A Convenient Death

by Alana Goodman

  “I would give the massage, I would go home, and the next day when I saw Jeffrey, he would pay me for what I did,” Giuffre has said.2 She said Epstein’s only instruction for her was to “treat them like you treat me.”

  “I complied with what he wanted because . . . it was just very mindboggling how I let him have so much control or power over me,” she has recalled.

  Giuffre claimed Epstein used the opportunity to get dirt on various high-profile people. “I always reported back to Jeffrey about what happened after I provided massages to his friends,” said Giuffre.

  “Jeffrey would have a laugh with me a few times about some of their different mannerisms, I guess you would say, like some of them, one guy had a foot fetish and that was really weird and I mentioned it to Jeffrey and we had a laugh over it.”

  She claimed Epstein relished the fact that he had dirt on his friends. “Lots of people owed him favors from what he told me. He’s got everybody in his pocket, and he would laugh about how he helps people for the sole purpose—in the end—to owe him something. That’s why I believe he does so many favors in the first place.”

  According to Giuffre, this included the former president of the United States, who had a relationship with Epstein. To be clear: Giuffre herself has never made any accusation that she engaged in sexual activities, or even a non-sensual massage, with Bill Clinton. Yet she distinctly remembers asking Epstein why Clinton was hanging around.

  “Well, he owes me a favor,” Giuffre says Epstein told her.3 She went on to add, “They’re all in each other’s pockets.”

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  Epstein did little to hide his interest in young women from friends, neighbors, and household staff. If anything, he flaunted it.

  “At his house [in Palm Beach], there were always more girls than you could count,” said one friend in an interview. “I always counted like three or four. What they were doing there I couldn’t tell . . . They weren’t walking around naked, they weren’t making sexual overtures, they were talking . . . They sounded and looked like college girls.”

  He enjoyed bike riding, and sometimes he’d be spotted cycling around Palm Beach with half a dozen young women trailing after him. The sight no doubt shocked the tiny island’s old-money residents.

  But many people wanted in on his victims. And Epstein had done what he could to be able to play gracious host. By 1998, he had become so monstrously wealthy that his New York City townhome and Palm Beach mansion were not enough. So he bought an island.

  Operating as the sole proprietor of L.S.J. LLC, Epstein purchased Little St. James for $7.95 million. In due time, it would be widely referred to as Little St. Jeff and then later as Orgy Island or Sex Island or Pedophile Island.

  The seventy-two-acre island is a lovely tropical getaway and, most attractively to its new owner, completely private. “You can hop off a plane and never see anybody again,” the venture capitalist Arch Cummin, the former owner, said upon the sale.4

  Onshore, there was a main house, three smaller guesthouses, a separate cottage for staff, and a helipad. Getting there was made easier by Epstein’s use of his private plane, which he’d fly into St. Thomas and then take his helicopter over.

  The investment apparently paid off. Not only did the island rise significantly in value (it is now estimated to be worth north of $60 million), but he also picked up a ranch in New Mexico and an apartment in Paris.

  The island and his new properties allowed him to entertain more freely, sharing his victims with those who might be able to do him a favor.

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  Phone messages eventually recovered by the police hint at some of the people who at the very least knew of Epstein’s activities. One particularly disturbing memo from September 2005 was a phone message from Epstein’s close friend Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent.

  “[Jean Luc] has a teacher for you to teach you how to speak Russian. She is 2x8 years old. Not blonde. Lessons are free and you can have 1st today if you call,” said the note.5

  Brunel ran a modeling business with cash provided by Epstein. Giuffre has accused Brunel of providing underage girls to Epstein as part of his sick sexual pyramid scheme and human trafficking operation.

  “Brunel would offer the girls ‘modeling’ jobs. A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money,” Giuffre has said in legal documents.6

  Phone messages, which were scribbled down in a memo pad by Epstein’s staff, were later collected through trash pulls by police investigators. The memos provide a glimpse into Epstein’s wide circle of influential contacts.

  The media tycoon Mort Zuckerman, the longtime owner of the New York Daily News, called to ask for “the address of the house to ‘drop by’ tomorrow at 10:45 a.m.,” said one note on January 22, 2005.

  There were also messages from the embattled media mogul Harvey Weinstein—“Returning your call”; Senator George Mitchell—“Return a call”; and Donald Trump.

  Trump had a friendship with Epstein in the early days, but it eventually fell apart. In the early 2000s, Trump banned Epstein from his exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach after hearing that he had propositioned a member’s underage daughter.

  “It wasn’t only Virginia [Giuffre], which would have been bad enough for Trump. It was a complaint from a member’s daughter,” said Sam Nunberg, Trump’s 2016 political adviser, in an interview.

  Nunberg said he asked Trump for details about his prior relationship with Epstein in 2015, warning him that it could become a campaign liability.

  “Trump told me [Epstein] was a ‘member,’ he was a ‘client.’ Meaning that the extent that Trump was familiar or hung out with him was because [Epstein] gave him money,” said Nunberg. “He said, ‘I kicked him out when this stuff became public, and he’s completely banned from my properties. He’s a real sicko.’”

  Not all of the men who left messages seemed to recognize that raping underage girls was the work of a “sicko.”

  David Copperfield, the celebrity magician, left at least ten phone messages with Epstein in January 2005. “I just want to say hello,” read one note. Another simply said, “It’s jackpot.” The two also appeared to discuss Epstein’s scheduled attendance at one of Copperfield’s shows later that month.

  One of Epstein’s alleged victims claimed he persuaded her to fly to Las Vegas with him to see a performance by a “world-famous” magician when she was just fifteen years old in 2004. She said Epstein took her backstage to meet the performer. Epstein later sexually assaulted her, she claimed.

  “Epstein and/or his agents had arranged for the girls to go backstage and meet the performer, along with several other young girls whom Epstein had arranged to be there,” said a lawsuit filed by the alleged victim against Epstein’s estate last November. “For a girl from the Midwest, all of this was like a dream come true—to be flown around in private jets, to meet a world-famous performer backstage, and to be among other beautiful girls, almost all of whom were much older than her. She felt like she was being treated special, and like a grown up.”

  Gloria Allred, an attorney for the alleged victim, said she was unable to comment on whether the magician referenced in the lawsuit was Copperfield.

  Epstein would also be pegged as close to other important politicians and academics—Senator George Mitchell, Governor Bill Richardson, Nobel Prize winners, and Harvard and Princeton professors.

  Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the same victim who has accused Epstein and Prince Andrew of sexual wrongdoing, has claimed that the former Senate majority leader, a Democrat from Maine, sexually abused her. She described some of the alleged encounters she had with Epstein’s associates in her unpublished book manuscript that was included in court records as part of a 2015 defamation lawsuit she filed against Ghislaine Maxwell. In a subsequent cour
t filing, Giuffre’s attorneys described the manuscript as a “fictionalized account of what happened to her” written as “an act of empowerment and a way of reframing and taking control over the narrative of her past abuse that haunts her.”7

  “My body was put on the banquet menu . . . for a powerful senator, George Mitchell, and another prominent Nobel Prize winning scientist,” Giuffre wrote in the unpublished book manuscript, where she retells how Epstein kept her as his sex slave for his pleasure and for his friends. “They would be only some of the recognizable figures of the high society that became added to my list of clientele.”

  Giuffre’s claim against Mitchell, unlike the ones against Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Prince Andrew, was made less compelling by the fact that she does not provide the very details that make her other accusations so believable.

  Ironically, and perhaps disastrously, Mitchell had been serving on the board of the compensation fund of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for victims of sexual abuse by priests,8 a posting that has been scrutinized since these allegations emerged.

  Mitchell has denied these claims. “I have never met, spoken with, or had any contact with Ms. Giuffre,” Mitchell told the press in a statement. “In my contacts with Mr. Epstein, I never observed or suspected any inappropriate conduct with underage girls. I only learned about his actions when they were reported in the media related to his prosecution in Florida. We have had no further contact.”9

  Similar claims by Giuffre were made against the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, the modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and the financier Glenn Dubin, whose wife, Eva Andersson-Dubin, used to date Epstein.10

  Most of the accused have denied Giuffre’s allegations. And only Dershowitz, who has never been known to be silent or reserved about anything, has gone so far as to launch a public rebuttal campaign with the aim of clearing his name once and for all.

  Dershowitz, the Democratic lawyer who more recently defended President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial on the floor of the Senate in the beginning of 2020, went so far as to publish a book on just this subject, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo.11

  “It feels terrible. Fifty-five years of public service,” he said in an interview. “I’m eighty-one years old. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life in and out of court.”

  Giuffre said she was forced to have sexual relations with the prominent attorney on multiple occasions, including in a stretch limousine and on Epstein’s private island.

  “One such powerful individual that Epstein forced then-minor [Giuffre] to have sexual relations with was former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, a close friend of Epstein’s and well-known criminal defense attorney,” said a December 2014 court filing by Giuffre’s attorneys as part of a victims’ rights lawsuit against the government. “Epstein required [Giuffre] to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions while she was a minor, not only in Florida but also on private planes, in New York, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition to being a participant in the abuse of Jane Doe #3 and other minors, Dershowitz was an eye-witness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein’s co-conspirators.”

  Dershowitz has vehemently denied Giuffre’s allegations and says he never met her. He has released travel and credit card records disputing that he was in the places she claimed he was when the alleged encounters occurred. He has also highlighted discrepancies in Giuffre’s accounts that he believes undermine her credibility; for example, she previously said she was fifteen when she met Epstein, while employment records indicate she likely met Epstein when she was sixteen or seventeen.

  He noted that she also did not claim she had relations with him in a 2011 memoir manuscript that she pitched to publishers, which included accounts of alleged sexual encounters she had with other associates of Epstein’s. In the draft, Giuffre also said she went to a dinner party with Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island, a story that appears to conflict with Secret Service records. Giuffre’s attorneys have said the manuscript was a “fictionalized account” of her experiences.

  The situation has spawned a complicated web of litigation. Giuffre is currently suing Dershowitz for defamation. Dershowitz, meanwhile, has taken legal action against both her and her attorney David Boies. He claims Boies persuaded Giuffre to accuse him as part of a wider plot to shake down Epstein’s benefactor, the billionaire Leslie Wexner, for money.

  But Giuffre’s claims would spark years of media attention and provide on-the-record testimony alleging sexual trafficking of girls. It was a charge that would stick in the court of public opinion, even if legal proceedings would prove to be far more forgiving.

  10

  How He Got Away the First Time

  After he had operated for about a decade with impunity, trouble began to brew for Jeffrey Epstein. In 2005, the Palm Beach County Police Department opened an investigation into Epstein after receiving a phone call from a concerned stepmother. The concerned parent called the cops, on March 14 of that year, claiming her stepchild, a fourteen-year-old Royal Palm Beach High student, had been the victim of molestation.

  By October 20, 2005, the investigation had developed to the point where investigators had probable cause. They executed a search warrant at his residence but were surprised to see that electronic equipment, like computers, was no longer on the premises. Was the suspected perpetrator given a heads-up?

  Many inside the police department believe it’s a distinct possibility. Epstein had worked hard to win the allegiance of local law enforcement, perhaps even enough to get them to look away most of the time. He had, after all, given $50,000 to the Palm Beach Police Scholarship Fund around 2001. Then, in 2003, he gave an additional $36,000 to the Town of Palm Beach. And an additional donation on December 14, 2004, of $90,000 to the Palm Beach Police Department for the purchase of equipment.1

  As Palm Beach police finalized their case and prepared to obtain a search warrant for Epstein’s house in October 2005, Epstein received a late night phone call from a longtime aide to one of his close associates, Bill Clinton.

  Sandy Berger—Clinton’s former national security adviser—left an urgent message for Epstein to call him back. “Can you call [Berger] at this number between 10 and 10:30 p.m.?” read the memo on October 2, 2005.

  There is no indication of what Berger, who passed away in 2015, wanted to discuss that night. The next morning, when police pulled trash from Epstein’s house—as they had surreptitiously been doing for months—they found a broken sex toy in the garbage, according to the detectives’ notes.

  “Inside of one of the [white garbage bags], I located a broken piece of a hard plastic or clear acrylic stick, which was shaped with small ridges,” said the notes from the Palm Beach police detectives that day.2 “This device is commonly used as a sexual toy which is inserted into the vagina or anus for stimulation.”

  The timing of the call stood out to the victims’ attorneys. In a deposition of Epstein’s assistant Adriana Ross, one of the victims’ lawyers, Brad Edwards, asked whether Berger tipped Epstein off to the looming search warrant.

  “[Berger] called the house within three weeks of the search warrant being executed. Did he tip off Jeffrey Epstein?” asked Edwards.3 Ross, who was exercising her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, refused to answer.

  By April 2006, Epstein had hired goons to help him deal with his problem, and potential witnesses were beginning to feel the heat. The message was clear, one victim’s father would report, relaying the message he heard to prosecutors: “Those who help him will be compensated, and those who hurt him will be dealt with.”4

  Epstein’s attorneys besieged prosecutors with documents, including reports on potential drug use by his underage accusers and the alleged criminal backgrounds of their parents.

  Epstein’s legal team even
obtained confidential internal reports from one of the girls’ employers, Victoria’s Secret—the company owned by Epstein’s longtime benefactor, Leslie Wexner—that claimed the teenager had been fired for theft.

  In one letter to the assistant state attorney’s office, Epstein’s lawyers made their intentions clear. His team was fully prepared to shred his accuser’s reputation in front of the grand jury.

  “Thank you for giving Mr. Epstein the opportunity to present information to the Grand Jury. Enclosed please find background information on [redacted victim’s name] and her family,” the letter read. “You will find the enclosed information presents [redacted victim] as someone who is untruthful, sexually active, smokes marijuana, drinks alcohol, and shoplifts regularly.

  “Additionally, the information reveals the motive behind the false allegations,” the letter continued. “Based on Ms. [redacted’s] lack of credibility, we request that you reconsider your decision to present this matter to the Grand Jury. In support of this request, it is important to acknowledge that Mr. Epstein does not use drugs or alcohol and has an unequivocal reputation for being truthful; a strict contrast to Ms. [redacted’s] reputation. I look forward to hearing from you after you have had a chance to review this information.”

  Epstein that month reached a deal with the state attorney of Palm Beach County to plead guilty, which resulted in the cancellation of the scheduled grand jury. The deal appeared too lenient to the Palm Beach police chief, Michael Reiter, especially after he caught wind of the fact that Epstein had hired as his counsel the husband of the top prosecutor in the state attorney’s office. It stank.

  In July 2006, a local grand jury convened and heard the testimony of only a single victim—a fourteen-year-old girl who accused the rich resident of molestation. Epstein was subsequently placed under arrest but soon freed after posting the measly $3,000 bond.