Mark Epstein, the younger brother of convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, maintains his brother is innocent and that he would not have killed himself, especially not before being sentenced.
“He was innocent and, until proven guilty, you are entitled to bail in America,” Mark Epstein told the Miami Herald on Thursday. “I could see if he got a life sentence, I could then see him taking himself out, but he had a bail hearing coming up.”
Epstein said he did not know much about his dead brother’s business or the accusations that he raped dozens of underage girls. The 65-year-old younger brother said he did not believe his brother did anything “illegal,” even if he did not approve of his brother hanging out with younger women.
“Do I think that it was inappropriate for him, at age 50 or 60 to be with women who were 18 or 20? Yes, but it certainly wasn’t illegal and it wasn’t sex trafficking,” he said.
Epstein has been adamant about his brother not killing himself, stating earlier this month, “People should know the truth about what can happen in a federal facility.” He said “unexplained” injuries were found on his brother’s body, including an abrasion on his left forearm, contusions on his wrists, and hemorrhaging of his left deltoid or shoulder.
Jeffrey Epstein, the 66-year-old financial mogul and sex offender, was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell in August. The New York City medical examiner said he died by suicide, but Mark Epstein hired one of the preeminent forensic pathologists in the world, Dr. Michael Baden, who claimed last month that his autopsy showed Jeffrey Epstein’s death was more consistent with “homicidal strangulation.”
Citing fractures in Epstein’s neck, the 85-year-old Baden, who used to be the New York City medical examiner, said, “I’ve not seen in 50 years where that occurred in a suicidal hanging case.” The current medical examiner reiterated that she stood by her initial claim after Baden’s autopsy despite not releasing a full report of the investigation.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, 88, has joined Baden in saying he believes Epstein did not kill himself. “I have never seen this kind of hanging scenario, this leaning forward, with three fractures. The bunk was three to four feet above, and there was not enough velocity there to produce three fractures,” Wecht said. He theorized that Epstein could have been killed by his cellmate or another prisoner “repulsed and angry” about him raping children.
Baden also hit back at the official narrative, saying that the only evidence of hanging comes from one photograph. “Everything we have is from two guards, who immediately lawyered up and refused to say anything,” he said. “We have one photograph that shows the ligature laid out on the ground, which, if that’s the way it was found, it looks like it was a planted kind of scene because that’s not the way it would have been found if the guards had cut it.”
Mark Epstein said he thought there were people that wanted Jeffrey Epstein dead, and he is afraid that he could also be murdered. In the meantime, he said he is still waiting to get documents related to his brother’s death from the medical examiner, the Bureau of Prisons, and the paramedics.
