American Police Officer With Bit Part in Epstein Jail Drama Is Convicted of Murder

Nicholas Tartaglione, a retired police officer who had shared a cell with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, killed four men over a debt, prosecutors said.

By Edward Era Barbacena

An ex-cop who once shared a jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein was convicted Thursday of killing four men in a cold-blooded murder spree in the Hudson Valley. 

A Westchester County federal jury found former Briarcliff Manor cop Nicholas Tartaglione guilty in the gruesome 2015 slayings of Martin Luna as well as two of his nephews and a family friend, prosecutors said Thursday. 

Tartaglione, who by 2015 had traded his career in law enforcement for illegal drug trafficking, lured Luna to a meeting near a Chester, N.Y., bar called the Likquid Lounge because the ex-cop believed Luna had stolen money from him, prosecutors said. 

Not knowing he was being lured to his death, Luna brought along his two nephews – Miguel Luna and Urbano Santiago, as well as a friend, Hector Gutierrez. 

When the four arrived, Tartaglione tortured Martin Luna and forced one of his nephews to watch as he was strangled to death with a zip tie. 

The sadistic ex-cop and two associates then brought their three other victims to a remote, wooded location, forced them to kneel and executed them with gunshots to the back of the head. 

Tartaglione buried all four victims in a mass grave at the wooded location. 

“Tartaglione’s heinous acts represent a broader betrayal, as he was a former police officer who once swore to protect the very community he devastated,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement after the conviction. 

In 2019, Tartaglione briefly shared a jail cell with pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein at the since-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center. 

Epstein allegedly told his lawyers Tartaglione “roughed him up” in the cell – but he was never charged with a crime and was cleared of wrongdoing, his lawyer told The Post at the time. 

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. His death was later ruled a suicide by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. 

Tartaglione faces life in prison at sentencing