Federal authorities pressed on Tuesday with their investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s jailhouse suicide amid mounting evidence the chronically understaffed lockup may have bungled its responsibility to keep him from harming himself.
At the same time, prosecutors pursued a parallel investigation into whether any associates of the wealthy financier will face charges for assisting him in what authorities say was his rampant sexual abuse of teenage girls.
One of the new details provided by people familiar with the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center was that one of Epstein’s guards the night he took his own life was not a regular correctional officer.
Serene Gregg, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3148, told The Washington Post that one of the guards was a fill-in who had been pressed into service because of staffing shortages.
In addition, Epstein was supposed to have been checked on by a guard every 30 minutes. But investigators have learned those checks weren’t done for several hours before he was found, according to a person familiar with the case. That person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
