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.
One of the biggest blows in the decade-plus case of Jeffrey Epstein came on Friday when a federal court unsealed documents from a lawsuit by one of Epstein’s accusers against his mysterious girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Virginia Giuffre accused Maxwell of procuring young girls for sexual abuse by Epstein and his powerful friends. (The two sides settled in 2017.) The more than 2,000 pages of documents provide the greatest details yet on allegations against Epstein, including eye-popping claims involving some of the world’s most famous men, allegations of sex slaves, and more.
Here are some of the major revelations:
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Giuffre said in several depositions that Maxwell and Epstein trafficked her to powerful men for sex. In 2016, she said Maxwell specifically instructed her to serve former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Britain’s Prince Andrew, wealthy financier Glenn Dubin, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, and scientist Marvin Minsky. She also says Maxwell and Epstein directed her to have sex with “another prince,” a "foreign president," a well-known prime minister" and the owner of a “large hotel chain.” None of the men named have been charged with a crime and all have denied inappropriate behavior.
A woman once employed to be Epstein’s personal masseuse testified that he said he needed “at least three orgasms” every day day. “It was biological, like eating,” said Johanna Sjoberg. “I thought it was a little crazy.”
Sjoberg said Maxwell approached her in 2001 a Florida college to be Epsein’s personal assistant. After one day of clerical work, Sjoberg said another woman described as Maxwell’s “sex slave” took her into the his bathroom to give him a massage. Sjoberg said Epstein and the other girl then performed a massage on her while she was naked. While Maxwell admitted in her 2016 deposition that she did employ massage therapists on Epstein’s behest, she had denied the visits were sexual in nature.
Juan Alessi, Epstein’s former house manager, testified he saw “probably over 100” girls serve Epstein at his Palm Beach home over 10 years. After each encounter, Alessi said, he would clean up the home’s upstairs massage room. In multiple occasions, he said, he found “vibrators or sex toys” and put them in Maxwell’s closet because he “knew that’s where they kept” such items, along with a “shiny black costume.” Tony Figueroa, Giuffre’s ex-boyfriend, also testified Giuffre said she participated in threesomes with Maxwell and Epstein, usually involving “strap-ons.” He says that Maxwell also asked him to find girls for Epstein. Maxwell has denied anything sexual took place during Epstein’s massages.
Giuffre wrote and shopped around a fictionalized story about her alleged experiences with Epstein, naming him and Maxwell in the manuscript. The story describes a world where only a “selective clientele” had access to girls “trained to fulfill every sexual desire asked of them, no matter how bizarre the requests might be.” In one passage, she writes, “Jeffrey made his appearance. It was strange seeing him in clothes for the first time. He wasn’t wearing what you’d expect your typical billionaire’s attire to be. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a Harvard sweatshirt, which he began to remove immediately.”
In 2011, Giuffre was working on her book proposal regarding Epstein when she received an email from journalist Sharon Churcher of the Mail on Sunday, a right-wing UK newspaper: “Don’t forget Alan Dershowitz, JE’s buddy and lawyer,” Churcher wrote. “Good name for your pitch as he repped Claus von Bulow and a movie was made about that case…. We all suspect Alan is a pedo and tho no proof on that, you probably met him when he was hanging out with JE.”
Dershowitz has long denied Giuffre’s allegations that he had sex with her. In the unsealed court documents, Giuffre once again claims that she had intercourse with Dershowitz at several of Epstein’s mansions, and says that she once gave him oral sex in the back of a limousine on the way to his house in Massachusetts while Epstein and another young woman watched.
Rinaldo Rizzo, a former house manager for Epstein friends Glenn Dubin and Eva Andersson-Dubin, testified that a “distraught” 15-year-old girl told him in 2005 she was pressured to have sex on Epstein’s private island. The butler said the girl, who identified herself as Epstein’s personal assistant, refused and that Epstein’s assistant Sarah Kellen took her passport and phone away and gave them to Maxwell. “She says, ‘I’m not supposed to talk about this,’” he recalled. Maxwell has denied these allegations.
Giuffre’s father, Sky Roberts, was named as Mar-a-Lago’s “most valuable employee” in a letter signed by Donald Trump in April 2000. Roberts worked on the Trump club’s maintenance crew and was relocating to Colorado for a new job. “Should he ever return to Florida, he would be eligible for rehire,” Trump wrote in the letter. Trump and Epstein were friendly for years until the now-president supposedly kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for acting inappropriately with girls.
In a deposition, Giuffre says that Epstein told her that he was friends with Trump, but that she never witnessed the president and Epstein together. “Donald Trump never flirted with me,” she testified, and added that she didn’t see him have sex with girls at Epstein’s homes.
When Maxwell wasn’t allegedly ordering girls to service Epstein and his friends, she abused them herself, according to at least three people. Giuffre said she, Maxwell, and Epstein “were all intimate together on multiple occasions,” her ex-boyfriend Tony Figueroa testified. Johanna Sjoberg testified that Maxwell called a girl who was giving massages to Epstein “her slave.” A former house manager testified that Maxwell received massages from girls, as well. Maxwell denies these claims.
Epstein and Maxwell allegedly trafficked Giuffre to Britain’s Prince Andrew. One day at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan, Sjoberg testified she sat on his lap with Giuffre sitting next to him. The prince touched Sjoberg’s breast, she testified, and used a puppet to touch Giuffre’s breast, showing what he would do to her. Prince Andrew has vehemently denied inappropriate behavior with underage women around Epstein.
Epstein’s accusers weren’t the only ones to lob bombs. Attorneys for Maxwell deposed retired Palm Beach police detective Joseph Recarey, who they say “failed to uncover any evidence” against Maxwell. When Recarey was asked to describe “everything that you believe you know about Ghislaine Maxwell’s sexual trafficking conduct,” he replied, “I don’t.” But Giuffre’s lawyers fired back that Recarey knew that Maxwell was involved in illegal sexual activities, that he wanted to speak to her but she didn’t return his calls, and that he concluded her role was to procure girls for Epstein.
Former house manager of the Palm Beach estate, Alfredo Rodriguez, called himself a “human ATM machine” tasked with paying out Epstein’s alleged victims. Girls would come by cab and he was “told to pay them cash” after they finished servicing Epstein and others. Epstein’s assistant Sarah Kellen would tell Rodriguez to call cabs to send the girls back, he testified.
Palm Beach police recovered receipts from Epstein’s trash that showed he ordered books on Amazon about sadomasochism and how to use sex slaves. A photograph of an Amazon receipt under Epstein’s name showed several titles, including SM 101: A Realistic Introduction, A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners, and SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude.
Around the time Epstein was under investigation in Florida in 2005, Maxwell’s assistant Adriana Ross and a man removed three computers from the Palm Beach residence, a former house manager testified. When police later turned up at the home, the computers—which allegedly contained nude pictures of underage girls—were gone.
Giuffre’s lawyers claimed that Maxwell kept photos of underage girls on her computers, and two of Epstein’s housekeepers also testified that they saw photos of young nude females on Maxwell’s devices. Detective Recarey also “found a collage of nude photos of young females in Epstein’s closet [in his Palm Beach mansion], and turned the photos over to the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ office.” The lawyers also note that a police video disclosed through a FOIA request shows naked images of women throughout the Florida house, including a full nude of Giuffre.
The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to press serious charges against Epstein in 2007 and instead he pleaded guilty to two minor state prostitution charges.
