A note that former cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione said he discovered after Jeffrey Epstein’s first suspected jail suicide attempt was almost certainly written by the same person who authored a note that authorities found in Epstein’s cell after his death, three forensic handwriting examiners told The Associated Press. The experts reached their conclusions after reviewing the two notes at the AP’s request, citing shared characteristics in spacing, letter shapes, capitalization, and distinctive punctuation.
The note Tartaglione claimed to have found was released publicly this week after New York Times reporters convinced a federal judge to unseal it from an unrelated criminal case. In the note, the writer says, “They investigated me for month — found nothing!!!” and talks about being able to choose the “time to say goodbye.” The second note, which has been public for years and was shown on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2020, is a list of grievances about conditions at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, including the showers, food, and “Giant Bugs.”
Both documents are written in pen on notepad paper. They share the underlined phrase “NO FUN” and end with double exclamation points in which the first mark is bowed slightly with similar curvature. The first few words of each note appear larger than the text that follows, and each successive line slants away from the left margin. “These are the kinds of things that would suggest that we’re dealing with the same writer,” said Thomas Vastrick, president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners.
Bart Baggett, who founded Handwriting Experts Inc. and has testified as an expert witness more than 130 times, was more direct: “They are written by the same person.” Grace Warmbier, who performed document examinations and handwriting analysis for the New York City Police Department for a decade, reached the same conclusion. “Both of those documents have the same author,” she said.
None of the examiners were able to determine definitively that Epstein himself wrote the notes. Few confirmed examples of Epstein’s handwriting exist in the millions of pages of Justice Department records released on the late financier.
The AP also supplied the examiners with writing samples from Tartaglione, including a portion of a note he sent to the New York Daily News in 2019 denying involvement in Epstein’s death. Warmbier excluded Tartaglione as the author of the two jail notes, telling the AP she found “significant dissimilarities between his handwriting and the handwriting in question.” Vastrick said Tartaglione’s samples showed “a wide range of variation from one to another” and that some similarities required further examination. “At this point, I certainly would not eliminate him as a potential writer,” Vastrick said. “I don’t at the same time want to suggest that he is the writer.”
Beyond the expert analysis, the phrasing in the newly released note provides additional evidence of authorship. The note includes the line, “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!,” which mimics dialogue from a 1931 “Little Rascals” film. Epstein used the same reference in three emails included in the Justice Department’s records, including one he sent to his brother four months before his arrest.
Tartaglione, a former police officer serving a life sentence for killing four people, shared a cell with Epstein for approximately two weeks beginning shortly after Epstein’s July 6, 2019, arrest on federal sex trafficking charges. He told writer Jessica Reed Kraus on her podcast last summer that he discovered the note in a book in his cell after Epstein was found on July 23 with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. Epstein was placed on suicide watch, moved to a different cell, and found dead on August 10, 2019.
According to a chronology in the Justice Department’s Epstein files, Tartaglione informed his lawyer about the note four days after the suspected July 23 suicide attempt. There is no indication in the record that the lawyer alerted jail officials or Epstein’s representatives. The note was later introduced as evidence in Tartaglione’s criminal case and sealed amid a dispute over his legal representation. It was not referenced in any government report on Epstein’s death.
The Associated Press contributed to this article. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.