New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) has lost surveillance video of Jeffrey Epstein’s cell that was recorded on the day that he may have first tried to commit suicide.
Federal prosecutors said Thursday that the video was permanently deleted, according to NBC News.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender, was back in jail last summer on new charges, and is believed to have unsuccessfully tried to kill himself on July 23, 2019.
(New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services/Handout via REUTERS.)
Video from that day has disappeared because employees of the MCC saved the wrong clip from a different floor at the prison, prosecutors admitted in a court filing. (RELATED: Report: Bill Clinton Caught In Photos Of Jeffrey Epstein’s Plane With ‘Sex Slave’)
The MCC “inadvertently preserved video from the wrong tier within the MCC and as a result, video from outside the defendant’s cell on July 22-23, 2019 no longer exists,” the filing reads.
The FBI discovered the blunder last week when they were examining the video provided to them by the MCC, prosecutors said, according to NBC News.
“After reviewing the video, it appeared to the government that the footage contained on the preserved video was for the correct date and time, but captured a different tier than the one where [the cell housing Epstein and his cellmate] was located because the preserved video did not show corrections officers responding to any of the cells seen on the video.” (RELATED: Did Jeffery Epstein Kill Himself? Here’s What The People Of DC Had To Say)
The filing resulted from an investigation into the actions of Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer who was bunking with Epstein in the same cell. He was in jail and awaiting trial on homicide and cocaine trafficking charges.
Some said Epstein was a victim of assault and was not trying to commit suicide during the July incident — only to have himself removed from the MCC facility.
Epstein was found dead about two weeks later in what was ruled a suicide but doubts have persisted about the veracity of that assessment. Forensic pathologist Dr. Michel Baden, hired by Epstein’s brother, has indicated that autopsy photos of Epstein suggest he was strangled and did not hang himself.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden appears on “Fox & Friends” to discuss the death of Jeffrey Epstein, Oct. 30, 2019. Fox News screenshot.
A former business associate of Epstein claims that the business mogul was also a top spy for the Israeli Mossad and had become an intelligence liability.