NEW YORK — A note Jeffrey Epstein’s former cellmate claims he found after the financier’s first suspected jail suicide attempt is made public after it had been sealed and locked in a courthouse vault for nearly five years as part of an unrelated legal dispute.
US District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains, New York, orders 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.
Few people had known 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 discovered the note 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!!!” says the short note, which is hard to decipher in some places. “It is a treat to be able to choose” the “time to say goodbye,” the note continues. “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!”
“NO FUN,” the note concludes, with those words underlined. “NOT WORTH IT!!”
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From the Liveblog of
Thursday, May 7, 2026
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