US financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services' sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019. (photo credit: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services/Handout via REUTERS)
August 10 marked six years since Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted child sex offender, was found dead in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.
In recent weeks, questions about Epstein’s life and loathsome actions, as well as the circumstances surrounding his death, have dominated the headlines in the American media, as the Trump administration has come under increasing pressure to release all the files and information about him in the government’s possession. The chorus behind such calls has grown louder, encompassing people from the Left to leading figures in the MAGA movement.
Earlier this year, Attorney-General Pam Bondi told Fox News on February 21 that the Epstein client list, which is said to have included many heavy hitters, was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” stoking expectations of a bombshell release of information in the near future.
But on July 6, the Justice Department and the FBI issued a two-page memo insisting that there was no client list and that Epstein had not blackmailed powerful figures nor been murdered. It was a stunning turnaround that set off a firestorm of disbelief, particularly among some of the president’s most ardent supporters, one that the White House has thus far failed to quell.
Amid the lingering questions and conspiracy theories swirling online, the Magazine sat down for an exclusive interview with Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, who argues that his sibling did not kill himself and was murdered as part of a cover-up. In the interview, he reveals his feelings about his brother’s actions and calls on the US government to open an official homicide investigation, saying the evidence indicates foul play. We will leave it to you, the reader, to decide.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
A PROTESTER calls for the release of the Epstein files, awaiting the imminent arrival of Trump administration officials, in Washington, Aug. 6. (credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)
You have said that you don’t believe that your brother committed suicide. So you believe this was a homicide?
Absolutely. But let me make it clear. When I first heard that he was dead from an apparent suicide, I heard it on CNN. I was having breakfast with a friend of mine in Virginia. I was in a restaurant and CNN was on, and bingo, there is his picture. And it says: ‘Jeffrey Epstein found dead from an apparent suicide in his cell.’ The government didn’t notify me. In their report, they said they notified me, but they did not. I heard it from CNN. And so I figured OK, as I had no reason to doubt it. You know, he was locked in a cell, facing a potentially long jail term, and he had no kids of his own to worry about. My parents were gone. I knew he didn’t have to worry about me, so I respected his choice to take himself out.
And then I had to come back to New York because the next morning, I had to identify the body as next of kin. Dr. Kristin Roman was the city pathologist who was doing the autopsy. And I have a right, as next of kin, to have my own pathologist there. So we got Dr. Michael Baden, who investigated the JFK assassination. And both Dr. Roman and Dr. Baden came out of the autopsy saying they couldn’t call this a suicide because it looked too much like a homicide. So that was a little bit disconcerting.
What was the basis for them saying that?
Well, one of the main things was the broken bones in Jeffrey’s neck. He had three broken bones in his neck, which nobody’s really ever seen in this kind of a soft hanging. Sometimes there might be one, sometimes two. Dr. Baden, who has been doing this for over 50 years and has done over 500 autopsies on prison deaths, said he’s never seen three broken bones. Another pathologist I spoke to sent me a report that came out in the Philippines, where they actually did a study about broken bones in the neck from hangings. And it mentioned a certain percentage have one broken bone, a smaller percentage have two. But there’s no mention of three broken bones. Three broken bones are more likely from a strangulation or from a karate chop to the neck.
What about the official death certificate? What did they write on it?
On the official first death certificate, the cause of death said, ‘Pending further study.’ They wouldn’t call it suicide because it looked more like a homicide. They couldn’t declare it either way because they couldn’t say it with a 100% certainty, but they wouldn’t say it was a suicide. They said it looks more like a homicide than a suicide at that point in time. And then a few days later, Dr. Barbara Sampson, who was the chief medical pathologist, declared it a suicide and gave no explanation why. She’s Dr. Roman’s boss. And Dr. Sampson never saw the body. Because after the autopsy, the body was claimed and taken away.
So on what basis did she determine that?
You’ll have to ask her that because she’s not telling anybody. Also, at that time roughly, Bill Barr, the US attorney-general, came out and said that he personally watched the videotape from the prison, and no one came into or out of the tier where Jeffrey was held, and that convinced him it was a suicide. That was his public statement, pretty much word for word. I heard that, and I said, this is BS. Number one, why is the attorney-general of the United States personally watching this videotape? I imagine he’s a pretty busy guy. That didn’t sit right. And then the fact they said no one went in or out, which means it’s a suicide. Well, there were like 12 other prisoners on the tier who potentially could have killed Jeffrey.
So, how do you think it might have happened?
Well, at first, what Bill Barr said sounds like it has a certain logic to it because to think somebody can actually get to that tier door from outside, which is locked, go in and kill somebody in a cell, and then leave completely undetected is ridiculous. There are six levels of security before you get to that tier, each with its own guards and cameras, and locked doors. So if he was killed, it wasn’t done that way. That’s not the way. It’s more likely either that the unnamed guards No. 1 and No. 2 had something to do with it, or somebody was planted on the tier to take him out. So what Barr said was so blatantly stupid because it ignored the fact that the other people on the tier could have done it. So I said to myself, this has got to be a cover-up because I really don’t think he’s that stupid to believe that, right?
How did you react when those two pathologists told you that they thought it was more likely a homicide than a suicide?
I was surprised because up until that point in time, I assumed it was a suicide, so I thought they were going to come out and say it’s a suicide. And then I would go home and deal with my brother’s death. But now there are questions that have to be asked. You know, when they call it a suicide so early, that stops the investigation. Because in a suicide, there is very little to investigate, as usually you have two questions: How did somebody kill themselves? And the other question would be, Why did somebody kill themselves? The why here is not important. It’s the how, right? So there’s not much to investigate in a true suicide. But they never did investigate it as a potential homicide because they declared it a suicide so quickly.
And I think they didn’t investigate it as a homicide because they didn’t want the results to show that. And that’s the cover-up.
You showed me some of the autopsy photos and said the ligature marks on your brother’s neck are significant. Why?
The ligature mark on Jeffrey’s neck is in the middle of his neck, and it’s sort of straight back. For four years, we were trying to find out what position Jeffrey was in when he was found because they moved the body. We know from that ligature mark and from the grooves in his neck that he was dead for at least two hours before he was found. Had it been much less than that, the ligature mark would not have left a groove. When someone hangs, the ligature mark is usually higher up, right under the chin, but that wasn’t the case with Jeffrey. No experts looking at the autopsy photos think that he died from hanging.
When we finally found out the position he was found in, they said he was in a seated position with his legs extended in front of him, hanging from the top bunk. And when they cut him down, his buttocks were about an inch to an inch and a half off the ground. That means the bulk of his body weight was hanging on his neck, right? Because if you sit that way with your feet out like that, there’s about 20 pounds of weight on your feet, so the bulk of your weight is hanging on your neck. That would have left a different mark than the one that was found on Jeffrey.
In one of the photos, there is an abrasion visible above the ligature mark. What does that indicate?
If a person is hanging, they are going to sink down into that ligature, and the ligature is going to ride up on the neck. So if there are any additional abrasions, they should be under the ligature mark; but on Jeffrey, it was above it. So where did that come from? In addition, he had bruises on his back. There was a deep muscle bruise on his back, so it looked more like a strangulation.
Couldn’t that have been from a beating?
There’s no report and no records of any beating.
Prof. Alan Dershowitz, who was your brother’s lawyer, said that he believes your brother committed suicide but that he did so with the assistance of others. What do you make of that theory?
I’ve heard that. I don’t know why he would commit suicide that way. If he was going to commit suicide, it takes just a few minutes to die that way. So I don’t know why he would need the assistance. I mean, it’s another theory that is out there.
There’s another reason I don’t think it was a suicide. A few weeks after Jeffrey was arrested and denied bail, his attorneys called me because they were appealing the bail decision. Jeffrey was willing to put up his house in New York as collateral, which was basically one of the largest private homes in New York City, as well as his jet and some other assets, which would have been a total of $70 million to $80 million for bail. I Googled to find out what the highest bail ever was in the United States, and at that point in time it was $100 million.
So his lawyers asked me if I would guarantee the entire bail, in essence doubling it. And he had another friend who was putting up some assets too, though I don’t know how much. So now we’re talking like $150 million. It would have been the highest bail by far. So maybe there was a chance on the appeal, as unpalatable as it might have been for people to see him get bail.
And if he got bail, he’d be living in his house with an ankle monitor, and he was also willing to pay for armed guards to be there so he couldn’t escape. So there was a chance, however slim, that he might have gotten bail. Slim, but maybe. And the hearing on the appeal was coming up. Now, if you were in that situation, wouldn’t you wait a few days or a week, whatever, for the hearing? Because if he had gotten bail, he would have been living in his mansion awaiting trial. But he killed himself right before the hearing? It doesn’t make sense.
EPSTEIN’S PRIVATE island of Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands. Part of a group of private islands, it was said to be a nexus of his sex trafficking and abuse of young women and underage girls. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
If this is all a cover-up, who’s behind it and why?
Well, I think he was killed to quiet him. He had dirt on people. That was public. Before the 2016 election, Jeffrey told me that if he said what he knew about Hillary [Clinton] and [Donald] Trump, they’d have to cancel the election. He didn’t tell me what he knew, but he said they’d have to cancel the election. He wouldn’t just say that to me unless he knew something. He didn’t have to try to impress me because we were brothers. And you know, in 2016, [political strategist] Steve Bannon said the only person he feared for Donald Trump’s sake was Jeffrey Epstein. That’s public also.
And then you look at Bill Barr, who was the attorney-general at the time, or Kash Patel, who now heads the FBI. They both said it was a suicide, but who do these people work for? If Jeffrey was killed, somebody authorized that, someone sanctioned it, or somebody ordered it. And if they’re covering it up, well, who are they covering it up for? I don’t speculate. I try to stick to facts. But if you were doing a true homicide investigation, you would look at who stands to gain by him being killed. And who had the ability to orchestrate something like this and get it covered up by the Justice Department and the FBI?
What would you like to see happen in terms of the release of information? What do you believe they are holding back?
Early on, I asked to see the video footage from the camera that Attorney-General Bill Barr said he had seen, in which no one had interacted with Jeffrey that night. I wanted to see the footage from 10 p.m. the night before until noon the next day. That would show the last people leaving the tier that nobody supposedly went in or out of. We would see the last people that locked it up at night; and then in the morning we would see the guard, Michael Thomas, going in and finding my brother, which was at 6:30 in the morning. And it would show what took place at that doorway. When they took his body out, we could see who was there. They weren’t supposed to move a dead body until the medical examiner got there. When the EMTs got there, his body was already in the infirmary. I only found that out a couple of years ago. His body should have been in the cell, but it was moved.
So I asked for the videotape, and initially I was told they couldn’t give me that footage because it was an ongoing investigation. Okay, I understand that, that’s normal. But then, after the investigation was over, I asked for that video footage again. And I specifically asked for the footage from the camera that Bill Barr referred to when he said he saw nobody go in or out. I was very specific. And then I was told by letter that the two cameras that were working don’t show the area I’m asking about. So at first, they said I couldn’t get the videotape because the Justice Department was still doing an investigation, and then they tell me it’s not available and it doesn’t exist. And this is after Bill Bar said he saw it! So where’s this video footage? What’s going on here?
What do you think is going on here?
Well, I think it’s not that they’re holding things back – they’re just not looking for answers. They said they didn’t do a homicide investigation because it was declared a suicide. But when I met with the Justice Department a few months after the death, and when I was asking questions, all I got from them was, ‘After a thorough investigation, we determined it was a suicide.’
‘But what about this?’ I would ask. And they again answered, ‘After a thorough investigation, we determined it was a suicide.’ It was like when someone pleads the fifth and they just say the same thing over and over again. That’s what I was getting from them.
So you want them to reopen a homicide investigation?
I would say I don’t want to see them reopen it because there wasn’t a homicide investigation to begin with. But I would like to see them open one.
Do you feel you could trust them to do so? Or would you prefer an independent investigation?
Well, you know, I would love to see an independent investigation, but I don’t know if that’s possible. It would be great to have a third party do it. But practically speaking, you are stuck with the government, stuck with the investigators. Why? Because if you got private investigators, then they’re not going to get access to anything, right? Only the government would have the kind of access needed.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) holds up a photo of US President Donald Trump with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a meeting of the the House Oversight and Accountability Committee to markup a resolution and report to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress, January 10, 2024; illustrative. (credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE)
Why do you think this has captured the imagination of the public?
Well, because it doesn’t add up. And I think people are realizing more and more that it likely wasn’t a suicide, and it doesn’t make sense. And, you know, when they hear people like Trump and these other people lying about all this stuff. Trump said he wasn’t in Jeffrey’s office, which is clearly a lie. Witnesses have already testified to that effect, such as the young girls who said they were abused in Jeffery’s office.
What can you tell us about your brother’s ties with people such as Ehud Barak or the Clintons?
There is very little that I can tell you. That was his life, and I wasn’t part of that stuff. Occasionally, I might meet somebody who knew him. I met [Bill] Clinton, but it had nothing to do with my brother. I was involved with Cooper Union, and we got Clinton to give the commencement address. Before the commencement, he’s upstairs in the trustee area. So I went up, I shook his hand and said, ‘Hey, I hear you are hanging out with my brother.’ I think I sort of caught him a little off guard, and he just looks at me. So I said, ‘Jeffrey Epstein is my brother.’ He stopped for a second, and he was almost, like, speechless. And then he just said, ‘Your brother’s quite a guy.’ And I know that my brother admired Clinton very much. But I didn’t know much about Jeffrey’s dealings with all the people in his phone book.
Various people have asserted, without providing any evidence, that your brother was linked to or operating on behalf of an intelligence agency, whether it was the CIA or the Mossad. Did he ever say anything to you that would support that idea?
No, no. I mean, I’ve heard this before, but I can neither confirm nor deny it, as I have no idea what he was doing. As far as I know, he knew a lot of people, but that doesn’t make him a spy.
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding how he obtained his wealth. Will we ever get clarity on that?
I don’t think it’s a huge mystery. You know, Jeffrey started as a young man on Wall Street, and he learned how to make money on Wall Street. And in the original days of Wall Street, it was pretty easy to make money. There was a lot of corruption on Wall Street. We started up with no money and were living in Coney Island. Jeffrey came home one day from work and said, ‘If the general population knew what was taking place on Wall Street, there’d be a revolution in this country.’ So he learned the tricks of how to make money.
And Jeffrey started working with a really shrewd attorney, and they started going after brokers that were corrupt, the ones who had clients that gave them a few million dollars; and then after a short period of time, all the money was gone. Jeffrey told me this story. He and the attorney approached a broker who said he had made a series of 10 trades and had lost all the trades, so the money was gone.
As a mathematician, Jeffrey knew that it’s almost impossible to lose 10 trades in a row, just like it’s almost impossible to win 10 trades in a row. The odds are so astronomically against it. So there had to be something fishy, and they started diving into it, and they found that the guy wasn’t being honest, and the money was gone. So they pressured the guy, and they got the money back for the client, and he would give him and the attorney 50%. So he made a bunch of money that way. And then through the years, he invested his money. I was told he was good at currency trading, and he bought some companies.
How did you first learn that he was facing criminal charges for child sex crimes, and how did that make you feel?
In 2006, when he first got into trouble for this, he asked me to come talk to him. He was living uptown, and I was living downtown. But even when we were both in New York, we never really got together. But I went to see him, and he told me that he was in trouble for being with girls who were too young. He said he was stupid and he was getting into trouble for that.
I just remember telling him, ‘Well, I’m glad our mom’s gone because this would have devastated her.’ Look, I wasn’t there. But the little bit I know is that what he did was wrong, as he was with girls who were underage. Jeffrey was 66, and a lot of people also didn’t think it was right for him to be with 20-year-olds. As unpalatable as that might be, and I can understand it, it’s not illegal as long as they are of age. So he was stupid for being with girls who were too young, and it was awful.
There are allegations that your brother was taping people in flagrante delicto and using it to blackmail them.
No, I don’t think Jeffrey had to blackmail people. He had more money than he needed, you know. So there was no point in that. And knowing Jeffrey as well as I did, I don’t think that’s who he was. You know, maybe he was just having fun. That’s really what I think it was. He was just having fun, and he got carried away and did things he shouldn’t have.
Did your brother ever express fear for his life or concern to you?
No, no, he was never worried that someone might be out to get him. Also, you have to understand that we weren’t that close in a sense. Before he died, I hadn’t seen him for seven years. We were always in communication, emails and phone calls, and the like. But he died in 2019. So that puts us back to 2012. And between 2004, when my mother died, to 2012, I only saw him maybe half a dozen times. We didn’t get together.
Why is that?
First of all, we had different homes in different cities. And he had his own life, and I think he kept away from me and some of his closest family to shield us from whatever BS he was doing. But we were always in communication. He would call me with a funny story or that kind of stuff.
In 1999, I flew up from Florida with my brother, and Donald Trump came with us on my brother’s plane. Donald was on Jeff’s plane a number of times. And a week or two before that, I was talking to Jeff and he told me that he had spoken with Donald and asked him, ‘How come you sleep with so many married women?’ And Donald said, ‘Because it is so wrong.’ And then when we were on the plane, a week or so later, my brother asked him the same question. I knew it was for my benefit so I could hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. So he asked Donald the question again, and Donald answered, ‘Because it is so wrong.’ I made believe I had never heard that before.
How has your own life been affected?
There were death threats and extortion attempts, and I had armed guards for a while at the early stages of this. Jeffrey’s will was public because wills are filed, so they are public, and it states that I am the sole heir. But listen carefully: It also states that if there was no will, I would inherit his entire estate. It said that in the will, which means there is a will, so I don’t inherit his entire estate. All his assets went into a trust. Now I am not an executor of the estate, I am not a trustee of the trust, and I don’t know what the trust documents say because I have never seen them.
What most people don’t understand is that being an heir doesn’t necessarily make you the beneficiary. It is usually the same, but not always. So when people read that I’m the sole heir, they thought I’m the beneficiary and I’m getting everything. So I started getting calls from people who wanted to help me manage all this money that I was not actually getting. People wanted to help me sell the houses and airplanes. People had ideas where I can invest the money. This was going on for a while.
What kinds of threats did you receive?
There was one where someone said that if I didn’t give him $10,000 by a certain time, he was going to kill my kids. I was dealing with the FBI and the NYPD, so on that particular day they told me to keep the kids inside, and they had the NYPD watching the building.
Have you ever thought of writing a book?
No, I’ve been told many times I should, but I’m not interested in writing a book. I’m just interested in getting to the truth on this case. I’m interested in the truth about my brother’s – what I refer to as – his murder. I used to say his death, but now I say his murder.
Why is that so important to you?
Because I don’t want the people who did this to just walk away scot-free. And I don’t want my fellow citizens – as much as they might not have liked him – you know, he was an American citizen, and he was potentially killed by his government in a federal prison. People should not be happy with that, no matter who he was. I know there’s a big feeling out there with people saying, ‘You know, better he’s dead. We don’t like him. Who cares?’ But if it could happen to him, it could happen to anybody.
There’s a lot of antisemitism that’s been generated, with people online invoking ‘Epstein, Weinstein’ as evidence of Jewish wrongdoing. What do you think of that?
Well, there are bad people in every community. That’s not at the forefront of my mind. I’m not a very religious person. I never really tried to make that connection. Your question is sort of a fresh one to me. I haven’t given it that much thought. As I said, there’s plenty of bad people from every walk of life, so there’s going to be some Jews who are bad, some Christians who are bad, some Protestants who are bad. You could look in the newspapers and find many, many cases of that. So I don’t make a thing out of the antisemitism part of it.
Was Jeffrey Jewishly involved at all? Did he ever visit Israel?
I know he’d been to Israel. He was friendly with Ehud Barak. And, I mean, we don’t come from a religious family. Growing up, we were not very observant. We’d have Jewish holidays where we would get together with relatives and have Italian food. But it didn’t play a major role in our lives.
Are there any more bombshell revelations you would like to share?
Well, the bombshell revelation is that Jeffrey did not commit suicide. And the government is covering it up. How much more do you need than that?■
The 'Magazine'contacted the US Department of Justice regarding Mark Epstein’s statements, but they responded with “No comment.” We did not receive a response to requests for comment from pathologists Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Barbara Sampson.
The writer served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
God Bless and protect the United States of America and all its people!
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EPSTEIN’S PRIVATE island of Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands. Part of a group of private islands, it was said to be a nexus of his sex trafficking and abuse of young women and underage girls. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
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