The police had a chance to stop pedophile Jeffery Epstein in 1997, one of his accusers has claimed — but under former President Bill Clinton, the victim says authorities looked the other way.
It’s the latest in a series of disturbing details that have come to light following Epstein’s sudden death in a New York City prison cell.
Epstein signed a will just two days before he died in jail, new court records show, opening a new legal front in what could be a long battle over the financier’s fortune — and could hide the details of his vast wealth from the public forever.
Court papers filed last week in the U.S. Virgin Islands list no details of beneficiaries but valued the estate at more than $577 million, including more than $56 million in cash.
The existence of the will, first reported by The New York Post, raised new questions about Epstein’s final days inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Epstein signed the document Aug. 8. He was found dead less than 48 hours later, prompting an investigation that has cast a harsh light on the Manhattan detention center, his connection to the rich and powerful, and even his death.
Just weeks before he was arrested, records show Epstein had a $100,000 cement truck rushed to his private estate on the U.S. Virgin Islands, paying extra to get the truck and cement onto his so-called “Pedophilia Island” early.
He also had a tile and carpet extractor that weighed 191-pounds shipped from his private island to his New York home on March 11 this year. In his Palm Beach home, Epstein had a 53-pound shredder, shipped there during his original 2008 prosecution in Florida.
Experts told The Daily Mail that the possibility that the cement was “used to literally cover up evidence cannot be discounted.”
Attorney General William Barr removed the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons, Hugh Hurwitz, from his position Monday amid mounting evidence that guards at the chronically understaffed Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York abdicated their responsibility to keep the 66-year-old Epstein alive. The FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general are investigating his death.
More than two decades before he died in that New York prison cell, a woman went into a California police station and filed one of the earliest sex-crime complaints against Epstein: that he groped her in 1997 during what she thought was a modeling interview for the Victoria’s Secret catalog.
Alicia Arden never heard back from investigators about her complaint. No charges ever came of it. And to this day she sees it as a glaring missed opportunity to bring the financier to justice long before he was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls and women.
“If they would have taken me more seriously than they did, it could have helped all these girls,” said Arden, an actress, and model. “It could have been stopped.”
With recent scrutiny focused on Epstein’s life, wealth and connections to powerful people, his early brush with the law has been something of a mystery. After Arden’s 1997 complaint to authorities first came to light several years ago, the department said little about it.
Epstein’s lawyers said only that police discounted her allegations. An official statement from Santa Monica police spokeswoman Lt. Candice Cobarrubias said Arden withdrew her complaint.
“If the victim tells the detective they do not wish to prosecute, then the detective will close the case,” the statement said. “In this case, the victim advised the detective she did not wish to prosecute so there was no point in presenting it to the City Attorney for review.”
When asked to provide documentary evidence of Arden’s stated wishes, Cobarrubias refused to provide any more details from the detective’s notes.
Arden was adamant that she did not, in any way, communicate to authorities that she did not want to press charges. She was outraged to hear that the police say otherwise.
“The fact that they didn’t do anything, and they discredited me, is just a stab to my heart,” Arden said.
Even the circumstances of Epstein’s last moments on Earth have come under intense questioning.
On Sunday, New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said in a statement that the presumed cause of death is suicide, but the autopsy results remain inconclusive. Epstein’s cause of death remains in question “pending further information at this time.”
Epstein received multiple broken neck bones, including his hyoid bone, which is far more common and consistent with strangulation than suicide by hanging, according to The Washington Examiner.
“Studies show a broken hyoid bone, which in men is near the Adam’s Apple, is more common during homicidal strangulation than hanging. Nevertheless, research on the frequency of the hyoid bone breaking during a hanging varies greatly, from it being rare to fairly frequent,” The Washinton Examiner reported. “And it is generally agreed the chances of a broken hyoid bone during suicide by hanging increases with age as the three jointed bones making up the hyoid harden and become more breakable. Epstein was 66 when he died. ”
Multiple people familiar with operations at the jail say Epstein was taken off suicide watch about a week after he was found on his cell floor July 23 with bruises around his neck, and put back in a high-security housing unit where he was less closely monitored but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.
Esptein’s lawyers said in a statement they’re “not satisfied” with the official story and want the prison’s survelience footage “if they exist.”
“The defense team fully intends to conduct its own independent and complete investigation into the circumstances and cause of Mr. Epstein’s death including if necessary legal action to view the picotal videos – if they exist as they should – of the area proximate to Mr. Epstein’s cell during the time period leading to his death,” the statement read. “We are not satisfied with the conclusions of the medical examiner. We will have a more complete response in the coming days.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this article