Behold your forearm. Either one of them
Now, take a close look at about the first four inches of your inner forearm north of your wrist. Some people, particularly cops and others, call that bony portion of the inner forearm the choke bone.
Now, this is why. Raise your forearm up to where that part of your forearm, the part that some call the choke bone, makes contact with your throat. Your Adam’s apple, your windpipe.
Now imagine that’s someone else’s forearm, and he’s about to incorporate it with his other arm, the crook of his elbow, to strongly leverage it into your windpipe.
That’s a choke hold. If it’s practice you better tap out quick. If it’s a fight you’re in trouble.
What you’re referring to is a different technique, usually exploiting the gi or shirt, to construct the carotid arteries. This set, or family of constriction holds, are most usually referred to as strangulation holds, not choke holds.
I don’t claim to know because I wasn’t there, but I’m inclined to consider it highly possible that JE’s neck was broken by a buffed up, homicidal cop, correctly but unfortunately executing a choke hold, leveraging and squishing the choke bone section of his inner forearm into JE’s windpipe.
The technique I referred to involved the crook of the elbow being lined up with the subjects windpipe. The forearm was squeezed into the side of the neck by the off hand and the officer flexed his bicep on the hold arm to complete the move.
This was what was taught the cops in SoCal in the early 80’s after a few people got killed with the forearm choke hold you described. This technique was perceived to be safer...until some of the arrestees ended up with aneurysms, strokes, and other brain injuries, quite a few of which were fatal.
It is entirely possible that Epstein was killed in the manner you described — it would check both the boxes we know so far — broken hyroid and death by asphyxiation.