Michael Thomas, a veteran Federal Bureau of Prisons correctional officer who worked the Metropolitan Correctional Center SHU, gives a firsthand account of institutional rounds, count procedures, and paperwork handling. He discusses why required checks were missed, how round sheets and count slips are processed, and the effects of staffing shortages and fatigue on night shift duties.
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Two-Officer Requirement Undermined By Single Signature Practice
Metropolitan Correctional Center rounds require two officers but one signature can represent both on the round sheet.
Michael Thomas explains rounds sheets cover multiple tiers and one officer signing often stands in for the absent partner, revealing procedural laxity.
insights INSIGHT
Round Sheets Collected By Internal Officer At Shift End
Round sheets encompass multiple shifts and tiers and are collected at day end by an 'internal' officer who rides the elevator.
Thomas describes internal as an officer who gathers paperwork because inmates cannot ride elevators alone in the high-rise facility.
insights INSIGHT
Single Overall Count Masks Tier-Level Visibility
Counts are called into the control center via a CNA and reported as one overall number for the entire SHU rather than per tier.
Thomas says officers give a single institutional count number, obscuring tier-level visibility.
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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 Epstein Chronicles