Jeffrey Epstein’s former bodyguard and driver said in a recent interview that he believes “somebody helped” his longtime boss himself.
“Somebody helped him do that,” Igor Zinoviev, a one-time UFC fighter who claims to have lived at Epstein’s Palm Beach guest house for five or six years, told New York Magazine in an interview published Wednesday.
When NY Mag’s M.L. Nestel pressed Zinoviev on why someone would have aided Epstein in killing himself, the Russian MMA fighter was reticent to pursue the subject.
“Listen, you know, that’s going a little too deep,” he replied.
In an unpublished interview with Nestel from 2015, Zinoviev claimed Epstein was being alerted to police raids before they took place.
MORE: NYC Fire Department Looking Into How Epstein’s Death Appeared on 4chan Before It Became Public
“He always do something wrong. There was some nights in question,” Zinoviev told Nestel in 2015. “There was at home arrest and police, before they come to the house, they call him and tell him they coming in at eight o’clock in the morning. It’s all corruption you know. It’s all bullshit.”
In 2015, Zinoviev said he was “not surprised at all” that Epstein was facing scrutiny for improper conduct with teen girls.
“I’m just surprised how low he can be outside the real world. Someday is going to call him and it will be real jail. He have so much money he can pay it off,” he said.
After Nestel brought up the old quotes during his most recent interview with Zinoviev, the former bodyguard issued a cryptic warning.
“Listen, don’t put yourself in trouble. Seriously,” he told Nestel.
When the NY Mag reporter continued to press, asking if he was “worried about the local cops,” Zinoviev urged him to drop the line of questioning.
“Listen, you’re really smart and I’m not going to offer that over the phone right now, okay? You’re really smart. You have no idea. Please!” he said.
“I can’t explain you. I can’t explain you over the phone any of this,” Zinoviev said in reply to Nestel asking him what he meant.
Jeffrey Epstein bodyguard echoes many who are raising questions about the millionaire financier’s death
A Wednesday report in The Washington Post revealed details of the autopsy performed on Epstein.
Sources familiar with the matter told The Post that suffered multiple breaks in his neck bones and that one of the broken bones was the hyoid bone, which is located near the Adam’s apple. According to experts who spoke to The Post, such breaks can happen in those who commit suicide by hanging, but more commonly occur in “victims of homicide by strangulation.”
On both the political left and right, alternative theories about how Epstein died have quickly proliferated, with many pointing to his former powerful friends. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily were trending on Twitter on Saturday along with a competing hashtag, TrumpBodyCount.
According to CBS News, “shouting and shrieking” was heard from Epstein’s cell on the morning he died.
The New York Times reported on Monday that one of the two people guarding Epstein when he died in a federal jail cell was a “substitute.”
The stand-in guard did not normally work as a correctional officer, three prison officials with knowledge of the case told The Times on condition of anonymity. The sources, one prison official and two law enforcement officials, did not identify the person or say what type of job he usually worked.
Meanwhile, a former inmate at the Metropolitan Correction Center told the New York Post on Saturday that there is “no way” he killed himself there.
Epstein, who was facing up to 45 years in prison on charges of sex trafficking girls as young as 14, was found unconscious Saturday morning in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. He was pronounced dead that morning after apparently hanging himself.
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