A retired police officer was given four consecutive life sentences in jail on Monday. He was found guilty of killing four people, including a man he tortured and strangled over stolen drug money.
The 56-year-old Nicholas Tartaglione was found guilty last year. He used to work as a police officer in the town of Briarcliff Manor in the Hudson River Valley. His case got a lot of attention because of how violent the crime was and because Tartaglione shared a cell with Jeffery Epstein, the politically connected playboy who killed himself while waiting to be tried on federal sex trafficking charges.
Police say Tartaglione abused Martin Luna because he thought Luna had stolen $250,000 from him that was meant to buy cocaine. The other three people who were taken by Tartaglione and two friends in 2016 were friends or family of Luna who were at a club with her.
Prosecutors said that Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna, and Hector Gutierrez had to stand there and watch as Tartaglione used a zip tie to choke Martin Luna. After that, they were shot and killed. The bodies of the four men were found buried together on Tartaglione’s land in Otisville, New York.
Before leaving on disability from the Briarcliff Manor force in 2008, Tartaglione worked for police departments in Yonkers, Pawling, and Mount Vernon, all of which were in the suburbs. According to The Journal News, Tartaglione has kept his innocence by saying in court that he was only running an animal rescue farm and wasn’t after money.
In 2017, as FBI agents got ready to arrest him, one of his accused murder partners shot himself in his car. After admitting to killing one of the victims, another man, Joseph Biggs, was given 16 years in jail. As a witness in Tartaglione’s trial, Biggs talked about the killings as per Associated News.
Tartaglione wasn’t in Epstein’s cell when he died, but his lawyer said he was a “critical witness” in the investigation into Epstein’s suicide. A few weeks earlier in 2019, he shared a cell with Epstein. That’s when the rich financier was found with cuts on his neck and put on suicide watch.