The FBI’s files on Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death show that the convicted sex offender was killed, contrary to the official account, according to historian Andrew Lownie.
Lownie, a British historian and author, told The Daily Beast Podcast that he has seen “internal FBI correspondence” stating that another inmate murdered Epstein.
Epstein, 66, was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges when he was found hanged in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on Aug. 10, 2019.
A 2023 report by the Department of Justice determined that he died by suicide.
But questions about Epstein’s death have only grown amid scrutiny surrounding the government’s handling of the case, with many convinced that the well-connected financier was killed.
Lownie told host Joanna Coles that a former FBI agent shared with him FBI correspondence asserting that Epstein was murdered by a “fellow convict who was brought in to do this.”
“It was treated as fact,” Lownie said. “This wasn’t speculation.”
Lownie said he was also given the name of the prisoner who allegedly murdered Epstein, but hadn’t shared the name publicly due to “liability considerations.” He added that he is still conducting “research,” saying, “I’d like to be able to follow up on this as soon as I can.”
On the night of Epstein’s death, corrections officers on duty failed to follow protocol that required check-ins every 30 minutes.
A failure of the digital video recording system resulted in the loss of CCTV footage from the night, according to CBS News, and lapses marred the subsequent federal investigation into the convicted pedophile’s death.
Speculation intensified when it was revealed that the 11 hours of CCTV footage from near Epstein’s cell, released by the Trump administration in July, was missing a minute and had been edited repeatedly.
While the extra minute was eventually released, a CBS News analysis found that the government’s footage still fails to provide a clear view of the entrance to Epstein’s cell block.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for comment.
In another explosive allegation, Lownie—who recently detailed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s long friendship with Epstein in a new book, Entitled—said that sources told him Epstein had plotted to hire a hitman to assassinate the then-prince in the weeks before his death.
According to the historian, two people who were close to Epstein—“one in Paris and another one in Palm Beach”—said Epstein had grown paranoid that Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson would leak incriminating information about him.
“I think he was getting very nervous,” Lownie told Coles. “He thought particularly Sarah Ferguson might spill the beans on him and this was a precautionary measure, I suppose.”
Detailing the claim on his Substack, Lownie wrote that one of the sources told him that Epstein “had been in talks with a notorious U.K. sniper for hire.”
“If Jeffrey hadn’t died, Andrew and Fergie would have been murdered,” the former friend of Epstein told Lownie. “They knew too much about his sex trafficking ring.”
According to Lownie, the source also claimed Epstein had become convinced that the British Royal Family was planning to assassinate him.
Just last month, King Charles III, 77, formally stripped his younger brother, 65, of his rank and “Duke of York” title and banished him from his royal lodgings, in part due to long-swirling accusations related to Andrew’s long-documented relationship with Epstein.
When reached for comment on Epstein’s death, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast, “Why isn’t the Daily Beast concerned with their own employee—Michael Wolff—closely corresponding with and offering advice to Jeffrey Epstein?”
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