That Jeffrey Epstein used his friendship with Prince Andrew (and other powerful men) to burnish his own image is well known.
What did the queen’s second son get out of the connection, though?
Given that the prince for many years rejoiced in the nickname "Randy Andy," it should come as no surprise that sex—or at least access to attractive women—was allegedly a factor. But money, of course, also played a part.
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Andrew has always struggled financially; unlike his big brother, Charles, who has an almost unlimited supply of money from his Duchy Of Cornwall estate, Andrew has had to rely for most of his life on handouts from his mother (hence the need for the suspicious property deal in which he sold his old house for three million pounds over the asking price of £12m to a Kazakh oligarch who then tore it down.)
Epstein was able to loan Andrew the jet-set lifestyle he always craved. It is a matter of pubic record that Andrew vacationed with Epstein in Thailand and St. Tropez. It was also on Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands where alleged underage sex slave Virginia Roberts claims that she was passed around among men, including Prince Andrew, for sex (Buckingham Palace has previously denied those claims, but a photograph of Andrew with his arm around Roberts continues to haunt him).
Prince Andrew and 17-year-old Virginia
Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson the Duchess of York, also benefited from Epstein’s largess, accepting £15,000 from Epstein in 2010, when he was already a convicted pedophile on the sex offender’s register. She later apologized for what she termed “a gigantic error of judgment,” saying that she had been blinkered by financial desperation.
So, yes, money played a part, but sources tell The Daily Beast that Andrew and Epstein also shared an insatiable appetite for young women.
Sources tell The Daily Beast that when Andrew was visiting New York in the late '90s and early '00s, he was a frequent guest at Epstein’s massive Upper East Side home.
Epstein would host drinks or dinner parties at which Andrew was feted as a guest of honor, and used to draw in a crowd of young society women, usually in their 20s, via his former girlfriend and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was closely connected to New York City’s and London’s more glamorous sets.
A guest at one of these dinners, which they estimated took place around the turn of the century, related one such evening to The Daily Beast.
“Everyone in New York had heard the rumors that Ghislaine’s job was to provide a stream of pretty women for Epstein,” says the source. “However, we were under the impression that this was about 20-something girls, not 12-year-olds. Ghislaine’s role, it was therefore understood, was about improving his social life and social standing and making sure there was a parade of hot young women at his house all the time.
“My girlfriend and I had been invited a few times before and not gone, but when Ghislaine said Prince Andrew was coming, we thought, ‘Why not?’, and we accepted an invitation to dinner. Andrew was divorced by this time and pretending to be a global trade ambassador, and Epstein was this famously creepy, wildly rich and rather mysterious financier, so it was kind of an appealing invite.
“It was quite an intimate dinner; there were maybe 16 of us, in his house that took up a quarter of a whole block on the Upper East Side.
“Epstein and Andrew were not there to begin with, and then the doors were flung open and they made their entrance.
“They were both charmless, they looked like bored people who wanted to be entertained.
“Ghislaine I actually liked. She ran around, making sure everyone was OK like a super hostess. She was gossipy, a little bit inappropriate, a social provocateur, but good fun.
“Epstein was clearly confident in Andrew’s presence, and was trading off him, basking in the reflected glory of having a prince at his table.
“He very obviously was not sucking up to him, and showing off by calling him Andy. ‘Hey Andy, did you see this….’
“He wanted to show how comfortable he was in his presence, and make clear that while he was a guest of honor, he was a regular, routine, and repeat guest.
“Epstein, Andrew, and Ghislaine were a trio, a little coterie, a party within the party, the insiders among the other guests.
“The story was that Ghislaine did all this for Epstein because he was a father figure to her after her father dies in mysterious circumstances, and also because when she stopped being his girlfriend, he put her on the payroll. She was his meal ticket and sugar daddy.”
Another source told The Daily Beast: “I went to Jeffrey’s house with its Lalanne sheep sculptures for a party. There were a lot of ugly old men, with Prince Andrew in the middle of it all, perched on the club fender. We left pretty quickly.”
Andrew developed a friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, and, taking a leaf from Epstein’s playbook, used Maxwell to gain access to smart women back home in London through her network of society friends, sources say.
One then-friend of Ghislaine recalls being invited to an intimate dinner for four at Buckingham Palace comprising Andrew, our source, Ghislaine, and another woman who was also a friend of our source.
“My car drove in the front gates of Buckingham Palace, stopped round the back and I was escorted up to his apartment. Ghislaine was there, and it was clear immediately that I had been brought to the dinner as a sex object. Andrew sat next to me on the sofa and kept reaching over to hold my hand.
“I said as a joke, ‘I’d love to go on a tour of this place’ and next thing I knew, I was walking hand in hand with Prince Andrew through Buckingham Palace. As a joke, he took me out on the balcony and I waved to the non-existent crowd.
“We went back to the apartment and he was like, ‘OK, let’s all go to a club,’ and I said, ‘Er, look, I have to go to work in the morning’ and left with my friend.
“Ghislaine procured women like me for Andrew. It was a network. She was on the party circuit and she was bringing Andrew around, meeting young women.”
Prince Andrew must have hoped his connections to Epstein and his sordid world would have faded from view; instead it seems, Andrew’s position, once so prized by the pedophile financier to exalt his own importance, has ensured he remains a person of significant fascination—and disgust.
As the world of Jeffrey Epstein continues its slow-motion implosion, there seems a significant risk that Prince Andrew may yet find himself buried in the rubble.
A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace told The Daily Beast, “The Duke of York has not visited any home of Mr Epstein or met with him since November 2010 when the photo in Central Park was taken.
“As we have repeatedly said, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
Editor's note: On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein died in an apparent jailhouse suicide. For more information, see The Daily Beast's reporting here.
