The Jeffrey Epstein Files 4: Dr. Michael Baden Interview

With the announcement of US Attorney-General Pam Bondi releasing the Jeffrey Epstein documents and the extraordinary trial of the ex-Senior JP Morgan & Barclay's Bank executive - Jes Staley - who exchanged "Snow White" e-mails with Epstein, we are releasing the much awaited final episodes of CrimeWaves investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein’s final days in prison.

We begin with the re-release our first five episodes investigating his death AND in the next two weeks, we will bring you three extraordinary new episodes. 

Highlights: 

-Cell doors were left unlocked in the Tier where Epstein was staying. Possible Murder.
-There was a “Ghost Count” on the night on his death: someone, somewhere among the correctional officers at the jail claimed that there was an extra person on the Wing with Epstein that night. Possible Murder.
-Two long-term drug dealers turned high-level cooperators who were on the Tier where Epstein was staying are convinced that the authorities got it right. Epstein did commit suicide.

**

Jeffrey Epstein’s death is one of the mysteries of our time. 
Since his death in a New York City Prison cell there have been countless conspiracy theories, speculation,  and conjecture.   
However,  only two medical examiners looked at Jeffrey Epstein’s body to discover the cause of his death.
In this episode, on CrimeWaves, we speak to one of those people.  
Dr.  Michael Baden is a legend in American law enforcement. 
He has decades of experience, specifically, on prison deaths, and has been involved in a host of high-profile legal cases including working for the family of George Floyd. 
After examining Jeffrey Epstein’s body, Dr. Baden says that the wounds indicate that  Epstein was most likely killed by a person or persons unknown.  
It was murder.

Please subscribe, rate, review or like this episode of CrimeWaves at YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.  
For more information on CrimeWaves please see - 
www.crimewavespodcast.com
www.declanhill.com
Twitter: declan_hill

Transcript

Michael Baden

But one inmate killing another inmate is not that unusual.
And often it's the high, that's why Epstein was probably the inmate in the United States most at risk of another prisoner stabbing him or killing him in some way.

Declan Hill

Jeffrey Epstein’s death is one the mysteries of our time. 
Since his death in a New York City Prison cell there have been countless conspiracy theories, speculation, hypothesises and conjecture.   
The official government response was to declare the death a suicide within hours of the news being leaked from the prison.
However,  only two medical examiners looked at Jeffrey Epstein’s body to discover the cause of his death.
In this episode, on CrimeWaves, we speak to one of those people. 
Dr.Michael Baden is a legend in American law enforcement.
Formerly the New York City Medical Examiner, he was also appointed to the Specially-Called Commission after the 1971 Attica Prison Riots that left dozens of inmates and guards dead.
He has decades of experience, specifically, on prison deaths, and has been involved in a host of high-profile legal cases including working for the family of George Floyd.
And after examining Jeffrey Epstein’s body, Dr. Baden says that the wounds indicate that  Epstein was most likely killed by a person or persons unknown. 
It was murder.
This is feature interview with him.

Music

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world - I hope you are well and thriving.  Thank you for joining us on this episode of CrimeWaves. 
I am Declan Hill an associate professor of investigations at the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science. We are one of the world’s best academic institutions to learn about police and detective work.   
Each episode, myself and my students interview one of the world’s best investigators.  However, this series on the Epstein death, my students have been transformed into investigators. I have taught them to organize their minds as investigators: to build chronology, a list of questions, sources and resources. They have poured over thousands of pages of documents.  Their names are Alex Klein and Jake Zenger.  I mention them because I want to give credit where credit is due, but also because in one section of this interview you will hear their voices and questions.
We spoke to one of the world’s leading medical examiners on the Epstein Case and his findings and perspective on the investigation.  It is pretty shocking stuff. Dr. Baden is outspoken about his belief that the FBI investigation was not good and that the indications on Jeffrey Epstein’s body was far more indicative of homicide than suicide. 
It was far-ranging discussion with a lot of topics covered, however, before we get to it a couple of program notes.
First, Please take a moment to rate, review the show. Also, If you are new to CrimeWaves I strongly urge you to take a listen to our earlier programs. There are some fantastic episodes.  A few selections of some of the interviews. 
There is ‘America Runs on Corruption’ featuring an interview Sarah Chayes who worked for years in Taliban-controlled territory of Afghanistan, speaks about the outrageous corruption of the Nato coalition in that country really catalyzed support for the Taliban. Then she returned to current-day America and discovered an equally grotesque corruption in this country.
There is ‘Solving the Unsolvable’, Lisa Dadio, a former New Haven City police lieutenant and one of my colleagues here at the University on how she helped solve a case of serial, sexual assaults on women up and down the Atlantic Coast of America.
There is ‘The Search for Black Sam’ featuring an interview with another colleague Claire Glynn on her forensic analysis on one of the greatest pirates in the history of the seafaring world. 
Do please take a listen to them - subscribe to the show. Rate it.  We are doing well. CrimeWaves is now in the top 5% of all podcasts but we would like to take it up to the next level - so your help, subscriptions, and reviews are super-important. 
If you have any thoughts, observations or ideas please put them in the comments section. Feed back is a hugely important part of the process and we do value, appreciate and read all comments.
Second, this specific episode is fairly gruesome stuff.  There will be a lot of discussion about body wounds and post-mortem examination of injuries. If you are of a sensitive nature, I strongly recommend that you do not listen. If you do - please be careful of playing the episode in front of children or anyone who might be unduly upset.
And finally and importantly, like all the episodes in the Epstein series we will be discussing suicide. It is inevitable in the investigation of the Epstein death.  Please. If you are considering self-harm, please do not.  Please reach out to someone - a family member, a friend or counsellor.  Here in Connecticut their number is 1-800-273-8255. Thats  1-800-273-8255…

Music

Jeffrey Epstein’s body was officially examined on Sunday, August 11, 2019.   There were two doctors in that room.  The first was the New York City Medical Examiner of the day.  That was the person who had drawn the awful Sunday morning shift on a hot New York City summer. 
And the other doctor was one of the most famous medical examiners in American police history - Dr. Michael Baden.
We began our interview by asking him what were the conditions like for the examination.

Michael Baden

There was just one medical examiner on duty that day and she was very cooperative with me and with the family and I was there with her when she did the autopsy.

Declan Hill

And what, in a normal circumstance, one of these autopsies, I mean, we've all seen the Law and Order and all these TV programs, but how does it work?
Is it a scrubbed down operating room or what's the circumstances?

Michael Baden

Well, in this circumstance, there's, in the medical exams off in New York City, there's a regular autopsy room with about six tables and a separate autopsy room where there's a single table that's used when the medical examiner wants privacy or if there's a decomposed body, for example, where they don't want the odor to spread.

So Mr. Epstein was taken to the single autopsy room, special autopsy room, and the medical examiner was there to do the autopsy.

And had come directly from the hospital.
So when he was found at 630 in the morning, he was brought
from the cell, instead of being left in the cell, which is the first error that was made, he was brought to the infirmary.
Then he was, EMS, Ambulance Service, picked him up from the infirmary, brought him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at the hospital, even though he was obviously dead when he was found.
And then he was brought from the hospital to the medical examiner's office.
And that all happened in a few hours.
Well, that all happened during the day.
That's on the 10th of August, 10th of August.
And the autopsy is done the 11th of August, the next day, the next day.
And so that when I was called by Mr. Epstein, the brother, I was in Sullivan County, knew that he was dead.
actually, and then went down first thing on the Sunday morning when the autopsy was done.
So he's found dead on Saturday.
And then I heard about the death on television and was called by the brother
during the afternoon of Saturday and asked to come down.
And he had arranged with the medical examiner's office as being the next of kin to have me present.
And that was a Sunday morning.
And then when I, I think the autopsy started around 10 o'clock in the morning.

Declan Hill

And during that autopsy, was there anything that struck you when you were looking at Jeffrey Epstein's body?

Michael Baden

Yes, there was the thing that struck me and the medical examiners, we were speaking during the whole time and going over things.
She was very cooperative and anything that I asked her to do or to go over during the dissection, she accommodated immediately.
What struck her and me was that there were multiple fractures of the
The larynx of the windpipe.
The hyoid bone was fractured in the left side and the thyroid cartilage, the Adam's apple, was fractured on both sides.
And this is very unusual for a hanging.
It was reported to the medical examiner's office as a hanging suicide is what the
personnel at the at the jail had indicated and there was a ligature mark around the neck which is kind of high up for a excuse me kind of not high for a hanging case for a hanging case because usually the ligatures slide up under the
upper part of the neck where it comes into contact with the mandible, the chin bone here, so that the ligature marks and free hanging cases are high above the windpipe, above the Adam's apple.
This was right across the Adam's apple, which is a little unusual.

And There were a lot of petechial hemorrhages, little ruptured blood vessels that we were looking at as he was on the table, on the autopsy table, with little petechial hemorrhages in the whites of the eye and around the skin of the eye, which is unusual in a hanging.

Declan Hill

Why would that be unusual in a hanging?

Michael Baden

Well, in a free-hanging case, where the weight of the body, when I say free-hanging, that the feet are not on the ground, which is most suicides that commit suicide that way, one way or another, they get higher up.

The ligature goes down to the underside of the neck and compresses the carotid arteries
uh and veins on both sides of the neck with the weight of the body minus 10 pounds for the 11 pounds for the head the head's 11 pounds the rest of the weight of the body is on on the ligature that's around the neck and that's forceful enough to compress the carotid arteries and the veins so that no blood is going to the head no blood, and the person in a hanging case has no particular hemorrhages.

The difference in manual strangulation where it's most of interest, particular hemorrhages, is that when the fingers are put on the neck in manual strangulation, the veins, which are low pressure, are completely compressed.

But the arteries keep pumping some blood up into the brain.

It doesn't completely occlude the arteries.

So blood is being pumped up into the head and brain and can't get back to the heart because the veins are collapsed.

The veins are just a few pounds of pressure compresses the veins.
If you put it on the hand, the pressure on the back of your hand that's hanging down, you'll see that the veins stop - don't contain blood anymore.

Declan Hill

So this is why it's significant when you see a different pattern of blood in the eyes is that it indicates either ironing or strangulation.

Michael Baden

When you see particular hemorrhages in the eyes yes situation there are a number of ways it can occur uh right particular hemorrhages can occur a body is found face down
and uh because as after we die the the settling of red blood cells but that wasn't the case evidently with Mr. Epstein's body it was that's correct that was yeah that was not the case uh with the epstein he was uh his head was still up and uh so it was the pattern of the ligature around the neck that it hadn't gone all the way up under the skin the multiple fractures usually in uh
80% or so of hanging cases, suicide, there are no fractures because the compression is above the windpipe.

If it's a broad ligature or certain kinds of leather, wide leather ligature, it can be wide enough to compress and cause a fracture.

Unusual, it's very unusual to
find more than one fracture, and it's unheard of to find three fractures.
Three fractures are crush injury.
Now, anything is possible, you know, there's always exceptions to the rules, but
You'd have to go to, you know, many hundred hangings to get one that has three fractures.
So this is highly unusual.
It's a crush injury.
It's a crush type of injury with the hands or commonly.
So this injury is concerned.
The particular hemorrhages and the fractures, yes, are
more indicative of homicide than suicide.


Declan Hill

Is it indicative of, for example, a karate chop across the neck?
Because I understand that's one way that a professional hitman works, that a quick chop across the thorax incapacitates the person and then is able to do what they want.

Michael Baden

Well, a karate chop can definitely cause that kind of fractures.
Usually you need a compression for
a few seconds, you know, a minute or so to get the particular hemorrhages.
But that's the reason these findings, to the doctor doing the autopsy and to myself there watching and talking to her about it,
indicate that this is more from an autopsy point of view.
Remember, there are a lot of other things going on about eyewitnesses, written suicide notes, the way the person is handled in the hospital and all that have to be taken into account.
But just from what was present on the autopsy,
Normally a suicide like this, if it were a suicide, it'd be called a suicide right away.
A person hanging and everything, no fractures, no particular hemorrhages, and some kind of indication, some kind of indication the person was depressed.
That's also part of the history
uh in in hanging if you if as opposed to accidental or doing sexual activities you can get this kind of thing so that what the doctor did who doing the autopsy instead of putting uh suicide on as as uh they were in stride they were told i mean the the uh information coming from the prison from the jail
was that this was a straightforward suicide from all the other information that they had at that time.

She put down pending further study because she wanted more information since the findings at the autopsy around the neck particularly were more like a homicide than a suicide.
That doesn't mean it automatically is you have to get as much information as possible.
So the initial death certificate was issued pending further study.

About four days later or five days later, her boss, the doctor's boss, the chief medical examiner changed it from pending further study to suicide.

Declan Hill

Why?

Michael Baden

Well, That wasn't fully explained initially to the family.
The family wouldn't know why it was changed.
It wasn't explained to the family.
The chief medical examiner felt there was enough information to call it a suicide after talking to the FBI people and other people about it.
I was hoping that this would be clarified with the investigation that was being done by the Justice Department.
See, the problem here is that suicides in jails and in prisons are a common cause of death.
Not common, but a common reason for people to die in custody.
The New York City police has a lot of experience investigating such deaths.
This was not a New York City problem.
It was a federal problem.
The federal problem meant instead of New York City police doing its usual routine and the special commission that was set up after Attica,
sending their investigators out to talk to all the people on the tier.
You see, if somebody dies in a suicide of hanging, there's always a concern.
There's always a concern in prisons that there are a lot of prisons and jails not only are there allegedly to protect
the outside world from the bad guys who are incarcerated, but they also protect the bad guys from each other because a lot of animosities in prison and there are people who get homicides in prisons occur.
That's one thing that happens often with riots like the Attica riot that people get even with each other during a riot and
and kill another person and then hang him up to make it look like suicide.

Declan Hill

That's common, is it?

Michael Baden

We don't have many prison uprisings where prisoners get control of prison.
Attica was one and there were a number of other prison
uh breakouts that occurred around that time and it was not uncommon for somebody to get even with like three of the prisoners three of the dead prisoners in Attica were killed by other by other inmates you know that for various reasons.

Declan Hill

Dr. Baden that's the thing that struck the team here you know the students and myself is that
You know, we're perfectly willing to believe that there are killers and murderers inside a jail.
You know, that is the, you know, that's the, you know, what jails are there for.
But to have a specific skill set to be able to kill somebody and then hang them up and make a credible, you know, make it credibly look like suicide, our thought was that this would be relatively rare to do.

Michael Baden

Well, it depends on whether the other inmates can get access to somebody.
And usually, like there was a
The police officer Chauvin, who was in the federal prison last week or something, he got stabbed by another prisoner.
He didn't die, apparently.
He didn't die.
And it was seen and witnessed, so they knew that one prisoner gets another prisoner under normal conditions.
It can be witnessed, but during a riot, I'm saying when a riot occurs and prisoners are free and get out of their cells as adequate, that doesn't happen very often.
But when it does happen, then there are a number of cases, documented situations where when the facility comes under control, they'll find somebody hanging.
and it'll look like committed suicide.
But that's one of the things that we're concerned about.
We've had that in other prisons in New York state where after the riot, these are before Attica.
Since Attica, there've been no prison riots where people, but there were before that time, but that's in 1971.
And that one of the things that I looked for at the time of the autopsy
If you find somebody hanging, there's always a concern.
Are there particular hemorrhages or not?
Because if there are particular hemorrhages, one has to make sure there's a proper investigation as to whether anybody else could have done it.
See, the other people would have had access because of the riot.
Normally, they don't have ready access.
So normally, it would be hard to get somebody and hang them up
And the only way this could have happened in this situation would be if another inmate on the tier got into his cell and that the cell was not locked, that kind of a thing, then this could happen.
And that would be only if that was intentionally done, you know, because so that the ability of
inmates to get even with other inmates, even for publicity.
That is, I'm not sure with Chauvin, why he was stabbed.
That hasn't come out yet.
Whether they had an argument in the prison or whether just one person, a person of high publicity often is at risk.

Declan Hill

Because you get street cred in the prison by injuring him or knocking him off like the other bad boys.

Michael Baden

That's right.
That can happen.
So that setting up somebody like Epstein is very unusual.
That would be very unusual.
But one inmate killing another inmate is not that unusual because
And often it's the high, that's why Epstein was probably the inmate in the United States most at risk of another prisoner stabbing him or killing him in some way.
I think it's certainly in the prison he was, the facility he was, so there has to be special
uh care taken of such prisoners such as where they put them in the cell who's in the cell with them uh they're not put into general population uh in the in the prison uh as he was but the problem there you see this is uh is that he was put under psychiatric uh observation for about a day or two and then taken off because he
There's a high incidence of suicide in people who are newly arrested or in jail who get bad news.

Bad news like prisoners who get news that their latest appeal in the prison was denied or their girlfriend sends them a Dear John letter
that the prisons, these are long-term prisons, are put under special observation because when they get bad news, the incidence of suicide is higher, as is when they're put into jail.
Metropolitan Corrections is a jail, you know, for people who have not yet been convicted.

So in jails, this is also common, a person gets arrested, put in jail,
And in the first week or so, there's a high incidence of suicidal people who feel depressed, who want to get jailed.

It's a good reason to be depressed.
So in jails and in prison, there has to be a special care taken when this person is a possible risk at suicide or homicide.

Declan Hill

Dr. Baden, let me just cut to the chase here because I think after spending two and a half months digging up research reports, investigations, really going... Alex and Jake have really done fantastic research here.
Those are my students working on this particular podcast episode.
What has shocked and surprised us is how bad the investigations were.

Michael Baden

Well, I agree.
I agree with you.
The general public thinks that the FBI is great at homicides and things, and that's based on television, not on real practice.
I mean, there's less than 1% of murders in the United States are on federal property, you know, that are in federal VA hospitals or a jail like this that's in a federal, so they're not,
And the FBI doesn't even have a medical examiner.
There's no forensic pathologist associated with the FBI.
If there's a death like this, a death in a federal prison, it goes to the local coroner.
The local coroner or medical examiner happens to be in New York.
But the investigation is done by the FBI, not by the local police.

Declan Hill

So in this case, it would have actually been better if the New York Police Department had done it because they had experience in this.
They've got a track record of solving these cases, but not the FBI.

Michael Baden

Yes, and also this would have permitted one of the reasons that Attica, one of the results of Attica was that Governor Rockefeller set up a special commission to look into all deaths in police and in custody.
Well, custody deaths because one of the reasons for the Attica uprising, rioting, in which 43 people died, 10 being civilians, the guards, was that they complained that when prisoners died, they
was covered up, that everybody coming out of the prisons came out with a death certificate saying heart disease.
When in fact, some of the prisoners were beaten up and died.
Some died because they didn't get proper medical care.
Some died because they were left in overheated conditions during the summer.

Declan Hill

But talking about in this particular case, the guys doing the investigation
The one that has shocked my team of students here and myself that we don't think was particularly good was FBI.
And contrary to the Hollywood impression, the FBI actually doesn't have all that much experience in it.
Let me ask you about one thing.
One of the things that was purportedly found in Jeffrey Epstein's cell was two cloth nooses.
that were supposed to be tested for DNA.
What's happened to that?

Michael Baden

Well, no, when you say supposed to be, if this were done properly by the local police agency, when you have prisons in a community, prisons, jails, and lockups in a community, there's always going to be times when people commit suicide.
That's one of the most common cause of deaths in corrections is suicide, especially among young people because they don't have natural diseases when they come in to die from.
But so in this situation, especially because nobody knew what happened, there was no eyewitness.
See, at the very beginning, the very first day, it was found that
He had not been looked at for about eight hours or so.
He was, contrary to being observed every 30 minutes or so, as happens in all prisons, to make sure person A is not too sick and also
the reason they do it to make sure he didn't escape.
I mean, one of the reasons is that people, they try to escape so that all prisons, jails have rules that you got to keep checking up on the prisoners and that they're not sick and having seizures or something.
So they weren't looked at and there was no statement made to how they were found.
When the body came to the medical examiner's office, it was thought to be a suicide because there were new ligatures made from the orange bedsheets.
But there was no information as to how they were found.
Were they hanging?
Were they kneeling?
Did they fall off the top bunk with this thing on that was raised?
So that was not, and that clearly in that kind of situation, the nooses, and there was some concern.
These are smooth nooses, sheets, they're smooth.
But the pattern on the lid, there was a imprint pattern on one area of the ligature mark on the neck.
And it was a deep ligature dried mark, meaning that the person had to have been hanging with that pressure on it for some time.
It took time for the ligature mark around the neck to become so prominent.
So he'd been dead for a while hanging.
What should have been done would be to get the ligatures that were there on the ground, there was more than one, and to examine it easily for DNA, whose cells were on there, whether on the cells of the decedent, which
which you'd expect if he's a... of course yeah you know reportedly tied around Jeffrey Epstein's neck but somebody else's yeah if those are a murderer that's correct if there's somebody else's DNA on it
You can get fingerprints also from cloth, but the DNA would have been easily obtainable.

Declan Hill

Were those cloth ligatures examined?

Michael Baden

No, not according to all the reports from the FBI.
The ligatures were not examined, period.

Why not?
Well, that's because they're being investigated.
The FBI can be great on peripheral things, you know, use of telephones and cell phones that can be very helpful.
In this instance, they were able to find out very quickly that the videos weren't working, that the two guards were not doing what they were supposed to do and had
perjured themselves by saying they had.
You know, they checked off every 30 minutes, but then it turned out that, and then the two guards refused to report, to discuss the findings with them.
The videos didn't work, and two sets of videos didn't work.
Why didn't they work?

Declan Hill

I still find this profoundly shocking, and You had a story that you were telling me about when you did the investigation of Marlon Brando's son.  Could you share that one, please?

Michael Baden


Yeah, with Marlon Brando's son, Marlon Brando's son was arrested for shooting the boyfriend of his sister because they had a confrontation because the boyfriend
had slapped his sister or beaten his sister.
So allegedly what happened, the son, Breno's son, came up to the boyfriend who was asleep on the couch in the house watching television that night and wound up shooting him.
The son had a gun.
It was a shooting.
The son said, I came over to threaten him not to strike my sister.
And he reached out and grabbed my hand and it went off accidentally, is what the son said.
What the police had said is they find the guy dead on the couch, lying on the couch, and that he had come over and shot him while he was asleep on the couch, while he was homicide arrested.
After about a week, I got a call out of the blue from Brando.
I'm in New York City.
He's in Los Angeles.
He's concerned, he the father is concerned, that they hadn't found the bullet.
The decedent had been shot.
There was no bullet in the
body was they didn't have a bullet wound or neck.
And they had done a search the room and everything where it happened, the couch, the furniture where it happened.
They couldn't find the bullet.
They didn't find the bullet.

So I got up there and
looked around and met Brianna, and take the room where the death was.
And if this is what I had spoken to you about, I could tell when I walked into the room, and it had all kinds of things around that the police had looked for, there was a shag rug, a shag rug on the floor.
And I'd been through this before in New York City with shag rugs, that shag rugs don't show bullet holes.

The only way you can find a bullet under a shag rug is to sit down, to kneel on it and feel.
You have to feel it.
Police don't like to do that.
Usually if there was a shag rug there, it obviously hadn't been pulled up.
So I got down on my knees and feeling it, I felt the bullet.
I made an incision and there was the bullet right underneath it.

A sergeant comes over, comes over to get the bullet.
And when I give the bullet to the sergeant, I say to the sergeant, look, this is a high profile, at that time it was a very high profile case.

And I remember this, I'll never forget this sergeant, the old timer, he looked at me almost with a tear in his eye.
He says, “Look doc, If you don't do a good job every day, then when something important comes along, you can't do a better job.”

When we're doing autopsies in New York City, where the guy came from the Bowery or was a bum or was a president of a company,
we had to do the same as good a job as we can but you can't just turn it on for important cases and and if you don't do it for every case.

Declan Hill

So to return to the Jeffrey Epstein case and this is my last question I'm going to hand it over to my students but Jeffrey Epstein at that time was the most high-profile inmate in the American prison system.

Michael Baden

Yes.

Declan Hill

He is found dead
you look at the autopsy you say it indicates indicates no probability this is more likely to have been a homicide than a suicide and you would expect an investigator a really rigorous investigation yes and that didn't happen and four and a half years later we're still waiting for that i went through with my students the department of justice report that came out this
this June and was shocked at how inadequate it was.
What were some of the things that you saw when you looked at that report?

Michael Baden

Yeah, when I looked at the report, what was interesting about it to me was that there was no investigation into the cause of death.

That is, they just accepted what the medical examiner, what they said, it's one page or two pages that the medical examiner, not the chief medical examiner,

Declan Hill

Yes, but the one who was doing the autopsy with you, or in your presence.

Michael Baden

The one they would talk to finally, but that had explained to them why the findings were not due to homicide.
The main reason they give is because there's no injuries.
There were no other injuries on the autopsy.
on Jeffrey Epstein's body.
Carotid Sleeper Hold, then the person can die and there's absolutely no injuries at all.
The person having, even in, you see this in the old movies sometimes.
When the mafia strangle somebody in the front of the car, you know, from behind.
There's never any marks on the body.
There's just a ligature mark on the neck.

Declan Hill

And one presumes if Jeffrey Epstein was sleeping, there'd be even less likelihood to be any struggle.

Michael Baden

That's correct.
If he was sleeping or if he was grabbed from around the neck, from behind, and then hanged up, there would be no marks other than the ligature mark on the neck.
Yes, I agree with that.

Declan Hill

I'm going to hand it over to Alex now, and then Jake.
Alex, you've been following this case now for two and a half months.
You've been looking, you've been reviewing some of the things.
What is one of the questions that you'd like to ask Dr. Baden?

 Alex Klein

I'd like to go back to the Hayek point about how
These fractures would only, you know, I do these fractures occur in most cases, as you were saying, or how it was unusual how multiple fractures are happening.
And, you know, as you just stated, how in slave mafia cases and these kind of strangulations, sometimes there's no marks at all.
So what in your expert experience, would that state how there would be considerable pressure applied to his neck because of, you know, these fractures that when marks that were found

Michael Baden

Yes, in order to get fractures of the Adam's apple and the higher bone, which is immediately above the Adam's apple, has to be pressure in that area, which happens with the fractures here, where Y on the side of the upper part of the Adam's apple
I'm
and wouldn't cause a fracture.
This ligature goes across.
Now, in the cases where you see that somebody comes from behind and quickly pulls a ligature and the person loses consciousness right away, there's enough loss of consciousness to cause brain damage and death, but the heart can keep circulating blood for
for a few minutes while they're in coma, so Petechiae can develop there.
But it's just very unusual.
And here, the mark around the neck is also across the Adam's apple, not above it.
And it's much more common and much more typical for any fractures is more typical for crushing compression with hands usually than with a ligature, a thin ligature around neck.
If it was a thick ligature, thick belt,
could extend from the surface across the Adam's apple and that can cause one fracture, but two fractures is unusual, three is rare as heck.

Declan Hill

So this is really unprecedented to see three fractures in that bone and it to be linked with suicide.

Jake, you've really done a lot of work on this.
You prepared some questions.
Let's walk our way through those questions.
Please go for it.

Jake Zenger

OK, so just a few clarifying questions at first.
you mentioned pretty early on that you felt like the first mistake within the case was them not leaving his body in the cell where it was found and just reviewing like prison protocol.
I think I read a document from the Bureau of Prison Systems that kind of basically said exactly what you said.
The first thing that you're supposed to do in a case like that where there's a body found hanging is you examine it within the cell, correct, rather than leave it outside.

Michael Baden

Yes, yes.
And you're absolutely right.
If there's any kind of concern that the person might still be alive, then you cut it down and test further.
But if the person is dead, if there's not breathing,
The body should be left in the cell because the time of death is always important.
Always important when the death in prison was who was the last person to see him and people having alibis and all that.
So the time of death is important.
The only time you can test for rigor mortis, lividity, the temperature of the body, which are the three ways that you tell the time of death is at the scene before the body is moved away.
uh so in uh if this were a police case in New York uh they would have left the body there for the medical examiner to come to the scene and test for rigor mortis and look for lividity and take a temperature.

Jake Zenger

Two more questions.
I wasn't really aware that the FBI does not have its own medical examiner.

Is there a reason for that?
Just is it because they don't tend to deal with that many deaths and their work is tailored around other cases or?

Michael Baden

Well, the FBI is terrific on certain technologies involved.
Fingerprints, hair analysis, toxicology.
They have great toxicology.
They do not have
a medical examiner system in the forensic pathology system in the FBI.
They rely on local coroners or there is a federal medical examiner in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology that they can call in.
That's training in the military case, but they don't have
And usually, usually they're not the first ones present.
Usually the FBI is called in like in many of the cases you've seen in the media afterwards, after the autopsy is done.
Remember the autopsy is going to be done in the first hopefully in 24 hours.
So the FBI is not usually happening.

As you see in the report, they're very good on finding out if the videos were cut or not cut.
They didn't even, what concerned me is they didn't even interview the other inmates on the tier
I think they refer to one inmate that said that, well, he didn't see anything because they have very narrow windows at midnight.

But they didn't interview the Tier to see, was there any fuss there?
Were all the doors locked?
Remember, in the facility, in that jail, an old time jail, it's not an electronic system where you can cut down all the doors to the cells by electronically.
It uses the old key lock, the Adams key or the Folger Adams key, which is popular around the country, where each door had to be individually locked.

So what happens if at eight o'clock at night, when apparently they're in their cell or something, if one of the doors is left open, and his door and Epstein's door is left open.
There'd be no record of that.
There's no electronic record of that.
So one of the issues brought up is could one of those inmates or somebody

It's unusual, very unusual, to be suicidal, hanging, had to be neck compression.
That's not 100%.
There can always be exceptions to something, but I've not in 50 years seen that kind of exception in all of the suicidal deaths.
Over a thousand deaths that we've had in New York, all the New York prisons,
since Attica.
It's unusual enough to require a full investigation as to the cause of death, but what the FBI did is they did a lot of the other stuff on the videos and all, but the only person they interviewed about the cause of death was the person who did the autopsy.

Jake Zenger

Okay, and then last question.
Near the end of our original interview before this question segment, you referenced a pattern ligature around his neck.
So the word like pattern being used there, is that the pattern that you found on it different?
Like it didn't line up with kind of the wide flat noose that was used to hang himself
Was the pattern that was found maybe of like a different material rather than a wide, like smooth bed sheet?

Michael Baden

Yeah, that's a very good question.
Very good observation.
The bed sheet is smooth.
The bed sheet doesn't leave a pattern.
It's just a flat, a furrow.
There's a portion, if you look on the, I think the right side, we've got a, of the,
autopsy pictures that have been released already.
There's a little imprint, when I say imprint, it's an imprint.
There's a compression of the skin in a little boxy pattern that doesn't match the sheet, that couldn't be produced by a sheet.
Now, when people are strangled, say, with the sheets or hanged with the
If they have a chain around their neck, that gets caught up in the sheet and you leave a pattern in an ordinary suicide where somebody has a chain around the neck.
You get the imprint of the chain on the skin.
Here, there's a little imprint on the right side of the neck.
right right front right side uh that doesn't match the smoothness of the uh of the uh uh sheet ligature or of of the ligature sheet even if it was crumpled you know you can have crumpling of of the ligature too this was uh some straight marks that looks like it could be from a different object

Jake Zenger

I actually noticed that before discussing with you, going through the autopsy photos, the abrasion on that side of his neck seemed to be more red than the rest of his neck, kind of whiter.
There's just, it did seem different than the rest of his neck after going through the photos of the autopsy.

Michael Baden

Well, the problem with photos also, color, you see, you always have to be careful about color photos because that depends on camera angles, on how the
It gets reproduced on the light that's going on around.
But what impressed me was the imprint.
There were some straight lines in the imprint that couldn't be from a crumpled sheet.
That's another thing to look into.
All the more reason why examining the ligature with DNA or even for fingerprints
would be important and easily done.
The FBI does that all the time.
So that why it wasn't done here, all you do is you take people, first of all, the FBI, everybody uses gloves because they don't want to get HIV or something, you know.
So with the gloved hand to put it into a bag or a container and send it to the lab and they can then easily look for DNA and see if there's any DNA that shouldn't be there.

Jake Zenger

That's all that I have.

Michael Baden

Thank you.

Declan Hill

Dr. Baden, one final question.
I really want to thank you for your time.
We really, really appreciate this.
The sum up question, what has surprised or shocked you the most in this entire Jeffrey Epstein case?

Michael Baden

Well, I think what shocked me the most is that given not just the death of Epstein, but the significance of his death,
with all the questions around it and all the prominent people who had a lot to lose if he were to testify at a trial or something, that this is very concerning that he wasn't given proper observation.

Declan Hill

Yeah, I mean, the prison guards, the specific prison guards had so clearly faked these records for weeks and months.
You know, it wasn't like it wasn't like they started faking their records when they were looking after America's most known inmate.
They had clearly a consistent pattern of fraud and outright corruption inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
That's that's the one that shocked me.

Michael Baden

I agree with you through this, that how how
guards could could this goes through two shift more than one shift of guards yes that uh that uh not to look at check somebody out uh it takes five minutes to make their rounds and and and that uh the uh other inmates on the tier
were not individually questions about what was going on and did they hear anything that was going on?
Staggering.

Declan Hill

I mean, you would do that for a normal shooting, a homicide shooting.
You'd go into passerby shops wherever, did you see anything?
And that wasn't done in this locked room, this thing.
One of my students had a great line.

Michael Baden

May I make one last answer to that?

Declan Hill

Please.

Michael Baden

To my mind, this all looks that you've got to really look for intentionality
But, going back to the Marlon Brando incident, if they do a lousy job all the time, if this is the way these guards always did things, and were allowed to do things, to do shopping, you know, and to watch TV on their internets and all that kind of thing, rather than checking on the inmates,
could be just incompetence that has been going on for a long period of time.

But it certainly looks terrible when there's so many people who would have liked to do that to Epstein.

Music

Declan Hill

Its Declan here.
Thank you for listening to this feature interview with Dr. Michael Baden on the death of Jeffrey Epstein.   
If you have any questions of thoughts on this episode please put it in the comments.  And please rate, review or subscribe to the show.  It is massively important.  We receive no outside money, sponsorship or advertising revenue - therefore any ratings we get come our listeners so please help us raise the profile of the show. 
The next case to feature on CrimeWaves is even more important and controversial than the Jeffrey Epstein death. However, only a small fraction of people know about it. We call it ‘The Greatest Unsolved Murder Mystery in the World’. 
It is a case that if it had been solved in a timely manner might have saved the lives of hundreds-of-thousands of people.  It was definitely a murder and to this date no one has been caught.  
My students and I investigated it and we will show you all the people who may have been involved: it is a shocking, scandal that effects us all.  
Stay tuned that will be airing shortly. In the meantime, please rate review, the program. Go back to other episodes and listen to them. You will discover gold in those episodes.
Thank you for listening.