National Post (National Edition)
Maxwell’s clothes, bedsheets taken away
SUICIDE CONCERNS
Federal officials are taking extra precautions to ensure the recently incarcerated Ghislaine Maxwell doesn’t meet the same fate as her accomplice Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide by hanging in custody last year.
These measures include taking away her clothes and bedsheets and making her wear a paper garb, according to an anonymous official in an interview with The Associated Press.
It also means Maxwell has a roommate in her cell, she is monitored and someone is always watching her while she is behind bars. The Justice Department has placed federal officials from outside the Bureau of Prisons to prevent other inmates from harming her and to prevent her from harming herself.
“We have asked (the Bureau of Prisons) to tell us specifically the protocols they’re following and we have a number of redundant systems to monitor the situation,” Attorney General William Barr told ABC News on Wednesday.
The concern is not unreasonable, after Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan correctional facility last year, kneeling with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. Despite a medical examiner having ruled the death a suicide, a great many theories have popped up surrounding Epstein’s end. These usually involve someone fixing to have him killed.
An investigation found that two of Epstein’s guards, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, did not make the required rounds every half hour to his cell, despite filing paperwork claiming they had. They were also discovered to be asleep at their desks, only about 4.5 metres from Epstein’s cell, for about two hours during their shift. In November, they were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and making false records.
“I believe very strongly in that case,” Barr said. “As you will recall, after he committed suicide, I said that I was confident that we would continue to pursue this case vigorously and pursue anyone who’s complicit in it. And so I’m very happy that we were able to get Ms. Maxwell.”
Maxwell was arrested last Thursday on charges that she helped lure at least three girls, one as young as 14, into sexual abuse by Epstein who was himself accused of trafficking and abusing dozens of girls over many years.
The labyrinthine case against Epstein has implicated many of the elites of the world, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Elon Musk and Alan Dershowitz among others.