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Mega Edition: The Murder Trial Of Nicholas Tartaglione (5/14/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

0:00
Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the Epstein Chronicles.
0:05
Nicholas Tartaglioni, the man that was in a jail cell
0:09
with Jeffrey Epstein when Epstein allegedly tried to commit suicide
0:14
the first time around, is getting ready to finally go
0:17
on trial for what the government says was a quadruple murder.
0:23
But before we even get to that, I still have
0:26
big questions about what the hell this dude was doing
0:29
in a jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein. And if that
0:33
was all of it, it would be suspect enough. But folks,
0:36
that's only scratching the surface. Not only was a man
0:40
who was allegedly responsible for a quadruple murder put into
0:45
a cell with a guy like Jeffrey Epstein, well, the
0:48
footage from that time together in that cell just happens
0:53
to magically disappear. And this comes after Jeffrey Epstein told
0:57
people that his cellmate Tartaglioni beat him up. According to reports,
1:04
the jail opened an investigation into those allegations, and they
1:08
eventually cleared Tartaglioni, setting the narrative that in fact, Tartagleoni's
1:14
a hero here of folks, and he tried to save
1:16
Jeffrey Epstein's life. Never mind the fact that this big, gigantic,
1:21
muscle bound, crazy psychopath was in the cell with Epstein
1:25
when Epstein was allegedly about to kill himself. So why
1:28
would this guy even let him get to the point
1:31
where he would have a noose around his neck if
1:34
he planned on stopping him? Nothing makes sense from the
1:37
time that Jeffrey Epstein was in the cell with Nicholas Tartaglioni.
1:41
It never made sense then and it doesn't make sense now.
1:45
And unfortunately, we're never going to know the real story
1:49
because Tartaglioni, well, he's certainly not going to tell us.
1:53
And Jeffrey Epstein is burning in hell. Oh in the
1:57
surveillance footage that's gone, that just happened to magically disappear,
2:01
and we still have no explanation about it. Nobody got fired,
2:05
nobody was brought up on charges. Who was in charge
2:08
of the chain of custody and whoever was in charge
2:10
of that chain of custody. Were they reprimanded? Do they
2:14
still work for the jail? Oh? We don't know, because
2:17
anytime you ask questions, the government says We'd love to
2:20
help you out, but this is an ongoing investigation and
2:24
we cannot give you those details as of now, and
2:28
they'll keep doing that for oh, I don't know, eighty
2:30
or ninety years or so. I mean, you would think
2:33
more people would be enraged about this situation right here
2:37
with Tartaglione than there are. People are just like ignoring this.
2:42
And this is a very big part of this story,
2:45
the fact that this dude was in the jail cell
2:47
with Jeffrey Epstein, who should have been in a restricted
2:50
area with nobody around him. Instead he's on a tier
2:55
in general population with a quadruple murderer. I'm sorry, but
2:59
that that seems like quite the coincidence to go along
3:03
with all of the other stuff. So what was Tartaglioni
3:07
doing in a jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein in the
3:09
first place. I've said it once and I'll say it
3:12
a million more times. I think Tartaglioni's job was to
3:15
send a message, and that message was one way or
3:18
the other, you're going to die. Either you're going to
3:21
kill yourself or me or someone like me is going
3:25
to do the job. Because there's no other reason that
3:28
I can figure out why Tartaglioni, of all people, was
3:32
in that jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein. And unfortunately, even
3:37
though this trial's coming up, I highly doubt we'll ever know.
3:42
Today's article is from Fox News headline Former NY cop
3:47
ex Epstein cellmate faces quadruple murder trial after bodies found
3:52
buried at his home. This article was authored by Chris Eberhardt.
3:59
The quadri rup murder trial against an ex cop who
4:02
shared a cell with Jeffrey Epstein begins this week after
4:06
four bodies were found buried in the backyard of his
4:09
New York home. In two thoy and sixteen, Nicholas Tartaglioni,
4:14
fifty five, was allegedly selling cocaine, steroids, and other drugs
4:20
after his two thousand and eight retirement from law enforcement,
4:23
when he accused one of his associates, Martin Luna, of
4:27
stealing more than two hundred thousand dollars from him. Federal
4:30
prosecutors alleged and the guy that he accused and ended
4:34
up killing, they all have cartel ties. So you know,
4:38
when Tartaglioni gets to prison, it's going to be a
4:41
rap for this dude. Imagine having the green light put
4:44
on you by the cartel, as well as being a
4:47
cop in prison or an ex cop, I should say
4:49
in prison. Yeah, that's not going to be a fun trip.
4:52
What you never seen the movie Tango in Cash. On
4:56
April eleventh, twenty and sixteen, Tartan allegedly alured Luna to
5:02
a bar in Orange County, New York, where Luna was
5:05
accompanied by his nephew Miguel Luna, his niece's fiance, Urbana Santiago,
5:11
and a family friend, Hector Gutiadas. All four men went
5:16
missing after that, according to prosecutors, who said after Tartaglioni's
5:21
arrest in December of twenty sixteen, that they were in
5:25
the wrong place at the wrong time. Then federal prosecutor
5:31
pre Baraja called the alleged murders a gangland style execution.
5:36
Miguel Luna, Santiago, and Gutieredas weren't part of the alleged
5:41
drug running operation, according to family and prosecutors. And that's true.
5:48
They were there with their boy and they just happened
5:51
to get caught up in this shit. And that's why
5:53
the drug game is so dangerous. It's not just you
5:56
that you're bringing into it. It's your family, your loved one,
6:00
your friends, because at any point it could be on right,
6:04
Tartaglioni allegedly zip tied Martin Luna and dragged him to
6:08
the property about twenty miles from the bar, where he
6:11
was allegedly murdered. Alleged co conspirators helped Tartaglioni force the
6:16
three other men to the property, where they were fatally
6:20
shot and buried with Martin Luna. According to court papers
6:24
and previous statements by federal prosecutors, Tartaglioni faces life in
6:29
prison if convicted. Although prosecutors initially intended on seeking the
6:35
death penalty against him, last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland
6:40
reversed that decision. Now, the cynic in me would look
6:43
at that and say, was that some pay for play.
6:46
If you do this job for us and you go
6:49
and pass on this quote unquote message for Jeffrey Epstein,
6:53
we'll make sure that you don't get the death penalty. Now. Look,
6:56
I don't know if that's the case, right, but I
6:59
don't put it past the people. That's where I'm at
7:02
when it comes to all of this, and it's their
7:04
own fault. They have not been transparent at all throughout
7:08
any of this, and then to have the gall to
7:11
tell me that the video disappeared. I'd be a lot
7:15
more inclined to believe that if the government had a
7:19
track record of being honest and transparent when it came
7:22
to stuff like this, and they certainly do not have
7:25
that track record, So why should I believe them. We're
7:28
gonna need video evidence at this point. And if you
7:32
have that video evidence that that liar Bill Barr was
7:35
talking about, let's see it. There is no reason under
7:38
the sun, not one, why that video shouldn't be shown
7:43
or at least be part of the public conversation. There's
7:47
no national security risk here. Jeffrey Epstein's dead, So what
7:51
are they so worried about? And why aren't they being
7:53
open and transparent. Tartaglioni's case went from an alleged Grizzly
8:00
Rugg related quadruple homicide in Lower New York State to
8:03
national news when he became cellmates with Epstein in the
8:07
Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. On July twenty third, twenty nineteen.
8:13
Epstein was found in his prison cell, semi conscious and
8:17
balled up in the fetal position with marks on his neck,
8:20
and there were accusations that Tartaglioni roughed them up. Yeah,
8:25
by Epstein himself. There's a lot of people, if you
8:29
go back to that point in time when it was happening,
8:32
that were convinced that Tartaglioni roughed them up. And I'm
8:36
one of those people. I don't think Jeffrey Epstein tried
8:39
to kill himself, not this time, the second time around,
8:43
when he actually died. Look, that's up for debate. I
8:47
haven't seen any video evidence one way or the other.
8:50
There's a lot of questions that need to be answered though,
8:52
I'll tell you that much, But I'm very agnostic on
8:55
all of it. I want to see the evidence. I'm
8:58
not interested in the BS. I'm interested in the actual
9:02
facts and what happened in that jail cell. He was questioned,
9:07
but the former cop and his lawyer fought the accusations
9:10
and charges were never filed. A dark cloud of suspicion
9:14
still lingers over the incident because video surveillance footage was
9:19
mistakenly deleted by prison staff and Tartaglioni was inexplicably found
9:25
with a cell phone. Yeah, folks, nothing suspect about any
9:28
of this. Just keep moving. If you think that this
9:31
is suspect, then you obviously believe in Bigfoot, the flat
9:35
earth theory, lizard people, all of it. Meanwhile, back in reality,
9:41
the real conspiracy theorists at this point are the people
9:44
who are denying that something is gravely wrong here. Epstein
9:49
died of an apparent suicide the next month, on August tenth,
9:53
twenty nineteen. But Tartaglioni wasn't in the cell at that time. No,
9:59
he was not. Epstein was alone in that cell allegedly
10:03
when he allegedly killed himself. But I've always thought that
10:07
Tartaglioni's role in this was to send a message, and
10:11
if my theory holds, message well received. After Epstein's death,
10:17
the former police officer requested a transfer to a different prison,
10:20
claiming he was being harassed by prison guards. According to
10:24
court documents, there were other allegations that Tartaglioni was assaulted
10:29
by corrections officers. According to court papers, the clear message
10:34
mister Tartaglioni has received is that if he conveys information
10:38
about the facility or about the recent suicide, there will
10:41
be a price to pay. His attorney, Bruce Barkett, wrote
10:45
in a letter to the judge, the continuing and seemingly
10:49
unresolvable problems with the conditions of mister Tartaglioni's confinement, coupled
10:54
with the unfortunate attempted suicide by a cell mate to
10:58
which mister Tartaglioni a critical witness, and the successful suicide
11:03
of that same person, makes his continued detention at the
11:06
MCC inappropriate. So the only witness, huh for the first
11:11
time around, and again very convenient that the cameras just
11:15
happened to not be working, and whatever surveillance was taken,
11:19
well that was deleted. But there's nothing to see here.
11:22
Everything is on the up and up. Jerry selection in
11:26
the quadruple murder case began in New York Federal Court
11:29
in Westchester County, just outside of New York City this week.
11:34
Tartaglioni has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Well, you
11:39
can certainly expect some updates from this trial the same
11:42
way we've covered some of the other trials in the past,
11:45
because it's pretty interesting to me to see what happens
11:48
with TARTAGLIONI. These are serious charges that he's facing, and
11:52
this man should go to prison for the rest of
11:55
his life. And as far as what happened in that
11:57
jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein, I'm convinced that he did
12:02
rough up Epstein and I don't care what he says
12:04
or his lawyer or Bill Barr unless I see video
12:09
evidence showing me otherwise. I'm going to continue to believe
12:14
that Nicholas star Tagleone roughed up Jeffrey Epstein in that
12:18
jail cell. All right, folks, that's gonna do it for
12:21
this one. All of the information that goes with the
12:23
episode can be found in the description box. What's up, everyone,
12:29
and welcome back to the Epstein Chronicles. Nicholas Star Tagleoni's
12:34
trial is now underway in Westchester, New York, and his
12:39
lawyers wasted no time telling the jury and everybody else
12:43
that Nicholas Star Tagleoni is nothing more than a fall guy. Now.
12:48
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be too
12:51
comfortable if this is what my lawyers came up with.
12:54
You mean to tell me all you can come up
12:56
with is saying that I'm the fall guy. How the
12:58
hell are we going to convince the jury of that?
13:01
And while it sounds great during opening statements, well, you're
13:04
going to have to prove that now throughout the rest
13:07
of the trial. And from what we know of Nicholas
13:10
Tartaglioni and what he allegedly was up to, it's going
13:14
to be a long road for the defense. Today's article
13:18
is from the Times Herald Record headline Tartaglioni was the
13:24
perfect fall guy in quadruple homicide X Cops defense says.
13:31
This article was authored by Jonathan Bandler, X cop Nicholas
13:37
Tartaglioni was so enraged by what he thought was the
13:40
theft of two hundred thousand dollars by a double crossing
13:44
partner in a cocaine trafficking operation that he strangled the
13:47
man with a zip tie and then participated in the
13:51
execution style slaying of the victims. To nephews and a
13:55
friend because they were witnesses, a federal prosecutor said Thursday
14:00
at the start of Tartaglioni's trial on murder and drug
14:04
conspiracy charges, and for Tartaglioni, the stakes couldn't be higher.
14:10
This is a man who is an ex police officer
14:13
who is now accused of killing a cartel associate. So
14:17
when he gets to prison, and I believe that's where
14:19
he's going, if there's any justice in the world anyway,
14:23
then he's going to have a real bad time of it.
14:25
He's going to have to go into protective custody and
14:28
shack up with the snitches and the chomos, because if
14:31
he's on the main line, he's going to be a
14:33
target who is responsible for these murders that man Nicholas Tartaglioni.
14:40
Assistant United States Attorney Jacob Fiddleman told jurors in opening
14:45
statements he and his enforcers executed the witnesses. The defendant
14:50
is a murderer who is responsible for the brutal death
14:53
of four people, but a lawyer for Tartaglioni said he
14:57
was uninvolved in any cocaine trafficking. That the cooperating witnesses
15:02
who will describe the twenty sixteen quadruple homicide and powerful
15:06
motives to lie and will testify about a narrative crafted
15:10
by federal and state law enforcement authorities, convinced Tartaglioni was
15:15
guilty after the four victims disappeared. Yeah, they just came
15:19
up with it out of the blue, and the bodies
15:22
just happened to be found on Tartaglioni's property. And furthermore,
15:26
this dude should be facing the death penalty, but Merrick
15:29
Garland stepped in and said that he wouldn't face the
15:32
death penalty. Was that a little bone thrown his way
15:35
for roughing up Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't the investigation that
15:40
led to their conclusion. It was the conclusion that steered
15:44
the investigation, Ada lisen Ring told the jury, adding later
15:48
that the people responsible are the government's own witnesses if
15:52
their deed was ever uncovered. Mister Tartaglioni was the perfect
15:56
fall guy. You know, they love using this guy as
15:58
a fall guy. Huh. Throw him in a jail cell
16:01
with Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein gets roughed up, but you know,
16:04
just miraculously, Epstein happened to try and kill himself that night,
16:08
but there was no cameras pointing at the cell. The
16:13
case background. In twenty fifteen, mister Tartaglioni was running an
16:18
animal rescue operation from a one hundred and sixty acre
16:21
rental property on Old Mountain Road in Mount Hope. He
16:25
was living off a disability pension, car cells and the
16:28
sale of steroids to fellow bodybuilders. And we all know
16:32
people that are zipped up on steroids are always calculating
16:36
and measured folks. Right, The cocaine conspiracy began, Fiddleman told
16:41
the jury when a farm hand of Tartaglioni's, Marcos Cruz,
16:45
introduced him to Martin Luna, who ran a construction business
16:49
in Middletown. The plan was for Luna to take two
16:52
hundred thousand dollars from Tartaglioni, buy cocaine in Texas, and
16:57
have his construction partner, Jason Sullivan, store of the drugs
17:00
in his Florida home and arrange for the drugs to
17:03
be sold there, and then with the proceeds, the process
17:07
would be repeated. And that's how it works. So you
17:10
get your first package, you sell that package off right,
17:13
you pocket a few bucks's profit, and then you reinvest
17:16
the rest into another package. But the second time Luna
17:20
went to Texas, he claimed that approximately two hundred and
17:23
fifty thousand dollars was stolen. Tartaglioni had an associate and
17:28
fellow bodybuilder Joseph Biggs try to pressure Luna to repay
17:32
the money. When Luna broke off communication, Tartaglioni determined he
17:37
had been double crossed. Fiddlman said, and unfortunately, in the
17:41
drug game, this is relatively common. You go into business
17:45
with somebody, things go south, either they get robbed or
17:48
they steal the money, whatever, and now you're in a
17:50
position where you have to take retribution. So if you're
17:54
not willing to go that next step and be a violent,
17:57
disgusting animal, then the drug game certainly not for you.
18:01
And mister Tartaglioni obviously had that kind of violence inside
18:05
of him and was ready to do what he had
18:08
to do, at least in his mind. What happened to
18:11
April eleventh, twenty sixteen, he used Sullivan to help trap Luna.
18:16
Sullivan told Luna that there were a series of construction
18:20
estimates to get done in Orange County on April eleventh,
18:23
twenty and sixteen, but the last one was fake. It
18:28
was an estimate at the Liquid Lounge, a strip mall
18:30
bar in Chester owned by Tartaglioni's brother. But when Luna
18:36
arrived that day. He had three others with him, his
18:39
nephews Miguel Luna and Urbano Santiago, and family friend Hector Gutiadres,
18:45
all three of whom Fidelman said had nothing to do
18:48
with the cocaine conspiracy and were in the wrong place
18:51
at the wrong time. Imagine you go roll with your
18:54
cousin or your friend and you think you're going to
18:56
do a job inspection, and before you know it, you're
18:59
caught up in a cocaine conspiracy that ends up with
19:02
you getting killed. Yeah, I'd say that's wrong place, wrong time.
19:07
Biggs and another bodybuilder ex haverstraw cop Gerard Benderoth, were
19:12
waiting for Luna at the bar and restrained all four
19:16
at gunpoint. Fiddleman said. Tartaglioni then arrived and beat and
19:21
screamed at Martin Luna in the bathroom for over an hour,
19:24
even bringing one of the nephews in to watch. Now,
19:28
I want you to keep in mind as we're going
19:30
through this, that this is the man that they thought
19:32
would be a good idea to throw into a cell
19:34
with Jeffrey Epstein. Finally, Fiddleman said, Tartaglioni strangled Luna with
19:40
a zip tie and drove his body to the mount
19:42
Hole property, Fiddleman said. The other enforcers then brought the
19:46
three other men to the property, where each was forced
19:49
to kneel on the ground and were each shot in
19:52
the back of the head, one by Biggs, who then
19:54
turned the gun over to Tartaglioni. Fiddleman said. Cruz, who
19:59
allegedly held carry the four men and filled in the
20:02
large grave, led authorities to the site eight months later.
20:05
The bodies were dug up on December twentieth, twenty sixteen,
20:09
the day after Tartaglioni's arrest. First witness Kevin O'Keefe, the
20:15
trial's first witness, New York State Police Senior investigator Kevin
20:19
O'Keefe was a member of the crime scene unit that
20:22
dug up the bodies. He detailed the discovery of two
20:25
pieces of a large zip tie that was found in
20:28
the grave, which prosecutors contend was used to kill Martin Luna.
20:33
The jury we'll hear from Biggs, Cruz in Sullivan, but
20:36
not Benderoff. He shot himself in his car in Havistraw
20:41
on March eighth, twenty seventeen, as FBI agents were approaching
20:45
to arrest him. Leisen Ring acknowledged that Tartaglioni sold steroids,
20:50
but insisted he wasn't involved in the cocaine trafficking. Nah,
20:55
I'm not involved in any of this. What do you
20:56
mean only steroids served in the case, she said, only
21:02
because the car he had sold, Cruise that Cruz gave
21:04
Martin Luna, was pulled over in Euston for speeding and
21:08
police found a dugout tire that is typically used to
21:12
transport drugs. When they learned the owner of the car
21:16
was still listed as Tartaglioni and that he was the
21:19
subject of a New York State Police investigation into steroid cells,
21:24
they began a cocaine trafficking investigation dubbed Operation a Taliano Buttis,
21:30
Lisenring said, with Tartaglioni the suspected ringleader and Luna and
21:35
Santiago the drug mules, even though no drugs had been recovered.
21:40
She went on to say that Cruz had unfettered access
21:43
to Tartaglioni's entired property. He regularly used the heavy machinery
21:48
that dug the large grave and filled in the hole
21:51
to cover the bodies and all that could have been
21:53
done without Tartaglioni's knowledge because the burial site could not
21:58
be seen from the house, and when Cruz at one
22:00
point admitted to killing the four men, she said, investigators
22:04
didn't believe him and threatened him and his family with
22:07
deportation until he implicated Tartaglioni, Yeah, I don't buy that
22:12
for a second, honestly. I mean, it's not past the
22:15
police to do something like that, but it sure seems
22:18
convenient here. Biggs motivation to lie was the strongest lizardinging
22:23
said because he faced the prospect of the death penalty
22:27
as one of the killers before cooperating. Tartaglioni's career history,
22:33
Tartaglioni has a checkered career law enforcement, working first in
22:38
Mount Vernon for just a year in nineteen ninety three
22:41
before transferring to a job in his native Yonkers, but
22:44
he lasted there for just thirteen weeks and took a
22:47
job in Pauling, where he fought to form a police
22:49
union before leaving in early nineteen ninety six and joining
22:53
the briarcliff Manor Police department. Look, if you get kicked
22:57
off one police department, you shouldn't get a job at
23:00
another one. And this guy was notoriously a bad cop.
23:05
He's somebody that grew up in the same area where
23:08
my parents grew up and where I lived for the
23:10
first eleven years of my life. And in fact, his
23:13
family lives like two streets from where my uncle was
23:16
living before he moved up to the Catskills. So Tartaglioni
23:20
and his brother were known in the you know, neighborhood
23:23
or whatever, and Tartaglioni has always been known as a
23:26
shitty cop. He faced perjury charges three years later over
23:30
at DWI arrest that he made. He was acquitted in
23:34
the criminal case but fired on departmental charges. However, the
23:38
village was forced to bring him back in two thousand
23:41
and three when he sued over the dismissal. During that time,
23:45
he faced an FBI probe related to allegations of excessive force,
23:49
but was never charged. The village did pay out a
23:53
one point one million dollar settlement over a local Gadflies
23:56
federal lawsuit alleging he had been roughed up by Tartan
24:00
on more than one occasion. Tar Taglioni worked just several
24:04
months in two thousand and three before injuring his elbow
24:08
when he was hit by a passing car. He never
24:10
returned to active duty and retired on disability in two
24:14
thousand and eight. He later won a ruling that he
24:17
had become fit to work again but was never hired. Bro,
24:20
you weren't hired because you're a scumbag. And you see
24:23
how the system works. If you're part of one of
24:25
these police unions, forget it. Even if you're a piece
24:27
of shit, they're going to defend you to the nines.
24:30
And that never really sat right with me. If somebody's
24:33
a scumbag, I don't care if they're a part of
24:34
your group, part of your union, whatever, you have to
24:38
take action and get rid of that person, not cover
24:40
up for them. Testimony and evidence, Fiddleman acknowledged that the
24:46
government's key witnesses are criminals, one bigs, even a murderer,
24:50
who had all pleaded guilty in the case and were
24:53
testifying in hopes of a more lenient sentence, But he
24:56
told jurors their job would be to determine not whether
25:00
you like these men or what they have done, but
25:03
whether they are telling the truth, and he said the
25:06
testimony would corroborate other key evidence in the case that
25:09
includes surveillance video from outside the bar, cell phone data
25:13
tracing the route the key players took between the bar
25:16
and mount hole, property and blood found on the base
25:19
board of the bathroom floor that matched Martin Luna's DNA.
25:24
Lizen Ring countered that the DNA would be unreliable because
25:28
police had mishandled evidence, allowing for cross contamination, and she
25:32
suggested that the cell phone data had been cherry pick
25:36
to fit the government's narrative. For three years, Tartaglioni faced
25:40
the specter of the death penalty until Attorney General Merrick
25:44
Garland decided late last year that prosecutors would no longer
25:48
pursue capital punishment in the case. If convicted, Tartaglioni faces
25:53
life in prison. The trial before US District Judge Kenneth
25:57
Carris resumes Friday and is expected to last about a month.
26:03
So imagine Merrick Garland stepping in here and taking the
26:07
death penalty off the table. That makes you wonder, why
26:10
what did Tartaglioni do that gets him the benefit of
26:14
not having to face the death penalty after murdering allegedly
26:18
four people. I mean, I'm sure it has nothing to
26:20
do with his time at mcc right, and I'm also
26:24
sure that the reason he was in that cell with
26:26
Epstein was just a mistake, a mix up, and just
26:29
human error, because that's the narrative that they've pitched us
26:33
from the very beginning. But I ask you once again,
26:37
does anybody out there think that that narrative is even
26:40
worth listening to? At this point? Considering what we know
26:43
about Tartaglioni and how procedure works in prison or jail,
26:48
do you really think that there's any way in hell
26:50
that this man that we were just talking about should
26:53
have been in a jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein. Ever,
26:57
Epstein should have been in there with another sex offender,
27:00
somebody who is working as a jailhouse snitch, whatever, but
27:04
certainly not in there with one of these juiced out
27:06
gorillas who's facing four murder counts. That's called a guy
27:11
with nothing to lose, folks, So why in the hell
27:14
would you put him in a jail cell with a
27:16
high profile inmate like Jeffrey Epstein. You know, instead of
27:20
getting to the very bottom of all of it, why
27:22
don't we just start there? Can anyone in the government
27:25
at least give us a reason why Tartaglioni, of all people,
27:28
was in a cell with Epstein. Well three years later
27:32
and we still don't have any of those answers, So
27:35
I'm not holding my breath either way. We'll continue to
27:38
cover this Tartaglioni trial and see where it all ends up,
27:42
because this is the man right here that certainly knows
27:45
more about what happened in that jail cell with Jeffrey
27:48
Epstein than he's ever let on. All right, folks, that's
27:51
gonna do it for this one. All of the information
27:54
that goes with the episode can be found in the
27:57
description box. What's up everyone, Welcome back to the Epstein Chronicles.
28:03
In this episode, we're gonna get a Nicholas Tartaglioni trial
28:07
update as one of his co conspirators testifies against them.
28:12
So let's get into the article by the Lowhood and
28:15
let's see what Jonathan Bandler has for us headlined Bodybuilder
28:20
details strangling fatal shootings in Tartaglioni quadruple murder trial. So
28:26
is it any shock that Tartaglioni is accused of strangling
28:29
somebody here? Considering what happened to Jeffrey Epstein and that
28:33
jel cell I mean, you know, just another coincidence, right,
28:36
One man, Martin Luna, was already dead over a two
28:39
hundred thousand dollars drug debt, his body wrapped in a
28:42
blue tarp, his two relatives and a family friend their
28:46
hands tied, knelt on the ground as X Cop Nicholas
28:49
Tartaglioni told them everything would be okay. But Joseph Biggs,
28:55
a bodybuilding enforcer who collected debts for Tartaglioni, details a
29:00
Federal Jerry Wednesday how the man would not leave that
29:03
mountain side clearing in Orange County alive seven years ago.
29:08
He said, he shot one of them in the head,
29:10
handed the black revolver to Tartaglioni, and turned away, hearing
29:15
two more gunshots as the other men were killed as well.
29:19
And you'll see that a lot. When somebody's gonna be
29:21
involved in a murder, everybody there has to kill somebody
29:25
so that they all take part, right with the thought
29:28
being if everybody takes part in the murder, nobody's gonna snitch.
29:31
But we know that that's not the case, especially here
29:35
considering Big snitched on his boy tartag Leoni quick as hell,
29:39
and when you're looking at a life sentence, yeah, it's
29:41
time to start talking. He said he had resisted moments
29:45
earlier when his fellow enforcer, another ex cop named Gerard Benderoth,
29:50
told him he was going to get his hands dirty
29:52
and demanded he take the gun. Benderov told him he
29:56
had two choices, either you leave here with us or
29:59
used to with them. Biggs recounted him saying, so he's saying,
30:04
according to Biggs here that he was bullied into this
30:07
and told that if he didn't pull the trigger that
30:09
they'd kill him too. And while I don't know how
30:13
much I buy of that, it's certainly possible. But if
30:16
I was on the jury, you'd really have to convince
30:18
me of that, Biggs as a key witness. Biggs testified
30:23
as the main cooperating witness against Tartaglioni, who was charged
30:26
with murder, kidnapping, and drug conspiracy in the April eleventh,
30:31
twenty sixteen murders of Martin Luna forty one, his twenty
30:35
five year old nephew, Miguel Luna, his niece's husband, Urbano
30:39
Santiago thirty five and Hector Cutiadez forty three. Biggs said
30:45
Tartaglioni strangled Martin Luna to death hours earlier at a
30:50
Chester bar where he had been lured, and the others
30:54
who had not been expected to show up with Luna
30:56
were killed on the property Tartaglioni rented at the time
31:00
in Mount Hope. The bodies were not discovered until eight
31:03
months later. Yeah, kind of hard to find the bodies
31:06
when they're buried in a place like that unless you
31:09
have somebody who is going to give you the information, right,
31:12
somebody who's going to work with you as an informant.
31:16
But unless you have that, it's very difficult to recover
31:19
bodies that are buried in this kind of manner, especially
31:22
on a property like this that's so sprawling. Unless you
31:25
have an informant, there's literally no way you're ever gonna
31:29
find those bodies. Biggs is the only eyewitness account of
31:33
the killings the jury will hear. Benderroth, the man he
31:36
said helped him and Tartaglione restrain and kill the four men,
31:40
fatally shot himself on March eighth, twenty seventeen, as FBI
31:44
agents were approaching his car to arrest him. Benderroth had
31:49
been a police officer and have Herstraw and New York
31:52
City and was a strong man competitor known as the
31:55
White Rhino. This is a big dude right here. And
31:58
I remember when I was first looking at the Tartaglione
32:01
reading about bender Roth and how he killed himself when
32:04
the FBI was rolling up on him. He knew he
32:07
was cooked. He knew that he was guilty of these crimes,
32:09
and he knew that if the FBI was on to him,
32:12
then the jig was up. And this was a gigantic man.
32:15
Imagine being the EMS people that had to come and
32:18
pull him out of his car after he killed himself.
32:20
You need a fucking crane. Biggs, now sixty one, lived
32:24
in Nanuitt and was a security guard at the Greenberg
32:28
gram School in Hastings on the Hudson when he was
32:30
arrested in the parking lot there in June twenty seventeen.
32:35
And all of these places are in my neck of
32:37
the woods where I grew up. I grew up in
32:40
South Yonkers, the South Bronx before moving to Las Vegas.
32:44
And this is literally like fifteen twenty minutes away from
32:47
where I used to live. Bigg's background. He said he
32:52
was a drug addict from his teenage years until his
32:54
late twenties, when he stopped at the time his youngest
32:57
child was born. He supported his bit with armed robberies
33:01
and burglaries, but avoided any criminal record. He said that
33:05
he had been sexually abused by a coach when he
33:08
was fourteen and called himself a garbage head after that,
33:12
taking cocaine, heroin, LSD, marijuana, anything to just not feel
33:18
like me. Look, I have a lot of sympathy for
33:20
people who are abused sexually, especially, but that doesn't give
33:25
you the cover later on. If you come out here
33:28
and you're murdering people, you still have to answer for
33:30
what you did. Sure, it sucks that you were abused,
33:34
and I'm sure the jury is going to take that
33:35
into account, but that doesn't mean you're getting off scot free.
33:40
He said he met Tartaglioni through the local gym scene
33:43
in Rockland and began buying steroids from him on a
33:46
regular basis around two thousand and six, usually in the
33:50
parking lot of the McDonald's and West Nayak. A friendship developed,
33:54
and Big said that around twenty thirteen, Tartaglioni started using
33:59
him Benderroth as enforcers to collect debts from steroid customers.
34:04
Their typical approach, Big said was to confront the customer
34:08
as they left the gym, box them in between park
34:11
cars and demand the money. If they didn't pay up,
34:14
he said, we take him somewhere where the money was.
34:17
Biggs acknowledged a complicated relationship with Benderoth, including consensual sex
34:23
between the two, even after a bizarre incident in the
34:26
married X CoP's bedroom that ended with Benderoth sexually assaulting him.
34:31
He had gone there because Benderov asked him if he
34:34
wanted to engage in a threesome with him and his wife.
34:37
Once in the bedroom, though the wife was not there,
34:40
and Benderoth came on to him, Big said he tried
34:43
to step away, but Benderov began beating him, pinning him
34:46
to the ground, and forcing him into sex. Yo, this
34:50
is all brand new to me. I didn't know these
34:52
dudes were out here raping each other in shit. Jesus,
34:55
But again it goes to show you this Nicholas Tartaglioni,
34:59
dude should have never been in a jail cell with
35:01
Jeffrey Epstein. I put myself in a situation, he told
35:06
assistant US attorney Maureen Komi. I didn't see it coming,
35:10
despite the violence of it. Biggs acknowledged having sexual contact
35:13
with Benderoth on other occasions and said he never told
35:17
anyone about it until his arrest in March twenty seventeen
35:21
because he was embarrassed. He did scale down his collections
35:25
with Benderov, though, he said, because he was more profitable
35:28
to get a package of steroids from Tartaglioni as compensation
35:32
for the collections than the cash Benderoth was giving them.
35:37
Almost always, it's going to be more profitable if somebody
35:40
is collecting their bounty, if you will, in drugs rather
35:44
than money. Because the drugs are plentiful right the drug
35:47
dealers are getting them at a wholesale cost. It's almost
35:51
like booze at a bar. The shift to cocaine, he
35:55
said he learned in late twenty fifteen that Tartaglioni had
35:59
taken up cocaine trafficking, investing in the purchase of cocaine
36:02
in Texas and having it sold in Florida with the
36:05
help of Luna. Luna's boss who lived in Florida. Jason Sullivan,
36:10
who Bigs knew just as Jay and Marcos Cruz, a
36:13
farm hand of Tartaglioni's. But in early twenty sixteen, Tartaglioni
36:19
asked for his help getting more than two hundred thousand
36:22
dollars back from Luna, who claimed that the second time
36:25
he went to Texas to buy cocaine, the people he
36:28
paid took off with the money and never gave him
36:31
the drugs. He said. He met with Luna and Cruz,
36:34
but soon Luna broke off communication. Tartaglioni then sent both
36:39
Benderoth and Biggs to find Luna, but they couldn't. My
36:42
guess is Luna burned them right. Luna probably took this
36:46
money and thought he was gonna get away with it. Well,
36:48
this is the Narco game, and people aren't just going
36:51
to forget a two hundred thousand dollars debt. What Biggs
36:56
testified about the killings. On April eleventh, twenty sixteen, with
37:00
the help of Sullivan, they lurned Luna to the Liquid Lounge,
37:04
a bar owned by Tartaglioni's brother in a Chester strip mall.
37:08
Big said they had Benderoth meet Luna at the door
37:11
because the two men had never met. Luna had been
37:15
expected to come alone, but he brought along Miguel Luna,
37:18
Santiago and Gutiadas. Once they entered, Big said, Luna recognized
37:24
him and bolted for the emergency exit, but it had
37:27
been blocked, and he bounced off the heavy door. Benderoth
37:31
then ordered everyone onto the floor at gunpoint. As Benderoth
37:36
kneeled on Luna's back, Big started duct taping the other's hands.
37:39
He said, the three men were put in the office
37:42
and Luna was seated on a chair in the bathroom,
37:45
his hands bound behind his back. And remember this is
37:49
the guy they put into a jail cell with Jeffrey Epstein.
37:52
Just keep that in mind. When Tartaglioni arrived, Big said
37:56
he went into the bathroom to confront Luna. Big said
37:59
he still in the office watching the others, but could
38:02
hear the smacking sounds of Luna being beaten and Tartaglioni
38:06
demanding his money. Big said he didn't know any of
38:10
the others, but described Santiago as the other captive, who
38:14
was then put into the bathroom as well. While Tartaglioni
38:18
continued to beat up Luna. Big said he heard a gasping,
38:22
choking sound for about thirty seconds and looked in to
38:25
see Martin Luna lying motionless on his side, bleeding from
38:28
his head, Santiago looking very scared. Tartaglioni went to his
38:33
car to get a tarp, and Biggs was directed to
38:36
wipe up a blood streak. Big said he helped Tartaglioni
38:40
carry the body to the car because he spoke Spanish.
38:43
Biggs was also tasked with making sure Santiago complied when
38:47
he was directed to call a relative to say there
38:50
was a problem and he had to go to Mexico.
38:52
After Tartaglioni ended the call, Big said, Santiago told Tartaglioni
38:57
he was going to get him the money. When Tartaglioni
39:01
drove off with Luna's body, Big said he urged Benderoth
39:04
that they should just leave, that the police could show up,
39:07
because someone from the Chinese restaurant next door had heard
39:10
noises and was asking what was going on. They soon
39:14
drove the other men to Tartaglioni's property on Old Mountain
39:17
Road in Mount Hope. Look, they had a chance right
39:20
there to get done with all of it and call
39:22
the cops and turn in Tartaglioni. They didn't. They continued
39:26
on with their mission and even brought the victims to
39:29
a new location. While Big said he did not watch
39:32
the second and third man get shot, he suggested Tartaglioni
39:36
and Benderoth had each shot one of them because he
39:39
had given the gun to Tartaglioni, but Benderov was holding it.
39:43
Immediately after two gunshots, he said he was directed to
39:47
cut the duct tape off the men's hands, and Tartaglioni
39:50
got a backo to start digging a hole, and the
39:53
bodies of the three men who were shot were thrown inside,
39:57
but they had to stop digging because a piece of
39:59
the back ho fell off. When Benderoth told him to
40:02
get in the hole and retrieve the broken piece and
40:05
looked at Tartaglioni, Biggs got the impression he wanted to
40:08
kill him, but Tartaglioni shook his head and hands indicating no.
40:13
Big said, hell of a group of friends, Huh, guys
40:16
sexually assaulting you? Gonna kill you? Real great group of
40:20
dudes you decided to throw in with. Before Luna's body
40:24
was thrown into the hole, on top of the others.
40:26
Big said, Tartaglioni cut a zip tie from around Luna's neck.
40:31
They shoveled dirt onto the bodies until nightfall. Tartaglioni then
40:36
threw the dead man's wallets and other belongings into a
40:39
furnace near the house. Big said he and Benderroth were
40:42
sent to pick up cruise so they could use a
40:45
key fob taken from the dead men to find a
40:47
car they had arrived in and move it as far
40:49
away from the bar as possible. They didn't manage to
40:53
find it. On their way back to Rockland County that night,
40:56
Big said Benderroth through the spent shell case and remaining
41:00
bullets from the black Revolver out the window on the
41:03
New York State Thruway. He wasn't sure if he threw
41:06
the gun out as well. Bigs guilty plea and cooperation
41:11
Biggs is pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping, and drug conspiracy
41:15
charges and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in hopes
41:19
of some leniency from a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
41:23
That's the only incentive he needs, he suggested, to testify
41:27
truthfully I'd like to hold my grandchildren. He said, well,
41:30
guess what, dude, you shouldn't have been involved in killing
41:33
these guys. I know you have a sob story and
41:35
all of that, but guess what the buck stops with
41:38
you self responsibility get some but he acknowledged on cross
41:43
examination by defense lawyer Bruce Barkett that his truthfulness and
41:47
cooperation are for the lawyers relying on him. The prosecutor
41:51
said to determine the defense maintains that Tartaglione was framed
41:55
for the murders, that the drug conspiracy had involved Luna Cruz, Sullivan,
41:59
Biggs in Benderoth and not Tartaglioni. Barket's sided the fact
42:03
that Tartaglioni never had a burner phone like Biggs and Sullivan,
42:07
and that it was Sullivan, not Tartaglioni, who had access
42:11
to the money and the cocaine in Florida. It's always
42:14
somebody else, right, And whenever somebody's doing the not me
42:17
routine of defense and not bringing receipts, I automatically default
42:22
to them lying. Barket questioned Biggs about the contacts in
42:26
his burner phone that showed j. Sullivan and Marcos Cruz
42:29
with dollar signs next to their names, and he suggested
42:33
that it was actually Biggs who had strangled Martin Luna.
42:36
He cited an incident for which Biggs was arrested in
42:39
twenty fifteen for squeezing a man's neck until he lost
42:42
consciousness after his daughter had claimed the man assaulted her,
42:46
and he got Biggs to concede that five to ten
42:49
times he had acted similarly to try to get people
42:52
to pay their debts. Boy, that's ironic, Hunh. Barket's out
42:56
here accusing this dude of being a strangler. Meanwhile, we
42:59
all know that Tartaglioni strangled Jeffrey Epstein in that jail cell.
43:04
The defense maintains details had been fed to the cooperators
43:08
to fit their narrative of the case. Biggs conceded to
43:11
bark It that a New York State Police investigator had
43:14
told him that he thought Tartaglioni had snapped and something
43:17
bad happened, and that Luna had been killed by Tartaglioni.
43:22
Anri direct comy asked Biggs if a law enforcement agent
43:26
had ever told Biggs to frame Tartaglioni. They had not.
43:29
He said, if you tell a single lie, what happens?
43:32
She asked, I go to jail for the rest of
43:35
my life. And that's no joke. If you're a witness
43:38
and you tell a lie on that stand, forget it.
43:40
All deals are off and you're going to prison forever.
43:43
So the whole entire account here by mister Biggs smacks
43:46
true to me. We know that Tartaglioni's guilty of this.
43:49
Come on, Several people have already said so, and the
43:52
evidence is just a mile high. So I have no
43:55
doubt that Tartaglioni's gonna be found guilty here. But the
43:59
question still rem what was he doing in that Geil
44:02
cell with Jeffrey Epstein? And will we ever get an
44:05
answer to that question? All right, folks, that's gonna do
44:09
it for this one. All of the information that goes
44:11
with the episode can be found in the description box.