(NewsNation) — Years after the disgraced financier died, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother says his death being deemed a suicide “makes no sense.”
If you or a loved one are experiencing mental distress, please call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Businessman Mark Epstein said he initially accepted the official ruling that his older brother died in 2019 by hanging himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges at a Manhattan jail cell.
After the autopsy was done, and “facts started coming out,” Mark Epstein said, his view changed.
“It makes no sense for him to have committed suicide, especially the way they’re trying to describe it,” Mark Epstein said in a phone interview on NewsNation’s “Morning in America” Thursday. “There’s so many inconsistencies in the Justice Department report.”
The way officials said Jeffrey Epstein was found hanging, Mark Epstein said, is “completely inconsistent with the autopsy results.” Mark Epstein added he thinks the ligature mark found on his brother’s neck shows he could not have been hanging the way authorities said he was.
In June, the Justice Department’s watchdog said it was a “combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures” by the federal Bureau of Prisons and workers at the New York City jail that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to take his own life. There was no evidence of foul play, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said.
Instead, Horowitz blamed numerous factors for Epstein’s death, including the jail’s failure to assign him a cellmate and overworked guards who lied on logs after failing to make regular checks, according to the Associated Press.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.