Federal prosecutors back release of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged suicide note

Federal prosecutors have joined the call to release a suicide note allegedly written by Jeffrey Epstein, first discovered by his cellmate at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in July 2019.

The New York Times reported on the note last week and has petitioned Judge Kenneth Karas of White Plains, New York, to allow for its publication. The Times argues that because the cellmate, convicted quadruple murderer Nicholas Tartaglione, had already discussed it publicly there is no longer a reason to keep it secret.

Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in turn wrote to the judge Monday saying that Tartaglione having discussed it openly means “his public statements constitute a waiver of the need for continued sealing as to the matters he has publicly disclosed.”

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The decision on whether or not to allow the publication of the note, which was sealed as part of the Tartaglione case, remains at the discretion of the justice.

A New York City medical examiner ruled that the pedophile financier died by suicide in his cell on August 10, 2019 as he awaited trial but, some three weeks earlier, the inmate had been found lying on the floor of his cell on July 23 “with a homemade noose fashioned around his neck,” according to a Bureau of Prisons incident report.

Epstein was revived and originally alleged that Tartaglione had tried to kill him, but did not subsequently repeat the claim after he was removed to another cell, where he ultimately succeeded in taking his own life.

Tartaglione, an ex-cop who was convicted in 2023 and sentenced in 2024 to four consecutive terms of life imprisonment, first mentioned the existence of the note during a podcast interview with Jessica Reed Kraus last July, claiming to have uncovered it inside a graphic novel left behind by Epstein when he was moved out of their shared cell.

“It said something like ‘FBI, you know, looked into me for months and found nothing.’ Then he wrote, ‘What do you want me to do? Cry about it?’ And he was weird because he wrote a smiley face, and then he wrote ‘time to say goodbye,’” Tartaglione claimed.

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Prosecutors from the SDNY were not previously aware of the note, according to ABC News, although it was alluded to in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in December and January.

“Sometime between 7/23 and 7/27, NT found the note,” a two-page timeline included in the files read, appearing to reference Tartaglione by his initials.

Epstein’s death has long been the subject of online conspiracy theories, with internet sleuths routinely claiming he was murdered on the orders of powerful former friends to ensure his silence over their involvement in his notorious sex trafficking operations.

When the FBI and DOJ put out a joint memo last summer stating that the financier left behind no “client list” and had not been assassinated in prison, hoping to put the matter to rest, the gesture had the opposite effect, only reigniting calls for justice on behalf of his victims.

That ultimately led to new investigations by the House Oversight Committee and the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act through Congress in November, prompting the chaotic release of millions of DOJ files pertaining to Epstein that have so far yielded no new prosecutions.