Were any official New York City Medical Examiner autopsy photographs for Jeffrey Epstein ever publicly released or requested in court filings?
Executive summary
The Justice Department’s massive release of Epstein-related files in late 2025 included photographs that appear to be post-mortem images showing Jeffrey Epstein’s body and close‑ups of his neck and injuries, and those files contained an OCME (Office of Chief Medical Examiner, City of New York) post‑mortem report that DOJ said had been produced to the DOJ and FBI [1] [2] [3]. Reporting confirms the DOJ made those images publicly available on its repository as part of the trove, but available sources do not document a separate, prior public release by the New York City Medical Examiner itself nor do they show a clear record in these reports of formal court filings that specifically requested OCME autopsy photographs [1] [4] [5].
1. What was actually released by the Justice Department and what the files contained
The Department of Justice posted millions of pages, tens of thousands of images and videos as part of a mandated disclosure, and journalists and verification teams found previously unseen photographs in those files showing Epstein unresponsive on a stretcher and close‑up images of his neck and apparent injuries; BBC Verify specifically identified images and an 89‑page post‑mortem report described as filed by the DOJ and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) [1] [2] [3]. Multiple outlets characterized the set as containing around 20 post‑mortem images in the declassified FBI/DOJ death investigation file, and described some images as graphic and time‑stamped from the immediate aftermath of his collapse [2] [6].
2. The provenance: OCME involvement vs. OCME public action
Reporting notes that the post‑mortem report in the released materials was from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York and that DOJ files included OCME content, but there is no source here saying the OCME itself posted autopsy photographs to the public website independently — rather, the photographs appeared in documents the DOJ published as part of its Epstein files release [1] [4] [5]. The OIG and other official records confirm the OCME performed the autopsy on Epstein on August 11, 2019, which is the origin for any official autopsy images or reports referenced in the released bundle [5].
3. Were OCME autopsy photos “officially” released by OCME?
Available reporting shows the photographs now circulating were published by the Department of Justice in the files it uploaded to its public repository, not that the New York City Medical Examiner independently posted autopsy photos to public view; BBC Verify and other outlets treated the images as coming to public attention via DOJ’s release of FBI/OCME material [1] [3]. Therefore, based on the documents and reporting cited here, the OCME is represented as the source of the post‑mortem report and images contained in records turned over to DOJ/FBI, but the public appearance of those autopsy images occurred through the DOJ’s mass disclosure [1] [2].
4. Were OCME autopsy photographs requested in court filings?
The sources provided do not document a specific court filing that requested the OCME autopsy photographs prior to the DOJ’s release; coverage focuses on the statutory mandate and subsequent DOJ publication of files, the discovery that graphic images and unredacted victim material were made public, and legal efforts by victims’ lawyers to have the files removed because of redaction failures [7] [8] [9]. While civil litigation around Epstein has repeatedly unsealed and compelled production of documents in the past, the reporting here does not cite a distinct, public court motion that sought OCME autopsy photos as a discrete item — that absence in the available sources means this analysis cannot assert that such a court request occurred [7] [9].
5. Context, controversies and limits of the record
The DOJ’s release sparked outrage because of poorly redacted victim material and graphic images, and the department subsequently removed or took down some flagged files after victims’ lawyers objected; coverage by The New York Times and BBC describes both the presence of graphic images and the broader disclosure problems in the tranche [10] [7] [9]. Conspiracy theories and misidentifications have also proliferated around the images — some outlets and fact‑checkers scrutinised whether images had been altered or misattributed — but the primary, verifiable fact in the record cited here is that post‑mortem images and an OCME post‑mortem report appear among the documents DOJ published [1] [11]. Where the publicly available reporting is silent — for example, on any separate OCME decision to post images itself, or on a discrete court filing that specifically sought OCME autopsy photographs — this account does not invent those events and instead notes the limitation [4] [5].