Nicholas Tartaglione (CBS New York screenshot)
A former steroid-selling police officer and former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein was convicted on Thursday of the drug and debt-related murders of four Mexican men in April 2016.
Cop-turned-federal defendant Nicholas Tartaglione, a 55-year-old former Briarcliff Manor Police Department officer who reportedly retired after an injury in 2008, was convicted of luring Martin Luna to a meeting in 2016. Luna , 41, went to a bar with her nephews Miguel Luna and Urbano Santiago, 25 and 35, and her friend Hector Gutierrez, 43. Martin Luna was strangled in front of his family members and his friend. Subsequently, the three remaining victims were taken to Tartaglione’s property in Otisville, NY, and shot in the back of the neck. All the victims were buried in a “mass grave”.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, said in a statement that drug trafficker Tartaglione ruthlessly murdered “beloved fathers, husbands, brothers and sons” after he suspected Martin Luna of stealing money to buy cocaine.
Pictured: The four Nicholas Tartaglione men were found guilty of murder (CBS New York screenshot)
“Tartaglione then devised a scheme to confront Martin in a meeting. Unaware that he was being lured into a death trap, Martin tragically brought his two nephews – Miguel and Urbano – and a family friend – Hector – to the reunion. What happened next could only be described as sheer terror as Tartaglione tortured Martin and then forced one of his nephews to watch Tartaglione strangle Martin to death with a zipper,” the attorney general said. . “Tartaglione and two of his associates then transported Miguel, Urbano and Hector – who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time – to a remote wooded area, forced them to their knees and executed them with gunfire. back of the head.”
“Tartaglione then buried the four victims in a mass grave. Tartaglione’s heinous acts represent a larger betrayal, as he was a former police officer who once swore to protect the very community he devastated,” Williams added. “Today a jury found Tartaglione guilty of these heinous acts, sending the message that no one is above the law.”
In conclusion, Williams thanked the investigators for this long case and thanked the families of the victims for their trust, even though Tartaglione betrayed the badge and the public.
The case against Tartaglione has been in the headlines since July 2019, when the former cop was jailed alongside Jeffrey Epstein.
The government officially acknowledged Tartaglione as Epstein’s cellmate after Epstein’s first reported suicide attempt. The DOJ memorably informed Tartaglione’s attorney that the video from outside the cell from July 2019 “no longer exists.”
Two weeks later and despite an “explicit directive” that he had a cellmate, Epstein died alone at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in what was ruled a suicide.
After the first hanging attempt, Tartaglione said he actually alerted prison staff and saved Epstein. His lawyer Bruce Barket commented in the media that he was “delighted” to learn that the video of the night in question was “preserved” (it was not). The lawyer also said Tartaglione and Epstein had become “friends” despite not being cellmates for very long.
“They’ve become more than cordial,” Barket told the New York Daily News at the time. “In the short time they have been together, they have become friends.”
Now in 2023, Barket is still representing Tartaglione and insisting his client was wrongly convicted.
“Mr. Tartaglione won’t stop fighting until he regains his freedom,” he told NBC News. next, the courts of appeal.”
CBS New York reported that Tartaglione’s trial in White Plains lasted three weeks and deliberations lasted two days. In a segment on the sentencing, CBS noted that Tartaglione’s team pointed to the alleged involvement of fellow bodybuilders and executors Joseph Biggs and ex-cop Gerard Benderoth in an effort to create reasonable doubt in the case. .
The Rockland/Westchester Journal News reported that Biggs testified at the trial against Tartaglione; Benderoth died by suicide in 2017 as the FBI shut down.
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