{"id":157439,"date":"2026-03-09T01:31:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T01:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/157439\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T01:31:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T01:31:32","slug":"cellmate-claims-guards-discussed-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/157439\/","title":{"rendered":"Cellmate Claims Guards Discussed Cover-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Efrain Reyes, Epstein\u2019s 50-year-old crack dealer cellmate who was released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center just hours before the sex trafficker\u2019s death, gave the FBI alarming details about what prison guards discussed that morning, according to the Justice Department dump <\/p>\n

Weeks after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on Aug. 10, 2019, a Bronx drug dealer who had been the last person to share a cell with the convicted sex trafficker faced a federal judge in Manhattan\u2019s Southern District to plead guilty as part of a deal he made with prosecutors. <\/p>\n

Efrain Reyes, 50, was caught up in a sprawling narcotics case and had agreed to cooperate against his crack-dealing coconspirators, meaning he had to be taken out of general population at the Metropolitan Correction Center and placed in the special housing unit, the same section of the federal lockup where Jeffrey Epstein had been held for just over a month, since his arrest on July 6 on federal charges of \u201csex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The two, Reyes would come to tell the FBI, bantered during the nine days they spent sharing a cell. Epstein had complained that a prior cellmate, a murderous New York City cop, had tried to kill him, leading him to attempt suicide on July 23. Reyes said he warned the billionaire, who was upset about wearing an orange jumpsuit, which as also noted by a prison psychologist, not to \u201chang himself in my cell.\u201d <\/p>\n

Epstein said he was a math teacher who had made some \u201cgood investments,\u201d and offered to put money in Reyes\u2019 canteen coffers. Days later Epstein told him \u201cI put some money on your books,\u201d Reyes told the FBI<\/a>. Then on Aug. 9, according to a FBI report in the Justice Department\u2019s document release, \u201cEpstein\u2019s cell mate, Efrain Reyes, was released from the MCC, leaving Epstein alone in his cell.\u201d That same day, Epstein was taken off suicide watch, the federal Bureau of Prisons says. <\/p>\n

The FBI report says that around 7:19 p.m. that night, Epstein was allowed to call his girlfriend, Belarusian dentist Karyna Shuliak, on \u201can unsecured and unrecorded line,\u201d in violation of BOP rules. The call, records show, lasted \u201capproximately 20 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Epstein\"EpsteinEpstein called his Belarusian dentist girlfriend Karyna Shuliak in the hours before he was found dead, according to the FBI, in a 20 minute call from Manhattan\u2019s MCC Credit: Department of Justice<\/p>\n

At 6:30 a.m. the next day, a grisly discovery was made in cell #220 on the 9th floor of the MCC. There, the FBI says, \u201cEpstein was found with a make-shift noose around his neck in an apparent suicide.\u201d Prison medical personnel rushed Epstein to the medical unit while performing CPR, delivering oxygen and \u201cother narcotics.\u201d <\/p>\n

Minutes later, prison officials called 911, and Epstein was pronounced dead at New York City\u2019s Presbyterian Hospital at 7:30 a.m. <\/p>\n

Scroll to continue reading<\/p>\n

\"Cell\"CellCell where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on 8\/10\/2019 Credit: Department of Justice<\/p>\n

On Aug. 26 \u2013 sixteen days after Epstein was found dead in his cell, prosecutors asked a judge for an emergency guilty plea hearing for Reyes and asked that a transcript of what was said be sealed. Before it began, Reyes\u2019 attorney, Marlon Kirton, told the judge there was a reason for the urgency.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he was the last inmate incarcerated with Mr. Jeffrey Epstein,\u201d Kirton told U.S. District Court Justice Katherine Polk Failla. <\/a> As requested, much of what happened next at Reyes\u2019 guilty plea, where his attorney reminded the court he was not only cooperating with investigators in his own drug case but also in \u201cother criminal matters,\u201d is heavily redacted in the transcript.<\/p>\n

Three days later, Reyes sat down with a plethora of investigators, including those he told his cellmates at a Queens lockup, then Attorney General William Barr, to answer questions about Epstein\u2019s death. Barr\u2019s father, Donald Barr, the headmaster of the elite all-girls Dalton School, had given Epstein, who did not have a college degree, a job at the private academy as a math teacher. The elder Barr had been a spy for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, and was also the author of a science fiction novel, \u201cSpace Masters,\u201d about the kidnapping of humans to become sexual playthings of the galaxy\u2019s super-rich.<\/p>\n

Reyes\u2019 interview notes remained a secret until Congress passed the Epstein Transparency Act, forcing the Justice Department to release millions of documents pertaining to the convicted pedophile, which has revealed a labyrinthine slew of connections that the billionaire maintained with billionaires, academics political figures, Middle Eastern power players, and two White House attorneys, the late Ken Starr and Obama\u2019s top lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler.<\/a> Ruemmler is scheduled to testify about her long ties to Epstein in front of the House Committee in April.<\/p>\n

Roughly a year after he was grilled by a federal investigator, Reyes was dead. A prosecutor in the Southern District, whose name is redacted, sent an email to another redacted party<\/a>. It read: \u201cEfrain Reyes died. It sounds like it was in his sleep. Given his history, I think it may have been drug related, but perhaps not. Either way, my recollection is that you didn\u2019t expect to need him for anything Epstein\/MCC-related, but just want to keep you in the loop in case my memory is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York Daily News, <\/a>citing a source, reported that Reyes died of COVID at his mother\u2019s home in Nov. 2020. Los Angeles could not locate an obituary, and there is no official cause of death listed in the Epstein files. The newspaper\u2019s owner, Mort Zuckerberg, enjoyed close ties to Epstein, according to the Epstein files, and was pressured to temper coverage of the billionaire\u2019s Florida sex trafficking of minors conviction.<\/p>\n

\"Epstein\"EpsteinHeavily redacted email about the death of Efrain Reyes, Epstein\u2019s last cellmate. It was reported that he died of COVID, but not confirmed. Credit: Department of Justice<\/p>\n

The new Justice Department Epstein files also contain an interview with another unnamed MCC inmate who was still in the unit when his body was found. According to hand-written notes contained in a proffer report, the inmate told the FBI he heard officers yell: \u201cBreathe! Breathe!\u201d at around 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10. <\/p>\n

Then he said he heard an officer say, \u201cDudes, you killed that dude.\u201d<\/p>\n

A female guard replied, \u201cIf he is dead, we\u2019re going to cover it up and he\u2019s going to have an alibi \u2014 my officers,\u201d the FBI notes claim the inmate said.<\/p>\n

Later, after learning Epstein had died, that inmate told the FBI the MCC was buzzing with a rumor: \u201cMiss Noel killed Jeffrey.\u201d<\/p>\n

He identified the female guard as Tova Noel, one of two correctional officers who were later charged with falsifying reports so that it appeared from their records that they had made their rounds that night, when they had not. The charges against her and the other officer, Michael Thomas, were later dropped, but both were fired. Noel is now being eyed for a suspicious Google search about Epstein, less than an hour before he died, and for cash deposits in her bank account.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Efrain Reyes, Epstein\u2019s 50-year-old crack dealer cellmate who was released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center just hours before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[26083,34520,5970,6769,65015,75,84,83,9,24,63,340],"class_list":["post-157439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-doj","tag-epstein-files","tag-fbi","tag-jeffrey-epstein","tag-kathryn-ruemmler","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}