A federal judge in New York on Wednesday allowed the release of a document believed to be the note before death by Jeffrey Epstein - the financier and sex offender found dead in a Manhattan cell in August 2019. The note was handwritten and found by convicted murderer and former police officer Nicholas Tartaglione, who shared a cell with Epstein for several weeks before his death.

District Judge Kenneth Karas found no legal reason for the note to remain secret. He did not confirm its authenticity, nor did he address who found it and when. „No party has identified a competing reason that would justify the note remaining sealed", Karas ruled.

The note was submitted by Tartaglione's attorneys. He shared a cell with Epstein for about two weeks in July 2019 - precisely the period before Epstein's death on 10 August 2019. The death was ruled a suicide - something a large part of the American public still does not believe today.

The note - on a handwritten sheet, with attacks on investigators and phrases like „misery without amusement" - is what tabloids will translate as „a suicide note". But the more interesting fact: that the court released the document six years later. Why now? Why did the New York Times request the document last week? Who has an interest in returning the Epstein case to the news in 2026?

For Balkan readers, the Epstein case carries an entire layer that rarely shows up in our media: Epstein was close to several public figures from the Balkans, and his ties to Russian oligarchs are documented in investigative materials. Six years of silence on the note is a long time. Six years of silence on the passenger list of his plane - is even longer.

The question that remains: is the note surfacing now a sign of a new legal transaction, or just a way to distract from the big unanswered question - who will ultimately answer for what Epstein kept in his archives?