Nicholas Tartaglione

Nicholas Tartaglione is a former police officer of the Briarcliff Manor Police Department in Westchester County, New York, who was convicted in April 2023 of the April 2016 murders of four men and sentenced to four consecutive life terms. While awaiting trial he was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, where from July 2019 he shared a cell in the Special Housing Unit with Jeffrey Epstein. After Epstein was found with a cloth around his neck on July 23, 2019, Epstein told an officer that Tartaglione had tried to kill him, then told a jail investigator eight days later that he had "never had any issues with Tartaglione." In 2026 a federal judge unsealed a handwritten note that Tartaglione says he found in the cell and that has not been authenticated.¹²³

Police Career and the 2016 Murders

Tartaglione served as a police officer in Briarcliff Manor, a Westchester village about 20 miles north of New York City. On April 11, 2016 he and accomplices kidnapped Martin Luna, whom he suspected of stealing 250,000 dollars from him; Luna was strangled with a zip tie, and three men who were with him, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez, were forced to kneel in the woods and shot in the back of the head. The four bodies were buried on Tartaglione's property in Otisville, Orange County. He was indicted in the Southern District of New York in December 2016 on a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and four counts of murder in furtherance of a drug crime, and a second superseding indictment added firearm murder, kidnapping conspiracy, kidnapping resulting in death and Travel Act murder counts.¹⁴⁵ He was held in federal custody from December 2016.⁶ The Bureau of Prisons described him as "a certified death penalty eligible inmate."²

During the pretrial proceedings Judge Kenneth M. Karas appointed separate counsel under Curcio to advise him on a conflict among his lawyers, held a multi-day sealed hearing with the participation of the government's "firewall" counsel, and on May 25, 2021 disqualified one of his retained attorneys, John Weider, for "an actual, unwaivable conflict of interest," while finding that any conflicts of the attorney Bruce Barket and his firm were waivable. Trial ran from March 13 to April 6, 2023, and the jury convicted him on every count. On June 10, 2024 Karas sentenced him to four consecutive life terms followed by five years of supervised release; U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said he had "brutally and senselessly murdered Martin Luna over money." His appeal to the Second Circuit (No. 24-1852) was pending in May 2026.¹⁵

Cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein

When Epstein was placed in the Special Housing Unit on July 7, 2019, the jail's executive staff chose Tartaglione, who had arrived at MCC New York on January 23, 2018, as his cellmate. A later institution response to a Bureau of Prisons psychological reconstruction team explained: "MCC New York administrators initially housed Mr. Epstein with Mr. Tartaglione as both had high profile cases. Mr. Tartaglione is also a certified death penalty eligible inmate and, thus, based on correctional judgment, less likely to assault or otherwise try to harm Mr. Epstein." The reconstruction team wrote that "input was not sought from Psychology Services" and that the two men "did not share the risk associated with being a sex offender and their pairing may have aggravated Mr. Epstein's risk for self-directed violence." Tartaglione's jail file carried the security threat group labels "EX LAW ENFORCEMENT" and "POSTED PICTURE CARD FILE."²

At about 1:27 a.m. on July 23, 2019 officers heard noises from cell Z05-124 and found Epstein "laying down near his bunk with what appeared to be a piece of handmade orange cloth around his neck"; one officer restrained Tartaglione and secured him in the bathroom. When Epstein became responsive he told a senior officer specialist that he thought his "Bunkie, Tartaglione," had "tried to kill him," that the cellmate had tried "to extort money from him," and that "this has been going on for a week." A lieutenant photographed Tartaglione that night; Tartaglione said he had been asleep with headphones on, felt something hit his legs, turned on the light and saw Epstein "with a string around his neck," and that he slept on a mattress on the floor because he had given Epstein the bottom bunk "because he's old." Epstein told the same lieutenant that Tartaglione had come back from a day in court in Westchester "carrying on," and had shown him a Daily News page with Epstein's picture on it saying that he was worth seventy-seven million dollars.²

The jail's Special Investigative Services lieutenant interviewed both men on July 31, 2019. Epstein said he "has never had any issues with Tartaglione, he is not threatened by Tartaglione," that Tartaglione had once "called him a pedophile" after returning from court upset, and that he "feels safe being housed with Tartaglione." Tartaglione said he did not "understand Epstein's motive and what he is trying to do," that "Epstein made him uncomfortable when Epstein stated 'fourteen (14) is legal in most states and I don't understand what's the problem here'," that Epstein "normally paces the cell and complains about his attorney's not doing their job and he needs to fire them," and that he did "not want to be involved with any plots Epstein have in mind in order to try to get released." A medical assessment found no injuries on Tartaglione. The report, case NYM-19-0061, signed off by Warden Lamine N'Diaye on August 2, 2019, found "insufficient evidence to support Epstein was assaulted by Tartaglione" and that no separation order was warranted; a later review called the results "inconclusive as to whether Mr. Epstein engaged in self-directed violence, willingly fought with his cellmate, or was assaulted by his cellmate," and the self-mutilation incident report against Epstein was expunged.²³

When Epstein left suicide watch, Tartaglione "was not chosen as the investigation at the time had not yet cleared him of any wrongdoing," and the jail instead narrowed its choice to cooperators, housing Epstein with an inmate "confirmed as proffering with the U.S. Attorney's Office." According to the Inspector General, after returning to the Special Housing Unit Epstein asked two staff members whether he could be housed again with the same cellmate.²³

After Epstein's Death

On September 12, 2019 the New York Daily News published a two-page handwritten letter from Tartaglione: "As far as Jeff Epstein is concerned, I never touched the man. I despise anyone who hurts children but whatever was going to happen to him, I was not going to be a part of it," and "The prison told Epstein they were putting him in a cell with me because they knew I would neither hurt nor extort him. The staff here at MCC had hundreds of inmates to choose from yet I was their first choice." Barket said his client had not been questioned "by any law enforcement official since July 23." Staff of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York circulated the article internally the next day. The Bureau of Prisons later withheld several categories of its records on Tartaglione on the ground that they could "adversely affect the Tartaglione proceedings and influence potential juror's perceptions."⁶⁷

The Note

On May 20, 2021 material described as "a suicide note purportedly authored by Jeffrey Epstein, recovered by . . . Tartaglione, and then reportedly submitted by . . . Tartaglione's attorneys" was placed in the court's vault. After Tartaglione discussed it in interviews, The New York Times asked for it to be unsealed, and on May 6, 2026 Karas granted the request, finding that Tartaglione's "repeated public discussion about the Note's contents constitutes waiver of the attorney-client privilege" and that the privacy interests of a deceased person "are vastly reduced." According to the Times's letter, a Justice Department document placed the note's existence more than a week before Epstein's death and before Epstein was moved from Tartaglione's cell. Tartaglione said he found it inside a book in the cell after the July 23 incident. The handwritten note includes the lines "It is a treat to be able to choose" and "NOT WORTH IT!!"; neither the court nor the Justice Department has authenticated it, and it does not appear in the Inspector General's report or the government's other published reviews of Epstein's death.¹⁸