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Epstein later denied that, claiming instead that he had been attacked – an allegation Tartaglione denied.

Authorities suspected an attempted suicide and placed him on watch for the next week or so, monitoring him 24-7. But in late July, he was returned to the jail’s special housing unit and assigned a new cellmate. But on Aug. 9, despite the fact that at least eight officials knew he wasn’t to be left alone in his cell, his fellow inmate was relocated.

By the next morning, Epstein was dead.

Nothing about Jeffrey Epstein's prosecution and death in federal custody surprises or could surprise me at this point

New York’s chief medical examiner ruled that Epstein had hanged himself and said the cause of death was suicide.

But in the months that followed, government inquiries into the facility’s handling of his death unearthed a litany of missteps by jail staffers and failed to quiet the crush of unfounded speculation that Epstein had been killed because he had dirt on his powerful friends.

In November, two jail workers were charged with conspiring to defraud the United States and making false records after they allegedly forged paperwork saying they had conducted regular checks on Epstein in the hours before he killed himself.

Instead of checking on him, the two staffers were shopping and checking sports scores online, prosecutors said.

The death of the most high-profile defendant in the federal prison system also led to a major leadership shake-up at the Bureau of Prisons. Attorney General William P. Barr brought in a former director of the agency to run it again, and replaced the jail’s top official, saying the preliminary investigation had found “serious irregularities at the center.”

After the prosecutors’ latest disclosure, one of Epstein’s attorneys, Marc Fernich, told the Associated Press that the missing video “only adds to the unanswered questions and deepens the air of mystery” around Epstein’s death.

Fernich added: “Nothing about Jeffrey Epstein’s prosecution and death in federal custody surprises or could surprise me at this point.”

— The Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett contributed to this report