US judge releases purported Epstein suicide note
A US judge has unsealed a note, which Jeffrey Epstein's former cellmate said he found. Photo: AAP
A note Jeffrey Epstein’s former cellmate claimed he found after the disgraced financier’s first suspected jail suicide attempt has been made public.
US District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains, New York, ordered the note’s release after The New York Times petitioned last week to unseal it and other documents in a case involving the cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione.
The letter, which is handwritten on lined paper and has not been authenticated, dates to what was believed to be Epstein’s unsuccessful suicide attempt in July 2019, less than two weeks before he died.
It had been sealed in a courthouse vault for nearly five years.
Epstein’s alleged note. Photo: US District Court Southern District of New York
Few people knew about the note until Tartaglione, a former police officer who is serving a life sentence for killing four people, mentioned it on a podcast last year.
Tartaglione claimed he found it in a book in his cell after Epstein was found on July 23, 2019, with a strip of bedsheet around his neck.
“They investigated me for month – found nothing!!!” the short note, which is hard to decipher in some places, said.
“It is a treat to be able to choose” the “time to say goodbye,” it continues. “Watcha want me to do – Bust out cryin!!”
“NO FUN,” the note concludes, with those words underlined. “NOT WORTH IT!!”
Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre, a federal jail in Manhattan, on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The medical examiner ruled it a suicide. Authorities have pointed to a series of missteps by jail personnel – including browsing the internet and sleeping when they should’ve been checking on Epstein – for allowing him to take his own life.
It is unclear who wrote the note that Tartaglione claimed he found. It wasn’t mentioned in the lengthy US government reports examining the circumstances of Epstein’s death.
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-AAP
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