Judge releases note said to have been written by Jeffrey Epstein in jail cell

A note Jeffrey Epstein’s cellmate claims he found after the convicted sex offender’s first suspected attempt to take his own life in a New York jail has been made public.

District Judge Kenneth Karas ordered the note’s release after The New York Times petitioned last week to unseal it and other documents in a case involving the cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione.

Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal jail in Manhattan, on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Tartaglione claimed he discovered the note in a book in his cell after Epstein was found on July 23, 2019, with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. “They investigated me for month — found nothing!!!” the short note says. “It is a treat to be able to choose the time to say goodbye. “Watcha want me to do — burst out cryin!! “NO FUN — NOT WORTH IT!!”

The note, which had been sealed and locked in a courthouse vault for nearly five years as part of an unrelated legal dispute was made public on Wednesday, local time. Few people had known about the note until Tartaglione, a former police officer serving a life sentence for killing four people, mentioned it on a podcast last year.

The medical examiner ruled it a suicide and authorities have pointed to a series of missteps by jail personnel, including browsing the internet and sleeping when they should’ve been checking on Epstein. It is unclear who wrote the note that Tartaglione claimed he found, nor was it mentioned in the lengthy government reports examining the circumstances of Epstein’s death.