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SWORN STATEMENT¶
OF¶
OIG CASE #:¶
2019-010614¶
OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL¶
MAY 31, 2022¶
RESOLUTE DOCUMENTATION SERVICES¶
28632 Roadside Dr., Suite 285¶
Agoura Hills, CA 91301¶
Phone: (818) 431-5800¶
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and the plethora. So, plethora is purple discoloration of the skin from back up of circulation. Petechiae are pinpoint hemorrhages that occur with a similar mechanism. If the blood is cut off, and the small capillaries burst, you get petechial hemorrhages, which, they’re just like pinpoint bleeds in the skin. So, he had them in his skin, in his eyes, and in his mouth.¶
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strangulation because very rarely is a person going to be still for that, or submit to it, without struggling. So, with a struggle, the pressure is not even, and you really don’t get the plethora, and the petechiae aren’t quite distributed like his were. His were, like, just all the way from the neck up, he had petechiae. In strangulations, it’s usually just the eyes and mouth, not all of the skin. So, even though they can be seen in homicidal strangulations, they usually have a different pattern then I saw in Mr. Epstein.¶
MR. : Got it. Thank you. So, what made you come to the conclusion that Jeffrey Epstein’s death was a suicide? Can you walk us through that? I know you mentioned the plethora, the petechiae, and also the ligature itself. What all else did you see that made you come to the conclusion as suicide? Sorry.¶
MS. : So, the autopsy didn’t show really any signs of a struggle. And every single strangulation case I’ve had, even people who were really impaired by intoxicants, they struggled. So, he didn’t have any marks on his hands. He had one abrasion on his arm, which¶
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probably was from convulsing when being hanging. But nothing that suggested a struggle. No broken fingernails. No other bruising anywhere.¶
He was pretty much pristine, other than the neck and face findings. He also internally didn’t have strap muscle hemorrhages of the neck. That’s bleeding in the lung muscles, in the front of your neck. Nor did he have hemorrhaging in the muscles of the back of his neck. That you see when it’s been an incomplete compression, not a sustained compression like a hanging. So, when I don’t see those, I’m more likely to think hanging than manual strangulation, or even ligature strangulation.¶
And then, lastly, he did have fractures of his thyroid cartilage and one side of his hyoid bone. These are structures inside your neck. Then the pattern of these fractures was consistent with a hanging. You see a very different pattern of fracturing if there has been a manual compression of the neck versus a sustained pressure of a hanging. And the pattern of his fractures was that of a hanging.¶
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So, even without an investigation, and although I wanted one, just because of the nature of the case, even without an investigation, this case, autopsy wise, looked like a very clear-cut hanging.¶
MS. : So - there’s It’s a little waerm in my office, sorry - it’s a U-shaped bone that sits between your tongue and your larynx. Sort of horseshoed like this, shaped like this, right here. And its function is to aid in swallowing and phonation, speaking.¶
Because it’s almost like a little wishbone, when somebody squeezes your neck, it snaps. And if somebody squeezes your neck in a homicidal fashion with un-sustained pressure, it’ll snap near the joints where it was centrally. If your hyoid bone is pressed against your spine by hanging, it fractures at the tips. Maybe one. Maybe both. His is fractured on the tip, on the left. So, that’s¶
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the back of the actual ligature itself, on the back of the neck, going up?¶
MS. : Yeah. I can -. Let me see.¶
I’m going to use my phone cord to show you.¶
When you hang yourself, it hangs, and it actually will sometimes make like a peak at the back, right? And sometimes it isn’t fully circumferential. That’s really classic for hanging. So, Mr. Epstein had a peak, it was sort of to the right and behind the ear, and it was not fully circumferential. Totally consistent with a hanging.¶
MR. □: And if it was circumstantial, that means someone strangled him?¶
MS. : It can, or it can mean that if he has - if you are really good, if what they showed me was his ligature, he didn’t tie a good slip knot, i.e., he didn’t tie a good hangman’s knot. If you tie a good hangman’s knot, it will sometimes be circumferential just because it tightens with your weight. If you don’t, if you have a fixed knot, you slump into the ligature, and it doesn’t -. It isn’t circumferential. So, it depends on the ligature. I have a feeling he wasn’t well¶
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versed in the tying of hangman’s knots or good slip knots, and that’s why his isn’t circumferential.¶
MR. : So, what type of knot did you see on the noose?¶
MS. : So, they showed me a noose with what looked like a fixed sort of granny knot. And I’m not convinced that’s even a noose because they told me they thought this was the ligature, but there was a lot of confusion about what the ligature - which thing was actually the ligature. And there was a lot of stuff in that room. But the thing that they said, this is the ligature, it had a fixed knot. Not a slip knot.¶
MR. : Okay. I kind of jumped, but I’ll come back to the noose part. That’s later on in the interview. You said there was no defensive wounds. So, if someone was to - if there was possibly an attack - me just putting it out there - if it was an attack, there would have been defensive wounds. Where else? Where would you have seen the defensive wounds?¶
MS. : So, what I tend to see in victims of strangulation is they have lots of¶
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debris under their fingernails from fighting, and from trying to pull the strangling person off their own neck. So, you’ll see a bunch of linear abrasions usually on the neck itself, and chin, and you’ll see a lot of debris under the nails. He didn’t have either of those things. Those are usually women.¶
Being that he’s a man, I would have also expected more of sort of the pugilistic type of injuries, because I can’t imagine somebody strangling a man easily without him trying to punch them out. So, I would think there would be some, you know, punch-type things, too, or sort of contusions on the knuckles and stuff. But he didn’t have any of that. None of that stuff.¶
MR. : Is it possible, I mean, in cases of suicide, like, once someone tries to hang themselves, do they just sit there? I mean, is it possible that they -? Normally with a person trying, you know, last second, change their mind, and try to dig in, and try to stop themselves from dying?¶
MS. : Well, that really rarely happens. I’ve yet to see that happen. I’ve¶
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seen hangings where people simply tie a ligature and slump forward in a chair. It happens pretty quickly. You lose consciousness in, like, less than a minute. And then, at that point, there’s really no intentional activity, and you start to seize pretty quickly.¶
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MS. : So, I had an anthropologist look at those to determine exactly that, if they were fractured superimposed on old trauma, or if they were just recent fractures. And their opinion was that they were recent fractures. It was no superimposed trauma.¶
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MR. : And there was a noose found around his neck. We were just trying to get an idea if it’s possible that he sustained injuries during that attempt, that could have also assisted, or made things, you know, the broken hyoid and the thyroid cartilage could have also been because of the fact of the initial attempt? Could it have been broken because of the damage already caused by the July 23rd incident?¶
MS. : I think probably not, just based on how they appeared. They don’t describe any - the anthropologist - doesn’t describe any healing. So, there would have been, if three-there is a refracture from a¶
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prior fracture, there probably would have been some healing visible, and they didn’t see that.¶
Also, if he had sustained that kind of trauma the first time, he would have had symptoms. He would have, you know, had difficulty talking and swallowing, and they probably would have noted that clinically. So, that might be a question you direct the people who took care of him after the first attempt.¶
MR. : And just a follow up, doctor. You said that people lose consciousness within a minute. Is that pretty standard, you know, when they attempt to hang themselves? Is that, in your practice, a pretty standard time frame?¶
MS. : So, where I’m getting that information from isn’t so much my practice as there is a woman in Canada who researched this extensively, and actually had a collection of films of people hanging themselves.¶
They were judicial hangings. They were in-custody hangings where there were actual cameras on prisoners who had managed to hang themselves. And there were people who actually filmed their own hangings.¶
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know what the cause of that? Is that something from the resuscitation, or was that -?¶
MS. : So, there were other photos that will also show cuts on the other side of the lip, inside, and I think that these are from resuscitative efforts. They’re pretty commonly seen when there is a mixture of different types of resuscitation, particularly if they’ve used a mask, or if it’s somebody who is - if there was any bystander resuscitation, as well. So, these, to me, appeared resuscitative.¶
Also, there is no, like, real bruising under these. If I had thought these were from some kind of impact to his face, there would be bruising, and if you look at the rest of the autopsy, I have the inside of his mouth photographed really well, and all you see are the petechiae. There is no big bruising. So, these aren’t impacts. These are consistent with him probably being already dead when they were trying to resuscitate him.¶
MR. : Okay. And this is, this picture is labeled, “Photos, I.D., Visual 001”. This is the picture that was taken by your¶
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hundred percent sure. Everything happened in the moment in time. One of the questions we were going to ask you is, who provided you with that noose?¶
MS. : I believe -. So, I think that it was given to the investigators by the EMS crew who took over the -. Yeah, that’s the picture of how it came to us. It was in the bag. And this is what they brought me.¶
MR. : So, this is labeled, “Path evidence 006.” And the picture prior to this was, “INV scene 009.” So, this is what they provided to you. And you said this didn’t seem-. This was like a -. You didn’t think this was the piece that cost - that was the noose around his neck?¶
MS. : Well, I’m asking because in the photo you showed me a piece of stuff hanging, and you tell me that the correction officer pulled and ripped. This thing that they gave me isn’t ripped at all like it would be ripped off of something. It’s ripped to create the strip, but it’s not ripped off. So —¶
MR : Okay¶
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MR. : And if you compare it to the other picture that we saw, if he pulled, if this was around Mr. Epstein’s neck, to me, it seems like there should have been more -. Like, it should have been tight, tightened up a lot more. Like, he should have been more wrinkled up because it was wrapped around his neck. Right? As a noose. But it doesn’t seem like there was much. It looks like -. Can you explain the difference? By looking at it, what do you think?¶
MS. : Well, what it looks like to me is that it’s too tidy. And if you tell me that somebody tore him off of the corner -. Like, when you look at that thing that they showed¶
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me, it was never clear to me how that suspended him from anything. All right? I could see him putting the looped part around his neck, but I can’t see how this suspended him from anything. There is no knot hanging anywhere or anything like this.¶
And then, that other thing you showed me that’s by the desk apparatus, that is torn, it makes more sense to me because that’s got the tearing that the correction officer remembers. Either one of these, in terms of its shape, could have caused the markings on Mr. Epstein, but this one, this second one that you’re showing me that was never brought to me, looks like a more likely candidate.¶
MR. : Okay. Do you recall -? Do you know if the initial noose that was brought to you, was there any DNA testing, or any kind of testing done on that noose?¶
MS. : I didn’t swab it or anything. We’re instructed not to do that just to submit it. So, I am not sure what happened to it after I bagged it up and gave it to evidence.¶
MR. : When you say submit it, what does that mean?¶
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MR. : So, this is in reference to packed evidence, picture 006, and the other one was the initial reference about the knot was for INV scene 015. Okay. Anything else, SAC ?¶
MR. : Nothing further. Thank you.¶
MR. : All right. So, a witness, basically an inmate, told the guard man that he saw the C.O. who entered Epstein’s cell fall to the ground with Epstein when he attempted to move him, or when he pulled him, whatever, he couldn’t describe -. He didn’t give us an exact explanation. But he said that he actually saw the C.O. and Epstein fall to the ground. In your examination, did you see any bruising or anything consistent with any falls that Mr. Epstein might have taken?¶
MS. : But if he landed on top of the guy, I wouldn’t have seen much.¶
MR. : Okay. And if he didn’t, if he landed on the floor, would there have been bruising being the fact that he was already -¶
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if he was already dead at this point. Would there have been bruising on his body?¶
MS. : There might not have been bruising, but what I might have seen might have been sort of dried, not hemorrhagic abrasions. Particularly if the guy pulling him was a big guy and landed on top of him. That could -. Even a dead body, if you scrape it across a concrete floor like that, you’re going to get some scraping on the skin. I wouldn’t see bruising, but I would see scraping most likely.¶
MR. : He didn’t use a cutter. He just yanked on it. Is it possible why him yanking on the rope, trying to yank the rope off, he could have caused - the C.O. - could have caused any of the damage on Mr. Epstein’s neck?¶
MS. : He certainly could have augmented it. I see it in hangings without that, but if he was pulling Epstein against the¶
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allowed to do that.¶
So, there were a couple of different things I wanted to do before I could ascertain whether or not -. You know, and mostly, in this case, it was being thorough. If he had been a less high-profile person who there weren’t people wanting to kill, I would have probably called it a hanging on the day of autopsy. But this was thoroughness that made me look for these things before I called it a suicide.¶
MR. : What information did you need from the C.O.s? Like, if you ended up getting to talk to them.¶
MS. : So, what I ideally would have liked to know was, how was he hanging? And was this thing that they gave me the actual ligature? So, I still don’t think we really know that, or at least I’m not as convinced as I would like to be. But that was what I sort of -. Was he fully hanging? Where was he hanging? That kind of stuff.¶
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MR. : Now, if it was not Jeffrey Epstein, would you, in the normal course of business, speak to the family members as often as you did in this case?¶
MS. Absolutely. That’s one thing that we definitely do as medical examiners. It’s a very important part of my job, is conveying the findings to families. The only times that I do not do that is when it’s a homicide, for sure, and there is an ongoing investigation, or a case that’s suspicious for homicide, then I don’t talk to family members because sometimes they’re the perpetrators. But when it’s as clear cut as this, I always talk to the families. As much as they need to talk to me.¶
MR. □: Sure. That’s all I had, □.¶
MR. : That’s all that I have, too. Is there anything else? Any information you think that might help us in our investigation, or you think wasn’t shared in the report, that might be useful to us? You want to share with us?¶
MS. : No. I think I put everything¶
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true and exact copy of that file. I am not going to be able to give you any information, on this call, that would be any different from that.¶
MR. : No problem. As long as this is the document you sent me, and you say this has everything in it.¶
it. It came to you from our Records Department, but I specifically remember approving the release by the Records Department, and it is clear that, you know, that we okayed it, and that it came from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. And as you know, there is that little red sort of self-protective note that I okayed the release by whoever put the note there. So, it seems to me that this looks exactly like what we would have issued to you. There is no way for me to verify that, looking at it, and I couldn’t even do that on, you know, a giant plasma screen, either.¶
MR. : Understood. That’s all.¶
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p.m. on May 31^{st}, 2022. I am ending the recording.¶
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CERTIFICATE¶
I hereby certify that the foregoing pages represent an accurate transcript of the electronic sound recording of the proceedings before the Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General in the matter of:¶
Interview of¶
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