Handwriting on new Epstein note matches one found after his death, say experts

Subscribed with another email? Logout and Login with that one. Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Science For All The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers THEdge At the cutting edge of education and careers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there Gender Agenda Stories from beyond the binary. The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. Published - May 09, 2026 11:58 am IST - New York Handwriting on a newly released Jeffrey Epstein note matches that of a note discovered after his death. File photo: X/U.S. Department of Justice via AP “A note that a former cellmate said he discovered after Jeffrey Epstein's first suspected jail suicide attempt was all but certainly penned by the same person as a note that authorities found in the millionaire sex offender's cell after he killed himself,” handwriting experts say on Saturday (May 9, 2026). Three forensic document examiners who reviewed the notes at the request of The Associated Press (AP) concluded that they have or appear to have common authorship, with shared characteristics such as the same spacing, letter shapes, usage of capital letters and unique punctuation. In the first note, made public this week, the writer states: “They investigated me for month - found nothing!!!” and talks about being able to choose the “time to say goodbye.” The other note, which has been public for years, is a list of grievances about conditions at the jail, including the showers, food and “Giant Bugs”. While no one has definitively said Epstein wrote the notes, they point to his grim outlook before his death and echo some frustrations he conveyed to jail personnel about being confined in the crumbling Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan after living in luxury for decades. They also contain phrases he had used in the past. Both notes, written in pen on notepad paper, include the underlined phrase “NO FUN” and end with double exclamation points — the first of which is bowed slightly with similar curvature. The first few words of each note are larger than the rest and each successive line slants away from the left margin. “These are the kinds of things that would suggest that we're dealing with the same writer,” said Thomas Vastrick, the president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners (ASQDE). “They are written by the same person,” said Bart Baggett, who founded the forensic analysis firm Handwriting Experts Inc. and has testified in court as an expert witness more than 130 times. “Both of those documents have the same author,” said Grace Warmbier, who worked for a decade for the New York City Police Department performing document examinations and handwriting analysis. None of the experts were able to say definitively that Epstein wrote the notes, in part because there are few if any confirmed examples of his handwriting in the millions of pages of records the Justice Department recently released on the late financier. In addition to the two jail notes, Ms. Warmbier and Mr. Vastrick also reviewed writing samples from the former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, including part of a note he sent to the New York Daily News in 2019 in which he denied any involvement in Epstein's death. Ms. Warmbier ruled out Tartaglione as the author, finding “significant dissimilarities between his handwriting and the handwriting in question”. Mr. Vastrick said Tartaglione's writing samples had “a wide range of variation from one to another” and that there were at least some similarities that require further examination. “At this point, I certainly would not eliminate him as a potential writer,” Mr. Vastrick said. “I don't at the same time want to suggest that he is the writer.” For years, only a few people known about the note that Tartaglione claimed he found. Then, last summer, he mentioned it on writer Jessica Reed Kraus' podcast. That piqued the interest of writers at The New York Times, who convinced a judge on Wednesday (May 6, 2026) to release the note, which had been sealed in an unrelated case. Tartaglione, an ex-police officer serving a life sentence for killing four people, said he discovered the note in a book in his cell after Epstein was found on July 23, 2019, on the floor with a strip of bedsheet around his neck. Epstein was placed on suicide watch and moved to a different cell. He had no cellmate when he was found dead on August 10, 2019. Epstein and Tartaglione shared a cell for about two weeks, beginning soon after Epst

Handwriting on new Epstein note matches one found after his death, say experts

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Handwriting on new Epstein note matches one found after his death, say experts

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