A former prisoner who shared a cell with Jeffrey Epstein insisted the former financier was not killed; he committed suicide.
Bill Mersey was serving a year-long sentence for tax evasion around the time Epstein was incarcerated in New York City’s Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) in 2019. In a March 2021 interview with Fox Nation, Mersey said he signed up for MCC’s “Inmate Companion Watch” — a suicide-prevention program that pairs at-risk inmates with other prisoners who watch them.
“When I got to MCC, the first thing I knew, it was going to be really boring,” Mersey told Fox News at the time. “The responsibilities of suicide watch was essentially to be alert for four hours, sit in front of a window across from one inmate that you’re watching, and write down every 15 minutes what’s going on.”
On Wednesday, New York Post Reporter Cindy Adams released information Mersey provided around the time of Epstein’s death, which was ruled a suicide. Adams said she was reporting previously unreleased information that holds value in the wake of Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial. Maxwell is charged with grooming underage women for sex with Epstein. Her defense team rested their case today. After closing arguments, jurors could be deliberating until Christmas on her fate.
Adams said she condensed the voluminous number of pages she received from Mersey that included accounts of living conditions and conversations between Mersey and Epstein.
“If you didn’t want to kill yourself before, you would after a few days at MCC,” Mersey informed Adams. “Minus trained psychologists, it was inmates who, with a whole three hours training, had to watch four suicide cells on the second floor.”
Mersey reportedly said inmates were confined in 50-square-foot cells with a cellmate. He added they received no commissary privileges or phone access. Training, he said, was mostly ogling the female psychologist teaching the inmates how to be suicide watchers, who were reportedly paid between 12 and 40 cents per hour.
“Epstein was soft as a pillow and not prepared to handle this,” Mersey recounted. “He requested protective custody. He was scared and he did not get over it. Handling prison constantly occupied his mind.”
Epstein returned to their cell one day with neck abrasions, the convict related to the reporter. He wondered if Epstein tried to kill himself but the financier refused to talk about it. Epstein reportedly sat down on the cell’s bare floor with his back against his bunk as he ate his prison food off a styrofoam plate.
“I asked, ‘What the f *** are you doing? Why you eating on the floor?’” Mersey said. “‘It’s just easier this way,’” he reported Epstein as saying, as though he was somewhat resolved to his fate that night. Epstein’s cellmate factored in that Epstein had been denied bail and was facing a reality that included spending the rest of his life in prison.
“Then one night, another watcher reported hearing the sound of tearing sheets,” Mersey said. “Conclusion was Jeffrey had killed himself.”
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