For anyone familiar with Bureau of Prisons [BOP] standard operating procedures, Jeffrey Epstein's apparent suicide is more than mysterious; it is unfathomable. The 66-year-old accused sex trafficker was found dead in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) Saturday morning, apparently after having hanged himself. The Bureau of Prisons, the federal agency that runs the MCC, has said the FBI will investigate. It had better. Epstein's death almost certainly means that astounding blunders occurred, perhaps by multiple personnel. If any prisoner in the federal system should have been a candidate for suspicion of suicide, it was the high-profile and disgraced Epstein. All administrative and structural measures should have been in place to ensure it could not happen. And yet it apparently did. Epstein was found last month unconscious in his MCC cell with marks on his neck. If he was not on suicide watch, it would be astonishing. Yet if he were on suicide watch, his death would be virtually inconceivable. BOP personnel, especially at MCC, are the best professionals in the corrections industry, and they receive special training in administrating suicide prevention. How exactly did Epstein manage to kill himself, and why exactly was it that he had access to the tools? Is there a video of Epstein's cell at the crucial time? There should be, and it will reveal exactly how and when Epstein killed himself. And none of this begins to address the royal mess it leaves in the efforts to take stock of Epstein's crimes and their prior slap-on-the-wrist treatment, nor the shambles in which it leaves Epstein's victims.
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