A YEAR LATER, EPSTEIN’S DEATH STILL REVERBERATES

Pervy financier’s suicide set off conspiracy theories and denials by celebrities

When Jeffrey Epstein took his life in a jail cell one year ago — dozens of his victims feared their hope for justice died with him.

The registered sex offender, who made a mockery of the legal process since at least 2007, undermined the law one last time. Using orange sheets tied to the railing of a bunk bed in his cell, Epstein hanged himself, snapping a bone in his neck in three places.

The multimillionaire financier’s death triggered a wave of outrage, disappointment, denials and conspiracy theories that continue to this day.

“The immediate reaction was disappointment. She and I wanted him alive and well and prepared to face justice in a courtroom,” said attorney Dan Kaiser, who represents Epstein accuser Jennifer Araoz. “She felt deprived of that opportunity when he died. The anniversary has resurrected those feelings.”

Epstein was accused of running an elaborate underage sex trafficking scheme in which victims were lured into giving him massages that devolved into a routine of sexual abuse. He paid victims to bring in new underage girls, maintaining a steady stream of young lives for him to destroy, prosecutors said. Lawsuits against his estate allege that defiling his victims was part of his sick thrill.

Epstein’s suicide the night between Aug. 9 and 10 capped a frenzy of shocking revelations that emerged seemingly every day after his arrest the month prior for sex trafficking minors in the early 2000s. Prosecutors said they found a stash of nude photographs of underage girls in the fiend’s $77 million Upper East Side mansion. The feds cracked a safe belonging to Epstein, 66, and found a foreign passport with a fake name and his photo, diamonds and piles of cash. The passport, issued in the 1980s, listed Epstein’s residence as Saudi Arabia. He owned palatial retreats in Palm Beach, New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“A year after his death, it is disappointing that we still don’t have more answers to how it was that Jeffrey Epstein was allowed to die while in custody, or how he was able to manipulate the criminal justice system to evade real punishment for decadeslong crimes,” Epstein accuser Teresa Helm said.

The government let down Epstein’s victims yet again. In 2007, then-Southern Florida U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta negotiated a sweetheart nonprosecution agreement with Epstein that allowed him to plead guilty to charges of procuring a minor for prostitution and serve a mere 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail. Acosta would later resign as President Trump’s labor secretary as outrage mounted that he kept victims in the dark about the outrageous terms of the deal. Blame fell on the overworked, underfunded Bureau of Prisons staff at the dysfunctional Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan for

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Araoz “is disappointed and angry at the Bureau of Prisons for not doing its job and protecting his welfare,” Kaiser said. The Queens woman who claims Epstein abused her at his Upper East Side mansion when she was 15 had wanted him alive to face criminal charges and her own civil lawsuit.

The death rocked the Justice Department and MCC, which holds some of the country’s highest-profile inmates.

Two correctional officers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, are accused of falsifying records, sleeping on the job and shopping online as Epstein hatched his final plan. They’ve pleaded not guilty.

Attorney General William Barr pledged that the investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking would continue.

“Any co-conspirators should not rest easy,” Barr said shortly after the pervert’s death.