When Jeffrey Epstein was first found semi-conscious in his Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) cell in July 2019, the Bureau of Prisons claimed it was a suicide attempt — but Epstein told his lawyers he’d been attacked by his cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, a former cop awaiting trial for four murders. That decision alone — to house Epstein, arguably the most high-profile inmate in the country, with a man accused of killing four people — defied logic and protocol. Tartaglione was a massive, physically imposing inmate with a violent reputation, yet the MCC placed him in the same small cell as a known sex offender and public target. When Epstein was discovered with bruising around his neck, Tartaglione told officials he’d “helped” Epstein and had nothing to do with the incident. Within days, the MCC cleared Tartaglione, declared there was “no foul play,” and went right back to business — an astonishingly fast turnaround for what should have been a high-level criminal investigation inside a federal lockup.

Critics have since pointed out how convenient that outcome was for everyone involved: Epstein’s claims were buried, Tartaglione was quietly removed from the narrative, and no meaningful inquiry into the alleged attack was ever made public. The Department of Justice later admitted the MCC had malfunctioning cameras during both incidents involving Epstein — the first with Tartaglione, and the second when Epstein was found dead. Given Epstein’s later “suicide” just weeks after being left alone in his cell, the speed and silence surrounding Tartaglione’s clearance look less like routine procedure and more like deliberate damage control. The question remains why a quadruple-murder defendant was ever in the same cell as the most notorious inmate in federal custody — and why every step of the investigation that followed seemed designed to erase accountability rather than uncover the truth.



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