A former New York police officer, turned convicted murderer, was accused by Jeffrey Epstein of attempting to strangle him inside their cell just 18 days before Epstein’s death.

Recently surfaced documents indicate that Epstein informed prison officials that his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, aged 57, assaulted him on the night of July 23, 2019 — a little under three weeks before Epstein’s death, which was ruled a suicide. 

Officers discovered Epstein at 1:27 am, lying on the floor of his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, with an orange makeshift noose around his neck and unable to respond to their inquiries. 

After being stretchered to another floor, he told staff he had been assaulted by Tartaglione, a former cop serving life for a quadruple murder that had already questioned him in their cell over his connections to powerful people, it is claimed. 

In a newly released transcript of former Attorney General Bill Barr’s closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Barr admitted he knew of the incident but insisted it was a suicide attempt, arguing it reflected Epstein’s ‘state of mind’ before his death. 

But according to a a memo written by corrections officers at the jail obtained by CBS News, those who spoke with Epstein after the incident cast doubt on that version of events.

The report says Epstein not only blamed his cellmate for the attack but had earlier warned staff that Tartaglione had threatened him.

Inmates who spoke with Epstein before and after the incident also reportedly questioned the idea his injuries were self-inflicted. 

The documents show Epstein reportedly told corrections officers he was not suicidal at the time, and raise further questions over the security precautions around the notorious pedophile before his much-scrutinized death.  

Tartaglione, a hulking former bodybuilder, had been a police officer in Westchester, New York, but became a drug dealer and was convicted over the 2016 kidnappings and murders of four men. 

He denied Epstein’s allegations that he tried to kill the pedophile in their shared cell at the time and insisted that he had tried to save his life. 

A corrections officer source told CBS News that when officers entered Epstein’s cell on the night of July 23, Tartaglione was screaming: ‘I did nothing, I banged on my door to get him out of my cell.’ 

In the days before the alleged attack, Epstein had expressed concern about his cellmate, and told the jailhouse source that Tartaglione had threatened him because of his odious charges of child sex trafficking. 

The financier had also told jail officers that he believed the former cop was trying ‘to extort money from him and stated that if he didn’t pay him that he would beat him up’, the memo read. 

Epstein said that he had not been comfortable reporting the threats because he was told that even if he did so, his child sex trafficking charges would mean that ‘the officers would not report it.’ 

On the evening of the alleged attack in July 2019, Epstein reportedly told a different corrections officer that Tartaglione had found a copy of the New York Daily News, and flew into a rage when he saw a story about Epstein’s crimes. 

Tartaglione was said to have pointed out the article’s description of Epstein’s wealth and connections to powerful people, before Epstein crumpled up the newspaper and threw it out.

Hours later, Epstein recalled to officers that he woke up around 1am for a drink of water, and the next thing he remembered was waking up in his cell with corrections officers rushing into the room around half an hour later. 

According to the newly released memo, officers said that Tartaglione told them he had given Epstein the bottom bunk in their cell ‘because he was old’, and he had moved his own mattress to the floor. 

On the night of the incident, Tartaglione said he felt something hit his legs and asked: ‘Jeff, what are you doing?’ 

Tartaglione said he then turned on the light and found the pedophile sitting slumped on the floor, ‘leaning to the side with his eyes opened’ and fabric around his neck. 

Tartaglione said he then yelled for jail staff, according to the documents. He also revealed in a recent podcast interview with House Inhabit that Epstein had even offered him money to kill him, but he refused. 

Epstein would later walk back his claim that Tartaglione attacked him, and later asked to be put back in the same cell with the former cop. 

The financier also insisted at the time that he would never have tried to kill himself, according to a 2023 report by the Department of Justice inspector general. 

Epstein’s insistence that he was not suicidal meant he was placed on suicide watch for less than a day following the July 23 incident, and he was switched to a lesser psychological observation status. 

‘He denied feeling hopeless. He is reporting positive future plans and reasons to live for,’ one officer wrote in a report on August 1 – nine days before Epstein was found dead in his cell. 

He had also described himself to one prison source as ‘too much of a coward’ to kill himself, according to the report. 

Epstein was subsequently given a new cellmate, named Efrain Reyes, but Reyes remained in the cell for only nine days before he was transferred out on August 10, 2019. 

That night, with no cellmate, Epstein was once again found unresponsive in his cell, but this time he was dead.