Jeffrey Epstein jail pal '100%' sure sexual predator killed himself

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on May 8, 2026

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NEW YORK — A Metropolitan Correctional Center inmate who spent time with Jeffrey Epstein before his death in 2019 has no doubt the well-connected sex offender died from suicide.

Questions have persisted about Epstein’s hanging himself despite a medical examiner’s determination that the 66-year-old ended his own life in a lower Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He’d previously served time for soliciting underaged prostitution.

Bill Mersey — who was on suicide watch with Epstein — told TMZ there’s no mystery about what happened on the day his former associate took his last breath.

When asked if Epstein died by suicide, he replied confidently, “100%. I’m sure he killed himself.”

Mersey said his opinion is based on knowing how the Metropolitan Correctional Center operates.

“For somebody to get in there and murder him would take a big conspiracy involving a lot of people,” he said.

Had that been the case, according to Mersey, the jailhouse guards the hypothetical killer encountered would have cracked under pressure if they tried keeping a secret.

“That conspiracy would’ve unraveled immediately,” he insisted.

Mersey claimed he witnessed Epstein coming unglued as his legal efforts to be set free before trial came up short.

“He was not ready for prison,” Mersey said.

He told TMZ the inmate in the cell next to Epstein’s told him he heard the sex offender tearing up the sheets that were used in his suicide attempt. No one else came in or out of Epstein’s cell before his death, Mersey said he was assured.

A note Epstein is believed to have written during a previous suicide attempt weeks earlier was released by a district court judge on Wednesday. The poorly constructed and sloppily scrawled letter has some skeptics wondering if it could’ve been written by someone as intelligent as Epstein is believed to have been. Mersey said the note was likely written under very challenging circumstances.

“It seems to me he was probably very stressed being in the special housing unit,” Mersey said, “because that’s a really bad environment.”

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