Epstein left unsupervised before suicide

NEW YORK — It was Friday night in a protective housing unit of the federal jail in lower Manhattan, and Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of trafficking girls for sex, was alone in a cell, only 11 days after he had been taken off a suicide watch.

Just that morning, thousands of documents from a civil suit had been released, providing lurid accounts accusing Epstein of sexually abusing scores of girls.

Epstein was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed that night, a law enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.

In addition, because Epstein may have tried to kill himself three weeks earlier, he was supposed to have had another inmate in his cell, two officials said. But the jail had recently transferred his cellmate and allowed Epstein to be housed alone, a decision that also violated jail procedure, the two officials said.

At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, guards doing morning rounds found him dead in his cell. Epstein, 66, had apparently hanged himself.

The disclosures about these seeming failures in Epstein’s detention at the Metropolitan Correctional Center deepened questions about his death and are very likely to be the focus of inquiries by the Justice Department and the FBI.

Officials cautioned that their initial findings about his detention could change.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has already come under intense criticism for not keeping Epstein under a suicide watch after he had been found in his cell on July 23 with injuries that suggested he had tried to kill himself.

The law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said that when the decision was made to remove Epstein from suicide watch, the jail informed the Justice Department that Epstein would have a cellmate and that a guard “would look into his cell” every 30 minutes.

But that wasn’t done, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.