MCC Corrections Officer Michael Thomas And His OIG Interview Related To Epstein's Death (Part 8) (3/3/26)
Mar 5, 2026
A corrections officer recounts nighttime routines and who carried which keys during the shift. The conversation covers how supervisory walkthroughs had no set times and limited interaction. Procedures for visitor entry, food cart movements, and control center verification are detailed. Staffing shortages and missed rounds that left an inmate unmonitored are highlighted.
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insights INSIGHT
Operations Lieutenant Routinely Walked Housing Units
Michael Thomas describes routine supervisory walk-throughs of housing units by an operations lieutenant that occur throughout the night.
The lieutenant
insights INSIGHT
TwoStep Entry Process For SHU Access
Entry to the SHU requires calling control, outer door verification, and an inner locked door that shoe staff unlock.
Control verifies identity via camera and opens the outer door while shoe staff use a master key for the inner door.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Shoe Number One Usually Carries Master Key
Thomas recalls shoe number one typically carries the master key on their person during night shifts.
He says on August 9–10 the key was likely with Officer Noel while he had cuff and door keys.
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Michael Thomas was a veteran correctional officer employed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan — a federal detention facility — where Jeffrey Epstein was being held in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. Thomas had been with the Bureau of Prisons since about 2007 and, on the night of Epstein’s death (August 9–10, 2019), was assigned to an overnight shift alongside another officer, Tova Noel, responsible for conducting required 30-minute inmate checks and institutional counts in the SHU. Because Epstein’s cellmate had been moved and not replaced, Epstein was alone in his cell, making regular monitoring all the more crucial under bureau policy.
Thomas became a focal figure in the official investigations into Epstein’s death because surveillance footage and institutional records showed that neither he nor Noel conducted the required rounds or counts through the night before Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell early on August 10. Prosecutors subsequently charged both officers with conspiracy and falsifying records for signing count slips that falsely indicated they had completed rounds they had not performed. Thomas and Noel later entered deferred prosecution agreements in which they admitted falsifying records and avoided prison time, instead receiving supervisory release and community service. Investigators concluded that chronic staffing shortages and procedural failures at the jail contributed to the circumstances that allowed Epstein to remain unmonitored for hours before his death, which was officially ruled a suicide by hanging.
The Vault: The Epstein Files