Rattankun Thongbun/iStock(NEW YORK) — U.S. Attorney General William Barr has ordered immediate changes in leadership at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York following Jeffrey Epstein’s death.
Barr ordered the staff shakeup amid investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Office Inspector General into the circumstances of the multimillionaire sex offender’s death by suicide.
“Today, the Attorney General directed the Bureau of Prisons to temporarily assign the warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York to the Bureau’s Northeast Regional Office pending the outcome of the FBI and OIG investigations into the apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, a former MCC inmate,” Kerri Kupec, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said in a statement.
Kupec said James Petrucci, the warden at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, will become acting warder at MCC, replacing Shirley Skipper-Scott.
The Bureau of Prisons also placed two MCC staff members who had been assigned to Epstein’s cell block at the time he died on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigations, Kupec said.
The shakeup came just days after sources told ABC News that jail protocols requiring routine checks on the well-being of Epstein appeared to have not been followed in the hours before he was found hanging in his cell.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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