Tova Noel

Tova Noel is a former correctional officer of the Federal Bureau of Prisons who was one of the two staff members on duty in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York on the night of August 9 to 10, 2019, when Jeffrey Epstein died in his cell. She and the materials handler Michael Thomas were indicted in November 2019 for falsifying the records of inmate counts and rounds; the charges were dismissed in December 2021 after both completed deferred prosecution agreements. Records released by the Department of Justice in 2026 showed that JPMorgan Chase had filed a suspicious activity report on twelve cash deposits to her account, the largest 5,000 dollars on July 30, 2019, and that a search for "latest on epstein in jail" was run on her workstation less than an hour before Epstein was found. She was not questioned about the deposits, and she denied under oath any role in Epstein's death.¹²³

Background

Noel was born in Antigua and raised by her mother and grandparents. Her mother emigrated from St. Croix to Tannersville, Pennsylvania, in the Pocono Mountains, and Noel joined her there at thirteen, graduating from high school in 2005 at sixteen after skipping grades. She enlisted in the Army National Guard at nineteen, served six years, including active duty in Kuwait in 2012 during Operation Enduring Freedom, became a naturalized citizen, and was honorably discharged in 2014. In 2013 her seven-year-old half-brother and his mother were murdered on St. Croix; no one was arrested. She worked for New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority on and off from 2014 to 2016, took a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2017, and worked for the U.S. Postal Service before the Bureau of Prisons hired her at MCC New York in June 2018.¹⁴

Her lawyer, Jason Foy, wrote in a background letter submitted with her deferred prosecution agreement that she found a "BOP way" and an "MCC way" of doing things depending on who trained her, and that she was made to sign a document confirming training for the Special Housing Unit that she had not received. Foy wrote that she had never worked the unit before August 9, 2019; a bureau document released in 2026 placed her start there on July 7, 2019, the day after Epstein's arrest.³⁴

August 9 and 10, 2019

Noel worked her regular shift in the Special Housing Unit from 4 p.m. to midnight on August 9 and an overtime shift from midnight to 8 a.m. on August 10. About 7 p.m. on August 9, a Unit Manager put Epstein in the unit's shower area for an unrecorded call on the legal line and left the building; Noel told the Inspector General that no one told her to monitor the call, that it lasted about 20 minutes, and that after she took the phone back and went to the bathroom, she returned to find Epstein already in his cell. His cellmate had been transferred out that morning and no replacement was assigned; Noel said she did not know he was alone.²⁴

She did not conduct the 4 p.m. or 10 p.m. counts on August 9, and with Thomas skipped the midnight, 3 a.m., and 5 a.m. counts on August 10, while signing count slips and more than 75 entries on 30-minute round sheets for checks that were not made. An FBI briefing released in 2026 described a figure on the surviving camera footage at about 10:40 p.m. as "a correctional officer, believed to be Tova Noel," carrying "linen or inmate clothing up to the L-Tier," the last time any officer approached the tier entrance before morning. Noel told investigators she last saw Epstein alive "somewhere around after 10" and that she "never gave out linen." The FBI's 66-page forensic examination of the officers' desktop computers highlighted searches for "latest on epstein in jail" at 5:42 and 5:52 a.m.; Noel told the Inspector General in 2021 that she did not recall making the search and that the data "wouldn't be accurate." She had also searched for furniture and "law enforcement discounts." Her lawyer said Thomas told her the rounds were not necessary that night and slept for most of the shift with a hoodie pulled over his head.²³⁴⁵

The Bureau of Prisons records later produced in the Epstein Library show the assignments. The MCC New York Daily Assignment Roster for Saturday, August 10, 2019, printed at 8:58 p.m. that evening, lists "Noel, T" on SHU post 1 for the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, marked as overtime, and "Thomas, M" on SHU post 2 for the same shift, marked "OT (NC)." Warden Lamine N'Diaye's Form 583 Report of Incident, NYM-19-0082, which dates the incident to 6:33 a.m., lists Noel among the staff involved. The jail nurse's resuscitation record for that morning describes Epstein as "Cold, with circumferential Bruising around the neck and posterior mottling."⁶

At about 6:30 a.m. Thomas opened Epstein's cell and found him hanged. Noel said she stood outside the cell, heard "a rip," and saw only "when the top part of his body went to the floor." The Inspector General's agent told her, "I thought you said you never looked in. You never saw anything." Noel said she never looked at the live camera feeds and did not know that all but one camera near the officers' station had stopped recording. "I've never worked in the Special Housing Unit and actually done rounds every 30 minutes," she said.³⁴

Prosecution

On November 19, 2019 a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York indicted Noel and Thomas on one count each of conspiracy and multiple counts each of making false records, in a case announced by U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman; according to the indictment, Thomas told a supervisor after finding Epstein, "we messed up." Each was released on a 100,000 dollar bond and ordered to surrender their passports. On May 25, 2021 both entered deferred prosecution agreements admitting that they had falsely certified counts and rounds, and agreeing to cooperate with the Inspector General, the FBI, and prosecutors and to perform 100 hours of community service; on December 13, 2021 the court entered a nolle prosequi order dismissing the charges. The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute other Special Housing Unit employees who had also falsified count slips and round sheets on August 9 and 10. Both officers were fired.²³⁷

The Deposits and the 2026 Inquiry

On November 22, 2019, three days after the indictment, JPMorgan Chase filed a suspicious activity report with the FBI on twelve cash deposits Noel made between April 2018 and July 2019, the largest 5,000 dollars on July 30, 2019, eleven days before Epstein's death; available records showed seven deposits totaling 11,880 dollars from December 2018. Bank records also showed she was leasing a new Land Rover Range Rover valued at more than 60,000 dollars. The FBI subpoenaed both officers' phones and financial records. Noel was not asked about the deposits in her 2021 Inspector General interview.³⁴⁸

FBI notes released in 2026 recorded an unnamed inmate's account that on the morning of August 10 he heard officers shout "Breathe! Breathe!" and then someone say "you killed that dude," and a female officer reply, "If he is dead we're going to cover it up and he's going to have an alibi, my officers"; he said other inmates later said "Miss Noel killed Jeffrey." The account has not been substantiated. Asked under oath whether she had any part in Epstein's death, Noel answered, "No."⁴⁵

In March 2026 James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked Noel to sit for a transcribed interview, saying the committee's goal was "to understand whether this was simply a series of failures inside the Bureau of Prisons or whether additional questions remain unanswered." The interview, set for March 26, was postponed. CNN's requests for comment to her attorney went unanswered.³⁴