Epstein’s final days in cell
WITH Ghislaine Maxwell’s current trial, I’m printing what I don’t think may have been already reported. Right after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, his cellmate Bill Mersey sent me this. I’ve held it all this time and have condensed Mersey’s voluminous pages:
“If you didn’t want to kill yourself before, you would after a few days at MCC. Minus trained psychologists, it was inmates who, with a whole three hours’ training, had to watch four Suicide cells on the second floor.
“Inmates were stowed away in 50 square feet with a cellmate and nothing to do but kill themselves. No commissary or phone access. ‘Training’ was mostly ogling the female psychologist teaching it. The pay, 12 cents, up to 40 cents, an hour.
“Into this prison came Bernie Kerik, El Chapo, Paul Manafort.
“Epstein was soft as a pillow and not prepared to handle this. He requested protective custody.
He was scared and he did not get over it. Handling prison constantly occupied his mind. To sleep he’d place an orange prison sock over his eyes.
“Epstein was initially brought into general population, a residence he was in no way prepared to handle. He also complained about the laxative the prison gave him and asked them not to continue giving him what they were prescribing. Didn’t matter. It’s what they gave him.
“The prison was abuzz with our new felon. He talked finance, saying, ‘Stocks are like women. You have to study to see what makes them happy. Observe their reaction to international news. Then you can predict their movements and that’s how you win.’ ”
Mersey also dropped the names of celebrities who, allegedly, Epstein knew.
Resigned to fate
THEN: “One time he returned to our cell with neck abrasions. So did he try to hang up [prison lingo for committing suicide]? He wasn’t talking. He wouldn’t say. He struck me as depressed. Suicidal. He sat down on the bare floor, his back to his bunk, eating the prison food off a Styrofoam plate.
“I asked, ‘What the f--k are you doing? Why you eating on the floor?’ ‘It’s just easier this way’ was his response. As though he was somewhat resolved to his fate that night. He’d been denied bail and was facing the reality of the rest of his life behind bars.
“As usual, the conversation centered around his adapting to prison life. And he signed off around 10 p.m. to hit the hay.
“Then one night, another watcher reported hearing the sound of tearing sheets. Conclusion was Jeffrey had killed himself.”
‘I have no doubt’
“THAT Saturday morning we were informed at wake-up that we’d be eating breakfast in our cells. We were locked down indefinitely. Jeffrey Epstein had killed himself a few hours before and the building was crawling with government agents.
“Assumption he had killed himself was reinforced when another inmate reported that in the wee hours he’d heard the sound of tearing sheets from Jeffrey’s cell in which he’d been left all alone after this bunky had been returned to general population.
“Nobody killed him. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. No reason not to believe it. That Jeffrey Epstein killed himself I have no doubt.”
ALSO there’s me. So tune into me this Sunday, every Sunday, from 1 to 2 p.m. on radio station WABC-770 on the AM dial.
And it’s not just Only in New York, kids, only in New York.