Renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden slammed a four-year Department of Justice report examining the prison death of Jeffery Epstein — calling its finding “ridiculous” for ignoring the clear-cut evidence of a homicide, RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal.
The DOJ’s Inspector General’s 128-page report concluded the August 2019 death of the billionaire sex trafficker was the result of “negligence and misconduct” by jail guards who failed to monitor the convicted pedophile.
But Dr. Baden, who has investigated hundreds of prison suicides over his 50-year career as the pathologist for the New York State Correction Medical Review Board that monitors ALL prison deaths, told RadarOnline.com, “They didn’t contact me at all” even though he was in autopsy room!
Instead, they only spoke to the pathologist at the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office who determined the death was a suicide.
“Apparently, they weren’t interested in going into the cause of death,” Dr. Baden told RadarOnline.com. “From the nature of the report — all they were focusing on was the security at the prison…They spoke to the (New York City Medical Examiner) that did the autopsy and that was the end of it. They didn’t do anything further.”
“Then they come out with the ridiculous statement in the report that the main reason it was suicide was because there were ‘no injuries to the body’ since homicidal strangulation always has evidence of injuries,” Dr. Baden said, referring to signs of the struggle.
But Dr. Baden, who retired from the Medical Review Board in July, told RadarOnline.com in the “vast majority of the manual strangulation cases he’s investigated, there are rarely signs of injuries to the body except for the ligature mark around the neck.”
As RadarOnline.com reported, Epstein was found dead in his cell on Aug. 10 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center with a noose made from bedsheets tied to a bunk bed and wrapped around his neck.
Dr. Baden said the report grossly ignored the fact that the 66-year-old Epstein had two fractures on the left and right sides of his larynx, as well as one fracture around his Adam’s apple – a tell-tale sign of manual strangulation.
“The most common way to commit suicide in jail or prison is by hanging and in 99 percent of the cases I’ve investigated – and we’ve had hundreds of such deaths – I have never seen one with three fractures,” Dr. Baden told RadarOnline.com.
What’s more, the ligature marks stretched across the middle of his neck near the Adam’s apple – instead of pressing underneath the jawbone like most hanging victims. Baden also doesn’t think Epstein was strangled by the bedsheet, as detailed by the IG report.
“The ligature mark doesn’t match the noose,” he said. “If you look closely at the ligature there is a pattern to indicate it was some kind of object squeezing on the neck. It was also narrower than the noose, so it didn’t match.”
Dr. Baden charges the IG report failed to note that the Medical Examiner’s initial determined the cause of death was unknown or “pending further information at this time,” an indication that the forensic pathologist was unsure and waiting for the toxicology report.
But within days, chief medical examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson mysteriously released a report stating Epstein’s death was a suicide without notifying his brother, Mark Epstein.
“The very interesting thing is the night they changed the cause of death from ‘pending further information’ to ‘suicide’ – we thought that they should’ve notified the family,” his renowned attorney Stacey Richman told RadarOnline.com.
Dr. Baden added: “There was nothing in the report, which was 100 or so pages long, to indicate why the cause of death was changed. It doesn’t even mention that there was a change.”
The report also shows the FBI did not conduct a full-blown investigation into Epstein’s death – despite his connections to world leaders and politicians like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and billionaires Bill Gates and Les Wexner.
“Did anybody do DNA on the orange bed sheet?” Dr. Baden asked. “There is nothing to show they conducted any DNA examination or dust for fingerprints…. As far as I can see (the FBI) did nothing except rely on the two guards who are not reliable and the medical examiner.”
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