It's just a ‘flash of orange’ amid the concrete grey of a bleak New York detention centre. But for some it could be the most significant of all the revelations amid the three million documents recently released from the Epstein files.

For this blurry snippet of video could shed new light on the most hotly contested of all the arguments over paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein: The truth about his controversial death while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in August 2019.

According to documents released by the US Department of Justice, investigators reviewing surveillance video from the night Epstein was found dead in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center observed a fuzzy, orange-coloured shape moving up a staircase toward the wing (known as a ‘tier’) of the jail that contained his cell.

Inmates were issued with orange clothing and bedclothes, yet this sighting occurred at 10.39pm when prisoners should have been locked up for the night. Less than eight hours later, the corpse of 66-year-old Epstein would be discovered in his cell in Tier L of the prison.

The mysterious ‘flash of orange’ is but one of many details in the latest release of Epstein files fuelling doubts about the official line that he took his own life.

Take, for example, the discovery of an official death announcement dated before Epstein died – a revelation seized upon by those convinced he was murdered with the connivance of the so-called Deep State.

We now know, too, there had been talks between the federal authorities and Epstein’s lawyers about a ‘deal’ he might have been hoping to strike with prosecutors to identify other perpetrators in exchange for a reduced sentence. What people might he have named – and did they know about these discussions?

The files have fuelled speculation that Epstein was laundering money on behalf of Russian criminals and, potentially, collecting blackmail information on behalf of the Kremlin’s intelligence services.

Almost seven years on, there are many who still passionately believe Epstein was killed in an attempt to silence him before his trial on sex trafficking charges.

Some close to the financier, including his brother Mark and jailed associate Ghislaine Maxwell, have openly stated they do not believe he took his own life.

The more we learn about the vast scale of Epstein’s web of powerful friends – whose intimate connections with him he repeatedly threatened to expose – the more feasible it seems that one or more might have chosen to act before the financier spoke in public.

Here, in the light of the new evidence, is what we now know about the final weeks, days and hours of Jeffrey Epstein’s life – details that might finally point to the truth of how and why he died.

July 6, 2019: FBI agents are waiting to arrest him as Epstein’s jet lands at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport after a flight from Paris. Epstein is held at the grim, rat- and cockroach-infested, notoriously overcrowded and understaffed Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Manhattan.

July 10: Having pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, he is assigned to the jail’s Special Housing Unit (SHU) over safety and suicide concerns.

July 23: Five days after he is denied bail, Epstein is placed on suicide watch after he is found semi-conscious in his cell with an orange fabric noose tied around his neck. Epstein accuses his cell mate, Nicholas Tartaglione – a former police officer facing four murder charges – of trying to kill him.

Tartaglione insists he actually tried to revive his cellmate. Tartaglione, who is hardly reliable, will later claim in a pardon petition that he was ‘deliberately’ put in with Epstein at the orders of the Trump administration because of his violent reputation and hatred of child sex offenders – in the hope he’d kill his cellmate. The White House has denied the claim.

July 24: Epstein meets a prison psychologist – as confirmed in an FBI report in the latest release of files. He insists he had ‘no interest in killing myself’ and that it ‘would be crazy’ to commit suicide. ‘I have a life and I want to go back to living my life,’ he claims.

July 29: According to another FBI report in the files, agents and prosecutors meet his lawyers, ‘who, in very general terms, discussed the possibility of a resolution of the case, and the possibility of the defendant’s co-operation’.

Another document in the files mentions the same meeting with the federal agents but notes: ‘Defence counsel did not... indicate what the nature of Epstein’s co-operation might be, if any.’

However, even the rumour that Epstein might be willing to consider a deal would surely have terrified some associates. Neither does such a discussion quite tally with a man considering suicide.

July 30: Epstein is transferred back to the SHU after a week on suicide watch in the hospital wing. He is now required to have an assigned cellmate – Efrain Reyes – so he won’t be alone and is given the cell closest to the correctional officers’ desk.

July 31: Epstein is still in low spirits, complaining the toilet in their cell is leaking and he cannot bear the sound of running water. He also says he isn’t sleeping well because his cellmate won’t stop talking. At a new court hearing, he looks gloomy, although a prison psychologist insists he doesn’t need to return to suicide watch as Epstein’s made clear he intends to fight and win his case.

August 8: Epstein meets two of his lawyers to sign a new will which puts $577million into a trust fund. His Belarusian girlfriend of ten years, Karyna Shuliak, 30, is to be given the bulk of his fortune including $50million in cash and his homes in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands. Epstein also bequeaths Shuliak a 33-carat diamond ring and 48 loose diamonds ‘in contemplation of marriage’.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein’s brother Mark get $10million each.

Friday, August 9 

8am: Cellmate Efrain Reyes is moved out after attending court and being released, leaving Epstein alone. Nobody is assigned to replace Reyes – and nobody will be – even though staff know their warden has stipulated that, after the previous suicide attempt, Epstein must not be alone. 

The facility’s boss has also insisted the inmate – who in prison parlance is on ‘PSYCH Alert’ (psychiatric emergency) – be subjected to ‘30-minute checks’ and ‘unannounced rounds’.

Yet it turns out that two cameras with a view of Epstein’s cell are not functioning properly – an astonishing lapse – so the warden is relying on his staff more than he might realise.

9am: With hundreds of court documents now released alleging new details – some of them graphic – about sexual abuse claims against him, Epstein spends the day with his lawyers in a conference room.

The court developments are hardly encouraging but one of the lawyers, Reid Weingarten, will later insist Epstein showed no signs of contemplating suicide.

However, according to an official statement in the latest Epstein files release, the New York US Attorney’s Office is already drafting an announcement about his death – hours before it happened.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has blamed an ‘unfortunate typo’ for the wrong date – August 9 rather than 10 – appearing on the document.

‘Any suggestion that the department drafted a statement in advance of Jeffrey Epstein’s death is false,’ said the DOJ.

4pm: Despite being stationed just 15 feet from Epstein’s cell, guards Tova Noel and Ghitto Bonhomme start their shift by failing to make the first of a series of checks on his tier in a 4pm ‘inmate count’.

It’s the first of many lapses. From midnight to 6.30am, Noel will complete and sign at least 75 separate records falsely saying the guards carried out 30-minute rounds to check on Epstein. In fact, Epstein is still with his lawyers and only returns at 6.45pm.

7pm: Noel escorts Epstein to his cell after allowing him to call his girlfriend, Shuliak. According to a prison time log, the guard reports it was a ‘pleasant call in good spirits; nothing unusual’.

10pm: By this time, all inmates are locked in their cells for the night. Noel and Bonhomme don’t carry out the 10pm inmate count either, although they record that they have done.

10.30pm: Surveillance footage from the only relevant camera known to have been working that night shows Noel briefly walk up to, and then back from, the door to L Tier where Epstein is held. That is officially the last time anyone goes near the entrance to the tier until Epstein’s body is discovered.

Although the FBI has claimed this functioning camera would have captured anyone going up the stairs towards Epstein’s cell, critics point out that the view is in fact partially obscured to the point someone could in fact have ascended without being seen.

10.39pm: Surveillance footage shows a ‘flash of orange’ on the same stairs. Officials have always insisted nobody other than the guards entered the area that night. Yet, in an FBI memorandum included in the new files, an agent notes that ‘a flash of orange looks to be going up the L Tier stairs – could possibly be an inmate escorted up to that Tier’.

The DOJ’s Office of Inspector General, which also investigated the circumstances of Epstein’s death, disagreed, concluding it was an unidentified prison officer carrying orange ‘linen or bedding’.

Independent experts have since sided with the FBI’s theory.

10.41pm: The FBI memorandum notes a ‘person’ walking into view ‘from the direction of either L Tier or exit to laundry room’.

Is this the same person? CBS News asked independent video analysts who said the movement of the orange blur was ‘more consistent with an inmate – or someone wearing an orange prison uniform – than a corrections officer’.

11.58pm: The start of a notorious ‘missing minute’ from the jail’s 11-hour surveillance footage of the area near Epstein’s cell. The gap in the video has long fuelled conspiracy theory claims that this is the moment someone goes into Epstein’s cell to kill him and that the authorities have tried to cover it up by erasing the evidence.

Attorney General Pam Bondi later said the brief gap came about because the recording system had a nightly reset resulting in a lost minute every 24 hours. However, the latest trove from the Epstein files confirms previous reports that officials had always possessed the full video footage and there was no missing minute.

The misunderstanding came about after, in 2024, an FBI agent destroyed the master copy of the video on the grounds the case was considered closed.

Saturday, August 10

12am to 6.30am: Noel and Michael Thomas, who takes over from Bonhomme at midnight, fail to complete inmate counts at 3am and 5am, as well as the ‘wellness’ checks on Epstein every 30 minutes. Instead, the guards remain by their desk, occasionally moving around the SHU common room. They use some of the time searching furniture and motorcycles sales on their computers. According to prosecutors, they were asleep for three hours.

The pair were later charged with falsifying records – including one in which they claimed Epstein waved at them when they checked on him at midnight – but the charges were dropped.

6.30am: The guards walk into Epstein’s wing to start serving breakfast, pushing trays of cereal through the cell hatches.

6.33am: Thomas discovers Epstein unresponsive on his cell floor and later says he ‘ripped’ him down from a near-seated position in which he was hanging from a makeshift noose made from a sheet.

Epstein’s legs are straight out and his buttocks little more than an inch from the floor. According to a corrections department memo, he is ‘cold’ with ‘no palpable pulse’. Thomas sounds the alarm and tells a supervisor: ‘Epstein hung himself.’ Thomas swiftly admits they failed to do their checks and had ‘messed up’.

6.49am: A photographer takes pictures of Epstein, including his neck injuries, as he lies almost naked on a stretcher with medics trying to revive him. He is taken to hospital where he is pronounced dead at 7.36am.

1.35pm: FBI agents arrive to find Epstein’s cell in disarray. As revealed by dozens of photos taken four hours earlier – and included in the latest tranche of government files – crucial evidence has been rifled through and moved.

The cell is strewn with orange clothes and bedsheets, while mattresses have been pushed into a corner and Epstein’s belongings and medications are lined up neatly on his bunk.

Things had been moved around, former New York police detective Herman Weisberg tells CBS after studying the pictures. ‘It appeared that the scene was, for lack of a better term, staged a bit.’ 

Most destructive of all for the investigators, Epstein’s body has already been taken out of the cell, making it impossible – according to a forensic pathologist, Dr Michael Baden, hired by Epstein’s brother – to determine the time of death.

Dr Baden, who observed the autopsy, renewed his claim this week that Epstein’s neck injuries are more consistent with ‘strangulation pressure’ than suicide – in other words, murder – and called for the case to be re-examined.

Investigators have even now failed to definitively identify the noose which guard Michael Thomas says he’d seen tied around Epstein’s neck. He tells the FBI: ‘I don’t recall taking the noose off... I don’t recall taking the thing from around his neck.’

Although a noose was found in the cell, it was later discounted and – according to Dr Baden – didn’t match Epstein’s injuries. ‘The markings [on Epstein’s neck] would have required a different type of material,’ he said.

August 12: US Attorney General William Barr admits ‘serious irregularities’ at the centre without elaborating. He later blames ‘a perfect storm of screw-ups’.

August 17: New York’s chief medical examiner rules the death a suicide. The new documents reveal she reviewed the jail surveillance footage and concluded it was too blurred to identify anyone.

But successive polls show far more Americans believe Epstein was murdered than committed suicide – and there’s little sign the mountain of newly released evidence will change their minds.

It remains the case that if someone with the necessary wealth and power did indeed arrange the death of Jeffrey Epstein, for now at least they have got way with it.