Jeffrey Epstein lay in the fetal position on the floor of his jail cell, unresponsive, with an orange fabric noose tied around his neck. The post-midnight quiet of the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s secure housing unit was punctured as a corrections officer called for help.

It was 1:27 a.m. on July 23, 2019, 18 days before Epstein’s death. . . . Moments after becoming alert, Epstein gave officers his first account of what happened, the records show. He told them he thought he had been attacked by his cellmate, an ex-cop who was awaiting trial on four murders.

“He sat up on the bed and began telling me that he [thinks] his bunkie … tried to kill him,” a responding officer wrote in one memo. A senior officer wrote in a separate incident report that Epstein initially implicated his cellmate in the incident, claiming he had previously said things that made Epstein feel threatened.

Epstein would later back off the claim, saying instead that he couldn’t remember what happened. Nicholas Tartaglione, the cellmate, has repeatedly disputed the initial allegation and said he tried to revive Epstein. As with Epstein’s eventual death, any camera footage of the incident was either mislaid, lost or never captured by the facility’s faulty system.

Tartaglione has not responded to emailed questions from CBS News. His lawyer said Epstein’s initial claim that Tartaglione tried to kill him was flatly “not true.”

Eyyyy, I heard he tripped over ‘is bunk an’ got his neck broke. Huh huh. Dangerous things, bunks, y’know.