Hidden jail note fuels new doubts over Epstein’s death
A suicide note written by Jeffrey Epstein in jail has reportedly been kept secret for nearly seven years.
The disgraced financier’s letter is said to have been locked up in a New York courthouse vault.
A cellmate said he discovered the note in July 2019, after Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth around his neck. Epstein survived that incident but weeks later was found dead in the jail.
On Thursday, The New York Times petitioned the judge to unseal the note which said it was "time to say goodbye", cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione claimed. The note had been sealed by a federal judge as part of the cellmate’s own criminal case, according to documents and interviews.
And it meant that detectives investigating Epstein’s high-profile death lacked what could have been a key piece of evidence. A two-page document in the records reportedly describes how the scrawled message became tangled up in Tartaglione’s legal case.
It was said that Tartaglione’s lawyers authenticated the note, though there is no explanation of how this was done.
Tartaglione did mention the note on a podcast last year but the contents of the message were never revealed, despite so many calls for transparency over the investigation. Since December, the Justice Department has released millions of pages of documents related to Epstein.
Tartaglione, a former police officer, is behind bars serving four consecutive life sentences for murdering four people. Prison records show that a week after Epstein accused his cellmate of attacking him in July 2019, he later U-turned and said they "never had any issues".
A Justice Department spokeswoman told the New York Times that the agency had not seen it and that the agency "underwent an exhaustive effort to collect all records in its possession," including those from the Bureau of Prisons and the Office of the Inspector General.
Tartaglione said he found the note tucked into a graphic novel after Epstein was moved into a different part of the jail. The note is alleged to have said investigators "found nothing" from their investigations into the sex offender, Tartaglione recalled.
He said the message read: "What do you want me to do, bust out crying? Time to say goodbye."
Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan, New York, in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled as a suicide.
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