Tova Noel, one of the two correctional officers assigned to the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s Special Housing Unit on the night Jeffrey Epstein died, told the House Oversight Committee that she failed to conduct the required inmate checks and later signed records falsely indicating that the rounds had been completed. Noel described an understaffed, poorly managed facility in which she was exhausted, inadequately trained and assigned duties beyond her normal responsibilities. She maintained that she last saw Epstein alive during the evening medication round and observed nothing that made her believe he was preparing to harm himself. Noel also testified that Epstein received unusual accommodations, including extra bed linens, a CPAP machine and access to medication that appeared different from the treatment ordinarily given to other prisoners.

Noel denied having any role in Epstein’s death, receiving money in connection with him or knowing anything about an alleged payment to facilitate access to his cell. She also rejected claims that she was the unidentified orange-colored figure seen moving toward Epstein’s tier at approximately 10:39 p.m., insisting that she never returned to the area and could not explain what—or who—the surveillance image showed. Although Noel said she believed Epstein died by suicide because he was supposedly alone inside the cell, her testimony did little to resolve the most important unanswered questions: why required checks were abandoned, why Epstein remained without a cellmate, who or what appeared near the tier, and how so many security procedures failed simultaneously. Instead, her account reinforced the picture of extraordinary negligence, special treatment and institutional dysfunction surrounding the death of the most consequential prisoner in federal custody.


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Tova-Noel-Transcript.pdf