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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27615 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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I was struck recently by this article talking about how the underlying anxieties are more or less true in both the conspiracy and non conspiracy versions (powerful financiers getting away with stuff and having undue influence, etc) but here is how it phrased what it called the two notable holes:

For one thing, why did the conspiracy of wealthy sex perverts wait until Epstein was in prison to kill him, when it presumably would have been easier to do it after he was convicted and released the first time, or after the second time a grand jury was convened against him but before he was in federal custody? If you believe a group of powerful people killed Epstein to keep him from revealing what he knew, you have to ask why he didn’t die in a car accident, instead of during the three minutes

I mean, isn’t it a lot easier and less suspicious if he dies earlier? Aside from what I view to be some major logistical problems with a quick three minute in and out strangulation, though I admit I’m not well read in to the nitty-gritty. And:

The non-conspiracy version of events says just as much. In this version, New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Facility, the jail where Epstein died that a court ordered closed in 2021, simply didn’t work very well. The plumbing was leaking, and the building was falling apart. The camera system didn’t work right. The guards were overworked and understaffed and sat in the break room browsing the internet when they were supposed to be making their rounds. This story of institutional failure should be familiar to anyone who has been to a VA hospital or worked somewhere that got bought by a private equity fund.

Epstein literally attempted suicide a few weeks before, and actually did right about when he was denied bail and it became increasingly clear that the best case scenario for him still would involve lengthy amounts of jail time. He’s a billionaire, used to much nicer things, and was not in a nice prison. As far as suicidal logic goes, that seems pretty normal? And incompetence by prison guards is definitely my base expectation. Shit is boring, pay is often bad, and the job doesn’t attract the best.

My hypothetical plan for killing the guy would basically be "contact some organized criminal enterprise that has associates already in said prison, and guards already on the payroll, and arrange for there to be a window where those associates can access the cell just long enough to strangle the guy and leave without being observed."

I assume that targeted hits in prison are an order of magnitude or so more common than hits outside of it (in the U.S.). So we just need means and opportunity.

Ironically putting him in prison allows you MORE control over weird variables, rather than having to arrange for him to be suicided outside of prison, where he has some freedom of movement and can set up countermeasures, AND you will have to do a lot more cleanup of evidence.

This particular facility is better known for several rape settlements (about guards), a beating settlement, and holding El Chapo for a bit. I don’t get the vibe that it’s the kind of jail, due to its nature as higher security, where gangs have the run of it… not to say it isn’t plagued by typical jail management stuff. I looked a bit into the history of the place. There’s a few cases where a guard smuggled in cell phones, various drugs, and lots of other contraband, but one was for two people and was a money making scheme. The other was three guards and the inmates had local gang connections (they are after all criminals from the area in many cases) however the guards didn’t. By all accounts the place was miserable - worse than Rikers said one inmate, with a mountain of lurid corroboration. El Chapo himself allegedly had a mental breakdown after staying there for a just few months. All this combines to me to suggest the normal official outcome is more likely.

Now you’ll never hear me call it impossible. It’s plausible beyond a superficial level. But far from likely. Not likely enough IMO that treating it as a worst case scenario is logical to do. For the guards to escalate to murder of a high profile suspect like that a noticeable amount of money would have to change hands and the feds are pretty good at money tracking, for whatever else they sometimes lack.

Are you basing this on actual knowledge of the prison system, or your own interpolations based on TV and movies?

Actual knowledge in the sense that I've read about the topic a bit. They exist, and they have extensive influence inside prisons.

I have not been to prison.

The main point I believe is that most prison gangs have a ready supply of guys who are in for life and are thus willing to commit murders if ordered to do so, and if not can still coerce someone to do a murder for them.

Most of said gangs have affiliated orgs outside the prison that can act as points of contact. Since criminals outside prison anticipate going to prison in the future, the outside guys really want to stay in the inside guys' good graces.

If you want somebody who is currently in a prison dead, this is the most straightforward approach I can think of, which avoids having to sneak your own independent contractor in and out without leaving much trace.

As I said in another comment, and would be blindingly obvious if you had read the official report, Epstein wasn't in the general population. He had limited contact with other prisoners. Furthermore, this was more of a jail than a prison, with people moving in and out regularly. Epstein was intentionally segregated from other prisoners for the explicit purpose of protection; this theory doesn't comport with the known facts.

Aside from what I view to be some major logistical problems with a quick three minute in and out strangulation, though I admit I’m not well read in to the nitty-gritty.

A soldier with the right equipment can do it in seconds.

What equipment would allow you to kill someone in seconds leaving only the marks left on Epstein? How many seconds are we talking? Getting a garrote on a resisting victim is not trivial unless you have the element of surprise, and strangulation takes a while to set in. Even after someone goes out they are not dead immediately. Whether by blood or air choke, it takes seconds to put someone out but much longer to kill.

Unlike the movies, real life garrotes function by instantly crushing the windpipe, the killer doesn’t need to sit there for three and a half minutes choking the guy out. And controlling a resisting victim is pretty easy when you have three or four people.

You said “a soldier” so I assumed you had some tool in mind that would allow one person to reliably strangle a victim. It does seem plausible that a crushed trachea could keep the air supply cut off after an attacker walks away, though in this case if he was killed he would have been hung afterwards which would have maintained pressure on the blood vessels as well.

Honestly for a single attacker the best tool might have been a taser to subdue him and then they could have just strangled him with the sheets since they have the stage the hanging anyway.

Typically when a soldier uses a garrote, the victim is pushed forward with a knee to the back, while the garrote is pulled backwards with force. This crushes the trachea to the point the airway cannot reopen, and possibly even breaks the neck. It is a useful technique for quietly and quickly removing pickets, and if you want to see a demonstration there are World War II era training films that show the technique. This is consistent with the postmortem analysis that found physical effects that differed from those you would see with a suspension hanging, and were more consistent with a violent strangulation.

Yeah that makes sense in light of the broken bones and cartilage. Apparently those injuries can happen in older individuals from hanging, but I can’t imagine he had much space to get a good drop if he did hang himself, so it still seems pretty suspicious to me.

A decently strong guy with a bit of Jiu-jistu training could do it, too.

Rear naked choke to render him unconscious, then string him up to actually die of strangulation.

Maybe they found it easier to kill him when he was trapped in a prison cell unable to escape, than when he was free to move around at will? Contra to the memes, I don't think Hillary Clinton actually has an organization of John Wick style super-assassins at her beck and call ready to hunt down inconvenient witnesses wherever they may hide. Killing someone and making it look like an accident or suicide isn't exactly easy.

Does it even have to look like an accident? Surely there's enough dodgy people on in Epstein's circles where if he was gunned down it's ugly but nobody's overly questioning it.

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