Videos released in Epstein files raise fresh questions about jail footage

A recently released cache of surveillance video from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City is raising new questions about the prison cameras at the facility where Jeffrey Epstein died in his cell in 2019. 

The videos were among a huge cache of materials released on Dec. 23 by the Department of Justice as congressionally mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Rather than clarifying events surrounding Epstein’s death, the footage appears to complicate the official narrative, and contradicts some prior statements about the prison’s surveillance system. 

The Epstein jail videos

Epstein was found dead in his cell at approximately 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2019, by a corrections officer delivering breakfast at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by the city’s chief medical examiner. 

Three months later, then-Attorney General Bill Barr said he had personally reviewed prison surveillance footage and verified that no one entered Epstein’s cell area in the hours before his death, which supported his conclusion that Epstein died by suicide.

The FBI released that footage this summer and analysis by CBS News found that the footage did not provide a clear enough view to definitively prove that no one entered Epstein’s cell area, and there were other inconsistencies with official statements and witness interviews. The DOJ and FBI declined to comment at the time. 

Specifics about what cameras were and were not operating comes mostly from a 2023 report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General. That report stated that although there were 11 cameras in the Special Housing Unit (SHU), 10 were not recording due to malfunctioning hard drives.

The single camera inside the common area of the SHU that was recording was positioned on an upper tier and showed only a sliver of the staircase that led to Epstein’s tier. 

In the 2023 report, the DOJ’s inspector general did acknowledge the existence of an additional camera covering a secondary entrance to the SHU. That footage was never released and, according to the report, did not show anything revealing about Epstein’s visitors or his death. 

New footage brings questions, not answers

Among the files released by the Justice Department on Dec. 24 were more than 400 one-hour clips of surveillance videos from MCC. The footage spans non-sequential, seemingly arbitrary time periods dating back to July 5, 2019, more than a month before Epstein’s death. 

According to internal DOJ emails included in the disclosure, the surveillance system was configured to retain only 30 days of footage. That raises an immediate question: Why do videos from July 5 exist at all?

One potential explanation, experts in video forensics that CBS News spoke with said, that if the system had excess storage capacity the old footage wouldn’t be overwritten, so footage outside of that 30-day window would be easily recovered. 

“[The system] won’t overwrite anything until the space is needed,” said Stacy Eldridge with Silicon Prairie Cyber Services. 

The new cache of video also includes footage from five more cameras inside the prison. Most notably, the release includes several hours of footage from a camera previously described as non-recording. It provides an unobstructed view of the primary entrance to the SHU and the stairs leading to Epstein’s tier. 

The four non-sequential one-hour videos from this camera are all dated Aug. 12, 2019 — two days after Epstein’s death. However, Department of Justice correspondence states that the surveillance system stopped recording on July 29 and was not repaired until Aug, 14.

This raises questions about which cameras were in fact recording at the time of his death. One potential explanation is that, following Epstein’s death, the system could have been reconfigured so that this camera was attached to a different, functioning DVR recorder. Based on the fact that the on-screen display stays the same and the dates do not overlap, experts told CBS News they thought  a wiring change was the most logical explanation. 

“There is a plausible explanation for it, but it’s just odd,” said Nick Barreiro, a digital forensic expert with Principle Forensics.  

If anything, this camera reveals the missed opportunity that a clear shot like this would have provided for investigators working to determine what happened that night. 

“It fills in gaps that are obviously missing from the perspective of the other camera,” Barreiro said. 

Another question is what happened with the footage from the night of July 23, less than three weeks before his death, when Epstein was found unconscious on the floor of his cell but then revived. That incident happened prior to the hard drive failures that led to the broken DVR system. Epstein’s tier had a camera positioned at the end and it would have captured his cellmate calling for assistance and corrections officers responding. The DOJ has previously said they have been unable to locate it. 

Experts say that footage could have been damaged when the hard drive failed. Correspondence included in the release indicates efforts to recover the data from the damaged hard drives were abandoned because the process could have taken six months or more and wouldn’t necessarily yield results.  

“They’re probably going to have to manually switch everything back together,” said Eldridge. “Like everything in every investigation, what’s your priority.” 

Other cameras

In addition to the SHU footage, the DOJ also released 188 one-hour video clips from a camera covering an adjacent housing area known as “10 South,” which is designated for housing the most dangerous inmates, including suspected terrorists (although it was apparently mislabeled as “9S, L tier”). Those videos similarly do not run continuously, but instead span sporadic hours beginning July 5 and ending the day after Epstein’s death. 

The disclosure also includes three one-hour videos showing a desk area from seemingly random hours on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, as well as 26 one-hour clips from the previously acknowledged elevator bank, covering assorted hours between Aug. 7 and Aug. 11.

In addition to those videos, a 2-minute and 23-second-long video labeled “J tier” was included that shows several guards walking around a cell tier. No date is given for this video. According to the 2023 inspector general’s report, the J tier camera was not recording at the time of Epstein’s death. 

Additional video?

These videos are likely a fraction of the videos held by the DOJ. Documents obtained by CNN earlier this year revealed that the DOJ had footage from 147 cameras from the prison covering a 24-hour period before and after Epstein died, totaling over 8 terabytes of data. The internal documents indicate that the footage does not reveal anything significant “since the cameras in the Special Housing Unit … were not active at the time.” 

After corrections officers discovered Epstein’s body, it was transported from his cell to a medical facility inside the prison, then to an ambulance waiting outside. It’s likely that some of that movement would have been captured on working cameras, but none of those have been made public. 

It’s not clear if the DOJ plans to release additional video. If they do not, they could be in violation of the law which requires the release of “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his death. 

CBS News has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment but has not received a response.