Warden In Charge Of Prison Where Jeffrey Epstein Died Given Leadership Role at New Correctional Facility

Warden In Charge Of Prison Where Jeffrey Epstein Died Given Leadership Role at New Correctional Facility
Jeffrey Epstein in a file photograph. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP)
Katabella Roberts
1/26/2020
Updated:
1/28/2020
The warden who was in charge of the jail cell where Jeffrey Epstein died last year is being moved to a leadership position at a new correctional facility in New Jersey.

Lamine N'Diaye has been assigned a new management position at FCI Fort Dix, a low-security prison in Burlington County, by the federal Bureau of Prisons, despite an ongoing investigation into financier Epstein’s death.

N’Diaye will begin his new leadership role in February, and will be assisting the prison’s current warden, CNN reports.

His alleged promotion comes less than six months after Attorney General William Barr temporarily reassigned him to a desk post at the Bureau of Prisons’ regional office in Pennsylvania while the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general investigated the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

His death was ruled as suicide by the New York medical examiner who said he had hung himself with a sheet from his bed.

However, Attorney Barr said there were “serious irregularities” at the Manhattan prison where Epstein was being held and that he was “appalled” to learn of the facility’s“ failure to adequately secure this prisoner.”
Prison guards Tova Noel, 31, and Michael Thomas, 41, were accused of failing to check up on the multi-millionaire convicted sex trafficker every 30 minutes, which is required and fabricating documents claiming that they had.
Court documents said that for substantial portions of their shift, the two sat at their desk, browsed the internet and moved around the common area of the isolation unit where Epstein was being held.

They later found Epstein unresponsive in his cell at 6:30 a.m.

The two guards pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and filing false documents claiming they had conducted regular checks.

Epstein, who was 66 when he died, had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.

Following his death, famed pathologist and former chief medical examiner for New York City Dr. Michael Baden told Fox News that he believes the physical evidence suggests Epstein did not take his own life.

Baden—who was hired by Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein—cited unusual symptoms such as hemorrhaging in the eyes, deep marks around his neck and three broken neck bones as evidence which “points toward homicide rather than suicide.”

He added that the injuries were “more consistent with ligature homicidal strangulation” than suicide.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.