CLAIMS EP MURDERED
Doc: Was strangling, not hanging
Autopsy photos of Jeffrey Epstein’s burst capillaries suggest the disgraced financier was strangled in his Manhattan jail cell, a former city medical examiner said in a TV interview.
Epstein likely died from manual strangulation, according to forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden in an interview on “Dr. Oz” that aired Thursday. Baden’s theory contradicts the current city medical examiner’s position that the convicted pedophile hanged himself in August at Manhattan Correctional Center.
“In a hanging, the arteries and the blood vessels — the veins — are both clogged off and the person is pale. The face is pale,” Baden told Oz.
“With a manual strangulation, there’s a backup of a pressure, and the little capillaries can rupture and they’re best seen in the eye,” he said, referencing an autopsy photo showing red splotches along the inner lower lid of Epstein’s left eye.
Baden — who was hired by Epstein’s brother Mark to investigate the death — also said photos of the accused sex trafficker’s pale legs lend further proof to his theory.
“The blood settles after we die — the so-called lividity. If you’re hanging, the lividity is on the lower part on the legs. These would be like maroon (or) purple, front and back, and they aren’t,” he said.
Rumors have swirled around the Epstein hanging since correctional officers found him dead on Aug. 10 — and after the bizarre revelation that surveillance footage from outside Jeffrey Epstein’s cell during a failed suicide attempt was destroyed.
An initial autopsy report said the multimillionaire, who was awaiting trial on charged he sex-trafficked underage girls in 2005, was deemed inconclusive.
On Aug. 16, the city’s medical examiner changed the report to suicide by hanging.
“One of the things the family wishes to know, [and] the estate wishes to know, is what was that additional information that caused them to change it,” Baden said.
The famed forensic pathologist told CBS’ “60 Minutes” last week that a sketch of the noose on the autopsy report doesn’t appear to match the ligature wounds on Epstein’s neck and that correctional officers violated prison protocol when they moved his body from the jail cell.
Epstein’s estate has been hit with lawsuits from some of his victims as well as a $577 million suit filed Wednesday by the U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general.
That suit alleges Epstein brought girls to his private Caribbean island as recently as 2018 and kept a database of nearby underage victims, including at least one victim who was only 11 years old.
The 49-page civil suit filed against Epstein’s estate gave disturbing details about Epstein’s sophisticated, supervillain-style sex trafficking operation on Little St. James. Young girls were lured to the island, which was only accessible by boat or helicopter, under the guise of good money for harmless massages of the powerful financier with famous friends, the suit says. But once the girls arrived they couldn’t escape and were allegedly subjected to “sexual servitude.”