A corrections officer who was on duty when Jeffrey Epstein died in a New York City prison cell in August 2019 testified before the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

Tova Noel told federal investigators in 2021 that she believes she was the last person to see the convicted sex offender alive at the Metropolitan Correctional Center before he killed himself. Noel and Michael Thomas, the other corrections officer assigned to monitor Epstein that night, initially faced criminal charges for falsifying records related to that shift, but the charges were dropped after the pair reached deals with prosecutors in 2021. Both were fired from their jobs.

Noel’s and Thomas’ prosecution agreements included their cooperation with a government investigation into Epstein’s death. The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released its report on that investigation in July 2023, finding “numerous and serious failures by MCC New York staff constituting misconduct and dereliction of their duties.”

Documents produced by the Justice Department reveal that FBI investigators probed Google searches by Noel the morning of Epstein’s death, including for “latest on Epstein in jail” less than an hour before he was found dead.

“I don’t remember doing that,” Noel said of the Google searches in her sworn statement to the DOJ in 2021.

Noel, now in her late 30s, apparently interacted with Epstein while he was in custody. A handwritten note found in Epstein’s cell and published by CBS News following his death indicated that Noel gave Epstein “burnt food” and that another guard kept him locked in a shower stall for an hour. The note, written on yellow lined paper with a blue ballpoint pen, also says, “NO FUN!!,” a phrase echoed in a purported suicide note unsealed by a federal court earlier this month.

Speaking with reporters on Monday prior to Noel’s testimony, committee members Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., and Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., both said they planned to probe Noel about why she didn’t check on Epstein in the hours prior to his suicide.

“It’s really puzzling that in a situation where he’s a suicide risk and he doesn’t have a cellmate, you wouldn’t at least check on him once,” Subramanyam said.

Walkinshaw added, “I think we’re all hoping to understand why Epstein was unmonitored on the night that he died. We want to understand the timeline fully … His death allowed him to really avoid fully accounting for the crimes that he committed and denied the survivors their day in court to get the accountability that they deserve, so we want to understand why that happened.”

Committee members asked Noel about financial payments she received in semi-regular increments beginning in April 2018 and through July 2019, the month before Epstein’s death. Subramanyam told reporters that Noel said the funds were from working overtime and that she deposited them into her savings account, an account the congressman said he believes.

“I don’t think she was paid extra money to not do her job that evening,” Subramanyam said.

He added that there was a “systemic issue at the facility” of people not doing their jobs due to “ineptness” and “laziness.”

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., told reporters that the first hour of the closed-door interview had focused on Noel’s “managerial responsibilities” and that she had so far been forthcoming.

After Noel’s roughly four-hour testimony concluded, Stansbury told reporters most of it focused on “the details of what happened the night of Epstein’s death.” She said Noel took issue with losing her job.

“She does feel like her termination was unfair,” Stansbury said, “and that had it not been Jeffrey Epstein, she would not have been fired.”

Noel’s Monday appearance before the House Oversight Committee came about two months after the panel first requested her testimony. The committee most recently heard from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who downplayed his visits to Epstein’s homes and denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. Former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire Les Wexner also appeared before the committee earlier this year and denied having had knowledge of Epstein’s abuse at the time.

Former Epstein assistant Sarah Kellen is scheduled to testify before the Republican-led committee on Thursday. In the weeks to come, former Attorney General Pam Bondi; Epstein’s longtime executive assistant, Lesley Groff; Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates; investor Leon Black; and former White House counsel to President Barack Obama Kathryn Ruemmler are all slated to appear before the committee.

Peggy Helman contributed reporting.

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