly. Exactly. Plus, there's reasons why he wouldn't kill himself then. He had a hearing scheduled to appeal the bail decision coming up in a few days, and the bail was being increased. So, there's a chance he could have got bail. Even as unpalatable as that might have been to some people, you know, in the United States, you're entitled to bail under certain conditions.

So I could see if he went for the hearing for bail and it was denied, then I can see him taking himself out if he didn't want to spend a year in jail waiting for a trial. But not a few days before.

That makes no sense. In your conversations with him and in your conversations with the people who were in contact with him at the final weeks of his life, was there any indication at all that he was suicidal at any point? No, I had no conversations with him once he was arrested. I spoke to him the day before he was arrested. He actually called me from Paris, just the usual, you know, how you doing kind of phone call. And the next day, his attorneys called me and told me he was arrested. And that was the last time I spoke with him. I didn't speak to him or see him while he was in jail.

But having spoken to his lawyers and people whom he communicated with from jail, did anybody say that he seemed suicidal? No, everybody was shocked that it was a suicide. Nobody thought he was going to kill himself. Nobody thought he would do that. So what's interesting is that the Attorney General of the United States at the time, Attorney General Barr, said publicly and then wrote in his memoir that he had concluded conclusively that this was a suicide.

based on two pieces of evidence. One, the medical examiner, the person who performed the autopsy, declared it a suicide, which is a lie. That didn't happen. And two, because he had viewed the videotape

at the entrance to the tier, to the cell block where your brother was being held. What do you make of that explanation? When I heard Barr's statement that he said he personally saw the videotape and he concluded it was a suicide because nobody went in or out, that's when it hit me that he's covering this up because there's two sort of fallacies in that. One, I thought, why is the Attorney General of the United States, who I imagine to be a busy guy, why is he personally watching the videotape? Couldn't he have two people

in his office, watch the videotape and say, hey, Bill, nobody went in or out. You know, wouldn't that suffice? And two, to assume that somebody could get to that door, go inside, you know, kill somebody, get out completely undetected is just ridiculous because I believe there are six levels of security before you get to that door.

So to assume that somebody could do it that way is crazy. And any third-rate investigator will tell you that, you know, there was anywhere from 7 to 14 people on the other side of that door, on the tier, that could have killed somebody. And I had been told from another source, I've been getting a lot of information from other sources, that cell doors were left unlocked that night. I don't know how many cell doors or whose cell doors, but if cell doors were left unlocked, then somebody could have went into Jeff's cell, killed him, went back into their cell,

undetected. Now in the Justice Department report, it says that from three cells you could see Jeff's cell door. But if you look at the photographs of the tear, there's tiny windows in the cell doors. So in order to see Jeff's cell door from another cell, you'd have to be standing at that window inside the other cells in the middle of the night.

looking towards Jeff's cell. And if somebody crept up low beneath the height of that window, you wouldn't see them. So the fact that, you know, to say that he could be seen from three other cells and they didn't see anything, chances are the other prisoners were sleeping in those cells if they had nothing to do with it.

So again, it's just like a cover-up line. Right. So in other words, the Attorney General said that nobody moved on to the cell block according to the videotape, but that is irrelevant because if your brother was murdered, he was almost certainly murdered by someone who was already on the cell block. Exactly. Right. So given that, and it's obvious and logical when you think about it for about 10 seconds, the identities of the other inmates on that cell block are critical. Your brother was alone in his cell. Right.

So any one of those inmates could have killed your brother. Do we know who they were? No, I can't find out who they were. There were seven other cells, each with one or two people in them, which means there's either anywhere from seven to 14 people other than my brother on the tier that night.

I don't know who they are. I know one, that guy Tataglioni, who was Jeff's cellmate for a while. He was there, and he was there for a long time. So if Jeff was killed, it's a possibility that somebody was planted in there.

cell doors were left unlocked and then from what i understand a number of prisoners were transferred off of that tier after the death so if somebody was planted he killed jeff and the day too late he's transferred out and he disappears into the ether i don't know who the prisoners were i'd like to find out who they are and where are they now

So there's, of course, a record of this. These are federal inmates in a facility run by the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Prisons overseen by the Department of Justice. So it's not like nobody knows who they were. They'd have to have a record. Right. But they will not release that to you. I haven't been able to get anything. Right. Let's go down the chain of documents that might

Explain this mystery. So the first would be the records of the first responders, the EMTs, who arrived at the scene and moved your brother's body from the cell to... No, that's what I had thought. But when I spoke to an EMT, when they got to the prison, Jeff was already in the infirmary. The prison people moved him to the infirmary, which they were not supposed to do. Because when he was found, he was clearly dead.

The autopsy showed he was dead for at least two hours before he was found. So at that point, they're supposed to leave the body and call the medical examiner's office so they can come, take photographs, do the initial testing, whatever they do when they find a dead body. But that wasn't done. They moved him to the infirmary.

And they moved his corpse to the infirmary but notified nobody else. Well, a 911 call was made to get the EMTs, and we can't get a copy of the 911 call, which is, you know, we hear 911 calls for all sorts of other cases. This one seems to be missing. When they got there, he was in the infirmary, and he was clearly dead because, like I said, he'd been dead for two hours. And there was a photograph.

of him being wheeled out of the prison where he was intubated and squeezing an air bulb to try and get... So I was questioning, why are they trying to pump into a clearly dead body? Were they trying to make it look like he was alive so that he could be declared dead in the hospital? Because what I've been told, normally when they find dead bodies in the prisons, they want to ship them to the hospital so they're declared dead in the hospital. It was like an unwritten rule is nobody dies in prison.

They didn't want to deal with it. So they shipped him to the hospital where he was declared dead. And when I questioned the EMT why they were intubating him, I said because he was dead for at least two hours. The response I got was, how do you know that? It was a kind of a strange response, but I knew that from the autopsy.

So we don't know who moved him out of the cell. No person has come forward to say, I moved this corpse from the cell. No. But I was also told that in the infirmary and in the hospital, there was somebody with a handheld video camera all the time running, videotaping everything. Where are those tapes? That's another question.

Despite the fact that your brother was dead in his cell and had been dead for two hours. At least two hours. At least two hours. Somebody cut off his clothing and redressed the corpse in hospital scrubs, in a gown. Yeah, I have a photograph of him in a hospital gown on a gurney in a hospital where, you know, his arms were put through the sleeves. It's one of those gowns you tie in the back.

So the question becomes, you know, who decided to dress a dead body in a hospital gown? Normally they're either in a body bag or covered by a sheet. That's bizarre. Yes. And four and a half years later, you have no answers at all on any of these questions. None. None. And I've tried to get the PCR report or the ACR report, which is the report that the EMTs fill out on every call they make. It's just the record keeping system. And these are filed with the fire department.

And as this video essentially showed, they have no record of it. So there are essentially no records of what happened at all. There's no videotape. The cameras were broken. The guards who are supposed to be keeping watch were asleep. They were convicted of lying, but then they were pardoned by a judge later. Apparently one still works for the federal government. I believe so, yeah. I tried to talk to the guards. I couldn't get to them. I tried to contact them through their attorneys, and I couldn't get to them.

Okay. So then there was famously an investigation into this overseen by the Department of Justice's head investigator. Where is that? Well, they came out with the report a few months ago. And for four years, we've been trying to find out what position his body was in when it was found. And we couldn't get an answer to that either. But in the report, it described how he was found. It said that he was in a seated position

with his legs extended in front of him, and he was hanging from the top bunk. So if you picture that, you know, basically all of his body weight or most of his body weight was hanging by this noose around his neck or the ligature around his neck. He had some weight on his feet, but the bulk of his 180-some-odd pounds was hanging. And they said when they cut him down or tore him down, his buttocks was an inch or an inch and a half above the ground, again, which means his body weight was on his neck.

Now, if somebody's hanging like that, the noose or ligature would ride up high on the neck and go high behind your ears to where it was tied to. But the autopsy photographs show that the ligature mark on Jeff's neck is in the middle of his neck and goes straight back, as if someone put a rope around his neck and strangled him like Carlo in The Godfather in the car.

Or the electrical cord to his... Or the electrical cord or whatever was there, but it doesn't look like the fabric from a bed sheet. So if it seems clear just from the photographs of his autopsy that he was strangled with, say, a cord, wouldn't you test that cord for his DNA? Yeah, nobody seems to know where that is. Also, the way they said he was hanging, and again, he had to be there for at least two hours.

When you die, the blood in your body settles to the... Gravity takes the blood down to the lowest parts of your body, and they become blotchy from the blood pooling under the skin. So the back of his legs and his buttocks should have what's called lividity. They should have this blotchiness, like bruising look on the back of his legs and his buttocks. Autopsy photographs show that his legs are clean, clear.

So he couldn't have been hanging that way for more than, you know, for two-plus hours. He'd have blood pooling in his legs. But that's not the case. So did the report explain the discrepancies from the autopsy, that bones in his neck were broken that are not seen in hangings but are seen in strangulations? Those broken bones are not... They're seen in strangulations, but because he had three bones, it's also from a karate chop to the neck.

will break bones like that. And that seems to be what I've spoken to military people, a preferred way of killing people is you karate chop them in the neck really hard, you collapse their windpipe, and that disorients them and incapacitates them. And then usually they just break their neck or you can strangle them. So the breaks in his neck are more consistent with a karate chop than what's called a soft hanging.

you know, when you tie something around your neck and you sit down or hang yourself from something soft, like, you know, unfortunately, Robin Williams or Andre Bourdain, was it? Who killed himself in the war. Right. Those are soft hangings, as opposed to, you know, Brooks in the Shawshank Redemption, who stood on a chair and sort of jumped off. That's a hard hanging. That will snap the bones in your neck. But that wasn't what happened with Jeff. So Dr. Michael Bodden, who participated, was present at the autopsy.

has participated in over a thousand autopsies of prison deaths. I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging. 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. His

fairly firm conclusion is that this was not a suicide. Is that correct? Yes. He was holding off on that determination, pending determination of how the body was found, which we finally... Now that they say the way the body was found, it just only shows that it was not that way. The autopsy shows it's not that way, which further convinced Dr. Barton that this was not a hanging, not a suicide. So...

Here's what we wind up with at the end of all this. We wind up with a high profile inmate in the most secure federal facility in the country's largest city who was somehow murdered, clearly with the knowledge of the Justice Department and the Attorney General of the United States lies about it, which he did, and there's no reason to do that except to cover up the crime. So what does that tell us about this? Oh, it's a scary thought that you could be killed in prison by the government.

Because again, my life would have been a lot easier if he committed suicide. I could have put it behind me. But it's obvious at this point in time that it was not a suicide. And so it means somebody killed him. So who killed him and why? Right. So in talking to all the people around him or people who were connected with him one way or another in the final weeks of his life, have you detected a fear in those people in talking about this?

Uh, not really. I don't think they're fearful of anything. I was the one getting the death threats, not them. I don't think they did. Why were you getting death threats? Well, when Jeff died, people tried to link me to his activities in some way, shape, or form. Again, I had not seen Jeff for seven years prior to his death. We were in communication. We spoke, we emailed, but we lived two different lives. So I didn't know his inner circle and he didn't know mine.

But people tried to link us, tried to link me to his activities. And I was in contact with the FBI and the New York Police Department about the death threats. And I had, at times, had armed guards. When I went to the autopsy, I had armed guards with me to protect myself. From who? From whoever killed Jeff. But anyone who could murder someone in a federal detention facility obviously has a lot of power.

yeah well i was trying to protect myself as best as i could yeah do you fear for i noticed you're not appearing on camera you've asked not to appear on camera yeah i just i don't want to be recognized i travel a lot and there's no need for me this is not about me this is about jeff's death did you have any inkling at all that your brother was involved in anything that might get him killed by a government no no like i wasn't involved with his day-to-day life you know and uh

You know, his troubles he had with the charges with the girls was from the early to, you know, 2006 is when he first got into trouble and he spent time in jail for that. Well, that's a question that's occurred to me. I mean, he went through all this, whatever you think of it, and then he was charged again for the same things, effectively. Right. I mean, from what I understand, that was going... He had a non-prosecution agreement with the federal government on that when he made his plea deal.

So he believed he was safe from further prosecution. And then he flew home from Paris in July and they arrested him on the same charges. And I believe his defense was going to be, well, hey, you know, I have a non-prosecution agreement with the federal government. And supposedly they said, well, that was like the Southern District or some area. Well, as far as I know, we have one federal government.

If you make a deal with the federal government, it covers the entire country. Has it occurred that maybe the point of rearresting him on the same charges was to get him into a facility where he could be killed? I've shied away from speculating about all of this. I try to stick with the facts, but that's a possibility. Do you think other governments might have been involved in this, not just the U.S. government?

I wouldn't, on the surface, say no. I don't see why. I mean, again, I don't know what he was doing day to day. So, you know, again, that's speculation, which I don't want to do. But I don't think so. You know, on the surface, I don't see why. What information are you still seeking about his death? Well, who were the prisoners on that ward?

that night how long were they there for now somebody was on that ward for you know a long time like his roommate then you know obviously he they weren't planted there you know two years ago to kill Jeff then so who was transferred onto that Ward in the week or two before he was killed and and where are they now where were they transferred to were these real prisoners or was it a plant

Have you asked the Inspector General at the Department of Justice? We asked all these questions, yes, way back when. And we get no answer. After a thorough investigation, we've determined it was a suicide. But no one's given you any details? After a careful investigation, we've determined it was a suicide. That's what I was getting from them. I'm doing to you what they were doing to me. What's your next move?

Well, I'm still trying to find the information. I have four years out to try to get the medical reports, to try to get the 911 call, and just to get people thinking about this. People shouldn't, like you said, people shouldn't be complacent with the fact that somebody was killed in a federal prison under federal protection. Yeah. And officials at the very highest levels are lying about it. Yeah. And people should be aware of that. Whether we ever figure out exactly what happened, I don't know. But

I don't want people to think he committed suicide because that's not the case. Mark Epstein, thank you very much. You're welcome.