Jail staff guarding Jeffrey Epstein allegedly deployed a decoy body to fool reporters gathered outside the prison following his death, newly unsealed files claim. An internal memo states a supervisor at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center told FBI agents that workers staged the deception amid a huge media presence after Epstein’s apparent suicide in 2019.

The documents allege officers arranged boxes and sheets to resemble a corpse before loading the dummy into a white van marked as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, prompting journalists to follow it while the real body was removed separately. The files claim Epstein’s body was instead placed into a black vehicle that left the facility “unnoticed”, allowing officers to move it in private after staff warned of the large crowd outside. Records also show investigators recovered a handwritten note from inside Epstein’s cell that the medical examiner did not classify as a suicide note. Described as “difficult to read”, it appeared to list grievances about jail conditions, including complaints about food, showers and insects.

Newly released records – part of a cache of three million documents – describe the response inside the prison as media gathered outside after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead.

After he was pronounced dead at hospital, his body was returned to federal custody while arrangements were made to transfer it to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Interview notes say staff were concerned about the “large news media presence” and devised a plan to “thwart” reporters during the removal.

The documents allege officers created a decoy using boxes and sheets, placing it in a white medical examiner’s vehicle that photographers followed, while a separate black vehicle left with Epstein’s body unnoticed.

Files also state officers guarded the body at a secure facility where identification procedures were completed before the official transfer.

Epstein had been held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on sex-trafficking charges when he died on August 10, 2019.

Prison guards found him unresponsive in his cell early that morning and attempted CPR before he was taken to New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging, though questions persisted after serious failures inside the jail emerged.

Investigations later revealed officers assigned to monitor him missed required overnight checks, including scheduled rounds at 3am and 5am.

Surveillance cameras outside his cell were also not working properly, with at least two devices malfunctioning.

Because of those lapses, investigators said they could not establish a precise timeline of Epstein’s final moments.