(Bloomberg) -- Lawyers for the former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein described grim conditions and veiled threats from guards in asking a judge to move their client from a federal jail in Manhattan.
At a hearing Wednesday in White Plains, New York, attorneys for Nicholas Tartaglione, an ex-police officer charged in a quadruple homicide, asked U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas to have Tartaglione removed from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Epstein killed himself Aug. 10.
Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking of minors, and Tartaglione were briefly cellmates until Epstein was found unconscious with marks on his neck in July. Given that red flag and others, the Justice Department is investigating how the jail’s management and the guards responsible for Epstein could have let him take his life.
In addition to “deplorable” conditions cited in a letter to the court Tuesday, Tartaglione’s lawyer Bruce Barket said at the hearing that his client recently got a note from a friend that had been cut to pieces with a razor blade. It’s inappropriate for Tartaglione to be guarded by the same people who are under investigation, Barket said.
“He’s in a particularly vulnerable position,” he told the judge.
(Updates with details starting in third paragraph.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in Federal Court in Manhattan at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Advertisement