NY Times Asks Court to Unseal Possible Epstein Suicide Note

The New York Times has petitioned a federal judge to unseal a purported suicide note written by Jeffrey Epstein, a document that has remained hidden inside a New York courthouse for nearly seven years.

The note was not included in a trove of Epstein-related documents released in the past year by the Department of Justice, the Times reported.

It was written in July 2019, after Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth around his neck in his Manhattan jail cell.

Epstein, who was in federal custody awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, survived the incident but weeks later was found dead in his jail cell. His death was ruled a suicide.

When jail officials asked Epstein about red marks on his neck after the July incident, he told them that his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, had attacked him and that he was not suicidal.

Tartaglione, a former police officer serving four life sentences after a 2023 conviction for quadruple homicide, has long denied assaulting Epstein, the Times reported.

The note's existence has long remained largely out of public view.

It was turned over to the court and sealed by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, a George W. Bush appointee, as part of Tartaglione's criminal case, raising questions about why a potentially significant piece of evidence was not part of official investigations into Epstein's death.

The Times reported it had not seen the note and could not locate it among the millions of documents the DOJ released as directed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

A DOJ spokeswoman told the Times the agency had not seen the document either despite "an exhaustive effort to collect all records in its possession," including those from the Bureau of Prisons and the Office of the Inspector General.

Tartaglione told the Times he found the note tucked inside a book in their jail cell. He described it as a piece of yellow legal paper, and he said that investigators had looked into Epstein for many months and "found nothing."

He said the message continued along the lines of, "What do you want me to do, bust out crying? Time to say goodbye."

The note's authenticity was examined by Tartaglione's legal team, the Times reported, citing a two-page chronology included among the documents released by the DOJ.

The chronology indicated that the note became entangled in legal disputes among Tartaglione's attorneys, leading a judge to take possession and seal related records.

The chronology stated that Tartaglione told his attorney about the note on July 27, 2019, four days after Epstein was found with marks on his neck. Over the following days, Tartaglione's attorneys tried multiple times to authenticate the note but could not.

The note was later authenticated by early January 2020, the chronology showed, though it's unclear how or by whom. It's also unclear who wrote the chronology and why, the Times reported.

The Times reported the note was not referenced in the DOJ inspector general's 2023 report on Epstein's death, which documented significant security failures at the now-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center but upheld the medical examiner's ruling that Epstein died by suicide.

Epstein's death at age 66 has fueled widespread scrutiny and speculation, driven by the security lapses and his connections to high-profile individuals.

The existence of such a note, if authenticated and released, could provide new insight into Epstein's state of mind in the weeks before his death.

Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office, an independent agency under the legislative branch, said it would review the DOJ's handling of the Epstein documents after a bipartisan group of senators raised concerns the DOJ violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Sarah Kaczmarek, managing director of the GAO's Office of Public Affairs, confirmed to Forbes that the investigation will focus on the DOJ's "reviewing, redacting, and releasing" of the files.

The lawmakers reportedly alleged in a letter to the GAO that the DOJ had violated the law by redacting the names of powerful people who appear in the files, accusing the DOJ of failing to protect victims.