Medical examiner rules Epstein death a suicide by hanging
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, MICHAEL BALSAMO and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s medical examiner ruled Jeffrey Epstein’s death a suicide Friday, confirming after nearly a week of speculation that the financier faced with sex trafficking charges hanged himself in his jail cell.
Epstein, 66, was found dead at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10, touching off outrage that such a high-profile prisoner could have gone unwatched at the Manhattan federal lockup where infamous inmates Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff came and went without incident.
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said in a statement that she made the suicide determination “after careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings.”
Sampson’s announcement came as a Justice Department official told The Associated Press that some prison staffers believed to have relevant information aren’t cooperating with investigators.
Epstein’s lawyers said they were “not satisfied” with Sampson’s conclusions and that they would conduct their own investigation, including seeking to obtain any video of the area around Epstein’s cell from the time leading to his death.
Epstein, arrested July 6 and jailed since, was found dead with a bedsheet around his neck less than 24 hours after more than 2,000 pages of documents were made public from a since-settled lawsuit against an ex-girlfriend alleged to be his aide-de-camp. The documents included graphic allegations against Epstein and a 2016 deposition in which he refused to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.
At the time of Epstein’s death, the Bureau of Prisons said he had apparently killed himself. But that did not squelch conspiracy theories , including one retweeted by President Donald Trump that speculated Epstein was murdered.
What emerged in the days that followed, however, was not evidence of a sinister plot, but early signs that prison staff failed to properly secure and monitor a prisoner, leading to ferocious criticism by everyone from Attorney General William Barr to Epstein’s lawyers.
Jail guards on Epstein’s unit failed to check on him every half hour, as required, and are suspected of falsifying log entries to show they had, according to several people familiar with the matter. Both were working overtime because of staffing shortages, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they lacked authorization to publicly discuss the investigation.
Epstein, who was charged with sexually abusing numerous underage girls over several years, had been placed on suicide watch last month after he was found on his cell floor July 23 with bruises on his neck.
Multiple people familiar with operations at the jail say Epstein was taken off the watch after about a week and put back in a high-security housing unit where he was less closely monitored, but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.
Barr says officials have uncovered “serious irregularities” at the jail. The FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general are investigating.
“It is indisputable that the authorities violated their own protocols,” Epstein’s lawyers said in a statement late Friday, calling the conditions in the unit where Epstein spent his final hours, “harsh, even medieval.”
In the wake of Epstein’s death, federal prosecutors have shifted their focus to possible charges against anyone who assisted or enabled him in what authorities say was rampant sexual abuse. Barr, on Monday, warned that “any co-conspirators should not rest easy.”
Authorities are most likely turning their attention to the team of recruiters and employees who, according to police reports, knew about Epstein’s penchant for underage girls and lined up victims for him.
The Associated Press reviewed hundreds of pages of police reports , FBI records and court documents that show Epstein relied on an entire staff of associates to arrange massages that led to sex acts.
Meanwhile, the investigation into Epstein’s death is being hampered because some people, including jail staff members who are believed to have information pertinent to the probe, aren’t cooperating and have not yet been interviewed by the FBI, according to a Justice Department official.
The official said the FBI has repeatedly sought interviews with staff members but those interviews are being delayed by union representatives. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
One possible roadblock to further charges is the controversial plea agreement Epstein struck more than a decade ago in Florida . The non-prosecution agreement not only allowed Epstein to plead guilty in 2008 to lesser state charges and serve just 13 months behind bars, it also shielded from prosecution several Epstein associates who allegedly were paid to recruit girls for him.
The AP often does not report details of suicide methods but has made an exception because Epstein’s cause of death is pertinent to the ongoing investigations.
The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Thursday that the autopsy revealed that a bone in Epstein’s neck had been broken, leading to speculation his death was a homicide. Sampson responded that “no single finding can be evaluated in a vacuum” and experts said the bone in question often breaks in suicidal hangings.
Autopsy reports are not public records in New York, and the details of the medical examiner’s finding, or the evidence she relied upon, were not immediately available.
An office telephone number for Dr. Michael Baden, the pathologist hired by Epstein’s representatives to observe the autopsy, repeatedly rang unanswered on Friday.
Epstein was a wealth manager who hobnobbed with the rich, famous and influential, including presidents and a prince.
He owned a private island in the Caribbean, homes in Paris and New York City, a New Mexico ranch and a fleet of high-price cars. His friends had once included Britain’s Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton and Trump both said they had not seen Epstein in years when new charges were brought against him last month.
The medical examiner’s ruling that Epstein’s death was a suicide came a day after two more women sued Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, saying he sexually abused them. The suit, filed Thursday in a federal court in New York, claims the women were working as hostesses at a popular Manhattan restaurant in 2004 when they were recruited to give Epstein massages.
One was 18 at the time. The other was 20.
The lawsuit says an unidentified female recruiter offered the hostesses hundreds of dollars to provide massages to Epstein, saying he “liked young, pretty girls to massage him,” and wouldn’t engage in any unwanted touching. The women say Epstein groped them anyway.
One plaintiff now lives in Japan, the other in Baltimore. They seek $100 million in damages, citing depression, anxiety, anger and flashbacks.
Other lawsuits, filed over many years by other women, accused him of hiring girls as young as 14 or 15 to give him massages, then subjecting them to sex acts.
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Michael Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jim Mustian in Atlanta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

‘Easy Rider’ star, 1960s swashbuckler Peter Fonda dies at 79
By LINDSEY BAHR and ANDREW DALTON Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Peter Fonda, the son of a Hollywood legend who became a movie star in his own right after both writing and starring in the counter-culture classic “Easy Rider,” died Friday at his home of complications from lung cancer. He was 79.
“I am very sad,” Jane Fonda said in a statement. “He was my sweet-hearted baby brother. The talker of the family. I have had beautiful alone time with him these last days. He went out laughing.”
Born into Hollywood royalty as Henry Fonda’s only son, Peter Fonda carved his own path with his non-conformist tendencies and earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing the psychedelic road trip movie “Easy Rider.” He would never win that golden statuette, but he would later be nominated for his leading performance as a Vietnam veteran and widowed beekeeper in “Ulee’s Gold.”
Fonda was born in New York in 1940 to parents whose personas were the very opposite of the rebellious images their kids would cultivate. Father Henry Fonda was already a Hollywood giant, known for playing straight-shooting cowboys and soldiers. Mother Frances Ford Seymour was a Canadian-born U.S. socialite.
He was only 10 years old when his mother died. She had a nervous breakdown after learning of her husband’s affair and was confined to a hospital. In 1950, she killed herself. It would be about five years before Peter Fonda learned the truth behind her death.
Fonda accidentally shot himself and nearly died on his 11th birthday. It was a story he told often, including during an acid trip with members of The Beatles and The Byrds during which Fonda reportedly said, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”
John Lennon would use the line in The Beatles song “She Said She Said.”
Fonda went to private schools in Massachusetts and Connecticut as a child, moving on to the University of Nebraska in his father’s home state, joining the same acting group — the Omaha Community Playhouse — where Henry Fonda got his start.
He then returned to New York and joined the Cecilwood Theatre, getting small roles on Broadway and guest parts on television shows including “Naked City” and “Wagon Train.”
Fonda had an estranged relationship with his father throughout most of his life, but he said that they grew closer over the years before Henry Fonda died in 1982.
“Peter is all deep sweetness, kind and sensitive to his core. He would never intentionally harm anything or anyone. In fact, he once argued with me that vegetables had souls (it was the ’60s),” his sister Jane Fonda said in her 2005 memoir. “He has a strange, complex mind that grasps and hangs on to details ranging from the minutiae of his childhood to cosmic matters, with a staggering amount in between. Dad couldn’t appreciate and nurture Peter’s sensitivity, couldn’t see him as he was. Instead he tried to shame Peter into his own image of stoic independence.”
Although Peter never achieved the status of his father or even his older sister, the impact of “Easy Rider,” which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, was enough to cement his place in popular culture.
Fonda collaborated with another struggling young actor, Dennis Hopper, on the script about two weed-smoking, drug-slinging bikers on a trip through the Southwest as they make their way to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
On the way, Fonda and Hopper befriend a drunken young lawyer — Jack Nicholson in a breakout role — but raise the dander of Southern rednecks and are murdered before they can return home.
Fonda’s character Wyatt wore a stars-and-stripes helmet and rode a motorcycle called “Captain America,” re-purposing traditional images for the counter-culture.
Actress Illeana Douglas tweeted her condolences Friday with the hashtag “RIPCaptainAmerica.”
“‘Easy Rider’ depicted the rise of hippie culture, condemned the establishment, and celebrated freedom,” Douglas wrote. “Peter Fonda embodied those values and instilled them in a generation.”
Fonda had played bikers before “Easy Rider.” In the 1966 Roger Corman-directed “Wild Angels,” in which he plays Heavenly Blues, leader of a band of Hells Angels, Fonda delivers a speech that could’ve served as both a personal mantra and a manifesto for the youth of the ’60s.
“We wanna be free!” Fonda tells a preacher in the film. “We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man! And we wanna get loaded!”
Fonda produced “Easy Rider” and Hopper directed it for a meager $380,000. It went on to gross $40 million worldwide, a substantial sum for its time.
The film was a hit at Cannes, netted a best screenplay Oscar nomination for Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern, and has since been listed on the American Film Institute’s ranking of the top 100 American films. The establishment gave its official blessing in 1998 when “Easy Rider” was included in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
In 1969, he told The Associated Press that, “As for my generation, it was time they started doing their own speaking. There has been too much of the ‘silent majority’ — at both ends of the generation gap.”
He did reflect later in a 2015 interview with The Hollywood Reporter that it may have impacted his career prospects: “It certainly put a nail in the coffin of ‘the next Dean Jones at Disney.’ ”
Fonda’s output may have been prolific, but he was not always well-regarded, which he was acutely aware of. But he said that “Ulee’s Gold,” which came out in 1997, was the “most fun” he’d ever had making a movie. He wore the same wire-rimmed glasses his father wore in “On Golden Pond,” although he said beyond that he was not channeling Henry Fonda in the performance. He lost out on the Oscar to Nicholson, who won for “As Good as It Gets.”
Nicholson said in his acceptance speech that it as an honor to be nominated alongside “my old bike pal Fonda.”
He remained prolific for the rest of his life with notable performances as the heel in Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey,” from 1999, and in James Mangold’s 2007 update of “3:10 to Yuma.” He’d even play himself in an episode of the spoof documentary series “Documentary Now!” about life as “an Oscar Bridesmaid.”
Fonda is survived by his third wife, Margaret DeVogelaere, his daughter, actress Bridget Fonda and son, Justin, both from his first marriage to Susan Brewer.
“In one of the saddest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our hearts,” the family said in a statement. “As we grieve, we ask that you respect our privacy.”
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Hillel Italie contributed from New York and Katie Campione contributed from Los Angeles.

Central Valley School Board convened Wednesday evening. With more details, here’s Sandy Giordano.

Ambridge School District voted to contribute to the libraries in the area. Here’s Sandy Giordano with more information.

A barn in New Sewickley Township has gone up in flames. 911 says there is a barn fire at 560 Baker Road in New Sewickley Township, Beaver County. Cows were reportedly in the barn during the fire, but it’s unclear if they were removed. There are no injuries.

FRIEDENS, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania couple is accused of faking the birth and death of a baby to obtain more than $600 in donations and gifts from friends and family. State police on Thursday charged Geoffrey and Kaycee Lang with theft by deception and receiving stolen property. Authorities say the couple posted a photo on Facebook of a baby that matched the appearance of a “newborn look-a-like baby doll” found in their home. A number could not be found for the couple, and it was not clear if they had a lawyer.

Education advocates are praising the new regulations and legislation proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf to reform Pennsylvania charter schools. On Tuesday, the governor announced his plans to improve the financial accountability and academic performance of charters. According to Raynelle Brown Staley, policy director at the Education Law Center, many charter schools have failed to live up to their promise of improved services for students who may need more help to succeed. The governor is directing the Department of Education to develop regulations targeting academic accountability and enrollment, and says he’ll propose funding-reform legislation in the fall.

In a ruling in a lawsuit against Beaver County in late 2017, it was determined that Beaver County would undergo its first property reassessment since 1982. The county is required to reassess by 2022, in a process that could cost as much as 10 million dollars. However, that cost will not include the 166,000 dollars that was incurred through litigation and expert fees by the plaintiff, developer Charles Betters, as it was ruled that the county never acted in bad faith.