A Mortician Explains Why This Photo Doesn't Make Sense

Hi. Is it just me or does every household have the plague right now? We're all sick.

And also, if you notice, my eyeball is swollen. I had micro blading done on my eyebrows, so they're a little dark. They'll fade.

Don't worry, they'll fade, but it was overdue. And I have no idea why, but this eye, can you see that? Is so swollen.

I had threading done and I'd never had that done before. I don't know. Has anyone else's eyeball swollen up after micro blading?

Please let me know. Anyways, anyh who, without further ado, my hair is wild. I don't have any makeup on, but we're going to nail this.

When something goes viral involving death, my brain does something very specific. I don't jump to conclusions. I don't jump to theories.

I start asking one question. Does the body make sense? And then I got to look at it because I'm a mortician and I work with the dead.

I see what the human body does after life leaves it. How fast things change, what relaxes, what drains, what dries out, and what never looks the way people expect [music] it to. So, when a photo starts circulating online, especially one being framed as a dead body, I don't look at the headlines.

I don't look at the comments. I mean, I do a little bit, but I look at the physiology. And that's exactly what happened when this image of Jeffrey Epstein started making the rounds.

There's been a lot of renewed attention on the Epstein case lately. Documents, files, rediscussions, people relitigating everything that's already been talked about to death. No pun intended.

I'm not here to reexlain who Jeffrey Epstein was. If you're watching this, you already probably know. And if you don't, that's not the point of today either.

What is the point is this photo. This image has been shared by major media outlets, [music] picked up by Tik Tok on some crazy conversation threads over on X, and dropped into the conversation as if it represents death. And people started tagging me.

I love when they do that. Not because they wanted to gossip, but because something about it felt off. Yeah, we're going to talk about that cuz I think it's weird, too.

So, anyways, welcome back to Morbid Monday, where we don't just talk about death, we talk about what the body actually does after it. And today, we're putting the death science lens on a photo that the internet cannot stop arguing about cuz it's just another morbid Monday. Wish it was Friday.

I need more lyrics. I got nothing. Hannah.

Oh my god, my brain is just [ __ ] fried. Morbid Monday. Morbid Monday.

Cue the intro. [music] Here's what we're going to do. First, I'm going to show you from a mortuary science standpoint why this photo does not show a deceased body.

Not opinion, not conspiracy, anatomy, physiology, and what the body actually does after death. Then once we establish that, we're going to talk about the part that really doesn't sit right with me. It's a little opinionated, but we're going to go there.

Why does this photo exist at all? Why is this image now resurfacing? and why does it feel like it creates more confusion than clarity?

And finally, we're going to talk about the things that aren't discussed enough in this case, like the lack of publicly released autopsy photos, the absence of clear crime scene imagery, what documentation does and doesn't exist, and what happens after someone like this actually dies. But before we go anywhere else, we need to start with the body. It's raining outside.

All righty then. Because no matter what you believe about this case, a dead body follows rules. So, let me show you exactly how I can tell just by looking at this image that you all lovingly and morbidly tagged me in that the person aka Jeffrey Epstein in this photo is very much alive in this moment, which actually makes the photo weirder to me.

Hold the photo up again. I get tagged in this and y'all want to know, does this look like a dead body to you? And that's when I realized why this photo is so effective and honestly dangerous because it sits right in that uncomfortable middle space.

Close enough to death to confuse people or at least it's cosplaying death, but not close enough to actually be real. So instead of reacting emotionally, I did what I always do. I stripped everything else away and I asked one question which if you ever see something like this again I hope that this video comes to mind because you should be thinking what is the body telling me.

So when I saw this the very first thing I noticed wasn't the weird looking table he's lying on it wasn't his body positioning it was actually the mouth area his mouth. This is one of those things that families are always kind of shocked by because no one really talks about it. But when someone dies, every muscle in their body relaxes.

All of it, including your jaw. And when the jaw [music] relaxes and someone is lying on their back, gravity takes over and the mouth opens. Not dramatically, just naturally.

So naturally, in fact, that at the funeral home, we don't just hope the mouth stays closed. We actually have to physically close it. And we have a few different techniques on how to do that, but we'll have to talk about that in another video.

That's [music] not poetic. That's not optional. That's anatomy.

There are techniques for it because without intervention, it will not stay shut. Have you ever been sleeping in the middle of the night and your mouth just pops open? You can feel that your mouth has popped open and you've been inhaling through your mouth.

So, your mouth is all dry and scratchy. It happens when you die, too, cuz it just relaxes. You're going to be thinking about me when you wake up in the middle of the night and you slept with your mouth open.

You're going to be like, "H, Lauren, why? " So, when I see an individual like Jeffrey Epstein laying flat on his [music] back with his mouth naturally closed, no tape, no visual support, no tension, my brain immediately goes, "Okay, well, the muscle tone is still there. " [music] And muscle tone does not exist in a deceased individual.

And this is one of those little details. I know it's little, but it's a big detail. And people don't realize that because movies, when you watch movies and they suddenly pass away, movies lie to us.

Television lies to us. Dead people on screen always look peaceful, [music] mouth closed, perfect, calm. I always think of Snow White.

She looked beautiful, right? Her mouth is just perfectly closed. But that's not reality.

Reality is gravity. Reality is relaxation. Reality is the body doing exactly what physics tells it to do.

So, right out the gate, before I even look at anything else, [music] that closed mouth tells me I am not looking at a deceased person. And once I clock that, I move on to the next thing because the mouth isn't the only part of the body that gives this [music] away. The eyes are next, and those are loud.

After death, dehydration starts almost [music] immediately. It does not wait. It does not care.

The eyes are one of the first places that you can actually see it. The surface of the eyeball starts to dry out. The corneas lose that wet reflective look.

The eyes flatten [music] and they dull. Dehydration is not my friend in the funeral home. It's one of the very first things we are constantly fighting.

In this photo though, the eyes are still moist. Are those tears? Are his eyes leaking?

I don't know. But they definitely look full and hydrated and puffy in a way that suggests fluid is still being regulated in the body. That is not what I expect to see in someone who is deceased.

Dead eyes don't look like that. They just don't. And I know it's just a movie.

Like I know it's just a film, but in Stranger Things when the kid is holding Eddie and like the bats got to him and he's no longer alive and his eyes are just glistening. And I know it's supposed to have just died, but I'm like it's it's too lifelike. It's I kind of it it can ruin movies for you, too.

So, I don't know. Once you see it, you just can't unsee it. Then I move on to skin color.

When the heart stops, circulation stops and the blood is no longer being pushed throughout the body. Gravity takes over. Blood settles into the lowest parts of your body and we call that levidity.

So if someone is lying flat on their back, I expect to see that settling, that purpleyish color start showing up in very specific places. The back of the head, the neck, maybe even the ears, face, shoulders. What I do not expect to see is an evenly colored.

We'll throw the picture up again like right here. I don't know. But his face is evenly colored.

You can even see pink in certain areas of the face, which fun mortuary fact of the day. When we are inbalming, have you ever wondered why inbalming fluid is a certain color? Why it might be a little pink or a little red?

When we imbalm, you can see that little pink color in his cheeks, maybe his chin and his forehead. We are essentially trying to duplicate that being alive look. So, as the inbalming fluid goes through and it starts to firm up the tissues, it might make things look a little pink again.

My cheeks are pink. So, in the photo, there is still color in his face, pinkness, and that color matters because deceased bodies don't hold facial color like that while [music] supine. That kind of color suggests ongoing circulation or at the very least very recent circulation.

Either way, it's not consistent with a body that's already gone through post-mortem changes. I've also seen some people were zooming in on Jeffrey Epstein's nose area because there is moisture under the nose and they think that it's purge coming out of the nose. This looks like purge, [music] they say, but it doesn't.

True post-mortem purge is heavier, can be darker, and purge follows gravity usually. Purge is another nightmare term. Not a good day if you've got that going on.

But clear moisture around the nose is incredibly common in living or recently treated patients. Oxygen secretions positioning. But when you stack it with everything else, Jeffrey Epstein's mouth, the eyes, the color, the color of his face, it fits the same picture.

This photo of Jeffrey Epstein is not behaving like a dead body. He's very much alive in this photo. That is my mortician opinion.

So now I've looked at the jaw. I've looked at the eyes. I've looked at his color.

This photo is not post death. But wait, there's more. We're not done yet.

And that's where things stop being about anatomy. And instead, we're going to talk about intent. Because once I'm confident that this person, Mr Epstein, is alive in this image, the question isn't what am I looking at?

The question becomes, why are we being shown this image at all? Like seriously, why? Why was this photo taken?

Who took the photo? This isn't security footage. This isn't a chaotic moment.

This is a clean, centered image of a person, a particular person, lying flat with his eyes closed. I've seen hospital beds. I've seen gurnies.

I've seen stretchers, CS, you name it. This does not look like any of those things. Look closer.

What is he laying on? It's flat. It's rigid.

Is that a handle? Like what? Please, if you work in a medical facility, doesn't this look like an autopsy table?

It looks like something for post being alive. You're dead. Like, we're we're going to put you on this slab essentially.

And then I want you to look at the head area. There is clearly something structured under his head. Not a pillow, like where's the pillow?

Not a folded blanket cuz we'd see that poking out, but there is something firm under his head. Is it a head block? Like we use head blocks in the prep room to hold the head up and in position while we are inbalming.

I don't feel like the ER staff is going to be here, Mr Epstein, please lie flat. Lie still. I'm going to put this perfectly positioned block under your head on this perfectly positioned table and I want you to lay there and pretend that you're sleeping.

It feels framed. It feels composed. And it feels way too calm.

Like this is a documentative photo, not a response to some sort of situation. Does anyone else agree? So, if this isn't a postdeath image, where are the images that actually matter?

Is anyone wondering that? Because we've seen famous autopsy photos before. Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain, JFK.

So, why not this case? Why not this one? We didn't get autopsy photos of Jeffrey Epstein.

We didn't get clear crime scene images. We got a written report. And again, I'm not saying the report is fake.

I'm saying we're being asked to accept a conclusion without the same level of visual documentation we've seen in other cases. And don't just hand me this weird photo instead. That's not transparency.

Nothing about this is transparent. It actually leads to more confusion. Wouldn't you say?

Wouldn't you agree? And this is where I need to tell you something. while it's pouring rain outside.

Can you hear that? Because this whole situation isn't theoretical for me. I have been on a death call inside of a prison before.

It's wild to even talk about, but we had a guy whose cellmate took his life. And here I am, little old mortuary student me, loading up my silver Chrysler minivan with my cot. So, I roll up, I get to the prison, and they don't take me through the front.

I had to go through some special side entrance. They have an officer walk all the way out and around my van with this long mirror, like a stick, and it had a mirror at the end. So, he was like checking underneath my van.

Then when I got inside, they had to search me. My cot got searched, my equipment, everything is searched. That was new.

And they had locked all of the inmates back into their cells. So, when I got there, it was super quiet. Like, nobody was out and around because they were all locked away.

And I will just never forget that quiet. I'm walking down this hallway pushing my cot. You could hear a pin drop.

You could hear my wheels turning on the ground. And I start noticing movement out of the corner of my eyes as we're going down this hallway. There are two sets of eyes, one up top and one on the bottom.

One [music] man above the other. One is crouched down a little, one's a little higher because they are looking out these little rectangle windows on their cell doors because they are so small and they want to watch me go by with my funeral home equipment. It was so eerie.

I can't even fully explain it to you. Definitely did not feel alone in there. We had to go up the stairs.

No elevator, at least not one that they let me or told me that I could use. So officers helped me carry my cot all the way up to the second floor. And when we got there, the medical examiner was super duper thorough.

Photos, crime scene documentation, the homicide team was there. Even when we rolled him over, she wanted images of his back. Documentation, documentation, documentation, if you get what I'm saying.

And that experience is why I know without question that these photos exist. They're real. They're out there.

still locked away in this file that maybe we'll have access to one day. And I guess that's why it floores me that we're given almost nothing here. Like you think the government would just want to clear up all the conspiracies and be like, hey guys, here's everything.

We know that you like having your tin hats on, but you know, hey, moving along. Nothing to see here. This is it.

I guess not. All right. So, let's shift a little bit and talk about what actually happens after someone like this dies.

And when I say someone like this, I don't mean a celebrity because Jeffrey Epstein wasn't famous. He was connected. Money, power, and access.

And deaths like that tend to get handled very, very quietly. And as far as the public knows, there was no traditional public funeral for Mr Epstein. No viewing, no service, and no coverage.

He was buried, not cremated, in an unmarked grave near his family. And that [music] matters because cremation ends questions. I'm floored he wasn't cremated.

Honestly, burial doesn't end things all the time. Burial gives us the opportunity to sometimes exume the person if we need to and go back. What we don't know publicly though is whether Jeffrey Epstein was imbalmed.

And yes, that matters too because imbalming leaves documentation, licensed professionals, and paper trails. Who was it? Who was the inbalmer that inbalmed Jeffrey Epstein?

Please message me. Send me a message. Funeral service is so small.

It's got to be somebody. I know it. I don't know everything about this case.

I don't have secret files. I don't have insider information, but what I do know from working with the dead is [music] this. The body doesn't lie.

Bodies follow rules. They lose muscle tone. They lose moisture.

Blood settles. And there's color changes in the body that we were shown in these photos that I was summoned in. It is not following the rules of death.

So I think we can officially claim this as cleared. This house has been cleared because bodies don't lie. But people on the other hand, people lie.

They lie by omission. They lie by distraction. They lie by giving you just enough to keep you arguing instead of asking better questions.

Wouldn't you agree? That doesn't mean every unanswered question is a conspiracy, but it does mean when something doesn't make sense. It's worth slowing it down and looking at it, like really looking and talking about it helps, too.

That's why I always say there's no weird or bad questions because this is conversations that should be had because the body doesn't lie. People do. All right, that's where I'm going to leave it.

I'm sorry this isn't our like typical morbid Monday. We're gonna get back into the swing of things next [music] week. Just with the plague hanging around here and in my eye, I Anyways, thank you for tuning in.

Thank you for letting me take you down one of my little morbid rabbit holes. And if you found this interesting, unsettling, or just the right amount of morbid, like, subscribe, and hang out with me here. We do morbid Mondays every single Monday.

And one of these days, I'm working on posting twice a week. I always talk about it. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't.

But you know what? I'll get my [ __ ] together one of these days. I'm Lauren the Mortician, and trust me, if they ever release these autopsy photos, because I know they exist, I will be talking about it immediately.

But until then, I'll see you next Monday or again, I might have something this another something this week for you. So, oh, you need a mango kiss. Don't go nowhere.

You can't eat it yet. Don't wiggle. No.

No. Oh my gosh. Oh, wait.

Wait. This is your job. No.

Stop. It's raining. Can you hear it?

No. Don't bark it. Okay.

There. Kisses. Mango.

Kisses. Kisses. Oh, the rain is more interesting.

[laughter] All right. Say love you. See you next week.

Bye-bye.