Surveillance footage taken from outside accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell the day of his first suicide attempt has been permanently deleted, reports said Thursday.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where Epstein was being held, "inadvertently preserved" footage from the wrong area of the jail, federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, CNBC first reported.
"As a result, video from outside the defendant's cell" July 22 and 23, which covered the time the disgraced financier was found semiconscious inside the federal lockup, 'no longer exists,'" the filing states.
The FBI made the discovery last week while reviewing a copy of the video provided by MCC officials, NBC News reported.
The startling revelation came in a case involving Nicholas Tartaglione, a former Westchester County, N.Y., police officer who was Epstein's cellmate at that time. Tartaglione, who was allegedly involved in a cocaine distribution conspiracy, is awaiting trial on charges of killing four men and burying them in his yard in 2016.
Tartaglione's lawyer, Bruce Barket, in a bid to exonerate his client, asked the jail to preserve footage from outside the cell.
Officials saved the wrong video because of a clerical error.
"The MCC computer system listed a different, incorrect cell for Tartaglione," prosecutors said in the court filing, NBC News reported.
Epstein, 66, was found dead inside his cell three weeks later.
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