A federal judge on Wednesday unsealed a handwritten note that convicted murderer Nicholas Tartaglione says Jeffrey Epstein left in their cell after what jail officials later described as Epstein’s first suspected suicide attempt — a note whose release after years in a courthouse vault has drawn fresh anger from Epstein’s accusers.
The note, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, surfaced in the immediate aftermath of the July 23, 2019, incident at the since-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center. According to jail records, Epstein was found on the floor of his cell around 1:30 a.m. with marks on his neck. He initially told an officer that Tartaglione, his cellmate, had attacked him, but he recanted within a week, saying he had no issues with his cellmate and did not want “to make up something that isn’t there.” Epstein spent 31 hours on suicide watch before being moved to psychiatric observation. He was without a cellmate when he was found dead on Aug. 10, 2019.
Tartaglione provided a different account. The former Briarcliff Manor, New York, police officer, who was then awaiting trial on charges of kidnapping and executing four men in a 2016 drug-money dispute, told his lawyer that Epstein had tucked a suicide note inside a personal book. He handed the document over to his legal team, and it was later submitted as evidence in his murder case but placed under seal amid a fight over his legal representation. Tartaglione spoke publicly about the note for the first time last year in a podcast interview, insisting that conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death were false because “it was in my book. When I got back into the cell, I opened my book to read, and there it was.”
The unsealed document itself is brief and hard to parse. Written in a scrawl that has not been verified as Epstein’s handwriting, it reads: “They investigated me for month — found nothing!!!” After a break, the message continues: “It is a treat to be able to choose” the “time to say goodbye.” It ends with the exclamation “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!”
The note’s release — and the seven-year lag — has deepened uncertainty for some of the women who have accused Epstein of sexual abuse. Actor and model Alicia Arden, who filed a 1997 police report about him that went nowhere, told the Associated Press the document was “hurtful to me because I don’t know if Jeffrey Epstein really wrote it, and if he did, when.” Her lawyer, Gloria Allred, said Epstein’s victims want truth and transparency but the note “simply deepens the mystery.” Jennifer Freeman, an attorney who represents multiple survivors, warned that the document “distracts” from their push to scrutinize the government’s handling of Epstein’s case and hold accountable anyone who enabled him. “We cannot allow the narrative to become muddied by speculation over whether this note is real,” Freeman said.
Tartaglione was ultimately convicted in 2023 of orchestrating the 2016 kidnapping and murder of four men, whom prosecutors say he lured to a bar, tortured, and buried on his property. He is serving four consecutive life sentences. Federal authorities concluded that Epstein killed himself in August 2019 and that the July incident was likely a missed opportunity to intervene. The Metropolitan Correctional Center was closed in 2021 after years of complaints about dangerous conditions.