Relentless Pursuit

by Bradley J. Edwards

  Krischer changed his prosecutorial mentality in the wake of his engagement with Dershowitz. He refused to charge Epstein with the lewd and lascivious molestations that the police had conclusive proof Epstein had committed. Krischer instead sought to empanel a grand jury, where select evidence could be presented to result in lesser charges being pressed on Epstein. Police Chief Reiter was troubled by this and wrote a letter to his once-friendly ally, Krischer, explaining, “After giving this much thought and consideration, I must urge you to examine the unusual course that your office’s handling of this matter has taken and consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification from the prosecution of these cases.” Shortly after this letter was delivered on May 1, 2006, Chief Reiter contacted the FBI himself and demanded a federal investigation.

  I could not think of a legitimate reason for Krischer’s refusal to prosecute Epstein. The Palm Beach investigation even included taped interviews of the girls in their childlike voices using little-girl words like “wee-wee” to describe Epstein’s penis. I had a feeling of overwhelming anger while reviewing this material. I had prosecuted evil people who had beaten, stabbed, shot, and violently raped their victims in ways that, on paper, may have seemed worse as singular acts of violence. But I had never seen someone premeditatedly orchestrate the type of crime Epstein had organized and get away with it for so long. What jumped off the page was the realization that this guy lived by his own laws. While I couldn’t completely calm Courtney’s anxiety about the status of the federal investigation, after looking at this evidence gathered by the state, and knowing that this information and more was now in the hands of the FBI and United States Attorney’s Office, I felt confident telling her that everything was going to be fine. Jeffrey Epstein surely would be going to prison for the rest of his life. It was only a matter of when.

  SIX OFF THE RECORD

  OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF weeks, I checked in with Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafaña as to the status of the federal case. Each time, her message was the same as that delivered to the victims in written correspondence: it was a major federal investigation, and everyone just needed to be patient. The message was consistent but getting old.

  On Friday, June 27, 2008, my wife, two-year-old son, and I drove to Jacksonville to spend the weekend with my parents. The next day, I got a call from AUSA Villafaña. While we had established a cordial working relationship up to this point, we were not personal friends by any means, and it was certainly strange to get a call from her on a weekend. Throughout the conversation, I felt there was tension in her voice behind what she was saying—and not saying. My impression was that she was being constrained not by her own sense of prosecutorial limitation, but by an office policy or directive of some kind.

  The main point of her call was to tell me that Jeffrey Epstein was pleading guilty to two felony criminal charges in state court on Monday morning at the Palm Beach County courthouse. One comprised three misdemeanor solicitations of prostitution; the other was procuring a minor for prostitution. (In Florida solicitation of prostitution is only a misdemeanor; three misdemeanor charges are the equivalent of one felony.) This message was odd to me for many reasons, not the least of which was that a federal prosecutor was calling me to tell me about state charges filed on behalf of victims I didn’t represent. I told her that as a matter of course, I would have my law clerk go to the hearing to watch. For good measure, before hanging up, I confirmed with her that the charges Epstein was pleading to were state charges only that were not related to any of my clients, who were all part of the federal case against him.

  That Monday, June 30, 2008, Jeffrey Epstein showed up to the Palm Beach County Courthouse with his team of high-priced lawyers from different parts of the country. I was not there. However, video, along with the transcript of the hearing, makes the events of that morning indisputable. Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo, a judge with an excellent reputation, presided over the proceedings. When it was time for Epstein to enter his plea, Assistant State Attorney (ASA) Lanna Belohlavek approached for the state of Florida, while Jeffrey Epstein and his lawyers walked to the front of the courtroom on the other side.

  Judge Pucillo announced that Jeffrey Epstein would plead guilty to two felonies that carried “twenty-one point five months in the Department of Corrections as the lowest permissible prison sentence.” The judge then confirmed that Epstein’s highest level of education was high school before making her way to questions regarding the Florida Science Foundation—the company in which Jeffrey would be employed during his jail sentence. Epstein’s attorney Jack Goldberger informed the court that the Florida Science Foundation was a 501(c)(3) corporation that Jeffrey Epstein formed to do charitable work. When asked how long the corporation had been in existence, Epstein himself responded, “Fifteen years.” He went on to explain that the corporation had funded more than fifty science programs in Florida and around the country, boasting recent grants to Harvard University, the “Neuro Science Institute of California,” and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  After a conversation among Epstein’s attorneys, the prosecutor representing the state of Florida, and the judge was held off the record, Judge Pucillo allowed a sealed envelope presented by Goldberger to be attached to the plea agreement, with no explanation to the audience sitting in the open courtroom as to what it contained. The judge then went back on the record and found a sufficient factual basis to support the plea before asking if all of the victims were in agreement with its terms.

  It is impossible to know what went through ASA Belohlavek’s mind, or the mind of any federal prosecutor who was sitting in the room that morning when the judge confronted the state with this very direct question about victim notification. The judge could have been told, and without doubt should have been told, any of the following information in response to her question: between the state and federal investigations, forty or more underage children had been identified as victims so far; the offenses Jeffrey Epstein committed included sex trafficking of minors; several of the victims had attorneys who were regularly inquiring about the status of the criminal case; the victims had recently been told to be patient because it would be a long investigation; and in fact, none of the many victims had been properly notified of this hearing, which was a violation of their rights as crime victims—they all had a right to be present and be heard.

  Instead, without much hesitation, ASA Belohlavek answered Judge Pucillo’s question, basically stating that she believed they had. Under the false impression that all identified victims had been given notice of the hearing and had just elected not to show up—a very unusual occurrence—Judge Pucillo accepted the plea negotiation.

  After the hearing, my law clerk reported back that Jeffrey Epstein was sentenced to eighteen months in jail, followed by twelve months under house arrest, for the state crimes. Judge Pucillo made sure Mr. Epstein understood that he was also being registered as a sex offender and was to have no contact with any minors. From the hearing, Jeffrey Epstein was taken into custody at the Palm Beach county jail.

  SEVEN EMERGENCY

  AFTER LEARNING ABOUT EPSTEIN’S GUILTY plea for the state felony charges, I contacted AUSA Marie Villafaña. Now that Jeffrey Epstein was going to jail for some short period of time on those state charges, I asked when we could expect the federal indictment on the crimes committed against all the victims identified by her office, including my clients. She said she still couldn’t tell me anything about that, but as I pressed, she urged me to write a letter to her office concerning the importance of the federal prosecution. That statement troubled me. Why would I need to write to her office to state the obvious?

  Regardless, on July 3, 2008, I wrote a letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office explaining that Jeffrey Epstein was the most dangerous child molester in modern history, a man who had probably abused more than a hundred children, according to facts known to anyone who had investigated the case for more than a minute. I followed my letter with a tele
phone call and demanded to meet immediately with the U.S. Attorney’s Office on behalf of my clients. Marie only said that she wished she could tell me more, but she couldn’t. She did mention that there were ongoing discussions with Epstein’s lawyers. “Settlement discussions? Plea negotiations on the federal case?” I asked. She repeated that she wished she could answer that but she couldn’t. This was frustrating, to say the least.

  I spent my weekend at the office trying to unravel this cryptic conversation for Jay Howell, the lawyer who introduced me to Courtney. I looked over the letter that Courtney had received from the FBI citing to 18 USC § 3771, the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, or CVRA. The CVRA, which was enacted in 2004, provides basic statutory rights for all federal crime victims, including the right to be protected from the accused, the right to timely notice of all public hearings, the right to be heard at any such hearing, the right to confer with the government in the case, and the right to be treated with fairness and respect.

  By now, it was clear that the only way we were going to find out what was happening behind the scenes was if we filed something with the court. I wasn’t sure what needed to be filed, so I entitled the pleading, “Victim’s Petition for Enforcement of Crime Victim’s Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 3771.”

  I explained that my client was a victim of federal crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein when she was a minor child because he flew from New York to Florida for the purpose of engaging in sexual contact with her. I was now under the impression that potential plea discussions were happening between Epstein’s attorneys and the government, yet the U.S. Attorney’s Office was refusing to keep me or my clients informed of the process. Truth is, I had no idea at that moment exactly what the Crime Victims’ Rights Act was meant to accomplish or what exactly needed to be filed to enforce a client’s assumed rights under the statute. I just knew that in order to protect Courtney, I had to give it a shot. When I finished my petition, I decided that I would hand-deliver it to the courthouse on Monday morning and, in light of what I suspected was taking place behind closed doors, ask the court to hold a hearing immediately.

  Before that day, I had only practiced law in state courts, which meant I had never even been to the federal courthouse. I walked inside and could barely tell the security guard why I was there or who I was going to see, but he eventually directed me to the clerk’s office. When I arrived, there was no one around except for a woman behind the last window. I told her I had a case to file. She said okay and asked me for a copy of the pleading.

  When I handed her my petition, she looked up at me as if to say, Why are you still standing there? I told her, “I need a hearing.” She said that the judge would send out a hearing notice if a hearing was required, but that most of the time, in federal court, there weren’t any hearings. “This is an emergency, I need a hearing now,” I declared. She left the room, I assumed to talk to her supervisor, since she was gone for a while.

  When she came back, she said, “This doesn’t even say ‘emergency’ on it, so it won’t be treated like an emergency.” She put the pleading down on the counter, and before she could say another word, I snatched it up and walked to the other side of the room, where pens were dangling from little metal chains. I handwrote the word Emergency at the beginning of the title and walked it back to her. “Now it’s an emergency,” I said. She started laughing and told me she had never seen that done before. She went to the back room again before returning to tell me that it would be filed as an emergency, but that didn’t mean I would get a hearing that day.

  My filing wasn’t disregarded. The case was assigned to Judge Kenneth Marra, who took it seriously. He issued an order immediately directing the government to respond to our petition within two days, and directed us to reply the day after we received the government’s response. He set a hearing for that Friday.

  * * *

  When I got back to my office, I had a message from a lawyer in Utah who said that it was very important I call him back. When I did, he asked if I was the lawyer who had just filed the case under the CVRA in Florida. He said he had been called by a friend of his, Jay Howell, who had alerted him to the filing. I said yes, and he said, “I would like to help you.”

  I told him, “Thank you, but I think I have it covered,” and he reminded me that the first pleading filed in the case had the word Emergency handwritten on it—as if to say that it looked like I could use his help. That lawyer was Paul Cassell, and he was right. We soon became a formidable team and the best of friends.

  During that conversation, Paul gave me his impressive résumé. He was a former assistant U.S. attorney who had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Then, after spending years as a federal judge, he left to dedicate his career to representing crime victims and teaching law at the University of Utah. After hearing his credentials, I told him that I would love his help. In fact, Paul and I collaborated on the reply brief that week, which anyone would notice was of slightly better quality than the original petition.

  * * *

  I picked my clients up at Courtney’s house on the morning of the hearing, July 11, 2008. We sat on one side of the courtroom. On the other side was Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafaña and the government’s appellate lawyer, Dexter Lee. Just behind them, sitting in the front row, were a man and a woman in plain clothes who clearly had something to do with the investigation. They were the two primary FBI agents on the case, Jason Richards and Nesbitt Kuyrkendall.

  Judge Marra took the bench and asked me to approach the podium. I began the hearing: “Your Honor, as a factual background, Mr. Epstein is a billionaire who sexually abused and molested dozens and dozens of girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen years old. And through cooperating victims, that evidence can be proven. Because of his deviant appetite for young girls, combined with his extraordinary wealth and power, he may just be the most dangerous sexual predator in U.S. history.”

  I told the judge that we believed the government had been secretly negotiating with Epstein, which was forbidden by the CVRA. I sat down and Dexter Lee stood up and said: “Let me update the Court on the status of various matters. The agreement to defer prosecution to the State of Florida was signed and completed by December 2007.… [Epstein] ended up pleading guilty on June 30, 2008, to two charges in state court, and he was sentenced to a term of incarceration of 18 months, with another 12 months of community control after the completion of his sentence, and he is currently incarcerated as we speak.” It was only then, in response to my argument, that the judge and I—and more important, my clients—learned for the very first time that our understanding of Epstein’s imminent plea negotiation was incorrect. The situation was much worse. There was not going to be any federal plea by Epstein at all, of any kind. The federal investigation into his crimes had been brought to a close and the federal case was already over. The ball game had ended without anyone being in the stands to see it.

  Even as the government was explaining this, it was still quite unclear exactly what they were saying. I wasn’t the only one confused. Judge Marra also had no idea that the government had worked out a secret non-prosecution agreement nine months prior to this day and had hidden it from the victims in hopes of helping Jeffrey Epstein make all of his criminal problems go away at the same time, unnoticed.

  Judge Marra turned back to me and asked what I wanted him to do, considering that the emergency we believed existed—the stopping of an imminent secret plea deal—was no longer an imminent concern. He sent us all into the hallway to talk. AUSA Dexter Lee tried to explain to me in some cryptic legalese that the procedure I had invoked was incorrect and that we should discuss whether the pleading needed to be withdrawn and some other process initiated. AUSA Marie Villafaña stood there not saying much. She seemed upset with what was happening. The FBI agents stood in the corner of this little breakout room grim-faced and not saying a word. After the work they’d put into the investigation, I could only imagine their sense of betrayal by the U.S. attorney
as well.

  As we left, I turned to Lynn, who had been quiet since we walked into the courtroom. “Where’s Jeffrey? I thought I was going to see him today,” she said.

  Before I could begin to answer, Courtney interrupted: “What the f***? It’s over?”

  We left the courthouse that day and I wanted to explain to my clients what was going on, but it was impossible because I didn’t understand myself.

  The government had concealed everything from my clients and was only now providing bits and pieces when compelled to do so. “They intended for it to be over without you knowing. That is what we learned today. But don’t worry, it’s not over,” I assured them.

  * * *

  The non-prosecution agreement—called an NPA—was a document that protected Epstein from being prosecuted by the federal government for crimes he committed in Florida.

  Now that I knew it existed, I requested a copy. It would seem that the government would hand this document over to us, but instead, they objected, still fighting hard to prevent the victims from knowing the truth. A few days later, AUSA Marie Villafaña came to my office. When she showed up, I didn’t know what to make of her. I had just learned that Jeffrey Epstein and his army of reputable lawyers had conspired with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to immunize Epstein for hundreds of sexual offenses against minor children. Now the prosecutor who had failed to warn me in prior conversations of what was actually going on, and who by all appearances was the lead prosecutor on the case, was at my office for a personal meeting.