Newly released surveillance video from the night Jeffrey Epstein died shows guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan walking nonchalantly just feet from the cell where he killed himself.Corrections officers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas were seen lounging in front of an officer’s station in a special housing unit around 3:15 a.m., both writing on paper, pacing back and forth, and making phone calls instead of conducting mandatory 3 a.m. rounds, according to video unearthed in recently released Justice Department documents.According to prison diagrams, Epstein was in the first cell on the block just a few feet away, walking down a short flight of stairs behind the ninth-floor L-level wing of the officer station.The Justice Department said Epstein is believed to have committed suicide sometime between 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 9, Noel’s last shift checking on inmates, and 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, when Noel and Thomas discovered his body while serving breakfast to inmates.The guards apparently ignored bright orange warnings and reminders posted on their computers by officials in charge of the Special Housing Unit, Justice Department documents show. The notes reminded everyone that Epstein had just come off suicide watch and needed a roommate at all times and regular check-ins.“Mandatory [sic] According to God’s instructions, rounds on Epstein had to be done every 30 minutes! ! ! ” read an order.SHU owner Lt. Roberto Grijalva later told DOJ investigators, “I kept it next to the computer. It was just a matter between us, that is, making sure rounds were done and that he always had a bunk.” It’s bright orange paper with black font. “Grijalva said he would “hang next to his computer screen” before heading home for the weekend at 2 p.m. on August 9.“Whoever was there, they saw that – saw that newspaper. When I came in on Monday, that newspaper wasn’t there,” he said.Grijalva said that around 8 a.m. on August 9, he brought Epstein and his cellmate, convicted drug dealer Efrain Reyes, downstairs. Epstein had been meeting with his attorneys all day, and Reyes was probably heading home with all of his belongings.“As I walked them toward the door, I said, ‘You’re going to get a bed,'” Grijalva recalled. “Epstein said, ‘No, I’m fine.'”“He seemed calm,” Grijalva added of Epstein. “He was joking because he wanted a new sweater and I told him, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Why not?’ I was like, ‘This is a prison, this is what you have to do. No one can get a sweater, it’s not Versace,’ you know. He goes ‘Ha ha ha, ha ha ha,’ and he laughs, and that’s it.”Grijalva said he told staff multiple times before leaving for the weekend that Epstein would need a new inmate when he returned from a meeting with lawyers that night.He also told investigators that multiple orange sheets, the same ones he used to hang himself, were in Epstein’s cell because police did not remove them from Reyes when he was discharged from the hospital, and they likely gave Epstein extra sheets after he complained about being cold at night.“They screwed up,” Grijalva said. “Sorry. This is absolutely not okay.”Grijalva remains employed at the Manhattan Correctional Center and has been promoted to deputy captain, according to the Bureau of Prisons.On March 26, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee summoned Noel for an interview after The Washington Post reported that Noel Googled information about Epstein shortly before his suicide and made a mysterious cash deposit.Noel and Thomas were accused of falsifying records, saying they checked on Epstein throughout the night, although investigators later learned they did not conduct the 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. rounds.They were fired, but U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres, an Obama appointee, dropped criminal charges against both men in 2021.
