A note that Jeffrey Epstein 's former cellmate claims to have found after the financier's first suspected jail suicide attempt in 2019 has been made public — not because of the Justice Department's release of records related to the sex offender, but as part of an unrelated case.
The government's explanation: It never had the note.
“The note has not yet been authenticated, and this is the first time DOJ is seeing it as well," the department said Thursday
when asked why it wasn't part of the voluminous Epstein files.
Nicholas Tartaglione said he discovered the handwritten note in a book after the disgraced financier was found in their cell at a Manhattan federal jail with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. Epstein was subsequently moved to a different cell, where a few weeks later, he was found dead, alone, in a suicide.
Tartaglione, a former police officer then facing murder charges, said he gave the note to his lawyers to protect himself against any claim that he might have harmed Epstein while they were in custody together. Epstein was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges at the time.
Since 2021, the note had been in a vault in federal court in New York. It somehow became part of proceedings between Tartaglione and his lawyers over their representation in his murder case. Anything related to that dispute was sealed out of the public's eye by the judge because it involved attorney-client privilege.
Tartaglione, a former suburban New York officer turned drug dealer, was convicted in April 2023 in the strangulation death of one man and the execution-style murders of three other people. He said he discovered the note in a book he was reading in his jail cell.
The New York Times petitioned U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas to release the note, noting that Tartaglione, now serving a life sentence, has talked publicly about it. The judge agreed to the request Wednesday, adding that Epstein's privacy interests in the note had been “vastly reduced” due to his death.
“They investigated me for month — found nothing!!!” said the short note, which is hard to decipher in some places and has not been authenticated. “It is a treat to be able to choose” the “time to say goodbye,” the note continues. “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!
“NO FUN. NOT WORTH IT!!” the note concludes.
According to jail records, Epstein had friction marks and skin irritation on his neck from the suspected July 23, 2019, suicide attempt. Jail officers said he was breathing heavily but responsive. Epstein told a guard Tartaglione had attacked him, but later recanted.
Jail officials subsequently placed Epstein on suicide watch for 31 hours before downgrading him to psychiatric observation, which was his status when he killed himself on Aug. 10, 2019.
The Justice Department did not object to releasing the note. Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley told the judge the public was interested in the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death.
Buckley also said that while two Justice Department lawyers were included in the proceedings between Tartaglione and his attorneys in 2021, they were barred by the judge from disclosing anything from those hearings to protect his attorney-client privilege. So if they did see the note, they weren't allowed to tell anyone about it.
