All of Epstein’s pilots were subpoenaed to appear for deposition on two consecutive days, and I requested that each bring all of his flight manifests to his deposition. Since none of these employees had thus far showed up with the documents we’d requested, I didn’t expect much. But, to my great surprise and satisfaction, Dave Rodgers complied.
Rodgers brought a passenger manifest with him that listed the travelers on each of the flights that he piloted from 1995 to 2007. The flight logs confirmed many of our suspicions, including the veracity of key allegations against Epstein made by Jane Doe 102.
The flight logs made it clear that Epstein was always flying with a loyal crew consisting primarily of young women and girls, and many times also with passengers who were powerful, wealthy, and connected businessmen, industry leaders, and political figures. According to the logs, Bill Clinton had flown on more than twenty flights with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. We finally had our hands on a great piece of previously unavailable evidence. Evidence that gave us insight into Jeffrey Epstein’s habits—where and with whom he frequently traveled.
* * *
In July 2009, Jeffrey Epstein was released from “jail” and placed on house arrest in his mansion located at 358 El Brillo Way in Palm Beach. I knew this was going to make our job harder, especially coupled with a personal injury I was soon dealing with. On August 28, 2009, I had emergency back surgery after herniating a disk and fracturing several vertebrae in my back during a flag football game. This was when I realized at the ripe age of thirty-three that getting old sucks. Even catching footballs with a bunch of lawyers was now too much for me.
For the brief period while I was laid up, the cases went on without me. On September 2, 2009, I missed out on a deposition of Epstein taken by Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing another victim. A videotape of the deposition was released and showed up in the press and online almost immediately. Seconds after Epstein had been sworn in as a witness, Kuvin’s first question was “Is it true, sir, that you have what has been described as an egg-shaped penis?” There was a description in one of the police reports by a fourteen-year-old victim of Epstein’s genitals as being “egg shaped,” but Spencer didn’t provide that or any other predicate for his question. I didn’t really miss much because Epstein stood up and left the room immediately after that one question. More entertaining, and probably more valuable than the deposition itself was the Opie and Anthony radio show where the hosts poked fun at the one-question deposition. It’s definitely worth a listen.
Back in the real world, the doctor told me not to work for at least two weeks. I followed his instructions for about four days. After months trying to serve Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, with a subpoena for his deposition, we finally had done so and I was not going to miss it just because I was recovering. I was actually pretty impressed with the creativity of our process server. He pulled his car up very close to Mark Epstein’s car outside Mark’s New York apartment. He then told the doorman that he had hit the car, so the doorman went to notify Mark. When Mark came outside to see the “damage,” he was handed the subpoena, and we were in business.
On September 21, 2009, I flew into LaGuardia Airport in New York with no bags, still unable to carry anything because of the surgery. Russ Adler flew up separately and met me at the deposition with all the materials I needed.
Before we sat down in the deposition, Mark Epstein’s lawyer Mark Cohen took me into the hallway to tell me how upset Mark was that he was being dragged into this case, and warned me not to ask family-related questions. During the deposition, Mark never smiled. He acted as if I were there trying to put him in jail. In typical fashion for witnesses under Jeffrey Epstein’s control, Mark had a case of amnesia and could not remember the simplest of things.
He didn’t remember when he saw his brother last or how many times he had been on the airplane or anything about his brother’s business success. He knew that his brother had accumulated tremendous wealth and assets over the years yet gave the impression that it was through some unknown magic trick. Maybe David Copperfield made the money appear out of nowhere. The only thing Mark did remember was flying on Epstein’s plane with Donald Trump, although even that description was suspiciously vague. While Mark had the chance to help, he didn’t. We would need to look elsewhere.
FOURTEEN THE HOLY GRAIL
EPSTEIN’S MANEUVERS TO OBSTRUCT MY efforts to infiltrate his clan could not save him forever. On August 7, 2009, I took the deposition of Alfredo Rodriguez, one of the former butlers at Epstein’s Palm Beach property. Alfredo was the only person from the Epstein camp who did not either invoke the Fifth Amendment or show up with a lawyer paid for by Epstein. This was our first real opportunity to obtain truthful information from an insider.
In his deposition, he told us that during the couple of years—2004 and 2005—he worked at Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, underage girls came to the residence every day Epstein was there. Rodriguez testified that the activity upstairs involved sex toys and devices of various kinds that were found in the room after Epstein received his massages. Also noteworthy, Alfredo observed that Epstein did not hide his sexual activities from his houseguests.
One houseguest that Alfredo named in particular was Alan Dershowitz, whom Rodriguez said was Epstein’s personal friend. He testified that Dershowitz would sit by the pool, sipping wine and reading books or stay inside while the local Palm Beach girls were upstairs servicing Epstein. That Epstein did not suspend his sexual abuse of girls when Dershowitz was in the house struck me as important. Epstein’s routine was so fundamental in his life that he refused to break from it even when the person he would eventually employ as his criminal defense attorney was around. I now knew that if we could identify the people who were not on Epstein’s payroll—his traveling companions, close friends, and houseguests—we would then have credible witnesses to strengthen our cases and destroy Epstein’s defenses.
Prior to Rodriguez’s deposition, I read in one of the investigative police reports that he had claimed to have a list of the underage girls who had been to the house. I understood that despite having been subpoenaed to produce that information to the grand jury during the 2006 criminal investigation, Rodriguez failed to produce the document. So during his deposition I hoped to determine if this list was real. When asked, he confirmed that Ghislaine Maxwell did, in fact, keep typed lists on her computer of the names of girls who would come and give massages. Alfredo was eventually fired from the job by Ghislaine. But before he left, he told us, he printed the lists from Maxwell’s computer, which included all of the people in Epstein and Maxwell’s Rolodex as well as the names and telephone numbers of the girls who frequently visited the Palm Beach house. Rodriguez claimed that he didn’t have it anymore. I sensed he was lying.
When we left Alfredo’s deposition, I handed him my business card with my cell phone number on it and told him to call me if he remembered anything else. Sure enough, a day later, I got a call on my cell phone. The voice on the other end said, “This is Alfredo. I have something for you. It is what you were asking about, but much better. It is the Holy Grail.” I thought this important piece of evidence was just going to fall into my lap. Boy, was I wrong.
Alfredo explained, “The book that I printed from Ms. Maxwell’s computer? I have it.” I told him that was great, I would leave the office immediately to get it from him, wherever he was. As I started to thank him, he said, “Bring fifty thousand dollars. Cash.”
Alfredo looked like a butler. He talked like a butler. He had this mysterious, raspy, soft voice as if he was always talking in a whisper and everything he said was either a secret or confirmation that he was keeping one. This particular conversation was no different.
I actually thought that he was joking about the money demand, so I laughed and asked him again where he was so that I could come and pick up the Holy Grail. He jumped back in. “It’s the golden ticket. Everything you will ever need. Epstein and Maxwell’s little black boo
k. It contains the names of many underage girls and others who are involved. You don’t understand how big this is.” Realizing he was serious, and not wanting to lose my shot at the book, I told him I would get back to him.
As soon as I hung up, I went to find my investigator Mike Fisten. I told Mike everything that Alfredo had just said. Mike looked at me like I was crazy. He had been a homicide detective for twenty years and this ransom for evidence was a first even for him. He had his doubts about the offer. Nonetheless, I called Alfredo back with Mike on the line and told him I was thinking about what he’d said. I asked him why he thought anyone had to pay for information that was subpoenaed by a criminal grand jury, and which we had also subpoenaed for his civil deposition. I reminded him that he had failed to produce it earlier, as required by law, and now was trying to sell it for $50,000, which was a crime.
Alfredo, in that covert, slow drawl said, “There are two reasons. First, when I was fired, I thought they would kill me. This was my insurance policy. If I ever disappeared, my wife would know it was Ghislaine and Jeffrey. Second, at this point, it is my property. I own it. It has value. It would be like me having a Mercedes-Benz. Just because you asked for it by subpoena, you think that I should hand it over to you.”
I said, “The Mercedes-Benz example doesn’t work. And if anyone was going to die right now, it would probably be me, not you.” Mike Fisten was looking at me like I was out of my mind. He wanted me to tell Alfredo we were paying him and then just show up and take it. That idea seemed fraught with problems.
Alfredo told me to meet him in Miami and that I would have to first open my trunk and show him the money. No lie, he was describing a scene out of some old mobster movie.
Mike and I talked about how to do this. We decided that we would tell Alfredo to meet us at a restaurant and show up before Alfredo got there. Mike would sit in one booth and I would sit in another close enough that Mike could record the conversation in a public place. If Alfredo didn’t agree to produce the document without any payment, we could turn the whole thing over to law enforcement. I did some research to confirm that we could legally record the conversation, which we could do so long as we were in a place where Alfredo didn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I called Alfredo back and told him where he could meet me. He rightly didn’t believe that I could have come up with the cash so fast, so he wanted to postpone the meeting until I could prove I had the cash. His condition was nonnegotiable.
The next day I contacted the FBI, asking, “Hypothetically speaking, if someone was served with a federal subpoena in both a criminal case and a civil case and they had valuable information that they failed to deliver, and later they told me that they had it all along but would only turn it over if they were paid fifty thousand dollars in cash, would you be interested?” I was made to repeat this to an assistant U.S. attorney, who said this sounded like an obstruction of justice.
I didn’t tell the prosecutor the identity of the person who claimed to have the information, and I didn’t give her any hints. I just wanted to be sure the office was going to be interested in prosecuting the case if I did this. I wanted the evidence, but I also didn’t want to get Alfredo in trouble if I could avoid it. This guy was fired from his job with Epstein for calling the police when a sixteen-year-old showed up at the house to collect her money and he mistakenly reported her car in the driveway. The police showed up and he told the officer, who was already suspicious of this little girl in the driveway, that girls like that were coming to the house regularly.
Everyone from Epstein’s former friends to witnesses was reluctant to give us any honest or relevant information. Alfredo was the first person who had shown up and testified to what everyone knew was just the truth.
Looking for ways to avoid turning Alfredo in, I went to the white-collar criminal defense attorney at RRA, Marc Nurik, and told him the entire story. He thought we should hire an outside attorney—preferably a former U.S. attorney—to provide an opinion defining our legal options. We hired Kendall Coffey.
Kendall was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had famously prosecuted one of the most notorious drug-trafficking charges of all time against Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta. The evidence in that case was overwhelming, yet the jury returned a not-guilty verdict. Rumor was that, in an apparent effort to drown his sorrows, Kendall went out to a strip club, drank too much, and bit a stripper. Weeks later, he found out that the jury had been bought. The foreman had been paid $500,000 to influence the verdict. It didn’t matter at that point that Kendall should have won the case; now he was in trouble for the stripper incident. Regardless of these bizarre events, he was now running a well-respected law firm in Miami and fit all the criteria needed to deal with our situation.
I told Kendall the details and he agreed to turn around an opinion letter within a day or two. It was long, but the letter basically informed me that I could meet with Alfredo to continue to persuade him to do the right thing, but that I could not pay him, which, of course, I already knew. The conclusion was that I did not have to go to the authorities at this moment, but could meet with Alfredo to try to get him to do the right thing and turn over the evidence.
I drove to Miami with Mike and made calls to Alfredo on the way to arrange the meeting. At the last minute, Alfredo changed the location from the restaurant to his house. We would no longer be able to record him there, and I didn’t trust him at this point—least of all at his own home—so we turned around and went back to Fort Lauderdale. I called the U.S. Attorney’s Office again, this time without conferring with anyone from RRA.
I met the next day with the FBI and continued to work with them through controlled telephone calls to Alfredo, setting him up on the obstruction of justice charge. I was torn. I liked Alfredo. I actually felt sorry for him.
After he was fired by Epstein, Alfredo had tried to get jobs with other wealthy people, but was unable to for two reasons. First, he had apparently violated the number one rule of being a butler by revealing what was going on inside the house, even though he felt he was doing the right thing. And second, he had worked for a man who was a now-notorious sexual predator.
The combination made Alfredo unemployable. He saw the sale of this phone journal as his only means of survival. He had also given us the most helpful information in the case even before turning over what he called the Holy Grail. He was a good man who did the right thing. Mostly. But now it looked as if he’d gone past that point and left me with no option.
I lost a lot of sleep due to being a confidential informant against Alfredo. After I made a few calls that were recorded by the FBI, the case against him was so strong that there was really nothing else that the prosecutors needed. The only thing left was for me to set up the purchase of the documents. I went up to the FBI’s West Palm Beach office to make that phone call. I was instructed to tell Alfredo that I was having someone named Paul meet him at a hotel in Miami. I had two agents sitting next to me reminding me to keep it a short conversation and only set up the buy.
Even with those very strict instructions, I gave Alfredo one more chance to do the right thing. I told him that I had the cash, but I didn’t do these kinds of things, so I was sending my fixer, who did. To the dismay of the FBI, instead of just telling Alfredo to go to the hotel, I told him again not to commit this crime. Alfredo responded with something along the lines of “I know that this is a federal crime, but you should look at this like you are helping put my daughter through college.” He went on for minutes explaining how he was so determined to do this despite knowing it was a crime.
I didn’t sleep for one second that night. Still, I felt my conscience was clear because I had tried so many times to stop him from going down this road.
The next day, Alfredo met “Paul”—who wasn’t the law firm employee that I had described but was instead an undercover FBI agent. I had spent twenty or more hours cultivating this relationship with Alfredo and helping the government get this “Holy Grail
.” The FBI told me that the mission was successful, so I called AUSA Marie Villafaña to get a copy of the document. She told me that not only could I not have it, but she didn’t think that the government was ever going to turn it over to me. Major plot twist. It never occurred to me that I had needed to extract a specific agreement from the government to share a copy of something I already had a right to see.
I devised a different plan. Alfredo was being charged with obstruction of justice, so we served a subpoena on his criminal defense attorney, Dave Brannon, requesting a copy of the phone journal. Brannon complied on the same day that the subpoena was served. It is pretty ironic that I had worked so hard and risked so much for the government, yet still I had to get the document from Alfredo. In fact, he was more cooperative and reliable even in custody than the government ever was on anything.
This document really was the Holy Grail. It was ninety-seven pages of typed names and phone numbers, including nearly one hundred victims of sexual abuse listed in the document under the heading “Massage,” with certain designated geographical locations including Florida, New Mexico, New York, and Paris. Many of my clients and their telephone numbers were listed—including those of Jean-Luc Brunel, Ghislaine Maxwell, Donald Trump, Les Wexner, and Alan Dershowitz.
In addition, as he had promised me, Alfredo had circled the names of others who he claimed were involved with or had knowledge of the sexual molestation operation. I wasn’t in the room when the FBI takedown occurred, so I am not sure to this day of the discussion they had deciphering Alfredo’s handwritten marks on the document. But several of the names of those I had suspected and whom I had subpoenaed months prior were circled.
Relentless Pursuit Page 13
