Ex-cop Nicholas Tartaglione receives 4 life sentences for quadruple murder

Metro

By David Proper

A former New York police officer who was once Jeffrey Epstein's cellmate will spend the rest of his life behind bars in the 2016 killings of four men after a federal judge allegedly accused him of caring more about animals than people victims he killed.

Nicholas Tartaglione, 56, was sentenced Monday to four life terms for masterminding the kidnapping and murders of Martin Luna, 41, Luna's nephews Urbano Santiago, 35, Miguel Luna, 25 , and a close family friend, Hector Gutierrez, 43.

He then buried them in shallow graves on his own property in 2016, federal prosecutors said.

During sentencing, Tartaglione was chastised by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas as a ruthless “monster.”

Karas also slammed the former Briarcliff Manor cop for caring “more about the animals than the victims” after his defense team listed their client's efforts to save cats, dogs, pigs, skunks and horses, The Journal
News reported.

“Nicholas Tartaglione brutally and senselessly murdered Martin Luna for money, then mercilessly executed Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the U.S. District Attorney said South New York, Damian Williams. said in a statement.

Tartaglione killed Martin Luna because he thought he had stolen about $250,000 from him that was supposed to be used to buy cocaine, prosecutors said.

Martin Luna was lured to a bar in Chester, where he was later confronted by Tartaglione. He was held and beaten by the ex-cop for more than an hour before being strangled with a tie when he did not reveal the whereabouts of the money.

Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez were shot in the back of the head because they were with Luna at the time of his confrontation with Tartaglione and witnessed the killing, prosecutors said.

The four victims were then buried in a mass grave in a remote part of his property until they were found eight months later.

Tartaglione briefly shared a prison cell with pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein at the now-closed Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Epstein told his lawyers that the former police officer “brutalized” him in the cell.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell before his 2019 sex trafficking trial, which was ruled a suicide.

Tartaglione was convicted of murder and kidnapping last April by a federal jury.

On Monday, Martin's sister, Celia Luna, said she would never forgive Tartaglione and “pray and hope” he never gets out of prison, according to The Journal News.

“A street animal has a better heart than this person,” she says.