Forensic pathologist Michael Baden says the death of Wall Street financier Jeffrey Epstein, the sex fiend who supposedly hanged himself in a federal prison while under indictment for trafficking girls as young as 14, might well have been murder.
Baden, who probed the Kennedy assassination and testified at the trial of O.J. Simpson, told Fox News’s Fox & Friends that the injuries to Epstein’s neck were more consistent with “homicidal strangulation” than self-hanging.
Baden told the Fox & Friends crew that he had never seen a suicide in which the individual’s neck sustained those injuries.
The doctor who performed the autopsy on Epstein, Baden said, did not conclude that his death was suicide, and no one seems to know what happened to the DNA tests on the ligature that Epstein supposedly used.
Brother Worried
Epstein was a Deep-Stater connected to the world’s elites, including President Trump, the Clintons, and Prince Andrew, when federal authorities arrested him in New York in June. On July 23, he tried to commit suicide, authorities said.
On August 10, in his cell at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York’s Medical examiner reported, Epstein hanged himself with a noose made of bed sheets.
Problem is, Epstein’s hyoid bone was broken, which usually occurs in strangulation. Adding to the mystery, authorities had ended the suicide watch on which they placed him after the first attempt, guards didn’t check on Epstein for three hours, intead of every 30 minutes as required, and the cameras around his cell didn’t work.
Thus did Epstein’s brother, Mark, hire Baden, the former medical examiner for New York City, whose resume includes not just autopsies and consulting on celebrity deaths and murder trials, but also autopsies on prisoners.
“On day one, there were findings that were unusual for suicidal hanging and more consistent with ligature homicidal strangulation,” Baden told Fox & Friends.
“I think that the evidence points toward homicide rather than suicide…. There are three fractures in the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage that are unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation … homicidal strangulation.”
But that information has been known for some time. What’s new for those following the case is Baden’s conclusion and two more revelations. The doctor who performed the autopsy on Epstein did not rule the death a suicide and DNA evidence has not been released.
“The doctor doing the autopsy … didn’t think it was enough information to say suicide,” Baden said, and instead said a conclusion must wait “pending further investigation.”
The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office changed that doctor’s ruling a week later and ruled suicide, Baden said. Epstein’s family wants to know why.
As well, Baden reported, scrapings from Epstein’s fingernails, which would reveal DNA and show whether he struggled against someone trying to kill him, have not been released.
Nor has the result of DNA tests on the bed-sheet ligature. “Whoever made it had to have a lot of DNA on it,” Baden said. “The brother has been asking that from day one…. We don’t even know who examined it.”
“It’s 80 days now,” Baden continued. “The brother feels he’s getting the run around. And to add to it, there was a total breakdown in security. The video cameras didn’t work. The guards went to sleep.”
“I’ve never seen it in 50 years of investigating deaths,” Baden said of those coincidences.
Other Evidence of Foul Play
Baden’s disclosures aren’t the only evidence that points to something suspicious in Epstein’s death.
As The New American reported in August two weeks after guards found Epstein dead, a lawyer for three of the financier’s victims claimed someone at the prison called to tell him Epstein did not commit suicide.
An anonymous prison worker told lawyer Spencer Kuvin that it was “highly unlikely” Epstein hanged himself.
Said Kuvin, “I received a call from a supervisor at the MCC. The first words out of his mouth to be honest were, ‘Don’t believe what you are hearing’ in regards to Epstein’s death.”
Why would anyone kill Epstein, whom some suspect of being an Israeli spy? Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, said he trafficked his victims to the world’s social, political, and financial elites to collect compromising information.
Where that information might be is anyone’s guess. But that might not matter, given that Epstein will never tell.
Image: Prathaan via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
