Judge releases note purportedly left in cell by Jeffrey Epstein

NEW YORK – A judge on Wednesday unsealed a suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein from the New York jail where he was held while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The note, which was allegedly written before a suicide attempt weeks before he was found dead in August 2019, was released now only after a request by The New York Times.

“They investigated me for month – FOUND NOTHING!!!” the note reads.

“It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note continues. “Watcha want me to do – Bust out cryin!! NO FUN – NOT WORTH IT!!”

The handwritten note, which is undated and unsigned, was provided in 2021 under seal to a federal judge by an attorney for Nicholas Tartaglione, a former New York police officer later convicted of four counts of murder and drug charges who shared a cell with Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

The document wasn’t included in the millions of pages of documents from the Epstein files made public by the Justice Department earlier this year.

Last week, The New York Times argued in a letter to the judge that there was no basis for continuing to seal the note and that Tartaglione had waived his attorney-client privilege. The court agreed that Tartaglione, by discussing its contents publicly, had waived his attorney-client privilege.

Epstein, who was detained while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, died by suicide about a month after his arrest. Though Epstein’s cause of death has been repeatedly confirmed as suicide by numerous authorities, including the New York City medical examiner and federal prosecutors, that has not stopped the proliferation of conspiracy theories about the subject.