{"id":25481,"date":"2026-05-06T23:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25481\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T23:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T23:45:08","slug":"purported-epstein-suicide-note-is-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25481\/","title":{"rendered":"Purported Epstein Suicide Note Is Released"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has released a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> that was sealed for years as part of the criminal case of his cellmate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey investigated me for months \u2014 FOUND NOTHING!!!\u201d the note begins, adding that the result was charges going back many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a treat to be able to choose one\u2019s time to say goodbye,\u201d the note continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatcha want me to do \u2014 Bust out cryin!!\u201d the note reads.<\/p>\n

\u201cNO FUN,” it concludes, with those words underlined. \u201cNOT WORTH IT!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Epstein\u2019s cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he discovered the note in July 2019 after Mr. Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth wrapped around his neck. Mr. Epstein survived that incident, but he was found dead weeks later<\/a> at age 66 in the now shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.<\/p>\n

The note was made public on Wednesday by Judge Kenneth M. Karas of Federal District Court in White Plains, N.Y., who oversaw the cellmate\u2019s case. The judge acted after The New York Times petitioned the court<\/a> last Thursday to unseal the document and published an article<\/a> in which Mr. Tartaglione described the note and how it came into his possession.<\/p>\n

The Times has not authenticated whether Mr. Epstein wrote the note, which was placed on the court docket Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n

The document remained hidden from public view even as the Justice Department released millions of pages of documents related to Mr. Epstein in a move of unprecedented transparency. The Times searched those records and did not find a copy of the note. (A spokeswoman from the Justice Department said the agency had never seen it.)<\/p>\n

Got a confidential news tip?\u00a0The New York Times would like to hear from readers who want to share messages and materials with our journalists.<\/p>\n

The search did turn up a cryptic two-page chronology that described how the note became caught up in Mr. Tartaglione\u2019s complicated legal case. The chronology said that Mr. Tartaglione\u2019s lawyers authenticated the note, though it did not explain how.<\/p>\n

Mr. Tartaglione, a former police officer in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., shared a cell with Mr. Epstein while awaiting trial in a quadruple murder case<\/a>. He told The Times in recent phone interviews from a California prison that he found the note in a graphic novel after Mr. Epstein was taken out of their cell after the apparent suicide attempt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI opened the book to read and there it was,\u201d Mr. Tartaglione said. It was written on a piece of yellow paper ripped from a legal pad, he said.<\/p>\n

The New York City medical examiner ruled Mr. Epstein\u2019s death a suicide<\/a>. In the years since, revelations of security lapses inside the jail have spawned endless theories about how Mr. Epstein died and whether he was murdered.<\/p>\n

When jail officials asked Mr. Epstein about red marks on his neck after the incident in July, he first said that Mr. Tartaglione had attacked him and that he was not suicidal. Mr. Tartaglione has long denied assaulting Mr. Epstein, who later told jail officials he \u201cnever had any issues\u201d with his cellmate.<\/p>\n

Mr. Tartaglione said he gave the note to his lawyers because he believed it could have been helpful if Mr. Epstein continued to claim that he had tried to hurt him. Mr. Tartaglione was convicted in 2023 and is now serving four life sentences. He has maintained his innocence and has appealed his conviction.<\/p>\n

The note apparently became part of a drawn-out legal dispute among Mr. Tartaglione\u2019s lawyers. Documents related to the conflict were placed under a court seal to protect attorney-client privilege, the filings say.<\/p>\n

Before unsealing the note, Judge Karas asked the parties in the case to provide their views on The Times\u2019s request that the materials be made public. The U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Manhattan, which prosecuted Mr. Tartaglione, did not contest the note\u2019s release. In a letter to the judge, the prosecutors wrote that \u201cthere appears to be a strong public interest in the circumstances surrounding Epstein\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.<\/p>\n

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com\/resources<\/a> for a list of additional resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge has released a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein that was sealed for years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3832,2084,12673,8,13180,1505,15618,15619,15617,9,13920,2146,14368,13919,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-25481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-courts-and-the-judiciary","9":"tag-epstein","10":"tag-federal-courts-us","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-jeffrey-e-1953","13":"tag-justice-department","14":"tag-karas","15":"tag-kenneth-m","16":"tag-metropolitan-correctional-center-manhattan","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nicholas-1967","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-prisons-and-prisoners","21":"tag-tartaglione","22":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116530297098864356","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}