Tova Noel, a guard at Jeffrey Epstein’s prison at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Googled the sexual predator minutes before he was found dead and made a $5,000 cash deposit 10 days before Epstein committed suicide in a prison cell on August 10, 2019, new Justice Department documents reveal.Noel was one of two workers at the Metropolitan Correctional Center accused of falsifying records to say they examined Epstein throughout the night before his suicide. The New York Post reported that the guards were fired but the criminal charges against them were later dropped.According to an FBI record of Noelle’s internet search history that night, Noelle searched Google for “the latest on Epstein in prison” at 5:42 a.m. and then again at 5:52 a.m., less than 40 minutes before her colleague, correctional officer Michael Thomas, found the disgraced financier dead in his cell by hanging at 6:30 a.m.
Prosecutors said that earlier in the shift, Noel, 37, shopped for furniture online and showed up late for work instead of performing mandatory checks on Epstein every 30 minutes, while Thomas chased motorcycles.The FBI highlighted the online search in a 66-page forensic examination of the Bureau of Prisons’ desktop computers of Noel and Thomas. This was the only research that was highlighted.“I don’t remember doing that,” she claimed, according to the transcript.
She said the FBI records were “not accurate. I don’t remember looking for him.”Noel also claimed to investigators that everyone at the Manhattan federal prison failed to make rounds and falsified records about them.“I never worked in a special housing unit, and I actually made rounds every 30 minutes,” she told investigators.Another Justice Department filing revealed that Chase reported cash deposits in Noel’s bank account in a “suspicious activity report” it filed with the FBI in November 2019.The bank said a total of 12 deposits began in April 2018, culminating with the largest deposit of $5,000, on July 30, 2019, records show.The files only contained Noel’s bank records starting in December 2018. They showed seven cash deposits totaling $11,880. Noel began working at the Special Housing Unit, where Epstein was being held, starting on July 7, 2019, weeks before his death.Noel, who drove a 2019 Land Rover Range Rover worth $62,000, was not asked about the cash during her interview with the Justice Department, records show.An internal FBI briefing, also released in Justice Department files, said the agency believed Noel was likely the mysterious orange figure spotted on blurry surveillance video near Epstein’s cell around 10:40 p.m. that night.“At approximately 10:40 p.m., a correctional officer, believed to be Tova Noel, was carrying inmates’ linen or clothing to the L tier, the last time any correctional officer approached the only entrance to the SHU tier,” the agency wrote.
Epstein apparently hanged himself with pieces of orange cloth.In the sworn statement, Noel, who was working two shifts that day, told investigators that she last saw Epstein alive “somewhere after about 10 o’clock” and that she “never gave linen or clothing to inmates because that had been done on shift before.”The identity of the orange dotted blob in the video has been a source of debate and intrigue since the FBI released the footage last summer.
The inspector general’s original 2023 report said they were “unidentified correctional officers,” making the recently released FBI document the first time the mysterious figure has been publicly named.She testified that she did not know why Epstein had extra blankets in his cell. She said the other guard on duty was asleep between 10pm and midnight.Workers said it would be a violation of policy for a prison employee to enter Epstein’s cell area alone.Noelle has since been sued in Westchester County Superior Court for the alleged assault at her new job as a medical office assistant at Montefiore Einstein Advanced Care.Noel’s lawyers declined to comment. When asked during her sworn statement whether she had any role in Epstein’s death, Noel answered, “No.”