New York City jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself shutting down ‘at least temporarily’

The scandal-plagued federal jail where pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein killed himself is being shut down for an undisclosed period of time due to ongoing problems at the facility.

The Metropolitan Correctional Center, located in lower Manhattan, has jailed a slew of notorious inmates, including Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernie Madoff, mafia hitman Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano and associates of Usama bin Laden.

In recent years, the jail has faced a number of controversies over its squalid conditions, chronic understaffing and rampant spread of coronavirus within its walls.

The facility, which currently houses less than half of its normal population with 223 inmates, will be shut down while it tries to fix those problems.

“In an effort to address the issues at MCC NY as quickly and efficiently as possible, the department has decided to close the MCC, at least temporarily, until those issues have been resolved,” the Department of Justice told the Associated Press Thursday.

The jail’s pervasive problems came under new scrutiny when Epstein hanged himself in a cell on Aug. 10, 2019. The disgraced financier had tried to hang himself with a strip of bedsheet just three weeks before his suicide, but was returned to a regular cell after a week in the hospital wing. – READ MORE