Tova Noel, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s prison guards, Googled him minutes before he was found dead. She also made a mysterious cash deposit of $5,000, 10 days before the late convicted child sex offender allegedly killed himself in the jail cell. The new documents from the Department of Justice reveal these details.
Noel reportedly Googled ‘latest on Epstein in jail’ at 5:42 am and 5:52 am, less than 40 minutes before her colleague, Michael Thomas, found Epstein hanging in his cell at 6:30 am, as per FBI records from that night.
As per an FBI memo, which was also in the files released by the DOJ, they thought Noel to be the mysterious orange shape seen in the blurry surveillance video near Epstein’s cell around 10:40 pm that night.
“At approximately 10:40 pm, a correctional officer, believed to be Tova Noel, carried linen or inmate clothing up to the L-Tier, last time any correctional officer approached the only entrance to the SHU tier,” the agency wrote. Notably, there has been much interest about the identity of the orange blob, since the video surfaced. Now, the FBI document appears to put a name of the person seen in the clip. Here is all you need to know about Tova Noel.
Tova Noel: 5 things to know
- Noel has been charged with falsifying records on August 9 and 10 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. “On August 10, 2019, NOEL and THOMAS repeatedly failed to complete mandated counts of prisoners under their watch in the MCC’s Special Housing Unit (“SHU”). Instead, for substantial portions of their shifts, NOEL and THOMAS sat at their desk, browsed the internet, and moved around the common area of the SHU. To conceal their failure to perform their duties, NOEL and THOMAS repeatedly signed false certifications attesting to having conducted multiple counts of inmates that they did not do,” the DOJ release on the incident noted.
- Noel would be around 38 and had been working as a correctional officer at MCC since around 2016. Both she and Thomas were regularly assigned to shifts at MCC’s Special Housing Unit (SHU), which is where Epstein was.
- Tova Noel’s shift saw her in the SHU from 4:00 p.m. on August 9, 2019, to 8:00 a.m. on August 10, 2019. “In fact, NOEL, and then NOEL and THOMAS, repeatedly failed to complete mandated counts in the SHU. Instead for substantial portions of their 12:00-8:00 a.m. shifts, NOEL and THOMAS sat at their desk, browsed the internet, and moved around the common area of the SHU. During that time period, NOEL and THOMAS were the only correctional officers assigned to the SHU,” the DOJ document noted. It added that Noel had ‘signed false certifications attesting to having conducted counts of inmates at 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.’
- Chase Bank flagged there was ‘suspicious activity’ in Noel’s bank account from April 2018. There were a total of 12 deposits and culminated in the largest deposit of $5000 on July 30, 2019, as per the records. The files reportedly show seven cash deposits totaling $11,880.
- Since then, Noel moved to on to become a medical office assistant at Montefiore Einstein Advanced Care, where she’s being sued for alleged assault.
Noel had denied Googling Epstein when questioned by the DOJ in 2021. “I don’t remember doing that,” she had claimed. She had also claimed that everyone failed to do rounds and falsified records about it. She had, in a sworn statement, said she saw Epstein alive ‘somewhere around after 10’ and ‘never gave out linen – ever.’ She’s also denied having any role in Epstein’s death.
