New York judge releases purported suicide note linked to Jeffrey Epstein

A newly released court document has cast fresh light on the final weeks before Jeffrey Epstein’s death: a federal judge in the US has unsealed a handwritten note described as a suicide note purportedly written by the jailed financier.

Epstein, the disgraced financier, convicted sex offender and accused sex trafficker, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019. Authorities ruled the death a suicide.

The handwritten note was said to have been discovered by Epstein’s former cellmate, convicted murderer and former police officer Nicholas Tartaglione, after an earlier apparent attempt by Epstein to end his life.

US District Judge Kenneth Karas, who presided over Tartaglione’s case, released the note after The New York Times requested that it be unsealed. The newspaper reported on its existence last week.

Tartaglione is serving four consecutive life sentences for drug‑related murders. Judge Karas handled that prosecution.

In his ruling, the judge said there was no legal basis to keep the document sealed. He did not, however, endorse the note as authentic or evaluate its chain of custody, saying those questions were not material to the decision to make it public.

“No party has identified any competing consideration that would justify sealing the note,” the judge ruled.

The note emerged in July 2019, weeks before Epstein’s death

The note, written on a yellow legal pad, was filed by Tartaglione’s lawyers. Tartaglione shared a cell with Epstein for about two weeks in July 2019 while both men were being held in a Manhattan jail.

“They investigated me for month – Found nothing!!! So 15-year-old charges resulted,” the note says, according to an image released in the court record.

Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor, a conviction that produced a controversial plea agreement and a brief jail term.

He was arrested again in July 2019 and charged with sex trafficking of minors. Prosecutors accused him of recruiting and abusing underage girls in New York and Florida.

The note surfaced later that same month, after Epstein was found alive in his Manhattan jail cell in what authorities would later describe as an apparent suicide attempt.

Based on Tartaglione’s public account, the note had been hidden inside a book in the cell the two men shared.

Several weeks later, on 10 August 2019, Epstein died in a separate incident that was also ruled a suicide.

Tartaglione referred to the note in a podcast interview last year, but scrutiny intensified after the Times revealed its existence last Thursday.

The Times said the note had never been reviewed by federal investigators and did not appear in the millions of Epstein-related documents the Justice Department has released in recent years.

In deciding to unseal it, the judge dismissed privacy objections, citing Epstein’s death and the fact that the purported note had already become the subject of extensive public discussion.

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