Hangin’ Up
Working suicide watch at MCC federal prison with Jeffrey Epstein
To nobody’s surprise, prison is a place and experience which often propels its inmates on a downward spiral to the depths of anxiety and depression. Well aware of this problem, prison administrators have designated programs to handle inmates who’ve reached rock bottom and want to end it all.
Suicidal inmates were certainly not a rarity where I stayed. Guys threatened to “hang up” (the colloquial expression used for suicide) on a more or less routine basis.
As such, the prison had a mini tier of suicide cells down on the second floor. Four of them in fact. And somebody had to watch those inmates who’d threatened to kill themselves. So who’s gonna watch them?
In a perfect world, the BOP would hire trained psychologists to do the job. But MCC was far from a perfect world. And the BOP doesn’t have money “like that.” So you guessed it. Inmates got the job! But not to worry. We received a whole 3 to 4 hours of training before being set loose on our suicidal brothers.
That exhaustive orientation consisted of a classroom session during which the applicants mostly ogled the female psychologist who taught the class.
In between all those furtive glances, we were trained to fill out entries in a ledger every 15 minutes (to chronicle exactly what the inmate we’d been assigned to watch was doing at that particular moment), given a few statistics about suicide, and directed on what and what not to talk about. To say we were adequately trained for the task at hand would be a joke.
At strategic points in time, officers would come to check on the watchers and the watched. And a prison psych would come in once a day to check on those who would kill themselves. But on balance, the inmates were stowed away with little to nothing with which to kill themselves (at least in theory) so diligent oversight was of the more or less variety.
We watchers were assigned 4-hour shifts. The pay ranged from 12 cents to 40 cents an hour depending on whether the inmate companion was a sentenced or pretrial inmate — and (I believe) on how much education we had.
As a college-educated and sentenced inmate, I got top dollar: 40 cents an hour to do this crucial job.
The manner in which the shrinks convinced inmates to perform this task at such a low rate of compensation hinged on the suggestion that with a certificate (issued by the department) that an inmate companion had completed 100 hours of service on suicide watch, a judge or prospective employer might look favorably on that particular inmate for rendering such a vital service.
Personally, I viewed that claim as somewhat ludicrous, and more of a hustle on the part of the BOP to induce idiots into slave employment than an activity that might actually benefit anybody in the future. I remember when the head of the program claimed that my 100-hour certificate would help me with employment when I got out, I almost laughed in her face at the suggestion.
While suicide watch could truly be a deadly serious proposition, the majority of our “suicidal” inmates weren’t really going to kill themselves. They were just assholes who wanted to meet up with their dealers to score drugs!
Gotta love prison! So how the fuck did they get that accomplished? No problem. An inmate’s ingenuity and creativity know no bounds.
The worst 10% of the prison population ended up in special housing (or the SHU) almost always for disciplinary issues. Getting caught with a phone or using and/or dealing drugs was usually the cause. Insubordination could get you passage to the inner sanctum as well. But the authorities had to pick and choose their reprobates, as there simply were not enough cells in the SHU to handle all the fuck ups.
The SHU is not the place to be. Inmates are stuck in the same 50 square feet with a celly 23 hours a day. They shower three times a week, have no access to commissary, and can’t use the phone. And it’s noisy in the SHU. Guys yell and scream all night (which they often did in general population). But the dysfunction was exponential as again, the SHU housed the worst of the worst.
Some of our suicide watchers had an added incentive (beyond the 12 cents an hour and empty promise from the psych department) to work the suicide beat. These were the aforementioned drug dealers who knew their customers were in the SHU and would be threatening to “hang up” so they could go down to suicide and meet up with their guys. Once the shrinks heard the guy wanted to kill himself, they’d bring him down to a suicide cell where (drum roll) his dealer would inevitably arrive to dispense his wares.
Initially, I couldn’t understand why suicidal inmates were constantly asking me who was working what shift. Finally, a friendly inmate laid it out for me. Observing this guy for an hour or two I wondered out loud “you don’t strike me as suicidal. What are you doing down here?“ after conversing with him and finding the guy completely normal (for prison that is). And that’s when he laid the entire scenario out for my comprehension. He was just down for the weekend to score his deuce. On Sunday night, he’d claim to be fine and would inevitably be returned to the SHU where he could smoke in peace. So much for suicide watch and whatever meaning it supposedly had.
But to be truthful, it wasn’t always like that. There were guys who wanted to kill themselves or were just crazy enough that you understood why they were down there.
The first inmate I remember watching was a kid named Bahnasawy, a young bearded, curly-haired inmate who at first blush didn’t seem all that deranged. We were not briefed on these inmates at all before reporting for work and so I had no idea of their history or anything that might help us shape the coming interaction.
Like the normal human being I may or may not be, I struck up a conversation with this guy asking what he was in for. His answer came in one word: “Terror!” “Terror,” I responded. “What did you do?” “I was going to set off a bomb at a Beyonce concert,” was his response.
I know this sounds strange. But when you’re in prison with all manner of murderers, child molesters and gunslingers, nothing really surprises you.
“So how long did they give you?” I continued. “Forty years. I’m going to Leavenworth soon. Do you know anything about it?” Now I was stunned. Forty years? Ouch! I almost wanted to give the guy a gun and let him kill himself. Forty years in Kansas. Whoa, Dorothy!
I watched Bahnasaway several times over the course of a couple of weeks. And it was only when he turned his orange outerwear inside out, wrapped it around his head, and then stuck his arm inside pretending to brandish a machine gun, did I get the full effect of his terrorist tendencies. A chill ran down my spine. He was no longer a stupid kid. Suddenly, he was a deadly ISIS operative. I realized how he’d managed to get himself 40 years.
And the parade of suicidal inmates went on. We had Galichio, a mobster from Staten Island who introduced me to the word skel (as in “the guy’s a real skel”) came next. What a great word. He was only there for some peace and quiet. His bunky in the SHU never shut up and he was going crazy from lack of sleep.
And there was Gaelen, who was constantly prancing around nude asking “Hey Bill! I could be a porn star, right?” I’d tell him yes, of course. And I’d add that he could be a writer, too, after he penned a semi-literate but heartfelt message to his daughter on toilet paper. I felt sorry for the guy. He really was a friendly individual. But he’d car-jacked a woman and forced her to make an ATM withdrawal. That got him a kidnapping charge. Gaelen might not even be able to raise the flagpole by the time he got out let alone star in a porn flick.
Perez was not unique among inmates. He was a chomo in for disseminating child pornography. While at MDC (in Brooklyn), he’d convinced the other inmates he had a drug offense. But somehow, his reputation preceded him. And when he arrived at MCC, everybody knew he was a fucking sex offender. He hadn’t actually molested anybody. He’d just passed horrible photos back and forth in a dark web group dedicated to passing those images. The fact that he hadn’t actually engaged in sex with a minor mattered not.
It was rare for inmates to confess this kind of stuff. Chomos were right at the bottom of the food chain in prison. Right next to snitches and considerably below murderers and such.
You get the idea. Perez only told me this because he judged me to be civil and understanding — which I was. But when he returned to our unit after his stint in suicide, I was careful not to linger in his presence lest I be judged sympathetic to his plight. Wouldn’t want to do that! To be human is to be weak and preyed upon.
And the procession continued. For me, our most noteworthy suicide tenant was a guy named Nicholas Gibson. This dude was some piece of work. He had already confessed to mutilating an old man with a sword and claimed he had 31 additional bodies notched on his bedpost! (If an inmate had murdered 32 people, it was said “he got 32 bodies.” More prison slang.)
The thing about Gibson was he appeared to be completely normal. With numerous tattoos and piercings, Nick reminded me of all the alt East Village types I’ve known over the years. Not only that, he was finally apprehended just yards away from the front door of my building. And I knew the place he worked during his monthlong stay in New York. It was almost like finding a guy from the neighborhood in prison.
Nick had a lot of crazy stories — most of which were corroborated by the news I found about him on Google. But the main thrust of his deal was quite unique.
At age 21, Nick was committed to an Illinois Mental Hospital for what reason he wouldn’t tell me. (I guess whatever it was, it was worse than his cutting off a lawyer’s head with a sword — a crime to which he confessed without emotion.) While there, he met a 16-year-old high school intern who was in attendance studying crazies for course work.
Somehow they fell in love. And when he was released, Nick went to live with her and the girl’s parents. However it happened, he was busted for statutory rape (being 5 or 6 years older than she) and served 5 years for the offense.
Apparently, they really were in love. And when he was set free, they got married and ended up running a massage parlor in Miami. Nick claimed he was not a pimp and exercised the normal splits with which I’m very familiar in the massage and escort business. But he was very forthcoming about his voyages to Asia (especially Malaysia) where he’d recruit and find underage girls to come to Miami to work for him.
That little deal got them both locked up…he for a longer period than she. When he was set free and went looking for his wife, he came to discover that her lawyer (they had separate representatives) had unbeknownst to Nick offered to allow the US to deport Nick’s wife once she was released. And worse, she’d been sent back to Somalia (where she was apparently from) and had been killed in the streets of a very dangerous country. Nick was beside himself and vowed revenge.
He found this lawyer in a hospital recovering from surgery. Rather than kill him right then and there, Nick befriended the man and actually performed home care on him after the lawyer was released from the hospital. It was only when the man was well on the road to recovery that Nick chopped his head off.
Asked why he would wait so long to kill the guy, Nick’s answer was simple and rational. He wanted that lawyer healthy and looking at the rest of his life before he took that life away. He didn’t want to kill him while he was still in recovery. Ok! (Yikes!)
One night while I was down on suicide watch — but caring for a different individual, all hell broke loose around the corner at another suicide cell. The watcher began screaming bloody murder for what reason I couldn’t imagine (though often, inmates went crazy and started banging on the window, or flinging shit, or flooding the unit for no apparent reason).
As I rounded the corner and peered into Nick’s cell, I saw his throat slashed and blood pouring from the cut. I thought the guy was dead.
Four different CO’s entered to tend to the situation. The inmate I was watching seized the moment to continuously and ceaselessly taunt the officers “You niggers are in trouble now. You let him into the cell with razor blades. You fucked up. You’re gonna get fired.”
And the officers countered accusing the watcher of shirking his duties, assessing him with the blame when I knew Montes had done nothing but his fucking 12 cent an hour job. The truth was (as I found out later when Nick returned), that he’d hidden razor blades in his hair and the officers had missed it. It was all their fault — if there was anybody to be blamed.
Nick bled 3 full liters. But he got carted off to Bellevue where they saved his life so he could serve the rest of it behind bars. Nick’s claim that he’d killed 31 additional people mostly fell upon deaf ears. CO’s thought he was “grandstanding,” just looking to mitigate his conditions if he revealed to the authorities where the additional bodies lay.
Anyway…Nick stuck around for a while until he was finally sent back to Miami to stand trial in the jurisdiction where he’d committed the murder. What became of him and his claim to 31 additional bodies I could not ascertain from Google, though on the BOP site, it says he’s scheduled for release in 2023. Sounds hard to believe. Must be one of the gazillion mistakes federal employees seem hell-bent on making.
If nothing else, Nick illustrated beyond equivocation what a perverse place prison really is. You would think that the guy would be a despised pariah given his crime. But in actuality, it was the exact opposite. The suicide watchers loved the guy. On more than one occasion, I witnessed colleagues fist-bump Gibson through the glass as they either left or arrived for their shifts. And officers constantly questioned me about what was going on with him — and had he told me any interesting stories. Only in a prison could a guy who claimed to have killed 32 people command respect. It was at times like those that I wondered equally how I ended up behind bars and why the government saw fit to put me there in the first place.
As unique and newsworthy as Nick was, the sublime became the ridiculous in short order. Because of its location in NY, NY — and its proximity to New York State court, MCC has had more than its share of high-profile inmates. Bernie Kerik, El Chapo, DMX, Manafort? They all graced our little piece of hell.
And then one day, yet another pedophile arrived at the prison. But this wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill sex offender. It was a billionaire buddy of Donald Trump’s and Bill Clinton’s among many other influential people. I’d vaguely heard of this guy before on some news show and was aware he’d almost skated on a charge that involved his sexing up numerous young teenagers. Suddenly, he’d been arrested at Newark Airport and brought directly to MCC to begin his voyage through the penal system.
The prison was abuzz with our new felon. But I gave him no mind. After all, I was rooming with Paul Manafort. But in short order, Epstein usurped Manafort’s newsworthiness by a country mile, and Manafort became old news in a hurry. Epstein was a billionaire (or so it was said) — and a sex offender. Clearly a much more salacious individual than the likes of a crooked Trump buddy.
Jeffrey was initially brought into general population, a residence he was in no way prepared to handle. Manafort was tough — and had already spent 11 months in prison. But Jeffrey was about as soft as they come. A few days with the boys was enough. He requested protective custody.
The problem with protective custody at MCC is that those who request to be housed away from the general population end up in the SHU with all the baddest boys. And we’ve already reviewed what that meant.
Not surprisingly, a few days in the SHU left Jeffrey ready to “hang up.” And down to a suicide cell he went where (drum roll), I ended up spending multiple hours and shifts watching him.
Round 1 set the tone for our relationship. Epstein was walked in from one of his daily sit-downs with his legal team, and escorted to his cell. I recognized Jeffrey as a contemporary right away. He was my age, my religion, and educated (as am I). He looked like all the guys I went to high school with. Once inside his cell and the guards gone, I introduced myself: “I’m Mersey. I’m here on a tax fraud charge from underreporting income I earned selling ads to New York hookers. I’m not broke. I have money and don’t want anything from you. You don’t have to worry about me.”
I’m sure there was nobody else in MCC who could honestly make that claim. And Jeffrey was instantly put at ease. From there we talked about the hooker business and its accompanying ad-selling infrastructure in equal parts. I related how the entire industry worked from mostly an economic point of view — and discussed the seamy side only secondarily. While he displayed a natural interest in the girls themselves — it wasn’t overly so. And he asked nothing about anybody’s age to whom I sold these ads. You wouldn’t know anything about his crime from the conversation.
After spending maybe an hour and a half on the subject, Epstein segued into how he was going to handle prisoners and prison life. This was a topic we went back to over and over again in the course of my watching him. He confessed to having been bullied throughout his youth by black guys in Coney Island. And he actually asked at one point “Do I need a big schvar?” meaning did he need a big black guy to protect him.
I and everybody privy to these conversations (which would be other watchers and/or suicidal inmates) told Jeffrey the same thing. ”MCC isn’t that threatening a place. This is not a federal penitentiary. All you have to do is stand up straight, look people in the eye, give respect, and you’ll get it in return.” But whatever happened in general population had scared Epstein. And I don’t think he ever got over it. Discussing how to handle prison occupied his mind constantly during his stay at MCC.
During the latter part of Jeffrey’s vacation at the prison, I became inmate companion coordinator, which meant I did the scheduling for all the suicide watchers. And I would schedule myself to watch Jeffrey every day from 7 PM — 11 PM. Each night, I would have a planned subject for discussion, the idea being to keep Jeffrey’s mind occupied so he wouldn’t dwell on his predicament and contemplate hanging up.
During that 4 hour shift, Jeffrey and I would interact for about 2 of those hours. Generally, he’d be with his lawyer until 8 PM, whereupon he’d return and we’d talk. And then somewhere around 10, he’d grow tired and ask if it was ok if he went to sleep. Jeffrey had good manners like that. He also never whined about the conditions to which he was subjected (the suicide cells were spartan, to say the least). And whatever his issues, insomnia wasn’t one of them.
Within minutes of declaring himself tired, Epstein would lie on his back (on a pad that was only an inch thick), place an orange sock over his eyes (we weren’t allowed to turn out the lights in the suicide cells as we had to see our charges), and snore happily almost instantly. And he’d be out for the duration. Maybe he missed his $77 million mansion. But you wouldn’t know it by his actions. The only time I heard him complain about anything had to do with the laxative the prison gave him. Whichever he wanted, he requested it not be docusate. And when that’s what they gave him, he complained. But only to me. Not to anybody that mattered. And he got over it a second later.
Epstein was not one to brag or tell a lot of stories to his suicide watchers either. But one day I managed to elicit a couple of anecdotes after asking a question he couldn’t resist answering.
“So Jeffrey,” said I after sitting down to watch him. “Give me one anecdote that’s emblematic of Donald Trump’s essence.” I don’t know if it was the subject matter, his mood, or how I phrased the question that got him going. But he was off and running immediately.
“I got it,” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “Donald and I are on my private plane…flying from New York to Miami. And I have a French girl with me. Donald suggests we land in Atlantic City so we can show her his casino. I answer ’There’s no way we’re landing in AC. There’s nothing but white trash down there.’ The girl asks in her French accent ‘What is white trash. I don’t understand.’ And Trump chimes in ‘It’s me without money.’”
Unsolicited, Jeffrey went into another anecdote. This one about Bill Clinton. “So Bill and I are walking down the street in Shanghai when a beautiful Chinese girl walks by. Bill turns to me and says ’That woman makes my dick harder than Chinese arithmetic.’”
Upon hearing this I asked if Clinton liked his women young (to my recollection, my only question to Jeffrey that had anything to do with older men liking younger women). He responded, “Clinton liked his women mature.”
“Is Clinton the hound dog many people say he is?” I continued. Jeffrey indicated that Bill’s philandering days are behind him now that he’s had some heart surgery.
In retrospect, maybe I should have interrogated him about Prince Andrew and other “pressing” matters. But I really wasn’t thinking fame and fortune. I was more about doing the job and certainly not bringing up subjects that might cause Jeffrey to kill himself. It was my mission to keep it light and entertaining. On more than one occasion, Epstein asked “Mersey! So you’re coming back tomorrow night, right?” He came to look forward to having me as his nightly watcher. If nothing else, I provided some airy comic relief and entertainment.
During another session with Epstein, I opened our discourse with the statement “So today, Jeffrey…we’re going to talk investments,” figuring this would be right in his wheelhouse. After all, he gained his connections and ensuing fame and fortune via teaching at an elite private school. And he certainly knew money and how to handle it.
I was right. He was more than willing to discuss my financial options and began questioning me as to how old I am, how much money I have, and where I have it right now. All were rational and relevant facts any financial planner would want to ascertain. Then the conversation took an odd turn.
When I indicated I wasn’t really one for buying equities (most of my money was in fixed income vehicles — bonds and such)…but I might dabble after I got out, he drew an odd comparison.
“Stocks are like pussy,” he declared. “How so?” I went along with the train of thought — though incredulous at the suggestion. “Do you have a significant woman in your life?” he continued. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I do,” I bit.
“Stocks are just like that woman. You study what makes her happy…what makes her sad. And after a while, you can predict her moods once you really understand her psyche. If you watch three stocks for six months and observe how they react to international news…and news in their sector, you should be able to predict those stocks’ movements and be ready to trade those equities successfully. And that’s how you win in the stock market.”
I found the comparison a little odd. But I got what he was saying. That conversation was the only one during which I found Jeffrey to be oversexed and obsessed with women. Otherwise, everything about him was totally normal. You would never know his charge — that is — until he compared equities to pussy. Therein lay the only hint.
After maybe a week spent in the suicide unit, Epstein was dispatched back to the SHU. I wasn’t privy to the decision-making process that sent him back. I just knew Epstein was gone from suicide and I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. Or maybe not.
For some reason only the warden could tell you, the prison placed Jeffrey with a murderous policeman. Why they couldn’t find some drug slinger who’d been smoking deuce and sent to the SHU for that offense rather than a murderer eludes me.
And soon enough (like maybe another week), Epstein was back in suicide with abrasions on his neck. Did Epstein try to hang up — or did his bunky try to kill him? Nobody knew for sure. And Jeffrey wasn’t talking.
Once back down in suicide with me as his watcher, I took no time in asking the obvious. “So Jeffrey! What the fuck happened?” His answer was ridiculous: “I don’t know. I got up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and I don’t remember anything after that.”
I gave him a look like “Get the fuck outta here with that bull shit.” But I let it go in the realization that this was his paid political announcement. Like Manafort on the subject of Russian collusion, Epstein wasn’t about to be forthcoming on whether he’d tried to commit suicide or his bunky attempted to kill him. Pursuing the issue would have been futile. And I didn’t bother.
Once again, Jeffrey was down with the inmate companions for another week during which time prison officials ruminated on what the fuck to do with the guy. It was bordering on ludicrous. Was he really suicidal? Could they put him in general population? A suicide inmate named Lopez reported one day that he overheard a conversation between Jeffrey and one of the shrinks in which Jeffrey asked if he could bunk with Mersey. The psych responded that I was a sentenced inmate. And Jeffrey being pretrial couldn’t be placed in the sentenced unit where I was housed. It was a prison rule that could not be broken.
The very last night I ever saw Jeffrey Epstein was the only time he struck me as depressed and possibly suicidal. I reported for work and found him sitting on the stone floor with his back on his bunk while eating the prison food given him out of a styrofoam plate that was sitting between his legs.
“Jeffrey! What the fuck are you doing? Why are you eating on the floor?” “It’s just easier this way,” was his response. It kind of made sense. But he did strike me as somewhat resolved to his fate that night. He’d recently been denied bail and was facing the reality of spending the rest of his life behind bars — even if he snitched on whoever else was included in his pedophiliac quests.
In an odd moment, Jeffrey asked “Mersey! You need any money?” “Well,” I meditated. “I could always use money from a billionaire.” “Give me your reg number and I’ll put some money on your books,” he offered — and then took my info so he could have somebody hook me up.
As usual, the conversation centered around his adapting to prison life and once again, Jeffrey signed off around 10 PM to hit the hay. I knew he’d be returning to the SHU the next day and while he slept, I penned a note full of platitudes to say goodbye — and left my cousin’s phone number in case he ever wanted to reach out.
For a week, we heard nothing about Epstein. He was back in the SHU and gossip about him had subsided for the moment. There was no million dollars on my books and the Epstein chapter seemed over until on a Saturday morning, we were informed at wake-up we’d be getting breakfast in our cells. We were apparently locked down indefinitely. Jeffrey Epstein had killed himself a few hours before and the building was crawling with government agents.
What I thought might be the end of the Jeffrey Epstein story was in some ways just the beginning. Speculation as to whether Epstein killed himself or was murdered in some sort of conspiracy ran wild. I didn’t see how anybody could get into his SHU cell and kill him without several people being involved. And that conspiracy would unravel quickly under investigation. I assumed he killed himself. That assumption was reinforced when a knucklehead I’ll call inmate White returned from the SHU to contribute his two cents to the debate.
White was a black inmate who befriended me one day in the kitchen (where I also worked a second job) when I read him the paragraph from Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence — a passage which condemned the British for ever bringing slaves to the New World. White decided that was a hip thing for a white boy to be reading and latched onto me as his number one kitchen friend.
But White needed money (or he was greedy) and decided to orchestrate a drug deal on TRULINCS, the monitored email program for inmate use. Monitored being the operative word here, White was apprehended (monitored) and thrown in the SHU for the offense. And there he was housed in the cell next door to (drum roll) Jeffrey Epstein.
When White was released from the SHU and returned to our unit, he reported to me that nobody came in or out of the tier that entire night and that at some point in the wee hours, he’d heard the sound of sheets tearing from Jeffrey’s cell, a cell in which he’d been left all alone after his bunky’d been returned to general population.
His conclusion was that “Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Nobody killed him.” White was most emphatic in this statement. He had no agenda in saying this and I have no reason not to believe him. And to this day, I believe Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Of that, I have little doubt.
Just like almost everything else at that Godforsaken prison, the suicide program was a hot mess I decided to discard just after Jeffrey's death. For a few months, I was working two jobs at MCC. At 1 PM, I descended to the kitchen to open cans and mop floors until 6 or 7 PM. Then at 7, I’d re-descend for suicide watch after returning to the unit for just a few minutes.
But one day, a CO who was supposed to be a friend, went nuts on me for no apparent reason, and sent me back to the unit with several choice words all of the four-letter variety. Rod was incredibly rude and I vowed never to work in the kitchen again until he apologized (which he did eventually).
At the time of Rod’s explosion, the suicide pay had elevated to a dollar an hour. And as inmate companion coordinator, I could assign myself any shift I wanted anytime. So I simply put myself on schedule from 11 AM — 3 PM and 7 PM — 11 PM. As in “fuck the kitchen.”
I have a documented bad back from a freak bicycle accident. And somehow, even though I’d been humping 50-pound cases of canned vegetables in the kitchen, my back hadn’t suffered any ill effects. But 8 hours a day in those shitty Unicor chairs down at suicide watch did what the heavy lifting in the kitchen hadn’t. Plaintive cries to the psych staff netted no response. They were completely unsympathetic to my back pain.
But that was just the beginning of my problems with that staff. The inmate companion coordinator job was a clerical nightmare which without a copy machine, induced writers’ cramp for all who undertook the task. And it paid somewhere around 40 cents a day! I only took it to give myself any shift I wanted anytime. That was the only perk!
Thanks to the shitty pay, we were short on employees. And after Epstein killed himself, the suicide cells were constantly filled. The shrinks took every suggestion that an inmate wanted to hang up very seriously. And they put virtually every inmate who even looked suicidal downstairs on watch. So I didn’t have enough guys to fill all the shifts. That meant I began double-shifting companions to fill all the slots.
To ad insult to injury, the psych staff had given me a boatload of misinformation concerning who worked which shift. All their paperwork was wrong. So imagine that you’re the guy who was responsible for having an inmate awakened at 3 AM to work a 40 cent an hour job when 3 AM wasn’t his shift at all. He’s supposed to be working at 3 PM — but the shrinks hadn’t properly entered his work hours on my sheet.
So what does that criminal do? He decides to take it out on the nearest body. And that body would be me. When I heard the gossip from one of the suicidal guys that somebody was getting ready to kick my ass, I told the shrinks they really needed to pull their shit together because I didn’t want to suffer a beating for their incompetence!
So upset were the girls (the psychs) that they immediately terminated the inmate companion coordinator job — and decreed that nobody could work more than one shift a day. Which didn’t matter because once I was off the coordinator job, I wasn’t doing the scheduling anymore and wouldn’t be able to double-shift myself.
Just about that time, Rod from the kitchen approached me to apologize for his outburst — and requested I return to my old job. The timing was perfect. I emailed my resignation to the shrinks. Not only would I not be doing their scheduling anymore, but I signed off on the billing job and watching any more guys who wanted to hang up. I was effectively completely out of their program. And I did suggest they pull their shit together (though not in those exact words).
And so, I finished out my bid working in the kitchen and never descended to suicide watch again. My bunky took my job and within a week complained to the shrinks “I feel Mersey’s pain” when he too discovered the futility of working that beat.
Forevermore, the shrinks looked very uncomfortable in my presence whenever our paths crossed. I thought they were the one competent group of administrators at the prison. But I was mistaken. Just like the rest of their colleagues, the psych staff was a fail — at least when it came to running the inmate companion program.
Even after I left the facility, the Epstein story went on and on like the energizer bunny. On my first day out, I called a friend and matter-of-factly told him I’d roomed with Paul Manafort and suicide-watched Jeffrey Epstein while inside — including many particulars — and he told me “You have to go to the Daily Mail with this story. It’s worth six figures. This is going to change your life!”
To be continued in my book “Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous: My Year At MCC Federal Prison.
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More about EPSTEIN and MANAFORT:
