A former inmate who spent hours speaking with Jeffrey Epstein in jail says he believes the disgraced financier died by suicide, having witnessed what he described as a marked decline in Epstein’s mood.
William “Dollar Bill” Mersey was held at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019, where he served as an “inmate companion” assigned to monitor Epstein while the financier was on suicide watch.
Mersey says he spoke with Epstein for at least 20 hours. Their conversations included Mersey’s own imprisonment for tax fraud after he failed to report the full income from an escort-advertising business.
During that time, he said he saw Epstein appear increasingly defeated. On one occasion, Mersey recalled finding him sitting on the floor of his cell, eating chicken from a container balanced between his legs.
Epstein was found dead inside his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His death was officially determined to be suicide.
Mersey, who was incarcerated at the facility from January through November 2019, has discussed his encounters with Epstein in a new BBC Panorama documentary airing tonight.
“I believe he killed himself because I observed him for many, many hours,” Mersey said. “I watched his decline. It was only during the last time I saw Jeffrey that his mood really struck me as defeated.”
William “Dollar Bill” Mersey served as an inmate companion at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019
Jeffrey Epstein was discovered dead in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019
“He was sitting on the floor of his cell with a Styrofoam container of chicken between his legs. He looked completely down and out. I asked him, ‘Jeffrey, what are you doing? Why are you eating chicken on the floor?’ He replied, ‘It’s just easier this way.’”
Mersey said Epstein then asked whether he needed money. “I said, ‘Well, you’re a billionaire, so why would I say no? That’s a ridiculous question,’” he recalled. Epstein allegedly replied that he could put money into Mersey’s inmate account.
“Looking back, I think he was saying goodbye,” Mersey said. “It was as if he was saying, ‘This is it. I’m going to give you a little money and you’re never going to see me again. I’m going to kill myself at the earliest opportunity,’ which he did.”
When asked whether the promised money ever arrived, Mersey answered: “No.”
Mersey became an “inmate companion” after completing four hours of training. Participants in the program took shifts observing prisoners placed on suicide watch.
The role gave Mersey unusual and frequent access to Epstein, making him one of the few people to have regular direct contact with the financier inside the jail, apart from correctional staff and Epstein’s lawyers.
Mersey explained how he sat and chatted with Epstein ‘for at least 15 or 20 hours’, adding: ‘I talked a lot about how running an advertising agency for prostitutes worked, which is how I made the money I didn’t declare on my income taxes and ended up there in his company.
‘And he was interested in the business aspect. There were times when he would sort of drift off and I knew he was ‘Oh my God, I was having a good time for a second and now I just remembered the deep s*** I’m in’.’
The cell where Jeffrey Epstein was housed at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center
Epstein was in a Special Housing Unit cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York
Epstein was discovered on the floor of his Special Housing Unit cell, weeks after he was temporarily transferred to the special suicide watch wing of the jail following an earlier suicide attempt.
The US Bureau of Prisons initially called Epstein’s death an ‘apparent suicide’, then the New York medical examiner officially ruled it a suicide.
But that have been various unsubstantiated theories ever since over whether foul play was involved in his death.
Epstein’s accomplice, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the US for luring young girls for him to sexually abuse.
Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, had accused Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager after allegedly being trafficked by Epstein. Andrew has strongly denied this.
The King last year stripped his brother of his royal titles after fresh revelations about his Epstein ties and Andrew was forced to leave his Windsor mansion and move to the monarch’s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
Andrew and Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US, were both arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over their connections with Epstein.
They were subsequently released under investigation and deny any wrongdoing.
Panorama – ‘Epstein: Money, Power and Abuse’ airs on BBC One at 8pm tonight
