Relentless Pursuit

by Bradley J. Edwards

  * * *

  While working in the office one weekend, we got a call from a woman whom we will call Fantasia. Fantasia was nearly forty years old when she called and described how in 1994, when she was seventeen, she had been recruited by Maxwell to provide Epstein with a massage in Europe. She had then been flown to Little Saint Jeff’s and his other fancy homes. She was introduced to other powerful billionaires. After having spent time with them sporadically for more than a decade, she had tremendous insight into the relationship between Ghislaine and Jeffrey. Fantasia believed that Ghislaine felt indebted to Jeffrey for taking her in right after her father’s death.

  Fantasia explained that Ghislaine’s role in life was to please Jeffrey, a job that included telling Fantasia which sex outfit to wear to make him happy. The schoolgirl outfit was his favorite. Another time, while in London, Fantasia and Ghislaine encountered a very young-looking girl who Fantasia thought was innocent and should be left alone. She recounted Maxwell protesting and telling her that someone had to give Epstein a blow job and if this new girl didn’t do it, then Maxwell herself would have to—and clearly, she did not want to. Fantasia explained that when underage girls were around, Epstein’s desire to have sex with them was so overwhelming that he would physically shake. She reconfirmed that he couldn’t survive without a constant supply of new girls. Fantasia even went so far as to tell us that she had known Epstein for so long and had seen enough of his “evil” side that she believed he wasn’t beyond killing someone, especially if that was necessary to keep his sex addiction alive. Whether that was accurate or merely an impression he cultivated, Fantasia did not know, but she was wary.

  There came a time when the case against Maxwell was on the verge of going to trial and Fantasia was strongly considering testifying with crucial information. As witness lists were being exchanged by the parties, she received a mysterious call in the middle of the night. The voice on the other end said, “If you care about your daughter, you will stay out of the litigation in New York.” That was enough to make up her mind. She was out.

  * * *

  Another young woman named Johanna had given an interview to Sharon Churcher for the Daily Mail, which had been published in 2011, about her experience and the fact that she, like Virginia, was recruited by Ghislaine. Despite speaking with the police and this publication, she had serious reservations about going on the record again. This whole experience was something she had tried hard to forget. Still, she was too important for us not to try to get her to cooperate. Her time with the dysfunctional “family” overlapped with Virginia Roberts’s. The two at one time knew each other, and Virginia remembered Johanna as a very nice person.

  Johanna was one witness who could corroborate a large part of one of the most seemingly unbelievable parts of Virginia’s story—her sexually charged relationship with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. We contacted Johanna, but she did not want to be involved. Virginia was not taking no for an answer, though. She insisted on going to see Johanna herself.

  Virginia called her and talked her into meeting in person. During that meeting, Johanna came around. She knew that Virginia’s standing up to Ghislaine and Jeffrey was very brave. Plus Virginia’s courage was contagious. Everyone who meets Virginia can’t help but love her.

  Johanna, just like the rest of Jeffrey Epstein’s targets, looked like a natural-born model. She walked us through her story. While attending school at Palm Beach Atlantic University, she was sitting on a bench one day when Ghislaine approached and asked her if she knew anyone who would be interested in working for her as a personal assistant. Johanna said that she would be interested and went with Ghislaine to Epstein’s house that day.

  Johanna spent the next couple of years working for Epstein and Maxwell and remembered many details about her interactions with Virginia and the duo. She remembered going on a trip with Epstein, Maxwell, and Virginia to Atlantic City when Virginia was too young to enter any of the casinos, so the girls stayed outside and stuck together.

  Perhaps most important, she vividly remembered an encounter with Prince Andrew at Epstein’s New York mansion. She described that Virginia was sitting on one of Prince Andrew’s knees and Johanna was sitting on the other. While the two girls were in his lap, Ghislaine took out a puppet figure of Prince Andrew and placed the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, at which point Prince Andrew placed his hand on Johanna’s breast. Everyone laughed.

  Johanna was also able to confirm other elements that were important to our representation of Virginia, including certain famous friends that Jeffrey Epstein collected. David Copperfield was one. On numerous occasions, Johanna met Copperfield, who was clearly a close friend of Jeffrey’s during that period.

  Other witnesses that I had interviewed had also told me of the friendship between Epstein and Copperfield and how their private islands were located close enough for them to visit each other on occasion. For a young woman like Johanna, the fact that there were stars who were friends with Jeffrey and Ghislaine was an attractive bonus of the job. Even the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, had been enough of an Epstein acquaintance to pay him a visit in Palm Beach while Johanna was working there.

  Ghislaine, Jeffrey, Prince Andrew, and Alan Dershowitz had all separately attacked Virginia’s story from many angles, claiming that she was indulging in sensational fantasy when describing Epstein having various famous friends and acquaintances around. They also challenged the truth of this intricate system she described by which Ghislaine and other recruiters constantly searched for girls to entertain Epstein sexually.

  One by one, we were disproving each of these defenses. Because of the careful attention that Epstein and Maxwell paid to keep the stratification of the enterprise intact, and to wall off the levels below from understanding how the system worked above, no one witness could give us everything. But more and more people were coming forward, allowing us to take tidbits here and nuggets there and piece the truth together.

  Johanna had been around Epstein and Maxwell enough to have observed and experienced the “family” that operated like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up unsuspecting girls before spitting them out and replacing them with new ones. She was close enough for Ghislaine to have included her as one of her so-called “children,” and to have referred to herself in front of Johanna as the “mother hen” over Epstein’s girls.

  In order to defend herself in the lawsuit, Ghislaine needed to plausibly deny knowledge of Epstein’s sexual activity with minors. She could not believably say that Virginia was lying about having been recruited underage into this sexual enterprise. It also seemed laughable for her to deny having any knowledge whatsoever of the facts uncovered by the police and the FBI during their investigation in 2005. But she couldn’t admit to knowing either. The approach Ghislaine decided on was to claim that she was no longer in Epstein’s life between 2001 and 2005, when the crimes against the dozens of young children had been committed.

  Remember, once their investigation had started, the police wanted to talk to her, but Ghislaine had disappeared from Florida and never spoke with law enforcement. Everyone knew she was the long-term girlfriend and closest partner of Epstein’s, but we could not rely on widely disseminated rumors and newspaper articles to prove the obvious. We needed evidence of the kind you could admit in court. One witness at a time, we were getting it.

  Johanna was an essential piece of the puzzle, because she put Maxwell front and center in the picture during the time when the police had accumulated concrete evidence of Epstein committing crimes against children on a daily basis.

  * * *

  In the summer of 2016, we were finally in a position where we had a more complete picture of Epstein’s operation. We now understood the existence of a New York spiderweb of underage victims that was very similar to the Florida version. We also had a strong grasp of the ways in which Epstein had attempted to restrict himself from engaging in sex with minors after he was jailed in Florida. What we still didn’t fully comprehen
d was how his sexual attraction to children all began.

  The most coveted witness we were after was a talented performer whom we will call Kat. Kat was important to us because she was the earliest child victim that we knew about, and Epstein and Maxwell had groomed her before they started employing their “massage” routine. After many years of trying, I was finally able to reach her on the phone right in the middle of the Maxwell litigation. She not only confirmed Epstein’s predatory sexual behavior but also provided insight into Maxwell’s intricate role.

  Kat explained to us that Epstein and Maxwell had recruited her in 1994 when she was only thirteen years old, while she was sitting alone on a bench outside her summer camp in Michigan—the same camp Epstein had attended twenty-seven summers earlier. (He gave money to the camp from 1990 to 2003 and occasionally visited the area.) Kat was an enormously talented singer, and Epstein promised to make her a star. Jeffrey and Ghislaine made Kat feel indebted to them by paying for her singing lessons, her private school education, and even the New York City apartment where Kat and her mother lived. Epstein often had Kat sing for him at his house.

  As part of their grooming process, Ghislaine and Jeffrey would talk about sex with her frequently. By the time Kat was fourteen years old, Epstein was regularly molesting her and Maxwell was continuing to remind her of all Epstein was doing for her career. When Kat was seventeen years old, Jeffrey Epstein forcibly raped her, taking her virginity. Kat explained that Epstein referred to himself as her “godfather,” and that he did everything he could to impress her with his money and his connections. During the time when she was being abused by Epstein, he introduced her to both Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein. This, like everything Epstein did for Kat, was a reminder of all that he could continue to do for her in the future so long as she complied with his wishes. Epstein’s hold over Kat lasted for a long time: She still hung out with him and Ghislaine occasionally in her twenties, despite the years of abuse she had survived.

  But her feeling of gratitude toward Epstein was not the reason for her reluctance to cooperate or tell her story. Her apprehension was driven by fear and hopelessness, explaining that “Fighting his endless supply of money is impossible. There is really nothing that will be gained and everything to lose.” I disagreed with that conclusion because I thought her account was so damning to Epstein that the authorities would have no choice but to act. However, given Epstein’s ability to escape responsibility in the past, I could not convincingly counter her pessimism.

  While this victim was always polite and had a powerful story to tell, she wouldn’t go on record without being forced to do so. It was a difficult balance to strike between representing our current clients and keeping promises not to involve those who bowed out for one reason or another. This one was the toughest thus far. Had she come forward years earlier, so many children would have been saved. Here we were decades later, more young women being abused, and still she would not speak up. But out of respect for her desire to stay out of it, I kept my promise not to drag her in.

  Either way, she told us enough to confirm that Epstein’s sexual predation upon children went back to the early 1990s, at least. Her experience made it clear that Epstein’s scheme had been fine-tuned over the years. This well-oiled machine of sexually explicit massages did not begin that way. In the 1990s, Epstein and Maxwell had not yet fully developed their routine. Instead, Epstein’s sexual predation upon young children was initiated through more traditional grooming tactics. This information allowed us to gain a better understanding of exactly when and how Epstein’s compulsive sexual abuse of children likely began, or at least what his recruitment scheme looked like early on.

  THIRTY-EIGHT THE CULT

  OUR INVESTIGATION WAS LONG, EXTENDED through the United States and beyond, and accumulated information from the early nineties through the mid-2010s. The Jeffrey Epstein cult, which had evolved to some degree over time, was coming into clear focus. It was far more complex than the media would ever report. There was no one-size-fits-all perspective from those who entered through the Epstein/Maxwell world, even among the victims.

  Some believed their experience with Ghislaine and Jeffrey followed a sexually free, philosophical rule of law. Unlike many of Epstein’s victims who suffered from extreme depression, eating disorders, drug use, nightmares, loss of self-esteem, and other serious psychological trauma, some thought their experience was beneficial and carried on Epstein’s philosophy. This cultish operation was openly discussed within the inner circle, and Epstein and Maxwell mandated that everyone follow it in order to be elevated into that higher status.

  Sex was central to the deeply held and guiding philosophy of Jeffrey Epstein. He thought female sexual availability should be determined by biology and not established by arbitrary social norms—or the law. He demanded that each of his recruiters be on the lookout for new sexual partners all the time. As for the target age, “the younger, the better,” according to Epstein. Under his law, science was all that mattered. Prepubescence, therefore, was where he drew the line.

  According to Epstein, the age of consent, if dictated by anything other than biology, was arbitrary—which was a word signifying that it should have no application in any aspect of his life. How could a female whose body was able to bear children not be given the choice to perform the acts necessary to give birth? Society, through the years, had created these concepts of marriage and monogamy that not only contradicted human nature, they unbearably constrained and killed people’s freedom. Sexual freedom. The fact that a female can have multiple orgasms and a male only one was evidence that females were meant to have multiple partners—again, law according to Jeffrey Epstein.

  These teachings were masterfully discussed by Epstein at just the right time in order to indoctrinate his new followers. Some of this information was disseminated early in the recruitment stage. Even some witnesses who were infrequent visitors in Epstein’s massage rooms knew his philosophy in general. The idea that a man with an abundance of money and resources should be sexually free to engage with multiple partners was a basic tenet of Epstein’s worldview, and anyone drawn in for even a brief period of time needed to tacitly accept it. Epstein’s regulars not only had to be familiar with his philosophy, they had to live by it.

  * * *

  Ghislaine so adored Jeffrey that she would do anything for him, including bringing him other girls. She was powerfully persuasive and influential in making the girls like him, too. Jeffrey’s brilliance was at the center of her pitch. For her, recruiting vulnerable girls like Virginia was an easy sell. Epstein had powerful friends. On his private island, he hosted his own personal scientific conventions attended by the most brilliant minds in the world. His impressionable young female followers watched in awe as he participated in high-powered group discussions about evolution, artificial intelligence, and cell regeneration.

  The sell was even easier because Epstein was obviously very rich. Whatever the pitch had been to get some young girl to the home, it appeared to be true when she got there, which always helped him seal the deal. The allure of Jeffrey Epstein was even more attractive to the regular harem of girls brought to give him a “massage,” because he was always available to them. Many people are rich, of course, but most of them still have regular lives to maintain—calendars, meetings, and the need to be in certain places at certain times. Not Jeffrey. He had no children. No office he needed to visit. No work he needed to tend to. He could wake up every day and decide to jump on his private jet and go anywhere, at any time, with anyone. He could get three, even four massages a day. And he did just that.

  It had taken years, but I had finally talked to enough witnesses to understand what really drove him. For the most part, it was simple. His philosophy was not something he shied from. Epstein accumulated disciples, like Ghislaine Maxwell, who could help grow his network of girls in each location he frequented into a massive web that included young children, just as he had done in Palm Beach, to serve his sexual addicti
on.

  After meeting Ghislaine, his sexual appetite for new, and young, females became insatiable. He designed several different “systems to get girls,” as he would call them, and was always looking for new ones. To understand the systems and the progression of his operation, it is important to understand the different relevant time periods, as we learned. The first period began in the mid-1990s and lasted through Epstein’s Florida “incarceration” in 2008. The next began while he was on work release and continued upon his release from the Florida jail system through the time that he was arrested in 2019. This time period was important because jail had a real impact on Jeffrey Epstein. It taught him that he was not completely invincible and would not last long in any real jail.

  Once released from his “jail” stint in 2009, Epstein “disciplined” himself, as his lawyer Marty Weinberg would earnestly characterize Epstein’s behavior modification at his bond hearing in federal court in New York on July 15, 2019. That just meant that he tried harder not to have sex with children after getting in trouble in Florida, making sure that each of the females recruited to his house was at least eighteen years old. His appetite did not diminish at all, and the harm he was causing to these barely legal females was significant. In some ways, his schemes to lure the girls into his homes became even more insidious. He targeted vunlerable young women with immigration problems, medical problems, or lofty professional ambitions and promised to make them legal, get them treatment, or make their educational or professional dreams come true. They just had to do as he said. Which, whether they liked it or not, was all about sex.

  THIRTY-NINE PADUCAH AND BEYOND

  KNOWING NOW THAT EPSTEIN WAS actively pursuing minors for sex in the 1990s, when Maxwell was widely known to be with Epstein every day, I looked back at my files to locate witnesses I knew were also around the pair during that time period. Maria Farmer had a star by her name in my notes. I had been told by a source that she had been assaulted by both Epstein and Maxwell. In fact, she was the very first victim to ever come forward and report the duo to law enforcement, in 1996.