Epstein got 'special treatment' in jail, former guard tells House Oversight Committee
A former prison guard who was on duty at the federal Metropolitan Corrections Center in New York when convicted Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019 testified Monday that the late sex offender received "special treatment" at the jail, two members of the House Oversight Committee said.
Democratic Reps. Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico said Tova Noel testified that Epstein received extra bed linens and a CPAP machine, and had access to "medications in a way no one else did."
"I do think [Epstein] was treated differently from the other inmates," Rep. Subramanyam said when asked about Noel's testimony. "Jeffrey Epstein got special treatment in that facility."
Subramanyam said he "fully" believes Epstein died from suicide, but emphasized there are still "open questions" about how he was able to do so.
"Why was he given special treatment, like extra linens that he used to hang himself ... when he had just tried to commit suicide a month earlier? Those are the questions we need to answer," Subramanyam said.
The interview of Noel -- believed to be the last person to have seen Epstein before his death -- comes amid renewed scrutiny of Epstein's death.
Epstein died by suicide according to an autopsy conducted by the New York medical examiner, though a series of missteps by prison officials have long fueled conspiracy theories about his death.
Noel also addressed the series of cash deposits she received between April 2018 and July 2019 totaling $12,000, with one last deposit made prior to Epstein's death.
"She said the financial transfers have nothing to do with Epstein," Stansbury said. "I think the only maybe new piece of information is that she does feel like her termination was unfair, and that had it not been Jeffrey Epstein, she would not have been fired."
Grand jury transcripts released from the case against Noel released by the DOJ earlier this year showed that the FBI examined her bank records and found no evidence of a bribe.
Neither Noel nor her lawyer commented on Monday's interview with the Oversight panel.
Subramanyam said he believed that Noel did commit wrongdoing by failing to carry out her job.
"She didn't check on Jeffrey Epstein like she should have, and that seemed to be a systemic issue at the facility," he said.
Noel is alleged to have spent the hours ahead of Epstein's death scrolling the internet, rather than performing the required headcounts of the prisoners in the unit where the disgraced sex offender was housed.
Prosecutors in 2019 charged Noel and another prison guard with falsifying records to make it seem as if they did the required checks, and both ended up reaching a deal with prosecutors to have the charges dropped.
A report on Epstein's death by the Justice Department's inspector general, completed in 2023, determined that video showed at 10:40 p.m. on Aug. 9 a corrections officer "believed to be Noel" had carried linen or inmate clothing up to the tier containing Epstein's cell. That was the last time any officer approached the tier where Epstein was housed, according to the IG report.
In sworn interview with the IG in June 2021, Noel said she "never gave out linen" and denied providing Epstein with the excess linen found in his cell when his body was discovered. She also told investigators that she did not remember searching the internet for Epstein but she may have read a news article. She said she believed she was the last person to see Epstein alive -- at around 10 p.m. on Aug. 9, according to a transcript of her interview with the IG.
