A federal judge unsealed a purported suicide note from Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday.
The unverified and undated document was placed on the court docket in the case of a former cellmate of the late convicted sex offender who said he had found the note.
The note — which is not signed — reads, in part:
“They investigated me for month – found NOTHING!!!
“It is a treat to be able to chose ones time to say goodbye.”
“NO FUN – NOT WORTH IT!!
The cellmate said the note was from Epstein’s unsuccessful suicide attempt in July 2019, weeks before he was found dead in his cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. A medical examiner ruled that he died by suicide.
The court’s release of the record on Wednesday comes after the Justice Department said it had released millions of documents in its possession related to Epstein.
The existence of a purported suicide note was first reported byThe New York Times, which shared last week that the note had been concealed from the public for almost seven years. The Times had asked District Judge Kenneth Karas to make public the reported note and other documents related to the cellmate’s criminal case, and the Justice Department did not oppose the transparency.
“There appears to be a strong public interest in the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death as described in the unsealing motion. That said, because the Government has no knowledge as to … the accuracy of the factual narrative described in the unsealing motion, the Government defers to the court,” the department wrote to Karas on Monday, indicating that it did not know if the purported note is legitimate.
CNN has reached out to DOJ for comment.
The note was reportedly discovered in July 2019 by Epstein’s cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer convicted of quadruple murder. The cellmate had said he revived Epstein during the initial unsuccessful suicide attempt. A law enforcement source and a source familiar with the incident told CNN at the time that Epstein was found in his Manhattan jail cell withmarks on his neck.
“Jeffrey Epstein tried killing himself when he was in the cell with me. I woke up, I brought him back with CPR. And to prove this point, Jeffrey Epstein wrote a suicide note,” Tartaglione told influencer and writer Jessica Reed Kraus last year.
The note “was in my book, yeah, when I got back into the cell, I opened my book to read, and there it was. And he wrote it and stuck it in the book,” he added.
Tartaglione asserted his lawyers had handwriting experts authenticate the note, the Times reported.
