Jeffrey Epstein has killed himself.

[conuly]

I didn't read any news about this yet, I just saw a blurb at the diner. (Link.)

On the one hand, I'm not grieving. He seems to have been a thoroughly awful person.

On the other hand, he already attempted suicide not that long ago. If suicide watch can mess up this badly with somebody who is both a. rich and b. very much in the public eye right now, how much care are they taking with every random dude off the street?

Comments

[silveradept]

They're definitely not doing anything for the people on the street, so much so that the phrase "suicide by police officer" is not out of the ordinary for people with mental illnesses that would be more expensive than their families' complete set of assets to treat for a month.

(Which, in many of these cases, isn't much at all.)

The trickiest part of this will be determining how much Epstein acted on his own and how much he may have been pressured to do the act so as to make it harder for other people's crimes to be discovered or prosecuted. Incompetence is still the default position, but something like this warrants a strong investigation into whether malice could be at fault.