A man accused of racketeering suspected sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in federal prison has been sentenced to four consecutive life sentences for masterminding a brutal 2016 quadruple murder that killed a man who owed him drug money and three passersby.
According to federal prosecutors, Nicholas Tartaglione, 56, and a group of bodybuilder co-conspirators tortured and killed Martin Luna, 41, for allegedly stealing $250,000 in drug money.
“Nicholas Tartaglione brutally and senselessly murdered Martin Luna over money, then mercilessly executed Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Héctor Gutierrez simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said Monday. “He attempted to cover up his crimes by burying all four victims in shallow graves on his own property.”
Tartaglione and Luna had been working together to smuggle cocaine from Texas to Florida when a victim told them he’d been robbed of his money. A few weeks later, Tartaglione allegedly invited Luna to a meeting to confront him over the cash. But the victim, unaware of the trap, accompanied him, bringing along his two nephews and a friend, according to federal prosecutors.
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This undated photo shows former Briarcliff Manor, New York police officer Nick Tartaglione. (Nick Tartaglione)
Tartaglione strangled him with a zip tie in front of the victim’s 25-year-old nephew, Miguel Luna.
“Then Tartaglione and two of his companions, Miguel, Urbano, [Santiago]and Hector [Gutierrez] “They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they were taken into a remote wooded area, forced to their knees and executed by shooting themselves in the back of the head,” Williams said after Tartaglione’s April 2023 sentencing.
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Santiago was 35 and Gutierrez was 43.
Hudson Valley Police and the FBI discovered the remains of all four men buried at Tartaglione’s ranch in Otisville, New York, in December 2016.
Nick Tartaglione is pictured with his pet Angus, his former police canine partner with the Pawling Police Department, at his then-Yonkers home in 2001. (The Journal News – USA TODAY Network)
The killer, a retired police officer on medical leave, was also a bodybuilder who trafficked steroids, cocaine and other drugs around New York’s Hudson Valley, according to prosecutors, and had hired two other bodybuilders to help him collect drug debts.
His lawyers blamed drug cartels for the murder and denied he was involved.
Tartaglione could have faced a minimum sentence of life in prison because federal prosecutors did not seek the death penalty on the murder, extortion and kidnapping charges. The Justice Department asked the judge to impose four consecutive life sentences.
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He was held in a Manhattan cell with Epstein while awaiting his own trial, weeks before the disgraced financier’s death was ruled a suicide.
Jeffrey Epstein photographed in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 8, 2004. (Rick Friedman/Rick Friedman Photo/Corbis via Getty Images)
Epstein had accused Tartaglione of assaulting him about a month before guards found him dead, hanging from a bedpost in his cell in the prison’s special housing unit for high-ranking inmates.
Tartaglione, who was not Epstein’s cellmate at the time of his death, told guards that Epstein had tried to hang himself after being found with an orange cloth around his neck.
Epstein’s lawyers and brother have disputed that version of events and say an inmate attacked him.
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A report prepared by the Office of the Inspector General documented the incident.
“Epstein initially told New York prison officials he believed his cellmate was trying to kill him, but later stated he did not know what happened or wanted to discuss how he was injured,” according to the inspector general’s report. He was exonerated after spending a day on suicide watch, authorities said.
