Nicholas Tartaglione
Snapshot
| Field | Documented information |
|---|---|
| Name | Nicholas Tartaglione |
| Background | Former Briarcliff Manor police officer |
| Criminal case | United States v. Tartaglione, 16-CR-832, Southern District of New York |
| Conviction | Jury verdict on April 6, 2023 for offenses arising from the murders of four men and related kidnapping and narcotics conduct |
| Sentence | Four consecutive life sentences, imposed June 10, 2024 |
| Appeal | Second Circuit No. 24-1852; district court confirmed it was pending with briefing underway on May 6, 2026 |
| Latest-status limitation | No later appellate disposition was verified in the public sources reviewed through October 7, 2026 |
| Epstein connection | Shared a cell with Jeffrey Epstein at MCC New York in July 2019 |
| Principal custody event | July 23, 2019 incident after which Epstein was placed on suicide watch |
| Tartaglione’s account | Said he found Epstein in distress and summoned officers; denied assaulting him |
| Conflicting account | Staff recorded Epstein initially saying his cellmate tried to harm him; later accounts differed |
| Internal inquiry | Found insufficient evidence to support an assault by Tartaglione |
| Missing video | Prosecutors acknowledged in January 2020 that the wrong tier’s footage had been preserved |
| Purported note | Tartaglione said he found a note attributed to Epstein; it became part of a dispute about legal representation |
| May 2026 development | Court ordered the note unsealed; the order did not authenticate its authorship |
| Last checked | October 7, 2026 |
Nicholas Tartaglione was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in June 2024 after a jury convicted him of crimes arising from the 2016 murders of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez. His connection to Jeffrey Epstein is separate: while awaiting trial in that case, he briefly shared Epstein’s cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
The July 2019 prison records preserve conflicting accounts of an incident in the shared cell. Tartaglione said he called for help after finding Epstein in distress. Staff recorded an initial allegation by Epstein that his cellmate had tried to hurt him, followed by different statements from Epstein. The internal investigation did not establish that Tartaglione assaulted him.
A May 6, 2026 court order added another important chapter by authorizing release of a note that Tartaglione attributed to Epstein. The order concerned access to judicial records and the protection of attorney-client material. It did not decide that Epstein wrote the note or that the note established how he later died.
Important Points
- Tartaglione’s convictions concern four murders in 2016, not Epstein’s death. His criminal history cannot substitute for evidence about what happened in the MCC cell.
- He was Epstein’s cellmate during the July 23 incident. He was not the cellmate whose transfer on August 9 left Epstein alone before his death.
- Epstein’s initial allegation, his later statements and Tartaglione’s account conflict in significant ways. Each should be attributed to its speaker and the date on which it was recorded.
- A July 23 memorandum’s title, “Possible Suicide Attempt,” is a contemporaneous description, not a final adjudication of every aspect of the episode.
- The prison threat-assessment report found insufficient evidence that Tartaglione assaulted Epstein. That wording is more precise than saying the record definitively reconstructed the incident.
- Tartaglione’s lawyers sought video partly because evidence that he helped another inmate could matter in a then-capital prosecution. The footage request was connected to punishment as well as his public reputation.
- Prosecutors initially believed the requested video had been preserved, then told the court the wrong tier’s footage had been saved and the requested recording no longer existed.
- The missing July recording and the limited recordings from the night of Epstein’s August death are related custodial issues but different evidence questions.
- The purported note’s alleged discovery in 2019, placement in a court vault in 2021 and unsealing in 2026 are distinct dates. None independently establishes when it was written.
- The May 2026 order distinguishes the prosecutors handling the criminal case from a separate government firewall team involved with privileged representation matters.
- Expert handwriting comments reported after the note’s release were qualified and did not amount to a judicial authentication or a complete chain of custody.
- The court expressly confirmed a pending appeal in May 2026. A public docket mirror last updated in 2024 cannot establish the appeal’s status on every subsequent date.
Background and the Separate Murder Prosecution
The district court’s May 2026 order identifies Tartaglione as a former Briarcliff Manor police officer and summarizes the prosecution that began in December 2016. The charges concerned narcotics activity, kidnapping and four deaths. He was already detained in that case before Epstein entered federal custody in July 2019.
The June 10, 2024 sentencing announcement describes the four victims and identifies an April 11, 2016 drug-money dispute as the origin of the crimes. It reports convictions on eleven murder counts under different federal provisions, four kidnapping-resulting-in-death counts, a kidnapping-conspiracy count and a narcotics-conspiracy count. Multiple statutory murder counts concerned the same four deaths; eleven counts does not mean eleven homicide victims.
The jury returned its verdict on April 6, 2023. Judge Kenneth Karas imposed four consecutive life sentences on June 10, 2024. These outcomes explain Tartaglione’s legal position when later coverage called him a convicted murderer. They should not be projected backward into a 2019 document as though he had already been convicted then.
The four victims retain their own place in the record. Their murders were the subject of Tartaglione’s prosecution, and the Epstein connection did not replace or resolve that case. Graphic descriptions of those killings are unnecessary to understanding his later cell assignment, evidence-preservation requests or legal-representation dispute.
The Appeal and the Limits of a Current-Status Check
The May 6, 2026 order, page 3, records a notice of appeal filed on July 2, 2024. It identifies the Second Circuit proceeding as No. 24-1852 and expressly says the appeal remained pending with briefing underway when that order was issued.
A public appellate docket mirror confirms the appeal’s opening but states that its docket was last retrieved on July 11, 2024. Its apparent recent appearance in search results is not proof of a recently updated docket. The later district-court order supplies the stronger dated status confirmation.
No later appellate disposition was verified in the public materials reviewed through October 7, 2026. The defensible statement is therefore that the appeal was pending as of the May 6 order, with later status not independently established here. The article does not claim an affirmance, reversal, retrial order or final exhaustion of review.
The same distinction applies to the unsealing litigation. Karas explained that the district court retained authority over collateral matters such as sealing despite the pending appeal. A decision to release a document did not itself reconsider the jury’s murder verdict.
Becoming Epstein’s Cellmate
Prosecutor Russell Capone’s August 5, 2020 declaration, filed in a Freedom of Information Act case, confirms that Tartaglione was housed at MCC during July 2019 and shared a SHU cell with Epstein, including on July 23. The declaration is a primary legal record connecting the named individual to the cell assignment.
The 2023 OIG report describes Epstein’s initial cellmate as Inmate 1. The named prison report and Capone declaration provide independent context for the July relationship. The later cellmate designated Inmate 3 belongs to the period after Epstein returned from psychological observation.
That distinction prevents a recurring chronological error. Tartaglione’s connection is to the earlier July event. The departure on August 9 that left Epstein without a cellmate concerned the later assignment. A statement that “Epstein’s cellmate was transferred” needs a date and a source before it can be attached to Tartaglione.
The available records establish institutional co-housing. They do not establish that Tartaglione knew Epstein socially before detention, participated in Epstein’s abuse network, or was placed there as part of a proven outside conspiracy.
July 23: The Conflicting Accounts
The contemporaneous BOP memorandum EFTA00072697 records an emergency in the shared cell and carries the subject “Possible Suicide Attempt.” It also records the author being told that Epstein alleged his cellmate had tried to kill him and had harassed him. This is a report of what staff said Epstein told them, not an eyewitness account of an assault.
The fuller threat-assessment packet EFTA00135029 contains subsequent interviews and supporting records. Its cover records investigative work on August 1 and supervisory reviews on August 2. The report therefore should not be described as though all its contents were written at the moment of the July 23 emergency.
In the July 31 interview recorded in that report, Epstein said he had been severely sleep-deprived and did not remember the event clearly. He said Tartaglione had not threatened him, that he had no problems being housed with him and that he did not want to invent an account. Those statements differed from the earlier allegation preserved in staff memoranda.
The report’s account of Tartaglione’s July 31 interview says he reported waking, finding Epstein unresponsive and calling for an officer. He described believing Epstein was experiencing a medical emergency. His account denied an assault and placed him in the role of seeking assistance.
There are limits on every layer of this material. An inmate’s statement may be self-interested or incomplete. A staff memorandum may summarize rather than reproduce exact words. A later interview may differ from an immediate account. The existence of a contradiction should be preserved rather than silently resolved in favor of whichever account fits a preferred theory.
The Internal Inquiry’s Findings
The threat-assessment report’s conclusion states that investigators had insufficient evidence to support that Tartaglione assaulted Epstein. It notes the later statements that Epstein did not feel threatened and that he had another cellmate. It recommended no additional separation assignment on the basis of that inquiry.
The report’s insufficiency finding is narrower than a judicial determination of precisely what happened. It is also materially different from leaving the original assault allegation unqualified. A profile that quotes the initial accusation without the investigation’s outcome would give a misleading account of the public record.
The OIG’s later review likewise records that the July event remained unresolved in important respects and that disciplinary charges against Epstein for alleged self-mutilation were not sustained for lack of evidence. It describes his changing accounts and his later interest in being housed again with the earlier cellmate.
The finding does not provide a basis to diagnose Epstein retrospectively or to declare his statements necessarily truthful or deliberately false. It shows the limits reached by the institutional inquiry and why a careful chronology distinguishes a suspected attempt, an allegation of assault, the response to an emergency and the eventual evidentiary assessment.
The Lawyers’ Response and Why the Video Mattered
Correspondence preserved in EFTA00083824 shows attorney Bruce Barket responding to press inquiries and what he believed were damaging leaks about Tartaglione. The July 24 and 25 chain includes his complaint that false information had been leaked and a prison legal representative’s response that the matter remained under investigation. The response also says administrators had been reminded against retaliation.
Barket’s allegation about the source or falsity of a leak was advocacy on behalf of his client. The email does not itself establish who leaked information, whether every press report was false, or that an investigator reached those conclusions. It does establish that the defense promptly contested the implication that Tartaglione had harmed Epstein.
The January 13, 2020 defense letter, Document 186, explains the legal importance of the footage. The defense wanted a hearing into the failure to preserve recording from outside the cell. It argued that images of Tartaglione summoning help could support mitigation if he faced a death-penalty phase and could rebut an assertion that he would remain dangerous in prison.
At that time, the prosecution was a capital case. That historical context matters when reading later references to saving Epstein’s life: the claimed assistance had a potential legal use in Tartaglione’s own defense, quite apart from public arguments about Epstein’s death. The defense letter requested findings about the loss of evidence; the request itself did not prove deliberate destruction or establish that the court granted every requested remedy.
The Missing July Surveillance Recording
The government’s January 9, 2020 letter acknowledges that its earlier assurance about preservation was wrong. Prosecutors said they had told the court in December that MCC staff confirmed the footage had been saved. When the government obtained and reviewed the recording in January, it found footage from a different tier.
The government explained that the prison’s computer system had listed an incorrect cell for Tartaglione. Staff preserved footage associated with that entry rather than the cell where the July 23 incident occurred. The letter also said the requested recording no longer existed on the backup system because of technical errors.
The preceding January 8 internal urgent-report chain, EFTA00105466, describes the planned corrective filing. It says prosecutors did not intend to dispute, in a possible penalty phase, that Tartaglione called for help and was not responsible for injuring Epstein. That is a documented prosecutorial position for a contemplated proceeding, rather than an eyewitness account or a new judicial verdict.
The two documents should not be collapsed. The internal message announces a planned letter; the January 9 letter is the actual communication to the court. Together they explain both the acknowledged evidence failure and why the defense viewed the recording as important.
The lost video concerned July 22 and 23. The separate recording failures and surviving footage from August 9 and 10 concern the night Epstein died after a different cellmate assignment. The OIG examined the broader recording system, but an absence of July footage does not establish what happened inside the cell in August.
Why Epstein Records Appeared in Tartaglione’s Case
Capone’s declaration in The New York Times Company v. Federal Bureau of Prisons explains why records about Epstein’s detention overlapped with two prosecutions: the case against the jail employees Noel and Thomas, and the separate case against Tartaglione. It was submitted to support the government’s position on withholding records while those proceedings were pending.
That context helps distinguish a record’s location from its meaning. A document in a murder defendant’s production could concern a potential witness, a mitigation argument, privilege, jail conditions or evidence preservation. Its presence in his case does not automatically make it evidence that he murdered Epstein or participated in Epstein’s underlying crimes.
The declaration is also a dated litigation position. Descriptions of pending prosecutions and possible trials in 2020 should not be repeated as current procedural status. Tartaglione’s case later proceeded to a verdict and sentence, while the jail employees’ prosecution had a different outcome.
The Purported Note and the Legal-Representation Dispute
The May 2026 order recounts the New York Times’ request to unseal a note purportedly authored by Epstein and reportedly recovered by Tartaglione. It says the Times relied on Tartaglione’s public interviews and a released DOJ document describing a note that predated Epstein’s death and his move away from Tartaglione.
The order explains how the note became relevant to a Curcio inquiry. Such a hearing concerns potential conflicts in a defendant’s legal representation and whether a conflict can be waived. The court appointed separate counsel to advise Tartaglione and conducted proceedings relating to those issues.
The order’s procedural history records that John Weider was disqualified after a finding of an actual, unwaivable conflict, while potential conflicts concerning other retained counsel were treated as waivable and Tartaglione’s waiver was accepted. Those legal rulings explain the sealed representation-related proceedings. They are not findings that any lawyer forged the note.
The court described separate government firewall counsel participating in the privileged matter. It distinguished that team from prosecutors handling the criminal case. Thus, a statement that prosecution counsel lacked knowledge of the sealed proceeding is not proof that no government lawyer had ever participated in the proceeding. Conversely, a firewall team’s participation does not establish that the trial prosecutors had unrestricted access to privileged defense materials.
What the May 2026 Unsealing Order Did
Karas’s May 6 order held that the note was a judicial document subject to a presumption of public access because it had been submitted in connection with a matter requiring judicial decision-making. Tartaglione did not oppose release of the note, while other representation-related records raised separate privilege and redaction questions.
The conclusion on page 13 directs the clerk to docket a copy and unseal the original material placed in the court vault on May 20, 2021. The court reserved its decision on the other requested documents and sought proposed redactions and supporting explanations.
Three dates must therefore remain separate:
- The alleged discovery during the period Tartaglione and Epstein shared a cell in 2019
- The documented placement of the material in the court vault on May 20, 2021
- The May 6, 2026 order authorizing public release
The order authenticates its own procedural account, including what the court ordered released. It does not establish the author of the underlying note, its exact creation date, a complete chain of custody before it reached the court, or whether describing it as a suicide note accurately captures its purpose.
The order also does not establish that every other record requested by the Times was released at the same time. A direction to submit proposed redactions is a future procedural step, not the completed unsealing of all related materials.
Later Handwriting Analysis and Remaining Limits
In May 2026, the Associated Press reported its interviews with three forensic document examiners. They saw common authorship or apparent common authorship between the released note and another jail note, but none definitively identified Epstein as the writer. Grace Warmbier excluded Tartaglione; Thomas Vastrick said more examination was needed and did not identify him as the author.
Those qualified assessments are relevant to the debate. They do not resolve provenance, establish when either note was written or turn the unsealing decision into a medical finding. The different opinions about excluding Tartaglione should also not be summarized as a unanimous forensic conclusion about him.
A note associated with the July episode cannot by itself establish the events of August 10. Even a securely authenticated document would need to be interpreted with its date, circumstances and evidentiary limits intact. This profile does not reproduce the note as a definitive last message or present its contents as proof of a particular death scenario.
The August Death and the Limits of Tartaglione’s Relevance
The OIG’s June 2023 report distinguishes the July event from the circumstances of Epstein’s death. It documents a later cellmate assignment, that inmate’s August 9 transfer, the failure to provide a replacement and extensive failures of monitoring and supervision. Epstein was alone in his cell when found on August 10.
The report records the city medical examiner’s suicide determination and says the OIG found no evidence contradicting the FBI’s conclusion that there was no criminality in how Epstein died. It simultaneously identifies serious misconduct in the jail’s operation. Those findings should not be flattened into either a claim that nothing went wrong or an assertion that a particular inmate murdered Epstein.
Tartaglione remains relevant as a witness to the earlier period, the subject of an unsubstantiated assault allegation, a defendant whose lawyers sought missing evidence, and the person who later attributed a note to Epstein. Those roles provide substantial grounds for examining the records without treating his separate murder convictions as proof of a different uncharged act.
The broader death-in-custody article and the detailed medical-review article address institutional and forensic questions beyond the scope of his personal connection.
Evidence Appearances
| Record | Date or period | What it establishes | Principal limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| EFTA00072697 | July 23, 2019 | Staff memorandum describing the emergency and reported allegation | Partly redacted; reports statements rather than an observed assault |
| EFTA00083824 | July 24 and 25, 2019 | Barket’s response to press inquiries and alleged leaks | Defense allegation is not a finding of who leaked information |
| EFTA00135029, pages 1 through 5 | July 31 interviews; August 1 and 2 processing | Named accounts and insufficient-evidence conclusion about an assault | A later internal report with attachments, not one contemporaneous eyewitness narrative |
| EFTA00105466 | January 8, 2020 | Internal urgent report about missing video and anticipated penalty-phase position | Describes a planned filing and prosecutorial position |
| EFTA00017953 | January 9, 2020 | Government’s actual correction to the court about wrong-tier footage | Government account of preservation failure, not a ruling on intent |
| EFTA00016736, Document 186 | January 13, 2020 | Defense hearing request and mitigation argument | Requested hearing and proposed inference are not completed findings |
| EFTA00015438, Document 22 | August 5, 2020 | Capone declaration connecting the named cellmates and explaining FOIA position | Describes pending proceedings as of 2020 |
| OIG Report 23-085 and EFTA00039025 viewer | June 2023 | Custody chronology, differing July accounts and August failures | Uses anonymous inmate labels; identity requires independent records |
| Official sentencing announcement | June 10, 2024 | Four consecutive life sentences for the separate murder prosecution | Does not adjudicate Epstein’s July incident |
| SDNY unsealing order | May 6, 2026 | Note’s judicial-record status, vault date, disclosure order and pending appeal | Does not authenticate authorship or establish a later appellate outcome |
Chronology
| Date | Event | Evidentiary significance |
|---|---|---|
| April 11, 2016 | Four men murdered in crimes later prosecuted against Tartaglione | Separate criminal case |
| December 19, 2016 | Tartaglione arrested, according to Capone declaration | Detention predates Epstein’s arrival |
| July 2019 | Tartaglione and Epstein share a SHU cell | Institutional relationship documented in named records |
| July 23, 2019 | Emergency in shared cell; Epstein placed on suicide watch | Conflicting accounts later investigated |
| July 25, 2019 | Defense requests preservation of surveillance footage | Request later described in court letters |
| July 31, 2019 | Prison investigators interview both men | Later accounts differ from the initial allegation |
| August 1 and 2, 2019 | Threat-assessment report processed and reviewed | Insufficient evidence of assault by Tartaglione |
| August 9, 2019 | Epstein’s later cellmate leaves MCC | Different assignment from Tartaglione’s July role |
| August 10, 2019 | Epstein dies in custody | Event examined separately by FBI and OIG |
| January 9 and 13, 2020 | Government correction and defense hearing request concerning video | Records preservation failure becomes a court issue |
| August 5, 2020 | Capone declaration filed in FOIA case | Explains overlap of Epstein records and Tartaglione prosecution |
| May 20, 2021 | Material later called the note placed in court vault | Date confirmed by 2026 order, not a creation date |
| April 6, 2023 | Jury convicts Tartaglione | Outcome of separate murder case |
| June 10, 2024 | Four consecutive life terms imposed | Officially documented sentence |
| July 2, 2024 | Notice of appeal filed | Second Circuit No. 24-1852 |
| May 6, 2026 | Karas orders note unsealed | Appeal still pending as of this dated order |
Related Articles
- Metropolitan Correctional Center New York
- BOP memorandum on the July 23 possible suicide attempt
- Epstein death in custody
- Jeffrey Epstein death timeline, 2019
- Death of Jeffrey Epstein
- Michael Baden’s review of the Epstein autopsy
Sources
- BOP July 23 memorandum, EFTA00072697
- Attorney correspondence, EFTA00083824
- Prison investigative packet, EFTA00135029
- Internal January 8, 2020 report, EFTA00105466
- Government January 9 letter, EFTA00017953
- Defense January 13 letter, EFTA00016736
- Capone declaration, EFTA00015438
- DOJ OIG Report 23-085
- DOJ sentencing announcement, June 10, 2024
- SDNY order, May 6, 2026
- Public appellate docket mirror, last retrieved July 11, 2024
- AP interviews with document examiners, May 2026