A federal judge on Wednesday released a document described as a suicide note purportedly written by the late Jeffrey Epstein and including the line: "It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye."
Epstein, the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 in what was ruled a suicide. The handwritten note was said to have been found by his former jail cellmate, convicted murderer and ex-police officer Nicholas Tartaglione.
US District Judge Kenneth Karas, who oversaw the Tartaglione case, released the note after a request by The New York Times, which reported its existence last week.
Karas ruled that the note qualified as a judicial document subject to the public’s right of access because it was submitted in connection with Tartaglione's criminal case. Tartaglione is serving four consecutive life sentences for drug-related murders. Karas oversaw that case.
The judge found no legal reason to keep it under seal. But nor did he vouch for the note's authenticity, nor assess its chain of custody. Instead he treated those issues as irrelevant to the unsealing decision.
"No party has identified any competing consideration that would justify sealing the Note," the judge ruled, according to Reuters.
The note, scrawled on a yellow legal pad, was submitted by lawyers for Tartaglione, who was Epstein's cellmate for roughly two weeks in July 2019 while both were held at a Manhattan jail.
"They investigated me for month - Found NOTHING!!! So 15 year old charges resulted,” the note says, according to an image of it released in the court file. "It is a treat to be able to choose ones time to say goodbye. Watcha want me to do - Burst out cryin!! NO FUN - NOT WORTH IT!!"
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor, a conviction that led to a controversial plea deal and a short jail sentence. He was arrested again in July 2019 and charged with sex trafficking of minors, accused of recruiting and abusing underage girls in New York and Florida.
The note surfaced in July 2019, after Epstein was found alive in his Manhattan jail cell with marks on his neck in what authorities later described as an apparent suicide attempt.
According to public descriptions by Tartaglione, the note was tucked inside a book in their shared cell. Epstein died several weeks later, on August 10, 2019, in a separate incident ruled a suicide.
Tartaglione mentioned the note in a podcast interview last year but the issue gained widespread attention after the Times reported on its existence last Thursday. The Times reported that the note was never seen by federal investigators and was absent from millions of Epstein-related documents released by the Justice Department in recent years.
In ordering the unsealing, the judge rejected privacy concerns, noting Epstein’s death and the widespread public discussion of the purported note.
