Here’s an odd coincidence:
Officials at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York cannot produce video surveillance of deceased sex pervert Jeffrey Epstein’s two most important days at the federal jail: the day he supposedly tried to commit suicide, and the day he actually did commit suicide, at least if you believe the coroner’s shaky verdict.
On August 10, the day the Wall Street moneyman and convicted sex offender supposedly hanged himself in his cell, the video cameras outside his cell malfunctioned.
Now, federal prosecutors in another case admit they can’t find surveillance video from outside the cell he shared with a beefy ex-cop on the day he tried to commit suicide in July.
Epstein was under indictment for sex trafficking girls, and skeptics believe the rich and powerful men who partook of the pervert’s carnal wares wanted him dead and had him killed.
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The missing video might shed light on what happened on July 23, the day Epstein tried and failed to kill himself.
But the New York Daily News reports that “Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Swergold admitted nobody can find the footage … during a hearing in White Plains District Court.”
That footage, the ex-cop’s attorney says, is crucial to his client’s claim that he tried to save Epstein’s life. The former lawman, Nick Tartaglione, might get a death sentence if convicted for the murder of four men over a drug deal in 2016.
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Reported the Daily News:
Bruce Barket, an attorney for Tartaglione, confirmed the stunning revelation that the footage was not preserved. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office declined comment.
Tartaglione’s attorneys filed a request for the footage to be retained two days after Epstein’s unsuccessful suicide attempt on July 23, Barket said….
Tartaglione claimed to have saved Epstein’s life after the pedophile perv tried to hang himself. Epstein reportedly claimed that Tartaglione attacked him.
“Nick acted appropriately and admirably,” Barket said.
That video would provide good-character evidence that might spare the brawny lawman from the death penalty.
Epstein, though, claimed Tartaglione attacked him.
The video aside, authorities haven’t questioned Tartaglione about Epstein’s suicide, Barket told the newspaper.
Broken Cameras
The missing video Tartaglione seeks isn’t the only fishy camera problem connected to Epstein’s alleged suicide.
The cameras outside his jail just happened to be malfunctioning the day he supposedly killed himself, as Reuters reported in late August.
That surveillance footage might have helped determine what went on when Epstein supposedly hanged himself with a bed sheet, a conclusion Epstein’s attorneys and family doubt.
So does celebrity pathologist Michael Baden, who led the forensic pathology panel for the House Committee on Assassinations that probed the murder of President Kennedy.
The relevant facts on that count are these:
• The FBI is probing Epstein’s case as a possible murder.
• The guards who were supposed to check on Epstein every 30 minutes have been indicted for multiple crimes related to dereliction of duty.
• Epstein’s hyoid bone was broken in three places, an injury that does not typically occur in suicidal hanging. Instead, it typically suggests, as Baden said, homicidal strangulation.
• DNA evidence on the bed sheet and from Epstein’s fingernail scrapings have not been released.
• The doctor who actually conducted the autopsy, Baden alleged, did not conclude that Epstein killed himself. That determination came from the city’s chief medical examiner.
• Epstein was collecting compromising information on the rich, powerful men who enjoyed the hospitality of his sex island, his most outspoken victim says.
• One example of those rich and powerful men is Prince Andrew, whose connection to Epstein has, as a practical matter, ruined him. Others, possibly, face the same consequence should the information Epstein collected surface in public.
• Epstein might have blackmailed those men on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Robert Maxwell, the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of procuring Epstein’s victims, was a Mossad agent.
Tartaglione Case
But back to Tartaglione, the retired cop with a troubling past who worked in Briarcliff Manor about 40 miles north of New York City in Westchester County.
The feds indicted him on four counts of murder in December 2016. Prosecutors allege that Tartaglione, in a “gangland-style” killing at or around a joint called the Likquid Lounge, whacked the four over a drug deal for five kilos of cocaine.
Cops dug up the bodies with a backhoe at his 175-acre farm.
“It really smelled of death,” a neighbor told the Daily News, “but then it disappeared after a couple of days.”
Image: pashapixel via iStock / Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
