Epstein May Have Left a Suicide Note—and DOJ Didn’t Mention It

Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death—ruled a suicide by a New York City coroner—has been pored over by conspiracy theorists. The financier was arrested for running a child sex-trafficking ring, and was friendly with many politicians and celebrities. His trial could have led to the arrest of an entire network of elites. And he was supposed to be in a high-security cell with guards nearby to prevent him from harming himself. How could this even happen?

Answers since then have been hard to come by, but on Thursday, another sliver of information was revealed: Epstein may have written a suicide note the previous month. The New York Times interviewed a cellmate of Epstein, Nicholas Tartaglione, who claimed he found a note after an incident in which Epstein was found unresponsive a few weeks before his actual death.

The note said it was “time to say goodbye,” Tartaglione said, and contained a line similar to, “What do you want me to do, bust out crying?” Tartaglione said it was written on a legal pad and found in the pages of a graphic novel.

Epstein survived this first incident, and in fact told jailers afterward he was not suicidal and the marks on his neck came from Tartaglione. Then he walked that accusation back, telling Bureau of Prisons investigators on July 31 he did “not have any issues” with his cellmate.

Epstein’s purported suicide note has not been reviewed by the public. The Times found that it was sealed by a federal judge during Tartaglione’s own criminal case. (Tartaglione has been charged with a life sentence for a quadruple homicide, and is appealing his conviction.)

On Thursday, the paper asked the judge to unseal the note. “Investigators scrutinizing Mr. Epstein’s high-profile death lacked what could have been a key piece of evidence,” the Times concluded.

A Department of Justice spokeswoman told the paper that the agency had not seen the note. It was also not mentioned in the DOJ’s investigations into Epstein’s death.

Information surrounding Epstein’s death continues to fuel a conspiratorial fire. Back in 2019, a 4chan user posted about his death before any media outlets had gotten word of it. In Donald Trump’s second term, the administration released an 11-hour surveillance video, which they claimed proved no one entered Epstein’s cell on the night he died. Reporters quickly found discrepancies in the footage.