Unsealed Epstein note says, Time to say goodbye, before first suicide attempt

A handwritten note attributed to Jeffrey Epstein and kept under seal for nearly five years surfaced in a federal court release on May 6, 2026, adding a new document to the long record of questions surrounding his confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

The note, described as undated and unsigned, had been locked in a courthouse vault as part of an unrelated legal dispute involving Epstein’s former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione. Tartaglione said he found the note in Epstein’s cell after Epstein’s first known suicide attempt on July 23, 2019. The text includes the line, “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” along with “Watcha want me to do — Bust out cryin!!” and “NO FUN — NOT WORTH IT!!” It also reads, “They investigated me for months — FOUND NOTHING!!!”

The newly public document does not settle the central question of Epstein’s state of mind. What it does establish is provenance, a rough timeline, and the odd route by which a note tied to one of the country’s most scrutinized deaths stayed sealed until a judge released it years later. Tartaglione’s attorney had provided the note under seal in 2021, according to court coverage.

Epstein was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. The New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death a suicide. In the days before his death, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Epstein had been transferred to suicide watch and then psychological observation after the July 23, 2019 episode in which he was found unresponsive in his SHU cell.

The later federal review of the Metropolitan Correctional Center described major failures in Epstein’s custody and supervision. The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General said the Federal Bureau of Prisons failed Epstein in ways that reinforced public suspicion about the jail’s safeguards. Two correctional officers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were charged with falsifying records tied to the night Epstein died.

Tartaglione, a former New York police officer, was later convicted of four counts of murder and drug charges. His role in the note’s preservation explains why it emerged now, not in 2019, and why the document is being read less as a revelation about Epstein’s psychology than as another piece in the record of a jail failure that never fully stops widening.