Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York

The Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York (MCC New York) was a Federal Bureau of Prisons detention facility at 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan, adjoining the federal courthouses at Foley Square, that held pretrial defendants for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. It housed about 750 inmates in normal operation, and its former inmates included Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, John Gotti, Bernard Madoff, and associates of Osama bin Laden. Jeffrey Epstein was found hanged in a cell in its Special Housing Unit on the morning of August 10, 2019, after two officers skipped the overnight counts, the facility's cellmate order went unexecuted, and the recording system for half its cameras had been dead since July 29. The Bureau of Prisons closed the jail, "at least temporarily," in October 2021.¹²

The Facility

MCC New York was a federal administrative detention facility, and most of its inmates were awaiting trial rather than serving sentences. Epstein was held in the Special Housing Unit (SHU), where inmates are "securely separated from the general inmate population and kept locked in their cells for approximately 23 hours a day." The SHU had six tiers of eight cells each, reached only through a locked door at the top or bottom of each tier's staircase, and the officers' desk sat directly outside the tier where Epstein was housed, diagonally across from his cell.¹

In the autumn of 2018 the Bureau of Prisons awarded contracts to two companies, identified in the Inspector General's report only as Company 1 and Company 2, to upgrade the jail's security cameras, which then recorded to a Digital Video Recorder system split into two halves (DVR 1 and DVR 2). From March 2019 the bureau's Northeast Regional Office rotated technicians from other prisons to MCC New York to do the wiring, but "work is not consistently conducted on the camera upgrade because TDY personnel are sometimes used to cover shortages at MCC New York's custody posts." Lamine N'Diaye had been warden since May 2018.¹³

Epstein's Detention

Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport on July 6, 2019 on his return from France and brought to MCC New York, where he was placed in general population. The next day a staff member asked the Psychology Department to evaluate him because he appeared "distraught, sad, and a little confused," and he was moved to the SHU because of media attention and his notoriety among inmates. On July 18 Judge Richard M. Berman ordered him detained pending trial as a danger to the community and a flight risk.¹

At about 1:27 a.m. on July 23, 2019, staff found Epstein on the floor of his cell "with a piece of orange cloth around his neck." He first told staff that his cellmate had tried to kill him, then said he did not remember how he was injured. His cellmate, identified in the Inspector General's report only as Inmate 1, was the former police officer Nicholas Tartaglione, then awaiting trial on murder charges. Epstein was placed on suicide watch and then psychological observation, and told a psychologist on July 24, "I have no interest in killing myself." The jail's investigative staff concluded on August 8 that there was "insufficient evidence to determine that Epstein harmed himself or that he was harmed by his cellmate." After returning to the SHU Epstein asked two staff members whether he could be housed again with the same cellmate.¹⁴

The jail's own records, released in the Epstein Library, fill in the July 23 incident. The officer who reached the cell first wrote that Epstein was "laying down near his bunk with what appeared to be a piece of handmade orange cloth around his neck"; a second officer applied restraints to Tartaglione, and the first secured him in the bathroom. The operations lieutenant wrote that Epstein, breathing heavily and snoring, did not respond, but that on the stretcher "When staff made eye contact with him, he would hurriedly shut his eyes," and that on suicide watch he twice leaned forward as if to fall head first before saying "Okay, I won't do it again," and giving a thumbs up. No medical assessment was done at the time "due to the fact, there was no medical staff available after 10:00 PM." A senior officer specialist recorded Epstein's statement that his "Bunkie" had "tried to kill him" and had tried to extort him "for a week"; Epstein told a psychologist the next day, "I don't know if he put it there as a joke." A Bureau of Prisons psychological reconstruction team later noted that the psychologist's note described "a string loosely hanging around his neck" while the responding officer described orange cloth, and that the self-mutilation incident report was written before the facts were known and later expunged; the Special Investigative Services threat assessment of August 2 was "inconclusive as to whether Mr. Epstein engaged in self- directed violence, willingly fought with his cellmate, or was assaulted by his cellmate."⁵

On the choice of cellmates, the reconstruction team found that when Epstein entered the SHU on July 7 "Executive Staff decided Mr. Tartaglione would be his cellmate" without input from Psychology Services, that the pairing "may have aggravated Mr. Epstein's risk for self-directed violence," and that although the Bureau's central Psychology Services Branch recommended on July 25 that Epstein be housed with another inmate accused of a sex offense, "Mr. Epstein was never housed with another inmate charged or convicted of a sexual offense." The institution answered that it had paired him with Tartaglione because "both had high profile cases" and Tartaglione, "a certified death penalty eligible inmate," was "less likely to assault or otherwise try to harm Mr. Epstein"; that a second inmate with a history of sex offenses was "deemed dangerous to Mr. Epstein due to his threatening nature"; and that it then "narrowed the possibilities to cooperators," choosing an inmate "confirmed as proffering with the U.S. Attorney's Office," on the reasoning that cooperators "are not only vulnerable themselves, but also had a lot to lose should they harm Mr. Epstein."⁵

On July 30 a staff psychologist emailed more than 70 bureau employees that Epstein "needs to be housed with an appropriate cellmate." The disk array of the DVR 2 system failed between July 29 and 30; the cameras kept showing live video but recorded nothing, and roughly half the jail's cameras, including those covering the area of Epstein's cell, were on DVR 2. Staff discovered the failure on August 8, obtained replacement drives on August 9, and did not complete the repair.¹

August 8 to 10, 2019

On August 8 Epstein met his lawyers in a private room at the jail and signed a new Last Will and Testament, which jail officials did not learn of until after his death; the same day staff were told his cellmate would be transferred out. The cellmate left at about 8:30 a.m. on August 9, and no new cellmate was assigned; two SHU staff said they told supervisors, and "other witnesses did not corroborate these statements." Epstein's attorneys asked that day whether he could be moved or housed without a cellmate. The same day the Second Circuit unsealed about 2,000 pages of records from Giuffre v. Maxwell.¹

Between 6:58 and 7:19 p.m. on August 9, a Unit Manager serving as Institutional Duty Officer let Epstein make an unrecorded call from a shower area on the SHU's legal line, a line reserved for attorney calls, to a number in the 646 area code, saying Epstein wanted to call his mother. Epstein's mother had died in 2004. A man answered, and the Unit Manager handed Epstein the receiver, told officers "make sure he gets his 15-minutes, and after that, he's done," and left the building. The Inspector General found that Epstein spoke with a woman identified as Individual 1, who declined to be interviewed; her lawyer told prosecutors she was in Belarus at the time and that Epstein told her "They are trying to keep me safe," that he loved her, and that he would not be able to call her again for another month. Before August 9, one of Epstein's attorneys had asked a senior officer "how Epstein could get an unmonitored call"; the officer told him the decision belonged to a lieutenant or unit manager.¹

Correctional officer Tova Noel and materials handler Michael Thomas staffed the SHU from midnight, Noel on the second half of a double shift and Thomas on overtime in place of his regular post. No officer checked on Epstein from about 10:40 p.m. on August 9, when a figure the FBI believed to be Noel carried linen or clothing up to his tier, until 6:30 a.m. on August 10. Neither officer conducted the midnight, 3 a.m., or 5 a.m. counts, and Noel signed more than 75 entries on round sheets for checks that did not happen. At 5:42 and 5:52 a.m. a search for "latest on epstein in jail" was run on Noel's workstation. At about 6:30 a.m. Thomas opened the cell and found Epstein hanged from the top bunk by strips of orange cloth, "in a near-seated position." The cell held "an excess amount of prison linens" and "multiple nooses." Epstein was pronounced dead at New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital at 7:36 a.m.¹⁴⁶

The jail nurse's resuscitation record logs a body alarm at 6:35 a.m. and describes Epstein on the cell floor with officers performing CPR: "Inmate was Cold, with circumferential Bruising around the neck and posterior mottling, Pupils Fixed and dilated, No Palpable pulses." An automated defibrillator advised no shock at 6:40, paramedics arrived at 6:56 and found asystole, and he was taken out with CPR in progress. Warden N'Diaye's Form 583 Report of Incident, NYM-19-0082, dated the incident 6:33 a.m. on August 10, 2019 and listed Noel and Thomas among the staff involved.⁵

The one SHU camera still recording, on DVR 1, covered the unit's common area and the stairs to the tiers but not Epstein's cell door. The Inspector General found that no one was seen entering Epstein's tier from the common area between 10:40 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., that three inmates with a view of his cell door said no one entered or left it, and that it "did not uncover evidence contradicting the FBI's determination regarding the absence of criminality." The FBI seized the DVR 2 drives on August 10 and found "catastrophic disk failures" with no recordings after July 29.¹

Investigations and Aftermath

Attorney General William Barr said on August 12 that the department had learned of "serious irregularities" at the jail: "I was appalled, and indeed the whole department was, and frankly angry, to learn of the MCC's failure to adequately secure this prisoner." On August 13 he ordered N'Diaye temporarily reassigned to the bureau's Northeast Regional Office and two SHU staff placed on leave; James Petrucci, warden at Otisville, became acting warden. On August 19, 2019, an MCC employee emailed the FBI that an inmate had told him members of the bureau's After Action Team investigating the death "were shredding boxes of paperwork" and that the inmate had been told to help; the employee later said he saw the inmate at the rear gate with about three large bags of shredded paper. An agent asked colleagues whether the dumpster could be checked "ASAP"; the released records do not show that it was searched.³⁴

Noel and Thomas were indicted by a federal grand jury on November 19, 2019 for falsifying records; the charges were dismissed on December 13, 2021 after they completed deferred prosecution agreements, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute other SHU employees who had also falsified count slips and round sheets. The Inspector General's June 2023 report found that "many other MCC New York staff members engaged in administrative misconduct," tied the failures to staffing shortages the office had flagged "since at least 2015," and made eight recommendations to the bureau.¹

The Justice Department announced on August 26, 2021, weeks after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco toured the jail, that it would close MCC New York "at least temporarily" to address "issues" including lax security and crumbling infrastructure; its 233 remaining inmates, down from a normal population of 600 or more, were moved mostly to the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn. The building remained closed as of 2026.²⁴

On July 7, 2025 the Justice Department and FBI released a memorandum stating that "FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center" and that the FBI's review of the common-area footage "confirmed that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at around 10:40 pm on August 9, 2019, until around 6:30 am the next morning, nobody entered any of the tiers in the SHU." The Inspector General had placed the SHU lock-in at about 8 p.m. and 10:40 p.m. as the last time any officer went up to Epstein's tier. The memorandum was accompanied by what the department described as "full raw" footage; an analysis of the file's metadata by Wired found it had been assembled from at least two source clips in Adobe Premiere Pro under a Windows account named "MJCOLE~1" on May 23, 2025, and later reporting found close to three minutes missing from the published version.⁷⁸⁹