Did Epstein Actually Write That Suicide Note? Here’s How We Tried to Find Out.

[Unredacted]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/insi ... 68Ri1GePJK

A judge recently unsealed a suicide note that Jeffrey Epstein may have written from a jail cell in the last weeks of his life. “It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye,” the note read in a messy scrawl.

The document had been locked in a New York courthouse for years, caught up in the criminal case of Epstein’s cellmate, who said he had found it.

Last month, The New York Times reported on the note and our legal team petitioned the judge for the document’s release. At a time when Congress has demanded transparency around the Epstein sex-trafficking scandal, our lawyers noted, “the public interest in the note’s disclosure is immense.”

Millions of our readers have now seen the note. And many still want to know: Did Epstein really write it? Will we ever know?

It’s a surprisingly complicated question. I asked the reporters Benjamin Weiser, Steve Eder and Jan Ransom to walk through how we’ve been trying to authenticate the note. Here’s our edited exchange.