A former prisoner, who apparently spent hours talking to now-deceased sex offender and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein before his mysterious death, is speaking out in a new Fox Nation documentary.
Bill Mersey met the disgraced financer while they were incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correction Center (MCC) in New York City in 2019.
Mersey was serving a yearlong sentence for tax evasion. Sixty-six-year-old Epstein faced up to 45 years in prison if he was found guilty on charges of sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy.
"When I got to MCC, the first thing I knew, it was going to be really boring," Mersey told Fox Nation in the new documentary "The Final Hours of Jeffrey Epstein."
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The New York native said he decided to sign up for the "Inmate Companion Watch," which is a suicide-prevention program that pairs at-risk inmates with fellow prisoners.
"The responsibilities of suicide watch was essentially to be alert for four hours, sit in front of a window across from one inmate that you're watching," said Mersey. "And write down every 15 minutes what's going on."
Epstein's first alleged suicide attempt occurred on July 23 and he was reportedly found unconscious in his cell and with marks on his neck.
Mersey was assigned to monitor the very-high-profile, at-risk inmate.
"We had normal guy conversations, a lot of sports, a lot of crime, tons of crime," he recalled. "The majority of the conversations were first and foremost about his safety and how to handle prison -- over and over again."
"He solicited advice on how to handle the general population. He thought that intimidation was going to be a problem."
Mersey told Fox Nation that Epstein didn't appear to be suicidal, even though his circumstances were clearly weighing on him.
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"He was not depressed, although I would have conversations with him and every so often he'd sort of drift off and I'd go, "Ah, he's thinking about the s---storm he's in the middle of."
"As if being in the MCC wasn't bad enough, it doesn't get worse than being a child molester or a pedophile in the federal prison system," said Fox News national correspondent Bryan Llenas, who closely covered the Epstein saga.
"Jeffrey Epstein was a famous pedophile," explained Llenas. "Everyone knew he was going to be targeted, ostracized, and he feared for his life for good reason."
Less than one month later, according to a New York City medical examiner's autopsy, Epstein succeeded in killing himself by hanging himself in his jail cell.
Epstein's brother, Mark, hired renowned forensic pathologist and Fox News contributor Dr. Michael Baden, to be present for Jeffrey Epstein's autopsy and conduct his own investigation into the death.
"The forensic evidence thus far points to the more likely homicidal death than suicidal death," Dr. Baden told Fox Nation, "but that can't be concluded until sufficient evidence comes forth. I think there was a rush to judgment here that the possibility of homicide has to be fully looked into."
Several individuals in the new Fox Nation documentary expressed skepticism that Epstein would have been physically capable of killing himself in his cell.
Mersey is not one of them. "He had enough space to hang himself. The bunk beds get pretty high, so you could rig something up and you could kill yourself," he told Fox Nation.
"The Final Hours of Jeffrey Epstein," available exclusively on Fox Nation, delved into all of the outstanding questions surrounding Epstein's death, including what Mersey said he was told by another inmate, who claimed to be in the cell next to Epstein's -- the night he died.
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