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Hey, guys, it's Declan here. Listen, over the last couple of weeks have been a whole bunch of really intriguing document releases in the Epstein files. To repeat, it is a closed case. Suspicious death. There's a closed room, literally, in a prison. And we're trying to figure out whether it's suicide or murder. And these documents are extraordinary. They've actually prompted a number of US Senators to ask the prison guards to come to US Congress to testify under oath. And we'll go through them, and I'll explain to you what the documents reveal and what, based on our investigation so far, the context around it. Now, if you're just joining us, you've never seen any of the eight investigative documentaries myself and my students at the University of New Haven have done. Let me just give you a little background. I'm Canadian investigative journalist, university professor. I don't care about politics. I don't care about a bunch of agendas. The only thing I care about is, is to figure out what actually happened to Jeffrey Epstein in that prison. So you want agendas? You want politics, you want gossip? Please, I beg you, go somewhere else if you want to figure out the facts. Join my audience here on YouTube, because we are looking simply at the documentation and the evidence and the proof. And you'll see that we've already interviewed some really high profile people who have inside knowledge as to what went on here. So the context is Epstein has been placed in a deliberately maintained hell hole. And I'm not expressing a sympathy for Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just stating the facts. The Metropolitan Correctional center in downtown Manhattan was a mile away from Wall Street. It's surrounded by these multimillionaire penthouse suites. And it is a hellhole. It was designed to break the prisoners, most of whom were poor, presumably many of them were innocent black guys or working class guys, whatever. And the New York legal system, almost everyone knew about it, and they kept that system going because they wanted to drive the prisoners, the people that were put in that correctional center before their trial, crazy, mad. Again. We've got the documentation of Chappell Guzman, the infamous Sonola drug cartel guy. His defense lawyers are saying exactly the same thing. So Epstein's in that prison. He's in this notorious hell hole. There are serial sex offenders, there are rapists, there are organized crime linked drugs, traffickers, and murderers inside that prison. And those were just the prison guards. And I'm not saying this again, as embellishment, as any kind of agenda. This is what we see in the court documents in the criminal cases that have evolved since August 2019, when Epstein's body was discovered, there were rapists among the prison guards. There were serial sex offenders. There were murderers and drug traffickers. So that's the context that you need to properly judge these documents that come out. The two guards that are purportedly the only people around Epstein, they're within 20, 30ft of Epstein's cell on that final night, August 9th 10th, 2019. One of them, Poland Noel, has received 12 suspicious payments of cash between October 2018 and July 30th, 2019. So just 10 days before Epstein is discovered dead in his cell. And when I'm using the word suspicious, I'm not making that up. It's the actual word the bank Chase bank used when it handed the file to the FBI in November 2019, said, you guys are investigating this prison guard. This is suspicious. We're flagging this for you guys. Why does a prison guard take $5,000 in cash and put it into our. When she's guarding. She's one of the people guarding the most high profile rich billionaire in American prison at that time. The second thing is that she does a Google search minutes before Epstein's body is discovered saying, epstein in jail. And the FBI discovers this. They do a forensic search through her computer and they discover this search on it. Here's the interesting thing. And again, the theme of our series is the utterly inadequate FBI Department of Justice investigation. You would think that when the bank hands the FBI investigators suspicious activity report detailing 12 payments in cash which are coming into this prison guard's account that she's putting in, that they would ask her about this under oath. But they don't. They don't. She's standing there in front of a grand jury and the prosecutors don't ask her about these cash payments. Two, when they actually ask her about, you know, we, you know, were you searching Epstein's, you know, life in prison on the Internet a couple of, you know, brief time before he was discovered dead, she's like, oh, I can't remember that. You would think that an irony of that kind would be something that you would remember. So the final piece of interesting documentation that has just come out. And by the way, I really want to commend the Miami Herald. Julie Brown has been driving much of this investigation, has done fantastic work in the New York Post. They also, this is in their backyard as New York journalists, and they've done really, really good work. Much of these documentations have been found by their journalists. The New York Post discovers a five page handwritten note by an FBI investigator who analyzes and interviews inmates that were in the Special Housing Unit. The shoe with Epstein, and this is some of their quotes. He hears inmates shouting at Toba Noel, quote, you killed that dude. Further on it goes according to the notes. The female guard replied, quote, if he's dead, we're going to cover it up and he's going to have an alibi, my officers. Later, the inmate reported that other prisoners allegedly said Ms. Noel killed Jeffrey. You would think that would be mentioned, but again, there's nothing. Look, I've gone through the Department of Justice final report on the investigation, and there's a kind of inference that some of these remarks might have been made. But it's more in the context of, well, the conditions in the shoe were so bad that that is what killed him. Not, this is quite explicit. This is saying, this person killed him. Now, again, I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that this is necessarily true. I'm not suggesting that Tobin Noel necessarily killed Epstein. But I'm saying that if you have a prison guard who's accepted $5,000 in cash as a line of suspicious cash payments from someone, you would mention it and you would really pursue that investigation. Here's some more context. Those payments started in October 2018. The Metropolitan Correctional center was rife with corruption and outright criminality, much of it linked to organized crime, gangs. And I'm not speaking loosely here, there was a criminal trial where really senior mobsters were seen to have been working like this with half a dozen of the MCC guards. What might be happening in these documentation, to be really fair to everybody, is that in the midst of the investigation about Epstein's death, the investigators start finding out about all this rape, sexual assault of female prisoners, murder, drug trafficking, and they flip Toba Noel. They say, we'll let you go on this epoch scene thing, but you've got to provide us with information on the other guards. This might be the reason why we're not. It's not entirely clear why they don't pursue this properly if that's not the case, if they haven't flipped Tova Noel. The lack of investigation rigor is stunning on this. The second and final point on this context is that Jeffrey Epstein mentions Tova Noel in his final note, his handwritten note that is found in his cell. Some people have classified this note as a, quote, suicide note. I don't think it's fair to say that it's a list of complaints that ends, quote, no fun. But he specifically mentions the female prisoner guard that is serving him bad food. I would suggest to you that if Tova Noel had been paid off by Epstein, we should be bringing him everything. She'd be like, oh, you know, I brought this hamburger for you, whatever you wanted. And again, look at the context. There's some really suspicious activity inside that shoe vis a vis Jeffrey Epstein and some of the other prison guards, where you clearly are thinking, who did you pay off here on his final night alive in the world before he's taken to his prison cell. So between his 12 hour meeting with his defense lawyers and is actually going to his prison cell, he spends 20 minutes alone in the special housing unit shower with the landline, the office phone that the MCC guards bring to him. And he phones somebody and they don't monitor his call, but they literally bring him the phone and he phones up his then girlfriend who's living in Bilo, Russia, and has a 20 minute conversation with her. And. And you're saying that that was normal routine? Because it wasn't. It was definitely not normal routine. So we can infer that something was going on with Epstein and some of the prison guards. There were payments of some kind that were going on. But whether Tova Noel had received this 5,000 from Epstein, whether this was her regular thing, we don't know. And so there are suspicious questions that need to be answered. And what we get coming out of these documentation is again, this sense of just a dreadful, appalling, inept FBI investigation. So we're still monitoring this. I'll bring you any more documentation as it comes out. Stay tuned. We'll see you later. Thanks.
CrimeWaves: "The Dark Side of Epstein: Payments to Prison Guards Exposed"
Host: Declan Hill
Date: March 23, 2026
Declan Hill, Canadian investigative journalist and university professor, delves into newly released documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s death in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), Manhattan. The episode focuses on questionable cash payments made to prison guard Tova Noel, the context of corruption at the MCC, and the ongoing concerns regarding the rigor—or lack thereof—of the subsequent FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations. This episode is rich with first-hand document analysis, direct quotes, and relevant background, offering a sharp, fact-driven breakdown of the Epstein case’s murkiest corners.
This detailed, factual summary captures the episode’s major revelations, forensic breakdowns, and Declan Hill’s sharp analysis of one of the most controversial custodial deaths in US criminal history.