A note that Jeffrey Epstein’s former cellmate says he found after the millionaire sex offender’s first suspected suicide attempt in a Manhattan jail was made public Wednesday, revealing a brief, at-times illegible message that authorities never used in their investigation into Epstein’s death.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains, N.Y., ordered the note’s release after The New York Times asked for it to be unsealed along with other documents in a case involving the cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione. Federal prosecutors did not object.
Few people knew of the note’s existence until Tartaglione mentioned it last year on writer Jessica Reed Kraus’s podcast. Tartaglione, a former police officer convicted of murdering four people and serving life in prison, told Kraus he discovered the note inside a book after Epstein was found on the floor of their cell on July 23, 2019, with a bedsheet strip around his neck. The two had been cellmates for about two weeks at the Metropolitan Correctional Center after Epstein’s July 6 arrest on sex trafficking charges.
The handwritten note is difficult to read in places. Partial text released by the court reads: “They investigated me for month — found nothing!!! … It is a treat to be able to choose” the “time to say goodbye … Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!” It concludes with the underlined words “NO FUN. NOT WORTH IT!!”
It remains unclear who wrote the note. Tartaglione’s claims were never corroborated in the lengthy government reports examining Epstein’s death, and the note did not appear in the Justice Department’s recent releases of files on the financier. In his ruling, Karas said he weighed the privacy interests of third parties but found that Epstein’s status as a deceased person “vastly reduced” such concerns and that disclosure was unlikely to cause “concrete harm.”
According to jail records, Epstein had friction marks and skin irritation from the July 23 incident. One officer reported at the time that Epstein said he believed Tartaglione had tried to kill him, though Epstein later told jail personnel he had never had any issues with his cellmate and “didn’t want to make up something that isn’t there.”
Epstein was placed on suicide watch for 31 hours after the incident, then downgraded to psychiatric observation. He denied trying to harm himself, telling a psychologist that suicide was against his Jewish religion and that he was a coward who did not like pain. He was found dead in his cell on Aug. 10, 2019, without a cellmate. Officials later concluded that his death was a suicide and cited a series of missteps by jail personnel.
A chronology included in Justice Department files states that Tartaglione told his lawyer about the note four days after the July 23 incident, and the document was eventually submitted as evidence in Tartaglione’s criminal case. It was placed under seal amid a dispute over his legal representation before being ordered unsealed this week.
Tartaglione, who was convicted in 2023, is currently incarcerated at a federal penitentiary in California and has petitioned President Donald Trump for a pardon.