Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed the disgraced late US financier Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison, in an interview with a British broadcaster that aired on Monday.
The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell is imprisoned in a Florida penitentiary after her conviction and 20-year sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse girls.
Epstein, who was facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, escaped trial by killing himself in a New York jail in August 2019.
The autopsy concluded suicide by hanging, although the 66-year-old’s sudden death fuelled widespread controversy and conspiracy theories.
“I believe that he was murdered,” former socialite Maxwell said in the series of jailhouse interviews aired on Britain’s TalkTV. “I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened.”
A forensic pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother said in 2019 that evidence suggested he had been murdered, arguing multiple fractures found in his neck were “very unusual for suicide”.
The US Department of Justice has conducted a years-long investigation into how Epstein was able to hang himself inside New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, but has not released any evidence of foul play.
Two prison guards on duty who admitted to falsifying records related to the night he died were charged later in 2019 over their alleged failure to monitor him.
But federal prosecutors dismissed the charges in late 2021 after the pair completed community service work as part of an earlier legal agreement.
Maxwell, who is appealing her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking minors, also insisted she now regrets ever meeting Epstein.
She said she did not know “he was so awful” when they first met and began a relationship in the late 1990s.
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