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Based on my experiences dealing with prisons & jails:
Bribing a prison guard doesn't take that much money. In my state, quite a few are caught every year smuggling drugs into facilities for paltry amounts of money, and certainly paltry amounts when compared to the pension/benefits they're losing for the rest of their life.
Bribery isn't the only avenue. Intimidation also works. "Oh hey, you have family at [address]. Nice family. How about you take a nap on date/time and make sure you're away from cell block X."
The guards can be in on it to some extent, and they're generally no bigger fan of accused child molesters than the general public. Plus getting other inmates to commit murder isn't impossible. In one facility I'm aware of, several accused child molesters kept ending up as cellmates to a particular accused murderer (who had been molested as a child). Those accused child molesters kept having unfortunate fatal accidents while a large group of other inmates were willing to swear the accused murderer was in the showers, at recreation, etc. The placement of those victims as his cellmates and him being informed of their charges was under the control of the guards.
So someone planning something nefarious doesn't necessarily need a well-paid, skilled hitman. They need to bribe or coerce guards into looking the other way for a few minutes (or just tell them that the guy in the cell is a child molester and he's going to get taken care of). They need an inmate who might have a grudge against child molesters and be willing to commit murder (not hard to find in most jails and prisons--guys have been beaten to death for the wrong rumor that they were a child molester). They need to get that inmate into the cell for a few minutes.
Did that happen to Epstein? I don't know. But it wouldn't require that many moving parts. I think intentionally giving him the opportunity to off himself while he was supposed to be closely watched is more likely, but most prisons & jails are incredibly shoddily-run and capable of being manipulated.
The thing with guards getting bribed is that they are convinced they aren't going to get caught, which is one of the reasons they are cheap. Getting involved with something like Epstein is a 100% bad idea and even idiots guards would know it.
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Epstein wasn't in general population. He didn't have a cellmate at the time. No other inmates had any access to him unless a guard let him out of his cell and into Epstein's, which we know didn't happen because there's nothing on tape showing that anyone went in the direction of Epstein's cell all night. Unless it's your contention that during the missing three minutes a guard went up the stairs, let one preselected prisoner out of his cell and into Epstein's, waited while the prisoner murdered Epstein and fashioned a noose from bedsheets, then let the prisoner back into his cell and walked downstairs, and somehow everyone who had access to the tape from the Electronics Technician on up the chain was also bought off or intimidated. That behavior goes beyond looking the other way for a few minutes and tends towards being an active participant liable to be indicted for a capital crime.
I don't know what state you're in, but "quite a few" doesn't mean much considering how many COs are in the state. If you're in Vermont, with only 600 officers, even if one was getting caught every week, and there were just as many who didn't get caught, and all were susceptible to bribery, that still leaves at 5/6 chance that the guy you pick doesn't participate and goes to the police, which is more common if you're using intimidation as a tactic and there's nothing in it for the CO. Even in Vermont, someone would have to be getting caught nearly every other day for the odds to even get to 50/50. Remember, you can't just pick the most susceptible guard; you have to pick someone who actually has access to Epstein, and since they don't work alone you need at least two people. So even if half of the guards are compromised you still only have a 25% chance of your gambit not resulting in a lengthy prison sentence, or at least a very uncomfortable conversation with police whereby your powerful employer's cover is completely blown.
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This is 100% what prison guards have relayed to me as the behavior of their coworkers(obviously not themselves, of course. They’re very clear about that). And, while people willing to kill are in shorter supply than Hollywood would have you believe, prison is the place to look for them- and they also don’t like child molesters much.
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