A former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein claims he was warned of a "price to pay" if he talked about the sex trafficker’s alleged suicide.
Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer, now is begging to be transferred to another cell, according to his lawyer, reported Summit News.
He shared a cell during Epstein's first suicide attempt and was separated before Epstein died Aug. 10.
Prison guards have been threatening Tartaglione, telling him to "stop talking," lawyer Bruce Barket said in a letter.
"The clear message Mr. Tartaglione has received is that if he conveys information about the facility or about [Epstein’s] recent suicide, there will be a price to pay," the lawyer wrote.
"Whether or not the investigators into the suicide chose to interview Mr. Tartaglione about the attempted suicide to which he was witness or about how the facility is run and the conditions under which the inmates are forced to live, the correction officers know he has information potentially very damaging to the very people now charged with guarding him or their coworkers.”
Epstein, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges involving underage girls, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan early Aug. 10. He was pronounced dead hours later.
His shocking death has prompted an investigation by the Justice Department, the FBI and congressional committees.
The New York City medical examiner's office announced Friday it determined Epstein died by kneeling down with a bedsheet around his neck that was attached to a bunkbed post.
But many forensic pathologists have questioned the finding, arguing the injuries are more common in victims of homicide by strangulation than by hanging.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, who has consulted in many high-profile cases, said Friday in a Fox News interview "you do not, from a kneeling position, with a bedsheet attached to the bedpost, break the hyoid bone ... and also cervical vertebrae."
"You don't break vertebrae in a suicidal hanging in which the scenario is a leaning-into," said Wecht, who is best known for his criticism of the Warren Commission's findings concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"If he hurled himself off the top bunkbed, that (breakage) could have occurred, because you've got a 200-pound-plus person with that kind of force imparted by the velocity of dropping-down body." he said.
Wecht emphasized, however, that if it occurred by kneeling down, as the medical examiner apparently determined, "you do not break your hyoid bone and your cervical vertibrae."
He dismissed arguments that being an older man, Epstein's bones might have been brittle.
"This is not a 75-year-old menopausal woman who has osteoporosis," Wecht said.