A former cellmate of deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein issued a statement from behind bars, saying he never touched him.
Nick Tartaglione, a former police officer accused of killing four people, told the New York Daily News that he was paired with Epstein, 66, because he wasn’t a threat.
“As far as Jeff Epstein is concerned, I never touched the man,” Tartaglione, 51, said in a handwritten note to the news outlet.
“I despise anyone who hurts children but whatever was going to happen to him, I was not going to be a part of it,” he continued.
Medical officials in New York City said he killed himself by hanging. He was found unresponsive in his cell in August and was without a cellmate.
“The prison told Epstein they were putting him in a cell with me because they knew I would neither hurt nor extort him,” Tartaglione wrote. “The staff here at [Metropolitan Correctional Center] had hundreds of inmates to choose from yet I was their first choice.”
In July, Epstein apparently first tried to commit suicide in a cell he shared with Tartaglione, the Daily News reported. Epstein was later moved to suicide watch before he was taken off of it.
Tartaglione, meanwhile, told the paper that he is looking to be transferred from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. He claimed that jail staff have made threats to him following Epstein’s suicide.
Witness Account
An air traffic controller told the U.S. Marshals Service that she saw Epstein disembark from his plane with 11- or 12-year-old girls last year.
The traffic controller, who worked at the Cyril E. King Airport in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said she saw Epstein get off his private jet with two white girls “who appeared” to be pre-teens.
The witness also said they saw Epstein leave his plane with a girl who is between 16 and 18 years old and of mixed race, Fox News reported on Sept. 12.
Speaking to officials, she claimed to have used binoculars to look at Epstein and the children from the control tower, which was some 150 feet away.
Epstein owned the island of St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The sightings took place, according to the report, between June or July and November 2018, the person said.
