Marie told me that she knew Lynn was a victim who was also enticed at a young age to recruit many other children for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse. Marie went on to explain that Lynn had not only refused to cooperate with the government but also in fact cooperated with Epstein and was represented by a lawyer hired by Epstein. We both agreed that the documentary evidence, and countless witness accounts verified Lynn’s role as a victim of Epstein’s abuse.
Despite three years of that abuse, Lynn had good reason to have given a favorable statement about Epstein to the FBI and to Marie a year earlier. While she was being paid as a sixteen-year-old recruiter for Jeffrey Epstein, Lynn got pregnant by her boyfriend. When the criminal investigation began, Lynn explained to me, the FBI went to her house. Epstein had tipped her off that such a day might come eventually and told her to call him if it did. Epstein had always looked out for her. In fact, months before she gave birth, Epstein learned from Sarah Kellen that Lynn was holding a baby shower in her single-wide trailer in the trailer park. On the day of the shower, two dark-tinted Mercedes Benz cars pulled up outside Lynn’s trailer. In true Epstein fashion, he arranged for every item on Lynn’s baby shower registry to be delivered to the party. His staff personally carried every item inside, making Lynn feel like a queen. He even threw in a silver Tiffany baby rattle for good measure. In addition to the gifts, he delivered the business card of a criminal defense lawyer, in case she was ever questioned.
Fast-forward a couple of months: FBI agents surrounded Lynn in her driveway with her baby in the car, blocking her in and preventing her from leaving. Lynn was still a child. A scared child. She was a brand-new mother and all that she cared about was her baby. She didn’t know what to do.
She couldn’t back up, and the agents were standing outside her car, so she drove forward over the rocks in her front yard, breaking her front fender and causing it to drag on the ground with sparks flying all over the place as she peeled away. Not knowing where to turn, she went directly to the office of the lawyer listed on that business card. She understood that her risk was next to nothing so long as she cooperated with Jeffrey. She had no real reason to conclude otherwise. After all, Jeffrey had always made her feel like the most special person in the world. She was one of his top girls. He even continued to pay her for each girl Lynn brought him while she was pregnant, which helped her financially prepare to be a mom. The supposed bad guy had always been nice to her and had supported her in tough times. The supposed good guys were chasing her around town, making her scared for her life, and had done nothing for her. This made her choice of whose side she was on pretty simple. I completely understood.
AUSA Villafaña said she understood, too, and knew most of it already. Still, any prosecutor hearing that a witness who had been uncooperative was now willing to cooperate should drop everything to get that interview. Marie checked with her office, which had no interest. I incorrectly chalked this up to the investigation being too large for her to focus on a small-time witness like Lynn, and figured she would get to it at some point.
FIVE 23 VICTIMS
IN RESPONSE TO MY FORMAL request to the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office, five Bankers boxes of investigative materials from the 2005 Palm Beach Police Department investigation showed up at my law firm. In order to determine how I was going to advocate for Courtney, I had to understand what had happened up to this point. I brought the boxes home and put them on my kitchen table. I went through every piece of paper twice that night. The first time I went through it I read every document but also created stacks all over my dining room, trying to place things in chronological order. The second time through, I was able to read the story in order from beginning to end.
The lead detective on the case was Joe Recarey. His excellent investigation uncovered twenty-three underage girls as victims of sexual abuse by Epstein. He had established conclusive evidence that the girls’ accounts were true.
The Palm Beach police investigation started with a tip on March 14, 2005, from the concerned parents of a girl we’ll call Tiffani. Tiffani had wads of cash that she could not explain. Her parents learned that she got the cash from a wealthy man in Palm Beach named Jeffrey Epstein, with whom they believed she was having a sexual relationship. This was actually not the first time the police had heard this story, but it was the first time it stuck. Years earlier, a similar account of young women going to Epstein’s house to give sexual massages surfaced, but a brief investigation revealed that the few who were identified were students at local colleges—arguably, in the view of prosecutors, consenting adults—and the file was closed.
This tip about Tiffani was different. She was only fourteen years old. Palm Beach detectives questioned her about the events, and she described in detail being brought over by a classmate, Kelly, to give a massage for cash to a wealthy Palm Beach man in his mansion. Kelly had known what was going to happen when Tiffani got there. Kelly had also known that Tiffani would be so impressed when she showed up at Epstein’s house that she would do what she needed to do in order to make money.
When questioned by the police, Tiffani explained how the whole event had unfolded with this man who appeared to be approximately fifty years old walking out of his fancy bathroom asking for a massage that quickly escalated into her being ordered to straddle his back before he turned over and masturbated in front of her. Tiffani was then given two hundred dollars in cash, which in her mind made everything that had just happened better. She went downstairs and her cool friend from school high-fived her and told her if they did this every weekend, they would be rich. It was a story much like the one you have already heard, and which you will hear again. It was also a story that made Detective Recarey certain that this man needed to be spending the rest of his life in prison.
The Palm Beach police listened to this troubling account and wanted to speak with Kelly next. So they tracked her down, but she was very reluctant to talk because of her regular and close contact with Epstein. She was still actively rounding up classmates to sexually service him under the guise of giving a massage. After speaking with her, the police realized that this case was much bigger than the abuse of a few teenagers, which would have been bad enough.
Kelly told the police initially that she’d brought six of her friends, ranging between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, to Jeffrey Epstein’s house. While in the back of a police car with tears streaming down her face, she reflected out loud that she had become “like Heidi Fleiss,” a reference to the notorious madam to Hollywood stars.
The Palm Beach police assigned officers and detectives to the case to perform various investigative functions, including recording telephone calls and interviewing victims and witnesses. The detectives even conducted trash pulls at Epstein’s home. To do this without being noticed by Epstein or the many members of his household staff, they contracted a local sanitation service to deliver Epstein’s trash to the police department after it was picked up from his house, so that they could sift through for any evidence of what Tiffani and Kelly were saying.
The evidence they found gave new meaning to the phrase “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Among the items in Epstein’s trash were his message pads—or more specifically, the carbon copies from old-fashioned message-taking forms that included the original, a yellow carbon copy sheet, and a pink carbon copy sheet. The messages showed everyone who was calling the house and leaving a message for Epstein or anyone else. It was obvious from even a basic review that there was a clear method for taking a message. Whoever answered the phone put the date, the name of the caller, the time of the call, the message that was being left, and a notation at the bottom indicating who in the house was taking the message.
Most of the messages that were confiscated were taken by the butler, who, in 2005, was a man named Alfredo Rodriguez. Other messages were taken by Epstein’s various assistants, including Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marcinkova. Someone named Ghislaine Maxwell also took messages and was one of the few people other
than Jeffrey who received messages. She was referred to in the messages sometimes as Ghislaine, and other times, by the staff, as Ms. Maxwell. The regular callers included Donald Trump, David Copperfield, Palm Beach politician C. Gerald Goldsmith, and former national security advisor Sandy Berger. Epstein’s close friends, such as model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, left more detailed messages during that time period, which gave better insight into what Epstein was up to.
Aside from the famous people calling for Jeffrey, there were many messages from girls. Girls like Courtney, Lynn, Molly, Holly, and Rebecca would call with messages such as “has girl for tonight” or “wondering if she can work tomorrow.” At least three girls a day were scheduled to go to his house, sometimes with little time between appointments. Sarah Kellen, for instance, left a message scheduling one girl to come at three o’clock and the next to arrive at four thirty.
The need for a constant flow of girls was clear from these messages: “Samantha hadn’t confirmed Veronica for 11:00 yet, so she is keeping Becki on hold in case Veronica doesn’t call back.” “Becki is available on Tuesday. No one for tomorrow.” “Becki is confirmed at 4pm. Who is scheduled for the morning? I believe Julie wants to work.” All of those girls were later identified as minor children who were coming over to “work,” which was code for giving sexual massages.
The PBPD continued to interview the victims. Each of them was between fourteen and seventeen years old. (Like Courtney, Kelly told the police that she once tried to bring a woman older than twenty, who was immediately turned away by Epstein as being too old.) Each was brought to the house with the enticement of making cash in exchange for what seemed to be a glamorous or at the very least innocuous one-hour massage, for a billionaire inside the largest mansion any of them had ever seen. All were nervous but feigned confidence as kids living in this oversize adult world.
Each teenager was led by someone whom she admired, usually a friend, up the stairs and into a bedroom with the promise that what would happen would not be bad and would lead to immediate cash. Once inside the room, their experiences were nearly identical, although the girls didn’t know that the experiences of their friends had been the same as their own. At the time that each visited the house, she was made to believe she was the only one—and at her particular moment, she was.
At some point, not long after entering Epstein’s room, the friend who was being paid to bring the new masseuse would leave and go back downstairs to wait in the kitchen. Whether it was Alexa or Veronica or Becki or Lauren, there was always a first time when she had no idea what to expect, when she knew only that her recruiting friend wanted to be a player in this glamorous atmosphere, which amplified the strength of peer pressure on the newbie to join in. By the end of each massage, each girl, in her different but similar words, described Jeffrey Epstein ordering her to remove her clothes and pinch his nipples while he masturbated. For those girls who returned a second, third, fourth, or fifth time, the escalation of sexual advances was also consistent in their experiences.
It was a slow pattern in which Epstein was somehow able to mark where he was in the game with each one of these girls, enabling him to pick up where he’d left off with her the very next time. Grabbing their breasts would escalate to digital penetration and the use of sex toys, which would escalate to oral sex and then to penetrative sex, to finally even threesomes with one of his traveling girlfriends, like Nadia Marcinkova. On a few occasions, Epstein got carried away and forced sex upon his teenage victim while she was resisting. But on those occasions, Epstein did the “fair” thing and paid $1,000 as opposed to the $200 or $300 going rate.
Every single one of these children identified by the police was paid for being subject to inappropriate touching, which was referred to by Epstein and his assistants as “work.” At the end of the first “working” experience, one of Epstein’s assistants, either Sarah Kellen or Adriana Mucinska, would take down the girl’s phone number and make sure that it was not the telephone number of a parent. Each was told that she could come back if she wanted to and that she would be paid each time. Each was given the “opportunity” to bring others of similar age and be paid for recruiting.
As a former state prosecutor, I could not imagine an easier case to prosecute. These were victims who were telling consistent stories. This level of specificity could not be made up, especially since most of the girls didn’t even know one another. It would be an impossible case to lose.
I continued to sift through the boxes in my living room. There were phone records of Jeffrey Epstein and Sarah Kellen showing that the numbers they were calling during this time period belonged to high school kids, many of whom were the same as those identified in the message pads. There were inventory lists from a search warrant that was executed on Jeffrey Epstein’s home, including porn videos alongside high school transcripts of some of his victims. It is believed that all the photographs confiscated from the home at the time of the investigation depicted only young females who were over the age of eighteen; however, in deposition, Detective Recarey testified to the home having been sanitized prior to his investigative efforts. Given the frequency of his interaction with minors, there was still plenty of incriminating evidence left behind. There was proof that Epstein had rented a car for one of the kids while she was in high school. There was even a note from Epstein to his butler instructing him to deliver roses to one of the victims at the high school drama play. He was clearly a mastermind at making these girls feel special, and he had the resources to make them feel more special than anyone ever had before. But even his “thoughtful” overtures now amounted to evidence that left no doubt as to Epstein’s true intentions.
Included in the boxes was an Amazon receipt in the name of Jeffrey Epstein dated September 4, 2005, for the shipment of SM101: A Realistic Introduction by Jay Wiseman; SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude—Principles, Skills and Tools by Guy Baldwin; and Training with Miss Abernathy: A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners by Christina Abernathy.
I reviewed the documents contained within these boxes realizing that I had never even heard of a case with so much evidence. A life sentence seemed likely. Ten-year sentences were handed out regularly to older men communicating on the internet with people they thought were fourteen-year-old girls, even when the actual person on the other end was instead an undercover cop. Epstein was not only communicating with actual teenage girls but was also following through on the sexual acts. Isolating the sexual charges to Courtney alone would result in life imprisonment on a criminal sentencing scoresheet. With the number of victims who were known, if calculated properly, Epstein’s conduct would score hundreds of years in prison.
The Palm Beach police did the bulk of their work in 2005 and 2006, uncovering twenty-three girls who had been underage when Jeffrey Epstein engaged in sexual massages with them. The ultimate decision whether to charge Epstein with a crime rested with the state attorney in Palm Beach County, where the crimes were committed. The state attorney for Palm Beach County was Barry Krischer.
When the Palm Beach police brought him the preliminary investigative results, including credible evidence of regular sex abuse of minors occurring on El Brillo Way, Krischer green-lighted the investigation moving forward. Police Chief Michael Reiter and Detective Recarey put more detectives on the case and increased their investigative resources. As they chased down leads, they continued to discover more victims. Many more. With each victim came detailed accounts of serious sexual offenses.
The evidence they were collecting matched perfectly with the taped statements of the many high schoolers who were describing how they were lured to Epstein’s mansion. Multiple victims under sixteen years old described a sexual grooming process employed by most known pedophiles—starting slow and easy and always making the victim feel everything is consensual. From the perspective of a detective trying to locate a witness, Epstein’s method of paying girls to bring other girls made acquiring the identity of the next victim as easy as asking, “Who t
old you about Mr. Epstein?”
The victims gave accounts of Sarah Kellen arranging for the butlers to drive the girls home because they were too young to drive and how Epstein inquired about which high school they were attending. Not only did Epstein and his many associates know the ages of these children with whom he was scheduling massage appointments, but their youth was a requirement to the point that those as “old” as eighteen were often rejected. And not one had any massage experience. The case Recarey was building could not have been stronger. And he was reporting this to Krischer, who seemed enthusiastic about the progress.
That is, until Epstein’s well-known lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, entered the fray. Dershowitz was a Harvard Law School professor who had developed a reputation for representing the most despised criminals in the country. He successfully represented Claus von Bu‥low, overturning his conviction for murdering his wife. Dershowitz was also on OJ Simpson’s legal team, defending the double homicide of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
But by the time Dershowitz became involved in the criminal investigation, he had been a longtime personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s who claimed to consider Mr. Epstein like family and had been quoted separately saying as much. In 2003, he had told Vanity Fair reporter Vicky Ward that he was authoring his twentieth book and that “the only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey.” The article went on to say that as Dershowitz “was getting to know Epstein, his wife asked him if he would still be close to him if Epstein suddenly filed for bankruptcy. Dershowitz says he replied, ‘Absolutely. I would be as interested in him as a friend if we had hamburgers on the boardwalk in Coney Island and talked about his ideas.’ ” That same year, Epstein donated millions to Harvard University, the same school where Dershowitz was a famed law professor. And when Epstein got in trouble, Dershowitz was the first to come to his defense, labeling the little girls who were abused regularly by his buddy as liars.
Relentless Pursuit Page 6
