Unanswered questions about Epstein's final hours: A 'flash of orange,' a Google search, a makeshift noose

Members of Congress examining Jeffrey Epstein's suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 are seeking testimony this week from the last guard to see him alive.

Around 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 2019, two guards were making the breakfast rounds in a locked and isolated unit of the federal jail in lower Manhattan when one of them knocked on the metal door of Jeffrey Epstein’s cell.

“Come to the door,” officer Michael Thomas said. “Come to the door.”

Epstein did not stir. When Thomas entered the cell, which was unusually cluttered with extra blankets and linens, he discovered Epstein alone and unresponsive, hanging by a strip of orange cloth tied to the top of a bunk bed. Thomas yelled to the other guard, Tova Noel, to call for help, and tried to resuscitate Epstein, according to transcripts of their interviews with federal investigators.

“He kept saying, ‘Breathe, Epstein, breathe,’” Noel, who was the last person to see the convicted sex offender alive the night before, told investigators. Thomas “was like, ‘We’re going to be in so much trouble.’”

Add NBC News to GoogleHouse committee in Epstein case calls for testimony of prison guard working night of his death02:47The events that unfolded at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center, and the cascade of staff failures that precipitated Epstein’s suicide, are documented in interview transcripts and other investigatory files, videos and photos that the Justice Department recently made public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Epstein, a wealthy New York financier who cultivated influence with politicians, royalty, academics and other powerful elites, was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges related to the sexual abuse of girls as young as 14.