The last man to share a cell with Jeffrey Epstein reportedly died last month in New York City after contracting the CCP virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.
Efrain “Stone” Reyes, 51, was found dead on Nov. 27 inside his mother’s Bronx apartment, police confirmed to the New York Daily News.
The Daily News reported that the day before Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender, died at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in what was ruled a suicide, Reyes was transferred to a private prison, where he contracted the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Following Epstein’s death, Reyes was questioned by FBI agents about whether he had seen any sign that Epstein might commit suicide, Reyes’s niece, Angelique Lopez, told the newspaper.
“They were asking how Epstein was when he was in the cell, if he seemed suicidal,” Lopez said. “They were asking if he had any indication that he would do that. My uncle cooperated.”
Though the New York City Medical Examiner has yet to determine a cause of death, Reyes reportedly suffered from both heart problems and diabetes, which are underlying conditions associated with more severe COVID-19 cases.
“I can’t say COVID didn’t play a part [in Reyes’s death],” his niece said. “He came back coughing more than normal. His lungs weren’t the same.”
A few days before Reyes’s reported death, longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to quarantine in prison because of possible exposure to the CCP virus.
Maxwell, 58, is being held without bail in a federal prison in Brooklyn on charges of recruitment and grooming of girls to engage in illegal sexual activities at multiple locations for at least three years, from 1994 to 1997. She was also charged with perjury for claiming in her testimony that she was not aware that Epstein was having sexual relations with anyone other than herself. If convicted of all counts, she could face up to 35 years in prison.
In a Nov. 23 filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors said that a staff member who was assigned to work in the detention facility where Maxwell was held tested positive for COVID-19. In response, administrators implemented the same quarantine protocols that apply whenever an inmate has potentially been exposed to the virus.
“As with any other quarantined inmate, the defendant will remain in quarantine for fourteen days, at which point she will be tested again for COVID-19,” prosecutors wrote. “If that test is negative, she will then be released from quarantine.”
