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Disclosure in US department of justice files raises further questions about whether paedophile died by suicide
Tova Noel, centre, is one of two officers accused of falsifying prisoner record checks the night Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell
Janet Eastham Senior News Reporter
Janet Eastham is part of the award-winning Telegraph Investigations team along with Claire Newell, Katherine Rushton and Sophie Barnes. See more
Published 08 March 2026 1:24pm GMT
The last prison guard to see Jeffrey Epstein alive made suspicious cash deposits in the 12 months before his death, US Department of Justice (DoJ) files reveal.
Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on Aug 10, 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.
Tova Noel, 37, one of two officers accused of falsifying prisoner record checks that night, made a final cash deposit of $5,000 (£3,729) into her bank account less than a fortnight earlier on July 30.
A total of 12 ATM cash deposits, beginning in October 2018, were flagged by her bank to the FBI in a “suspicious activity report” in November 2019.
Ms Noel and her colleague Michael Thomas were fired after being accused of falsifying records to claim they checked on Epsteinduring the night before his suicide on Aug 10 that year.
CCTV footage revealed the pair did not check on Epstein for eight hours, despite his cell being just 15 feet from the guards’ desk.
Criminal charges against them were later dropped.
Tova Noel made a final cash deposit of $5,000 into her bank account less than a fortnight before Epstein’s death
The bank transactions are among several new disclosures in the Epstein files that raise questions about the paedophile’s death.
It can also be revealed that Ms Noel searched the internet for the sex offender just minutes before he was found dead.
The officer Googled “latest on Epstein in jail” at 5:42am and then again at 5:52am. Less than 40 minutes later, at 6.30am, Mr Thomas found the disgraced financier dead in his cell.
The FBI highlighted the internet search in its 66-page forensic examination of Ms Noel and Mr Thomas’s bureau of prisons desktop computers. It was the only search highlighted.
Ms Noel later denied having made this search during her sworn statement to the DoJ in 2021.
“I don’t remember doing that,” she claimed, suggesting that an article about Epstein could have appeared automatically in her browser instead. When shown the search record, she insisted it was inaccurate.
Ms Noel was not asked under oath about the payments raised in the “suspicious activity report”.
At 7.49pm on Aug 9, 2019, Epstein returned to his unit from a visit to his attorney and was escorted to his cell by Ms Noel and another officer.
Footage showed the officers did not carry out the 10pm count but still signed a slip falsely claiming it had been done.
The 2023 DoJ inspector general report later identified Ms Noel as the mysterious orange shape spotted in a blurry surveillance video near Epstein’s cell around 10:40pm on the night he died.
It said the footage showed “a CO [correctional officer], believed to be Tova Noel, carried linen or inmate clothing” up to Epstein’s tier, adding this was the “last time any CO [correctional officer] approached the only entrance to the SHU tier”.
In a sworn statement Ms Noel told investigators that she last saw Epstein alive “somewhere around after 10”.
She also said she “never gave out linen” because it had been issued by the earlier shift. She testified she did not know why Epstein had extra linen in his cell. The other guard was asleep between 10pm and midnight.
Epstein’s cell after he was found dead Credit: Department of Justice
Other documents released by the DoJ include FBI notes of an interview with an unnamed inmate who claimed guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center discussed covering up Epstein’s death on the morning he died.
A five-page handwritten report records the inmate saying he woke on Aug 10, 2019 to commotion in the “special housing unit” where Epstein was held to hear officers shouting “Breathe! Breathe!” at about 6.30am.
He said that while breakfast was being served he heard someone say, “you killed that dude”, adding that the whole wing heard the exchange.
According to the notes, a female guard replied: “If he is dead we’re going to cover it up and he’s going to have an alibi – my officers.”
Later, the inmate reported that other prisoners allegedly said: “Miss Noel killed Jeffrey.”
When asked under oath whether she had any part in Epstein’s death, Ms Noel replied: “No.”
Comment from :
Frankie Caton
5’6” and 208 lbs? Did she sit on him to finish him off?
Frederick Fretful
To strangle someone who really didn’t want to be strangled would take a lot of effort. People fighting for their life can be very strong?
Paul Lambert
I hope these guards have written their Wills.
Acacia Wood
Look, no one really knows his money to instigate kompromat came from.
Surely finding out who he was working for will lead to whoever decided he was disposable.
Ghislaine knows but no one will let her get close to a computer.
Simon Barker
The wounds to his neck are more akin to a strangulation rather than a suicide by hanging. That’s according to the post mortem. There are photos of him dead on the floor. If they can kill JFK, then knocking off someone in prison is relatively simple for them. Trump is definitely implicated in the files – but they’ll be lost of course.
Acacia Wood
Nonsense.
Ghislaine knows but no one will give her a computer.
And what kind of ethnicity is ‘Not Hispanic’ anyway?
Linda O’Connor
What a shock – said no-one, ever.
Cromwell Fairfax
Hmmm…$5,000 to unlock a door to let another inmate into the section and turn off the CCTV for a few minutes.
Liam Logan
Epstein was obviously murdered. Unsurprisingly so. He certainly deserved it, but that’s not the point.
Much more interesting though is the case of Ms Ghislaine. Why hasn’t she been suicided yet? What deal has she struck with the vampire class? What safeguards does she have in place? How long will the status quo persist?
Fascinating stuff.
Brian Sewell
She was paid to top him? Allegedly, apparently, implicitly, maybe, maybe not? Who knows?
Martin Bellinger
I certainly doubted it was suicide, right from the start. Far too many important and wealthy people benefit from his demise. He simply knew too much.
Colleen Morrison
My guess, the extra linen was perhaps wrapped around the dead body of a reasonable look alike for Epstein and used to conceal it in a dirty laundry bin, to get it to Epstein’s cell. Once in the cell, the body was unwrapped, placed in Epstein’s bed and the real, living Epstein was concealed in the dirty laundry bin. But there was a problem, the real Epstein was larger than the look alike, so dirty linen had to be removed from the bin and dumped in Epstein’s cell. What we can see in the video is someone passing orange linen from the dirty linen bin to Epstein in the cell. Sufficient linen removed, Epstein then hides in the bin. The bin, with Epstein inside is removed from the prison by the men with the van who were seen at the prison during the night.
Mr Sensible
Epsteins death reminds me of the death of Rudolf Hess in Spandau prison in 1987.
I rather tend to believe that Epstein was murdered. Maybe Tova’s big 208 lbs. buffalo butt suffocated the child rapist.
Either way, this whole affair just proves what a banana republic we have been turned into.