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A suicide note reportedly penned by Jeffrey Epstein while in custody has allegedly been kept under wraps for nearly seven years.

The disgraced financier's letter is said to have been locked away in a New York courthouse vault.

A cellmate claimed he discovered the note in July 2019, after Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth around his neck.

Epstein survived that incident but weeks later was found dead in the jail.

On Thursday, The New York Times petitioned the judge to unseal the note which said it was "time to say goodbye", cellmate Nicholas Tartaglione claimed.

The note had been sealed by a federal judge as part of the cellmate's own criminal case, according to documents and interviews.

This meant that detectives probing Epstein's high-profile death were denied what could have been a crucial piece of evidence.

A two-page document within the records reportedly details how the scrawled message became entangled in Tartaglione's legal proceedings, reports the Mirror.

It was reported that Tartaglione's lawyers authenticated the note, though no explanation was provided as to how this was achieved.

Tartaglione did reference the note on a podcast last year, yet the contents of the message were never disclosed, despite widespread calls for transparency surrounding the investigation.

Since December, the Justice Department has released millions of pages of documents connected to Epstein.

Tartaglione, a former police officer, is currently serving four consecutive life sentences for the murder of four people.

Prison records reveal that a week after Epstein accused his cellmate of attacking him in July 2019, he subsequently reversed his position and claimed they "never had any issues".

A Justice Department spokeswoman informed the New York Times that the agency had not reviewed it and that the department "underwent an exhaustive effort to collect all records in its possession," including those from the Bureau of Prisons and the Office of the Inspector General.

Tartaglione claimed he discovered the note concealed inside a graphic novel after Epstein was relocated to a different wing of the prison.

The note is alleged to have stated that investigators "found nothing" from their enquiries into the sex offender, Tartaglione recalled.

He said the message read: "What do you want me to do, bust out crying? Time to say goodbye."

Epstein was discovered dead in his cell at a federal prison in Manhattan, New York, in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was officially ruled as suicide.