Epstein’s ‘time to say goodbye’ suicide note found in comic has been kept in ‘secret vault’

The cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein has claimed he found his suicide note in a graphic novel- but it is now stuck in a court vault.

Jeffrey was found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on August 10, 2019 while he was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Now his cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione has claimed he found a note in July 2019, after Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth around his neck but survived.

The note – if verified – would clear up one of the modern mysteries, offering a glimpse into the mindset of the jailed human trafficker.

When jail officials asked Epstein about red marks on his neck after the July incident, he told them that Tartaglione had attacked him and that he was not suicidal.

Tartaglione, a former police officer charged with a quadruple homicide, has long denied assaulting Epstein.

The prisoner now claims Epstein’s suicide note is in a vault after it became entangled in his own messy trial.

In recent interviews by phone from a federal prison in California, Mr Tartaglione told how he found it.

In the month before his death, Epstein was moved to a different part of the jail and briefly placed on suicide watch.

Around then, Tartaglione said, he found the note in his cell, tucked into a graphic novel.

‘I opened the book to read and there it was,’ Tartaglione claimed. He said it was a piece of yellow paper ripped from a legal pad.

Mr Tartaglione recalled the message continued along the lines of: ‘What do you want me to do, bust out crying? Time to say goodbye.’

The note said that investigators had looked into Epstein for many months and ‘found nothing,’ Tartaglione recalled.

‘My lawyers at the time wanted to make sure, you know, I didn’t write it,’ Tartaglione said in a July 2025 interview adding they had ‘handwriting experts’ examine the note.

A court spokesman declined to comment on the existence of any sealed document. Such records, he said, are placed in court vaults for safekeeping.

Metro has not seen note and could not find it in the Epstein files.

A Justice Department spokeswoman told the New York Times the agency had not seen it.

However, his brother Mark has long claimed Jeffrey was ‘murdered’ and then ‘covered up’.

An expert Mark hired to attend the autopsy also said his death looked ‘more consistent with homicidal strangulation’.

Documents and reports have also showed that prison guards failed to conduct checks on the night of Jeffrey’s death and that the camera system in the unit was also down.

On the night she was meant to be checking on Jeffrey every 30 minutes, guard Tova Noel, 37, reportedly slept on the job, browsed furniture online and even searched ‘latest on Epstein in jail’ less than an hour before the sex offender committed suicide in August 2019.

In an interview with the FBI published in the Epstein Files, the inmate recalled a guard saying ‘If he is dead, we’re going to cover it up and he’s going to have an alibi,’ according to Detroit News

Mark told Metro: ‘It all just bolsters the argument against suicide.

‘If this was a suicide why all the shenanigans, and covert ops. Makes no sense.’

It came as a man Epstein left $5 million also died by suicide in Norway.

Edward Juul Rod-Larsen, 25, was found dead in Oslo on Wednesday, days after Norwegian and French police launched a joint investigation into his parents, diplomat Terje Rod-Larsen and Mona Juul, a former ambassador.

Edward and Emma Juul Rod-Larsen were never accused of wrongdoing.

‘It stands in the shadow of months of a public spotlight that has long since ceased to be critical, and has instead become suspicious, speculative and at times limitless,’ their legal team wrote to Norwegian outlet VG.

‘A spotlight that has not only affected two parents, but has also drawn their children involuntarily into the relentless machinery of the public.’