The news won't satisfy everyone, but it's official: Jeffrey Epstein died by his own hand. That's the assessment of the city medical examiner's report, released Friday. Based on a full autopsy, the predator hanged himself in his jail cell.
Yes, there may have been awful, cruel incompetence at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, with poorly trained authorities taking hours to check on him (and apparently subsequently falsifying records). That demands further investigation.
Otherwise, put away the dark conspiracies and consider Occam's Razor: Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one.
Certainly, Epstein's many victims have a right to feel frustrated about his escaping his day in criminal court. Epstein took the easy way out to avoid true justice, as he had for more than a decade.
Even so, this past week, some who suffered Epstein's predations in New York gained a new legal tool to pursue a modicum of justice on the civil side.
The opening of the Child Victims Act one-year lookback window allows a survivor of abuse as a minor to sue an estate in the event of a predator's death. One of the first to step forward was Jennifer Araoz who sued Epstein and four associates, charging they "groomed" and raped her as 15-year-old.
Wish well Epstein's many victims as they seek as many paths as possible to peace and closure.
