A suicide note purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein was unsealed Wednesday by a federal judge.
The document, made public for the first time, was unsealed as a part of a criminal case against his cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione.
“They investigated me — Found Nothing!!!” the sprawling handwritten note begins.
“It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note continues. “Watcha want me to do — Burst out crying!! No FUN — NOT WORTH IT!!”
MS NOW has not authenticated whether the letter was written by Epstein, the late convicted sex offender at the center of an international sex trafficking scandal.
Epstein’s cellmate, Tartaglione, told The New York Times that he discovered the note inside of a graphic novel after Epstein was found hanging from a bunk bed in his cell following an unsuccessful suicide attempt in July 2019. Epstein was subsequently placed on suicide watch, but corrections officers found him dead in his cell weeks later in August at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York determined that Epstein had died by suicide.
“I opened the book to read and there it was,” Tartaglione told The Times.
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Judge Kenneth Karas, who is overseeing Tartaglione’s case, released the note after The Times petitioned the court to publicly release the document as part of its reporting on Epstein.
According to the Justice Department’s report on Epstein’s custody and death, Epstein first told Metropolitan Correctional Center staff that he thought his cellmate had tried to kill him after he was found unresponsive in his cell. Epstein later said he did not know what occurred and refused to talk about how he sustained his injuries, the report stated. Tartaglione said he gave the purported suicide note to his lawyers in case Epstein accused his cellmate of trying to injure him.
Tartaglione is a former police officer who was sentenced in 2024 to four consecutive life sentences for homicide.
His attorney, John Wieder, submitted the note at Karas’ direction.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment on the note.
See the full note below:
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.