Mary: February 2005

It�s a typically slow South Florida Sunday, and Mary�s staring into the mirror, trying to wipe the morning cobwebs away from her dark, sleepy eyes.

She�s a pretty girl, tiny-just five feet three inches tall-but tanned and athletic, with curly black henna-streaked hair.* Her bedroom�s a playland of pinks and pastels, stuffed animals, and boy-band posters. But Mary�s a teenager now. Fourteen years old. She even has a boyfriend. He�s cute and popular. Joe^� is the heartthrob of her school, and Mary�s feelings for him are new to her, powerful, hard to untangle. She�s thinking of Joe as she presses the Play button on her iPod.

The MP3 player�s on shuffle. There�s no telling what song will come up, and Mary�s head drops dramatically in anticipation. Then a loud, sexy throb spills out of the earbuds: Britney Spears. The bass line takes over, and she starts to dance, moving her hips as she lip-synchs the lyrics:

Jeffrey Epstein: February 2005

Jeffrey�s morning routine is precise and unvarying. First he spends twenty-five minutes in silence, visualizing the day ahead as he digests the guava, banana, and M�eslix that his chef prepares for him-the same way every day-at six in the morning. Then Jeffrey walks a third of a mile up to South County Road, pausing once in a while to take deep, restorative breaths.

It�s a slight slope that leads toward the ocean. Jeffrey�s home on the Intracoastal Waterway is behind him now. The morning�s not windy. The Atlantic is calm and glittery, and fishing trawlers bob gently on distant waves.

Jeffrey�s partial to monogrammed sweatpants, monogrammed fleece pullovers, and hoodies. Casual attire offset by embroidered Stubbs & Wootton slippers-the kind that sell for hundreds of dollars a pair. His hair, which is thick, has turned silver. But Jeffrey Epstein does not have a paunch. For a fifty-two-year-old man, he�s extremely fit. Six feet tall, 180 pounds, brown eyes, a strong jawline.

He�s never been a drinker. He doesn�t smoke or take drugs, and he takes care good care of his body as well as his mind.

It�s a magnificent mind. His gift is for numbers: complex calculations, abstract formulas. Even as a child, Jeffrey could untangle math problems that would stump most smart adults. Numbers just fall into place for him, forming in ranks he can bend, twist, manipulate-and multiply. He could have been a scientist or a mathematician. As a young man, he taught calculus and physics. Then he became an investor-a very rich man. Then he became a philanthropist, like Bill Gates. His love for science has inspired him to give millions to academics and institutions committed to studying mysteries of the brain and the arcana of physics. He�s given millions to Harvard. And he�s given money to politicians: Governor Eliot Spitzer, of New York, and Governor Bill Richardson, of New Mexico, where Epstein owns the largest home in the state.

Epstein�s flown Bill Clinton to Africa on a private jet-not the Gulfstream he owns but his Boeing 727, customized with its own trading floor-so that the former president could promote his various and worthy causes.

Just for fun, Chris Tucker, the comedian, and Clinton�s pal Kevin Spacey had tagged along for the ride.

�Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science,� Clinton would say through a spokesperson. �I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS.�

But is Jeffrey thinking about that trip now?

His first guest is due that morning at nine, and that leaves him enough time for a shower, a lunch, and a few phone calls before the second girl arrives.

Sarah has scheduled that girl for one.

For Jeffrey, it�s just part of the daily routine.

But on this day, there�s a delicious twist.

One of the girls is a first-timer.

Mary: February 2005

Downstairs, the doorbell is ringing. Mary�s father shouts, gruffly:

�Ella est� aqu�. Su amiga con el cami�n.�

�She�s here. Your friend with the truck.�

Mary runs down the stairs. It�s game day, and Dad�s already got the TV on. Her stepmom�s out running errands. Mary�s twin sister has gone out, too, Rollerblading with a few of her friends.

�Going shopping,� she yells, and she pops a piece of Dubble Bubble into her mouth.

��Dice qui�n?�

�Says who?�

Mary�s already halfway out the door. Her father calls out again, but on Sundays there�s no getting him out of his chair. Besides, Mary knows he�ll be happy when he sees the money she�s made. Real money, like Joe�s cousin Wendy Dobbs, is making.* And it�s not like she�s running off to do something crazy. After all, Wendy�s assured her already that there�s nothing to worry about.

Jeffrey Epstein: February 2005

John Kluge, the media magnate, has bought up several lots around here, torn down the mansions, and built a grand, sprawling estate. But Epstein�s neighbors have blocked his own efforts to buy more land and increase his holdings.

Epstein�s address in Palm Beach is 358 El Brillo Way. Built in the fifties by a totally run-of-the-mill architect, the house has none of the elegance of his neighbors� homes. It�s big, with a big swimming pool-that�s the most you can say for it. It�s totally bland. But it�s the last house on a dead-end block, the last block of the street, and this makes it very secluded.

Tonight, one of Epstein�s black Escalades will whisk him away, taking him to the private terminal at Palm Beach International Airport. Then a short flight down to Little Saint James-or, as he likes to call it, Little Saint Jeff�s-the seventy-eight-acre island he owns in the Virgin Islands. But for the moment, there are still things to attend to in Florida. Business and pleasure-although, in Epstein�s experience, the two have always fit together nicely.

He strolls through the gate, past the guard, up to the side door that leads to the kitchen. Inside, he ignores the maid doing dishes and climbs a wide, winding staircase to the second floor. He walks down a hallway, one that�s lined with photographs of naked women. Then, in his bedroom, he opens a closet. Inside, there are many more photographs. Erotic photos, tacked to the wall, of girls who have come to the house.

Familiar faces, familiar bodies. That�s what makes the first-timers so special.

Epstein checks his watch before closing the door.

The Virgin Islands can wait.

Mary: February 2005

The Dubble Bubble�s lost all its flavor, but Mary�s still chewing the gum as she shifts, nervously, in the backseat of Wendy�s big pickup truck. The girl sitting up front next to Wendy is a stranger to Mary. She�s chain-smoking menthols. The music is blaring; the seat is filthy and gross. Worried that her white jeans will get grody, Mary sits on her hands. Then, through the window, she sees a gigantic resort called the Breakers. It is resplendent, sun-drenched, not quite real-like something you�d see in the movies.

It makes for an interesting contrast.

�We�ll wait for her,� Wendy says to the girl in the passenger seat. �Then we can all go to the mall.�

�Which one?�

�The Gardens.�

It�s like she�s not there. Mary wants to say something about it, but she doesn�t know if the other girls would even respond. Wendy�s always seemed so much cooler than kids Mary�s age. This other girl�s just a mystery. And when Wendy does turn around to speak to Mary, her stare seems to slice right through the younger girl.

�Remember,� Wendy says, according to a probable cause affidavit filed by the Palm Beach police. �When he asks how old you are, say eighteen.�

The light changes, and Wendy turns back around but keeps looking at Mary in the rearview mirror.

�Got it?�

Mary nods.

�I mean it,� says Wendy.

Who would believe her? Anyone can see that Mary is younger than that.

�Okay,� she says. �I got it. Eighteen.�

Mary takes out her flip phone and sends Joe a text: �Your cousin is a BAMF.�

A badass motherfucker.

There�s no reply.

�Or maybe she�s just a bitch,� Mary texts.

Still no reply.

Joe must still be in church, Mary thinks.

They pass El Bravo Way and turn onto El Brillo Way.

Wendy�s driving slowly now, right at the speed limit. Once more, she says: �When the man asks your age, say eighteen.�

Mary nods again and smiles, slightly. She wants Wendy to see her smiling. To know that she�s got it all under control. But Wendy�s eyes are on the front gate now. It opens, she parks, and they walk past a guard.

�We�re here to see Jeff,� says Wendy.

The guard nods-of course you are-and leads them to the side door.

Michael Reiter: March 2005

Chief Reiter looks more like a bank president than a cop. He�s well built, with an air of formality and discretion. But he�s got twenty-four years on the job. Decades earlier, he was a campus police officer in Pittsburgh. Then he rose, steadily, through the ranks in Palm Beach, moving up from patrol officer to detective, working vice, narcotics, and organized crime, then becoming a sergeant, captain, major, and assistant chief-a job he held for three years-before becoming chief of police. Reiter is what you�d call seasoned, although chief of police in Palm Beach is a job that calls upon his political skills as much as his street smarts.

Then again, from time to time, things do happen.

Once in a blue moon there are murders-though these are so rare that they tend to be remembered for decades.

Sometimes there are hurricanes to contend with, and, when the sea calms, human cargo washes up on the shore. Sometimes traffickers aim the bows of their boats at the glow of the Breakers resort, order their passengers to go overboard, then tell them to swim.

Most of the passengers are Haitian-men, women, and children who stake all they have on a chance at a life in America. From time to time, Palm Beach cops have to retrieve their bodies from the surf.

Things get busier during the wintertime, or, as the locals call it, the season. It�s when the very rich come to town, throw parties and balls, shop, and tangle traffic at the intersections around Worth Avenue. The population booms, and the men and women who work under Chief Reiter deal with fender benders, shoplifters, and snotty skateboarding teenagers. There are DUIs. Domestic disturbances. Choking victims and heart attacks. It�s routine stuff, but there�s always lots of it. Enough to keep the men and women who work for Reiter busy.

Chief Reiter�s proud of the team he has built. And, the team knows, they�re lucky to have him. Reiter�s extremely well qualified for the job. If anything, he�s overqualified, with a certificate from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and antiterrorist training at Quantico, courtesy of the FBI. It�s not brought up often at cocktail parties in Palm Beach, but several of the 9/11 hijackers lived in Palm Beach County. They took flight lessons at local airstrips. A few, including the mastermind, Mohamed Atta, had been regulars at 251 Sunrise, a chic nightclub in Palm Beach. There they had regaled any woman who would listen with made-up stories about their adventures as pilots.

But 251 Sunrise is shuttered now. The joint was shut down in 2004, after an avalanche of noise complaints. For the moment, Palm Beach is as quiet and calm as any place Reiter has dreamed about.

For the moment.

Mary: March 2005

If there�s no traffic, Mary�s hometown is less than thirty minutes away from the island of Palm Beach. But in economic terms it�s a world away. Her high school is run by the county. Most of Mary�s classmates are black. Thirty percent are Hispanic, as she is. The rest are white. The school has a C rating, and lots of students receive free or discounted lunches. Mary is one of those students. But inch by inch, she�s working her way out of the crab barrel. A good kid, her teachers think. A kid with a future in front of her.

Weeks have gone by since her meeting with Epstein. She hasn�t told anyone about the visit. Still, other kids at the high school have noticed a change.

�Yo, Mary,� a friend says. �What�s up with you anyway?�

This is a kid who veers from nice to mean, depending on who else is around.

Still, a friend.

�Nothing,� says Mary.

�You got your period?�

�Shut the fuck up,� Mary whispers.

There have been rumors going around, she knows that. Rumors started by a girl who has eyes for Joe.

�Whore,� her rival shouts in the hallway one day.

�You�re the whore,� Mary shouts back.

Mary rushes the girl, who shoves back, grabbing at Mary�s hair, twisting and tugging. Someone yells, �Catfight!� By the time the bell rings for next period, Mary�s sitting in the principal�s office.

She shakes her head in reply to the questions, stays silent, feeling humiliated.

Then, in her wallet, they find the three hundred dollars.

Michele Pagan: March 2005

On March 15, Palm Beach police officer Michele Pagan takes the first call from Mary�s stepmother.

�Ma�am,� she says, �I�m going to have to ask you to come down to the station.�

�I don�t want to say anything more until I speak with my husband.�

�Ma�am, I appreciate that. But I�d urge you to come in. Let us find out what happened. Please.�

�I�ll get back to you.�

�Please, ma�am. I�m here for the rest of the day. We�re on South County Road.�

At the station, Mary�s father does most of the talking.

�There was an incident,� he says. �At school. A fight between Mary and another girl. But please understand, our Mary�s not like that.�

Officer Pagan�s starting to feel as though she�s swimming in uncharted waters. She�s young, and the cases she�s worked before this have been minor. Robberies, that sort of thing. Pagan�s not used to the Gold Coast. She was educated in New York City, and, to her, the less affluent towns further in from the Coast might as well be somewhere in Georgia. Then again, she knows enough to know that in the back of the station, detectives are already whispering.

What�s a guy with that kind of money need with some girl from out west? The women around here could make a man cry.

Extortion?

The kid�s fourteen. What would she know from extortion?

Have you seen the shows these kids watch? They know about things we�ve never dreamed about.

No, Pagan thinks. This is her case.

She�s the one who�s going to work it.

Mary: March 2005

Mary�s father and stepmother believe their girl. Officer Pagan believes Mary�s parents. Ergo, Mary must be telling the truth. The girl�s got a sweet, high, halting voice. Pagan interviews her twice, and both times, she speaks with her chin buried deep in her chest.

�Tell me, honey,� says Pagan. �What happened?�

In her notepad, Michele Pagan writes: While speaking to me, Mary became upset and started to cry.

�This white-haired guy came into the room,� Mary says. �Wearing only a towel around his waist. He took off the towel. And then he was all naked, and he lay down on a massage table.

�He was a really built guy. But his wee-wee was very tiny.�

Mary tells Pagan that Epstein spoke only to give her instructions, which he did in a stern voice. She tells Pagan that she was alone and didn�t know what to do.

She removed her pants, leaving her thong panties on, Pagan writes in her incident report.

She straddled his back, whereby her exposed buttocks were touching Epstein�s exposed buttocks.

Epstein then turned to his side and started to rub his penis in an up-and-down motion. Epstein pulled out a purple vibrator and began to massage Mary�s vaginal area.

Mary�s sure that Epstein ejaculated. �He used a towel to wipe himself down as he got off the table,� she says.

That week, Pagan�s assigned to the case, along with six detectives. Five men, two women. �A predator case,� one of them will say. �This is different from someone who is stealing. This predator is a smart person, and that�s his desire. He can�t stop.�

Within days, another victim comes into the station. She�s got a similar story.

Noel St. Pierre: March 2005

Noel St. Pierre* thinks of the kids he grew up with in Haiti. His old neighborhood was pressed up against the jungle border that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, and some of the kids he knew would slip over. Those kids would stay in the DR for a few days, sometimes weeks. Some of them never returned. But the ones who did come back wouldn�t say too much about it.

Most of them didn�t talk much at all.

By the time he was ten, Noel had learned the truth about those kids. He�d learned that they�d ended up working as prostitutes.

This was how Noel St. Pierre had learned about evil. There really were devils out in the world. Flesh-and-blood devils, and they were nothing like the demons he�d heard about in church. Noel had never forgotten the way those kids looked. The way they�d turned into old men and old women. They were like zombies trapped in children�s bodies. And now, in America, Noel�s been given a chance to help other kids.

That�s what the police have told him, at least.

Noel is a sanitation worker. Still strong at fifty, and lucky enough to have found his way to Palm Beach, he gets in to work before anyone else and keeps his white compactor truck clean, almost glistening. His pickup route runs hot and cold with the seasons. But even in the summer, with much less to do, he�s on the job early, braced for a six-hour shift that would break a lesser man�s back. In the winter, the job gets even harder. The Estate Section gets especially busy. Some of the parties have hundreds of guests. They leave behind mountains of refuse. That garbage gets picked up daily, or twice a day when requested. It�s carried by workers who slip, silently, under the porte cocheres. Then it gets whisked twenty miles away to a landfill that the garbagemen call Mount Trashmore.

Noel�s stretch of the Estate Section runs from the Everglades Club to the southernmost tip of the island. It encompasses Banyan Road, Jungle Road, El Bravo Way, and El Brillo Way. His performance record is spotless. As far as the Palm Beach PD is concerned, he�s the perfect man for the job.

Michael Reiter: September 2005

There�s a sense in which the Palm Beach PD functions as a foundation. From time to time, one of the town�s wealthy residents will walk in with a check followed by an inquiry. How much more would the police force need to make this remarkably safe community feel even safer?

A tax write-off? Sure. But why not? Coming from most, it�s a genuine gesture. One of appreciation for all they have and for all the department�s efforts to guard it. Donations are accepted graciously, gratefully. In 2004, the department had taken one from Jeffrey Epstein-the second donation he�d made to the Palm Beach PD-for ninety thousand dollars. Generous, even by the generous standards of Palm Beach. The donation, which Epstein delivered personally, was earmarked for a firearms training simulator. But that day Michael Reiter had thought something seemed off about Epstein.

Something an old cop would notice.

Reiter�s officers had told him about complaints they�d gotten a few months earlier-young women hanging around at the end of the block or coming and going at all hours from Epstein�s house. �There was some follow-up to that,� Reiter said in a deposition for B.B. vs. Epstein, a civil suit, brought by a victim, that Jeffrey eventually settled. �I think we may have encountered one or two of them. [We] may have done a little bit of surveillance or talked to neighbors as to whether or not they had seen that. I think we were of the general understanding that, yes, there were very attractive young women coming and going from Mr. Epstein�s residence.

�We did some level of further inquiry, and we were of the belief that they were all adults. And [we] were also of the belief that there was a possibility that there could be prostitution. But I mean that�s just not something that we heavily pursued-prostitution in private residences; it�s common everywhere in America. We didn�t believe that they were underage at that point, and so we had no further interest in it.�

Reiter had recalled those complaints on the day Epstein had shown up with his $90,000 donation. And when Reiter had walked Epstein downstairs, he couldn�t help but notice the tall, beautiful woman whom Epstein had brought with him to the station.

It struck him as strange that she was standing so stiffly, eyes cast downward, as though she were afraid to speak. Not a kid. But not a woman, either. Epstein did not introduce or even acknowledge her. To Reiter, this, too, seemed odd.

Indeed, the statuesque woman was Nadia Marcinkova, a nineteen-year-old beauty who lived at Epstein�s home and was described, by another girl, in a recorded interview with Detective Recarey, as one of Epstein�s �like, slaves.�

Alison: September 11, 2005

It might start with the Palm Beach Daily News, which usually covers charity balls, equestrian events, and gallery openings. Reporters there would kill to sink their teeth into something so juicy. On top of that, Chief Reiter knows, Palm Beach is full of freelance paparazzi and seasoned semiretired journalists.

They�d kill for the story, too. For them, it�d be a real-life Body Heat.

Over at WPTV, the local NBC affiliate, the phone rings one day.

It�s a tip from a kid, sounding nervous. Something about girls from a local high school.

There�s a prostitution ring out in Palm Beach, says the boy.

The tip gets brought up in a midmorning meeting at which the producers divvy up ideas among the various reporters and newscasts.

�Where, exactly?� a producer asks.

�He didn�t say, exactly,� an intern replies. �He said that a very rich man was involved.�

�Who?�

�Didn�t say.�

�Did he leave a call-back number?�

�No. The kid sounded really young. Fourteen, fifteen years old.�

The producer thinks for a moment, makes a few scratches in his dog-eared notepad.

�Okay,� he says. �I�m not sure what we can do with that for the moment.�

At some point, some enterprising journalist will put enough pieces together to get a sense of the picture. Sooner or later, someone will talk. Maybe a parent. Maybe a cop�s girlfriend gets giddy at lunch. The girlfriend�s girlfriend mentions it to her husband, who says something to a golfing buddy in turn. Maybe the golfing buddy knows a reporter.

Or maybe some lawyer goes off the rez, blitzed off those martinis they serve at the Palm Beach Grill.

Sooner or later, there�s always talk. At that point, Chief Reiter�s job will get much, much harder-with Epstein on one side, the press on the other, and the chief taking flak from all sides. But right now, two months into Reiter�s investigation, the press is still speaking in whispers.

Right now, Reiter wants to keep it that way.

And, in the meantime, new pieces of the puzzle keep falling into place.

Wendy Dobbs: October 3, 2005

Every chance he gets-and he gets lots of chances-Chief Reiter drills the same thing into his investigators� heads: they need to be careful. Patient. Methodical. Strategic. Or Epstein�s lawyers will eat them for lunch.

Inch by inch, they move their case toward the goalpost. But in October, Detective Recarey and his coworkers catch a break that moves the ball several yards down the field.

On the first Monday of that month, they pick Wendy up at her house and, down at the police station, she starts to sing-like a bird.

The detectives can hardly believe it or get it all down fast enough. Later on, in a probable-cause affidavit, Detective Recarey will write:

Wendy Dobbs, interview with Detective Recarey and Sergeant Frick, October 3, 2005, transcribed from video (excerpts)

RECAREY: Okay. Your Pepsi�s coming, my Pepsi�s coming. First of all, I know you�re freaking out. Don�t freak out, just relax. Okay? I want to thank you for coming. All right? Though the door�s closed, you�re free to go at any time. You�re not here-you know, it�s only closed for our privacy.

DOBBS: That�s fine.

RECAREY: I understand that you may have information on a case that we�re looking into, okay? That�s the reason why I brought you here today. All right? And again, you�re here voluntarily. You agreed to come back with us and talk to us. But I do want to talk you about Jeff Epstein, and the whole�thing.

DOBBS: And I don�t need a lawyer, right?

RECAREY: It�s up to you. If you wanted one, you can have one. I can�t tell you yes or no on that. That�s totally [up] to you, I�m only-

DOBBS: I�m not gonna get in trouble for anything I say, right?

RECAREY: Right now, you�re just a witness. I�m talking to you as a witness�That�s totally up to you. You wanna talk to me?

DOBBS: I have no problem telling you everything I know. I�m a very cooperative person.

RECAREY: Okay. How did you first meet, um-

DOBBS: I first met Jeffrey-I was at a beach resort on Singer Island, and I was approached by this girl I went to school with. Her name was [redacted]. And she was asking me, you know, �Oh, you need extra money, I know this guy�� I thought about it and I finally gave her a call, and her and her friend [redacted] met up with me. I actually picked them up and we drove down to Jeffrey�s house. She introduced me, whatever.

RECAREY: Okay. Now, what [do] you mean by making money, how do you make money with Jeffrey?

DOBBS: Um, there�s two ways. There�s two ways you can make money. He�ll, all right-

RECAREY: That�s all right. Talk to me. Talk to me like, like nothin�.

DOBBS: How do I say-this is going to sound really sleazy, but-

RECAREY: No. Go ahead. Talk to me.

DOBBS: Every girl that meets Jeffrey starts off with giving him a massage. The more you do with him, the more you make. Basically, if you take off your clothes, you�re gonna make more. If you let him do things to you, you�re gonna make more.

RECAREY: Like �do things� you mean, touch you?

DOBBS: Yeah. Touch you in inappropriate places.

RECAREY: Okay. Does he use his hand? Does he-

DOBBS: He uses his hands and, I really wouldn�t call it a vibrator-I guess it�s like a massager? But um-I was one of the girls that refused to do that. I did it basically my-I did it naked, but I wouldn�t let him touch me or anything like that. So after that he�s like, �You know what?� He�s like, �Listen, I�ll pay you $200 for every girl that you bring to me.� He�s like, �I don�t want you to massage me anymore, you know, just bring girls to me�� So that�s the other way you can make money. For every girl that you bring to the table-so, for every girl that I brought to Jeffrey-I would make $200. Flat. Just right there.

RECAREY: Just to bring a girl.

DOBBS: Yeah. Just to bring a girl.

RECAREY: Okay. And the girl that was going knew that she would have to massage him.

DOBBS: She knew everything. She knew everything. That was one of Jeffrey�s rules. He had a problem with girls coming to the house that didn�t know what they were getting into. He would tell me, you know, �Make sure these girls know what I expect, make sure they know what they want, because when I get in that room I don�t want them to-you know-they need to know.� And, as far as [redacted]�s case, she knew everything she was getting herself into. It was all volunteer.

RECAREY: Okay. What did you tell her that she was gonna do?

DOBBS: I told her the same thing. I told her, you know, this guy Jeffrey-she came to me saying she needed money, da da da. I basically told her about it. She was like, um, you know, �What do you have to do?� I told her. I was like, �The more you do, the more you make. That�s it. In order to make money, you�re gonna have to go up there. You�re gonna take your clothes off. But the more you do, is the more you make.� She walked out of there with $300. So she obviously and evidently let him do a little more. Plus, on our way home, she kinda told me what she did.

RECAREY: Which was? Give the massage�

DOBBS: She gave the massage, and she basically let him, like, touch her, down there. Basically.

RECAREY: Did he touch her with his hands?

DOBBS: All with his hands. And then he brought out the massager. From what she told me.

�

RECAREY: How old were you when you were approached to see Jeffrey?

DOBBS: Um, I think I was seventeen?

RECAREY: Seventeen.

DOBBS: Sixteen or seventeen.

RECAREY: Okay. When was the last time you talked to him?

DOBBS: It�s been a while. I can honestly say it�s probably been about close to a year. About a year. I actually stopped working for him.

RECAREY: Who was the last girl you brought over?

DOBBS: The last girl I brought over was [redacted]�

RECAREY: Okay. You got paid two hundred bucks for taking her over?

DOBBS: Yes.

RECAREY: Okay. [Redacted] knew�

DOBBS: She knew everything.

RECAREY: That she�d have to massage him, and the more she did-

DOBBS: The more she�d make.

RECAREY: The more she got paid.

DOBBS: Yeah.

RECAREY: So, she had intercourse with him.

DOBBS: Um, I don�t know about the intercourse. I heard different stories on that. I�ve never asked him �Oh, you know�� But when I was first introduced to him, my friend [redacted] who introduced me to him, told me that she knew a girl who slept with him and made $1,000. But from what his intern-or secretary-told me, is that he doesn�t do that. He just plays around with them. So I heard two different stories.

�

RECAREY: So, when you went and you massaged him, nothing happened between you two.

DOBBS: Nothing. I wouldn�t let him.

RECAREY: Okay. Did he become forceful? Did he get upset?

DOBBS: I wouldn�t say he became upset. I think he was a little disappointed. But I�m not-I didn�t care. I knew I was getting paid. I let him-I let him look, but I never let him touch. It was out of the question for him. And I think that�s pretty much why he just, kind of down-promoted me? He was just kind of like, �You can bring girls.� But as far as working, you know-

RECAREY: Okay. How many girls have you brought to him, aside from [redacted]?

DOBBS: Oh. Um. A lot.

RECAREY: A lot?

DOBBS: Um, let�s see, there�s [several redacted names]�

RECAREY: And all these girls knew what they had to do?

DOBBS: Every one of them.

�

RECAREY: How long have you been working for him?

DOBBS: Um�I probably worked for him for a year.

RECAREY: Okay. And out of all these girls�

DOBBS: Those were all the girls I brought. But you have to remember, those girls brought other girls, too.

RECAREY: Oh, okay.

DOBBS: So it�s like-it�s like a train. It�s like, I introduced him to all my friends, and then�it goes on and on, like that.

�

RECAREY: Okay�[Redacted] being fourteen or fifteen at the time-I think [redacted] was fourteen when this happened-who else was underage? Out of all these?

DOBBS: Underage, what do you mean?

RECAREY: Under eighteen.

DOBBS: Under eighteen? All of �em.

RECAREY: All of them?

DOBBS: All of them�

RECAREY: Okay. Did Jeff know anybody�s real true age? Or he didn�t care.

DOBBS: I don�t think he cared. He told me the younger the better.

RECAREY: The younger the better. All right.

DOBBS: Pretty much. That�s how it worked. He didn�t-let me just put it this way: I tried to bring him a woman who was twenty-three, and he didn�t really like it.

RECAREY: Didn�t go for it.

DOBBS: It�s not that he didn�t go for it. He just didn�t care for it. And he likes the girls that [are] between the ages of, like, eighteen and twenty�But some of them, I think, lie about their age. I know that when I started off young, I think he knew better [than] to believe me. I think he knew that I was younger-like, seventeen-but I told him I was, like, eighteen. Most of those girls lie when they go in there.

�

RECAREY: Let�s talk about [Mary] for a minute.

DOBBS: Okay.

RECAREY: [Mary] at the time was dating your cousin, right?

DOBBS: Mm-hmm.

RECAREY: Okay. She told you she needed to make money. Did she know you worked for Jeffrey?

DOBBS: I told her.

RECAREY: You had told her you worked for Jeffrey.

DOBBS: Mm-hmm.

RECAREY: Did you tell her what it entailed? So she knew that?

DOBBS: She knew everything before she even agreed to it.

RECAREY: Okay. So she knew that there was going to have to be some kind of-

DOBBS: Contact. Pretty much. Yeah. I told her. I told her exactly what his expectations were. I told her what goes on with the girls that go up there. I told her-it was like, �It�s your call.� I was like, �If you want to do this, fine. If not, fine. But when you go in that room, I don�t want to hear you say, �Oh, I didn�t know he was going to do all that.� Because I�m telling you right now, he�s expecting it.�

RECAREY: Basically, this is touching-

DOBBS: Fondling-

RECAREY: Fondling-

DOBBS: Or whatever. And I told her when she went on her own. Just like, �Just remember, the more you do, the more you make. But that�s-that�s up to you.� And she asked me, and I brought up, told her I wouldn�t do more.

RECAREY: Okay. You made that clear, you wouldn�t do more.

DOBBS: No. Screw that!

RECAREY: But as far as [Mary] is concerned. What did she tell you that happened in that room?

DOBBS: Exact words? If I can recall, when she came downstairs from-when she came downstairs, me and her and [redacted], we all walked out. We got into the car. And I was like, �How much did you make?� She�s like, �Three hundred dollars.� And I looked at [Mary] and I just knew right then she did more.

RECAREY: Than just a massage, right?

DOBBS: Yeah. And I asked her. I was like, �Well, what�d you do?� She�s like, �Well, I started giving a massage, and then my clothes came off and, you know, he put his fingers inside me. And then he brought out the massager.� And that�s basically what she said.

�

RECAREY: It�s all right. You can talk to me. It�s all right.

DOBBS: It�s kind of incredible talking about it, now that I-I can�t believe I worked for him.

RECAREY: But it�s okay. You know what, we all go through things in life, you know what I mean? It�s an experience. And you can put this experience behind you.

�

Do girls that-people that you brought over-how did you approach them? That they were going to have to do this�Like, if they wanted to work, how did you approach them? Say, �Listen, I got this guy in Palm Beach?�

DOBBS: Um�Two of them were my friends. The others were, like, my acquaintances. It was a little more easier talking to them about it, �cause, like, I knew them.

RECAREY: Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. �Cause I can see you�re working up again. You�re working up the tears, I can see it, and I don�t want to get you like that.

DOBBS: I, um, pretty much I just would ask them-

RECAREY: Straight up?

DOBBS: �If you�re looking for extra money, let me know; this guy down in Palm Beach, he�s really, really, really wealthy. You have to give him a massage.� That�s all I would tell them. Then, if they were interested or told me, �Yes, I want to do it,� I�d go into detail with them before they�d actually agree. If they told me, �Yeah, that sounds good, I�m interested,� then I�d tell them, �Okay, well I�m gonna let you know, this is what you have to do, this is what�s gonna go on.�

RECAREY: Did you tell them that you were going to make money from bringing them over? Or-

DOBBS: Most part? I believe they knew�Most of the girls, we were open about that. We didn�t-they pretty much knew I was making money under the table. So�

RECAREY: Okay. Gimme two seconds. Let me get the soda�Gimme two seconds.

�

All right, I talked to my boss a little bit-

FRICK:-Which is why I�m here.

DOBBS: Okay.

FRICK: Obviously I was listening to what you were saying. And at this point you clearly implicated yourself on a crime, okay? You�ve taken girls to somebody�s house for the purpose of prostitution. More importantly, more significantly, one of those girls was fourteen at the time, okay? Now that�s a pretty significant second-degree felony, okay? I�m not going to kid you, that is-it�s a significant thing, okay? Now, you came in, you cooperated with us. The question we have for you now is, do you want to continue cooperating with us and try and help us make a case against Jeff?

DOBBS: I don�t think that�s really going to help me in the long run, though. I�ve already admitted to a second-degree felony, right?

FRICK: Yeah, you have.

DOBBS: Okay, so there you go. What�s going to keep me out of trouble? It�s not going to keep me out of trouble. I�ve already admitted committing a crime.

FRICK: I�m not going to argue with that�

DOBBS: So basically I just fucked myself. I can go two ways. I can agree not to cooperate, which is going to put me at-well-now you can use the second-degree felony against me. Or you can help and work with it and maybe get myself some slack�

FRICK: We�re still talkin� here. What would the odds be of you contacting Jeff at this point? Have you had any contact with him at all?

DOBBS: I have not had any contact-

FRICK: How about with-

DOBBS: No, none of �em. None of �em�I had a phone call about four or five months ago, and I told my parents. Look, I swear to you I�m not anywhere-like, no connection with him at all. That�s why I pretty much got my number changed. I have not made any communication with him. It stopped.

FRICK: Okay. Well, I mean, that�s good. That�s good that you stopped�

�

This is what we�d like to do: We would like to reach out to some of your ex-friends and [unintelligible] talk to them. Now, the question is, do we think that they are currently still working for Jeff, in which case they would make a phone call to Jeff? Or can we just kinda show up and, you know, have you make a call as we�re standing outside and say: �Hey, you know, these guys wanna talk to you, and I�ve already told �em everything?� Our goal is to make a better case against Jeff, all right?

RECAREY: With your cooperation.

FRICK: Let me, let me get back to-past-the cooperation thing, okay? There are lesser charges that can easily be filed: leading to the delinquency of a minor, as compared to a second-degree felony. You know what I mean? That�s a misdemeanor�First of all, I�ll tell you straight up, okay, we�re not going to take you to jail today�

DOBBS: Not today.

FRICK: Well, you�re-And here�s the other thing: If you cooperate and if we can-If you cooperate, whether we pull it off or not-that�s not up to you, that�s up to us, okay? So what we would do is if we ended up charging you with like a misdemeanor, we�d give you a call, we�d say: �Hey, you gotta come in, you know.�

RECAREY: You sign it�

FRICK: That�s our preference. You come in, you�ve been very forthright with us, you�ve been very up front-

RECAREY: Very truthful.

�

FRICK: Do you want us to call your parents, or do you want to deal with it, or do you-As far as we�re concerned you�re an adult, okay? You�re nineteen. You do what you do. You know, we can drop you off at the end of the block if you�d like. Or we can cushion the blow beyond what-but again, you�re helping us at this point. We�ve been pretty forthright with you on what is going on, our options for your future. And what we�d like you to do obviously is make a couple of calls with us this evening to talk to a couple of your, you know, these other girls.

DOBBS: I�m not really on a�Me and my parents really don�t get along right now�

FRICK: So you�d prefer that-

DOBBS: If they found out that I was-If they found out that I was into some other stuff�I�m actually stripping now�So they�re not exactly happy with me at the moment, and I don�t want to do anything that�s going to piss �em off even furthermore.

Michael Reiter: October 3, 2005

Chief Reiter sifts through the evidence: information about underage girls-six of them-whom Wendy Dobbs procured for Epstein. Phone numbers pulled from the trash on El Brillo. An arrest report for Alison, the girl who�d been caught with a dime bag of weed.

She�d told Detective Recarey about an encounter that sounded very much like a rape.

Soon Reiter will ask a judge for a warrant. But not yet. There�s more footwork to do, and Reiter calls Detective Joe Recarey into his office.

Later that day, Detective Recarey and Sergeant George Frick arrive at the home of a girl named Jenny.* An older woman greets them at the front door and invites them inside. She introduces them to her husband and daughter. Jenny is sixteen years old. Sitting down at the dining room table, they see that she�s nervous. In between biting her lip and fidgeting, she tells them that yes, she�s been to Jeffrey Epstein�s house.

Wendy took her there once. But nothing much happened. She met Epstein�s chef and spent some time in the kitchen is all. Then she left.

�I get what you�re asking,� she says. �But really, I just want to put the whole thing behind me.�

�Okay,� the officers tell her. �You have our numbers. But Jenny, if you remember anything else, you�ll find that we�re very good listeners.�

One down. Five to go.

Cynthia: October 6, 2005

Three days after meeting with Francine, the police drive to Boca Raton. They�re there to see Cynthia Selleck, who�s eighteen years old.* But according to the probable-cause affidavit that the Palm Beach PD is preparing in order to obtain an arrest warrant for Epstein, Cynthia was sixteen when Wendy Dobbs first took her to meet him.

During a sworn taped statement, she tells the police that she�d met Wendy at her high school. She says that Wendy had recruited her and prepped her for her first visit to Epstein�s house. And she says she�d ended up going to the house �a lot of times to provide massages over the past two years.� The affidavit states:

Alison: October 11, 2005

After speaking with Cynthia, Detectives Recarey and Dawson meet up, once again, with Alison. It�s been exactly one month since her arrest, and once again, she�s willing to talk. They have no trouble obtaining her sworn taped statement.

Alison is eighteen, but she�s been going to Epstein�s house since 2002. Things got off to a slow start, she says. She received two hundred dollars for her first session, during which she had her bra off but her underwear on. Still, at the end of the session, Epstein had asked for her number.

Then the sessions got heavier. Much heavier, as Detective Recarey already knew. [Alison] stated that during her many visits a routine was established between her and Epstein, he wrote in his report.

Michael Reiter: October 2005

On October 20, Palm Beach police officers execute a search warrant, signed by Judge Laura Johnson, at Jeffrey Epstein�s home on El Brillo Way. Inside the house, an employee is on the phone with Epstein. They ask him, politely, to hang up. Then, guns drawn, they walk up the winding stairs to the home�s second story.

Detective Recarey remains outside and reads the warrant, out loud, to Epstein�s houseman while another officer videotapes them.

�This is your copy,� Recarey says as he hands over the warrant. �When we are concluded, I will leave a list of what items we�ve taken, okay? I would ask that you don�t answer your telephone. I know that the gentleman was having a conversation with Mr. Epstein at the time. So I�m sure he�s trying to call and find out what�s going on. He will be told what was going on as soon as we�re done. Okay?�

Inside the house, detectives see the pink-and-green couch that Mary and other girls had described. They see photos of naked young girls-in some cases, girls they�ve spoken to about Epstein. They also find message pads on which are written first names, dates, and numbers for the girls.

Sometimes there are notes to go with the names and numbers: �I have girls for him.� Or �I have 2 girls for him.�

These notes are signed by one Sarah Kellen.

Epstein�s house has a strangely antiseptic quality. Some of the bedrooms look almost like doctors� offices. In the bathroom off Epstein�s bedroom, there�s a massage table as well as stands holding strange machines, which looked like something you�d find in a dermatologist�s office.

In a wood-colored armoire beside Epstein�s bed, they see a bottle of peach-flavored Joy Jelly. In the bathroom, there are soaps shaped like penises and vaginas, bottles of Mango Mist, more Joy Jelly, and boxes of tampons.

The officers find stacks of UFC videos and DVDs of Rock Star and other B-list movies.

They also find receipts for books bought on Amazon, such as SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude.

On the first floor, detectives are drawn to two secret cameras hidden in clocks. On the computer hard drive, they see several photographs of Wendy and other girls. These images appear to come from the camera inside the clock behind Epstein�s desk.

The officers know where the cameras are because they helped install them-in 2004, when Epstein complained that someone had stolen a gun and $2,700 from him. Detective Recarey had investigated that case. But before he could arrest Epstein�s handyman, Juan Alessi, for the theft, Epstein contacted a captain in the Palm Beach PD and prevailed upon him to have the investigation called off.

Epstein had met Alessi at a luncheonette, he explained, and Alessi had agreed to pay back the money. At the time, it made no sense to prosecute: Epstein was a busy man. He was going to get his money. But he did invite the police into his home to install the cameras. This was a service that the Palm Beach PD provided (though Epstein would be the only one with access to the footage). But while they were there, the police had noticed a group of attractive young women who seemed to be camped out at the house.

The group included Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marcinkova.

None of the girls was a relative of Epstein-that fact had caught the cops� attention.

And now, as the search continues, the cops see photographs of the very same girls.

On Epstein�s desk, the officers find Alison�s high school transcript.

The thing is, the detectives can�t shake the feeling that the Epstein house has been tidied up for their arrival. Shelves look as though they�ve been emptied, and several photographs appear to have been removed from the walls.

�[Judging] by the condition of the place to be searched,� Chief Reiter will say in his deposition for B.B. vs. Epstein, �someone probably had cleaned it up a bit.�

Maybe there�s nothing too surprising about this. After all, Reiter�s team knows that Epstein�s gotten wind of their investigation. What is surprising is that for a house that�s been scrubbed, there�s so much left lying around.

In fact, the oddest thing about the search is that someone appears to have gone through the house, gotten rid of incriminating materials, but left many clues behind.

It was as if the things the police were seeing didn�t even register as wrong.

Detective Recarey, Probable-Cause Affidavit: May 2006

Jeffrey Epstein: 1953-1969

Jeffrey Epstein�s mother, Paula, was the daughter of Max and Lena Stolofsky, who arrived in the United States as Lithuanian refugees. Relatives on that side of the family who remained in the old country would all perish in the course of Adolf Hitler�s campaign to exterminate European Jewry.

Epstein�s father, Seymour, was a manual laborer, like his father before him. Seymour�s parents, Julius and Bessie Epstein, had emigrated from Russia and landed in Brooklyn, both of them with eighth-grade educations. They lived in Crown Heights, where Julius owned a house-wrecking company.

Before landing a job with the city, Seymour had worked with his father.

They were kind people, says Epstein�s childhood friend Gary Grossberg. Seymour was there for him at a difficult time, Grossberg says. When Grossberg was young, his parents divorced, and his father moved out of Brooklyn. Seymour and Paula took Gary in. Often they referred to him as their third son. �Paula was a wonderful mother and homemaker,� Grossberg remembers, �despite the fact that she had a full-time job.�

Epstein, as a kid, was �chubby, with curly hair and a high, �hee-hee� kind of laugh,� Beverly Donatelli recalls.* Beverly was two years older than Epstein, but thanks to his precocious talents, which allowed him to skip two grades, they graduated from Brooklyn�s Lafayette High School together, in 1969.

�He was advanced,� Beverly remembers. �He tutored my girlfriend and myself in the summer. He taught me geometry in just two months.�

When Beverly thinks of Epstein now, she recalls gentler times-long strolls down the Coney Island boardwalk, roller-coaster rides, stolen kisses. �That last year in school, I think he kind of loved me,� she says. �One night on the beach he kissed me. In fact, our history teacher made up a mock wedding invitation for Jeffrey and myself to show to the class. That seems pretty inappropriate now. But back then, we all thought it was funny. Jews and the Italians, that was pretty much who went to Lafayette High School. They didn�t socialize that much. And though my mother was crazy about him, she told me Jewish boys don�t marry Italians.�

Through the haze of several decades, Beverly remembers Epstein as a kindhearted boy and something of a prodigy-a gifted young pianist as well as a math whiz.

�I was talking to my girlfriends the other day,� she says. �There is nothing but nice we can say about him. He is actually the reason I went to college.�

Beverly lost contact with Epstein over the years. But not long after Epstein�s fiftieth birthday, she got a call out of the blue.

�He had a photo of us on the beach,� she says. �A friend noticed it at his birthday party. And Jeffrey said to the friend: �I bet she has a big ass now.� So Jeffrey called me and invited me to his home on 71st Street. We hung out. We reminisced. He was the same Jeffrey. A gentleman.�

The two never did speak again, but to this day Beverly sympathizes with her high school sweetheart.

�I feel so bad for him,� Beverly says. �That�s how much I liked him.�

Jeffrey Epstein: 1969-1976

It�s the height of the Vietnam War. Students collide with college administrators. Hippies collide with hard hats. Kids with long hair collide with their parents. Jeffrey Epstein does not go in for any of that. At the age of sixteen, he�s taking advanced math classes at Cooper Union, an august institution in the East Village where Abraham Lincoln once spoke.

Thanks to a generous endowment, the school is tuition-free, though the application process is famously rigorous.

Epstein sails through it.

At Harvard or Yale, his accent would give him away. Epstein tawks like the Brooklyn boy he is. But Cooper Union is more open than any Ivy League school. It�s full of boys from Brooklyn, and, aside from his prodigious intellect, Epstein doesn�t stand out. He starts to make money by tutoring his fellow students. And in 1971, he leaves Cooper Union for the greener pastures of New York University, located a few blocks away. There, at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, he studies the mathematical physiology of the heart. But he never graduates from any college or university.

Jeffrey Epstein: 1976-1981

According to several published reports, it was Ace Greenberg�s son, Ted, who introduced Epstein to Greenberg. But other sources say Greenberg�s daughter, Lynne, was dating Epstein at the time. According to them, that was how Epstein got into Bear Stearns-by charming a young and beautiful woman and using her to advance his career.

At Bear Stearns, Epstein started as an assistant to a trader on the American Stock Exchange and quickly worked up to junior partner, which meant that he was entitled to a share of the profits. Still in his twenties, he was running with the bulls, kicking down any doors that stood in his way.

The view from Ace Greenberg�s office, high above Madison Avenue in midtown, was striking. At night, the whole city was lit up like a stage set.

It was Epstein�s city now, to win or to lose. And there were women to go with the prize. Tall, beautiful women, blondes and brunettes, who wouldn�t have given a math teacher the time of day. Now they found Epstein exciting and handsome.

Greenberg�s gorgeous assistant was one of these women.

If Greenberg knew about their affair, he did not seem to care. Then again, Greenberg had other things on his mind. The Reagan era, when deregulation kicked into high gear, was still on the horizon. But there was already a decreasing amount of government oversight on Wall Street, and a new breed of bare-knuckle traders had begun to push every available limit. It was the start of the age of corporate raiders, and with Ace Greenberg looking out for him, Epstein had no reservations when it came to throwing his weight around. The golden boy�s gift for working the numbers earned him a place in the special-products division, where he worked on extremely complex tax-related problems for a select group of Bear Stearns�s wealthiest clients-an elite within the elite-including Seagram CEO Edgar Bronfman.

In the spring of 1981 Bronfman made a bid to take over the St. Joe Minerals Corporation. He offered forty-five dollars a share, or close to three times the value of St. Joe�s stock. The whole offer amounted to $2.1 billion in cash.

But St. Joe�s executives didn�t want to sell their 118-year-old company. In a press release, they called Seagram�s bid unsolicited and dismissed it as �grossly inadequate.� At which point the SEC decided to investigate.

There were allegations of insider trading. Within a few weeks, Bear Stearns�s employees were called in to testify.

Epstein got called in as well and categorically denied any wrongdoing.

But, as it turned out, he�d just resigned from Bear Stearns.

Jeffrey Epstein: 1981

Epstein will always maintain that his resignation had nothing to do with the SEC�s investigation into Bear Stearns and Edgar Bronfman�s ill-fated attempt to take over St. Joe�s.

But of course this raises the question: Why did Epstein resign from Bear Stearns?

In his testimony before the SEC, Epstein says he was offended by the company�s investigation of a twenty-thousand-dollar loan he�d made to his friend Warren Eisenstein. Epstein didn�t know it at the time, he maintains, but if used to buy stock, such a loan might have been unethical, if not illegal.

On top of that, questions about Epstein�s expenses had come up.

In the end, Bear Stearns fined him $2,500-an embarrassing thing, to be sure. So much for making full partner anytime soon.

But $2,500 is not $250,000 or even $25,000. Who�d give up a job as junior partner over that?

Another one of Epstein�s bosses, James �Jimmy� Cayne, will say, �Jeffrey Epstein left Bear of his own volition.� Epstein wanted to strike out on his own, Cayne explains. But given the timing, some questions remain. Then there�s Epstein�s own testimony, given on April 1, 1981, before SEC investigators Jonathan Harris and Robert Blackburn:

Ana Obreg�n: 1982

Ana Obreg�n was one of the world�s most beautiful women and well on her way to becoming famous as such when she first met Jeffrey Epstein. For her, there would be film roles-in the 1984 Bo Derek vehicle Bolero, Ana Obreg�n gives the star a run for her money-and appearances on the covers of Spanish Playboy and Spanish Vanity Fair.

As for fortune, Obreg�n had that already.

Ana�s father was a very wealthy investor in Spain. But he also had serious problems. On June 15, 1982, a venerable stock- and bond-trading firm, the Drysdale Securities Corporation, announced that it was going out of business. Just that year, Drysdale had spun off a subsidiary operation called Drysdale Government Securities. And in May, DGS defaulted on $160 million in interest payments it owed on Treasury securities that it had borrowed. In doing so, DGS had dragged down its parent company.

A very well-connected group of Spanish families-including members of Spain�s royal family-had invested with Drysdale. Those investors stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. And Ana�s father was one of those investors.

What Ana wanted from Jeffrey Epstein was help in recovering her father�s money.

�My father, he�s done something stupid,� she told him.

A Spanish accent. A Brooklyn accent. They blended well together, and Ana was so very lovely.

It turned out that Epstein was willing to help.

�Something stupid, you see, with the money. The family money. Some-what do you call it? A scheme. He knew some of the people, but they lied to him. And now the money is gone.�

Eva Andersson: July 8, 1980

Miss Sweden, Eva Birgitta Andersson, is wearing a dazzling white gown and sweating, ever so slightly, under the stage lights. But Bob Barker�s about to announce the winner of this, the twenty-ninth Miss Universe pageant, held in Seoul, South Korea, and Eva�s smile is as wide as the ocean.

�And now that we know what Miss Universe will win, let�s see which five girls are still in the running!�

Barker pauses, like the expert broadcaster he is. Eva�s chest tightens. There are twelve women on stage, all of them beautiful-even if they�re not quite as beautiful as Miss Sweden.

�On this card are the names of five contestants who have received the highest total score from our judges in the personal interview, the swimsuit, and the evening gown competition.�

Eva feels the camera pan across the stage-pan across her, standing in between Miss Scotland and Miss Puerto Rico.

�As a result, they will be our five finalists. As I call each name, you will see a figure on your television screen. That is the total score received by the contestant since she became a semifinalist. But one thing I would point out to you: the point total is not necessarily a sign of who our eventual winner will be. Being first now is no guarantee of being first at the time of our judges� final ballot.�

Oh, get on with it, Miss Sweden thinks. And, as if by her command, Bob Barker does.

�Now our five finalists. Good luck, girls! The first finalist is: Miss Sweden!�

Eva�s hands fly up to her face. The time it takes her to walk to the front of the stage is all the time she needs to stop herself from crying.

Jeffrey Epstein: 1984

How did Jeffrey Epstein make all his money?

Epstein would tell stories over the years about monies recovered from slippery characters. Sometimes, friends and former associates would say, he�d suggest he had ties to the government, giving listeners the impression that he was doing dangerous, glamorous work.

Others said that what Epstein really did, at this stage in his career, was much more banal. According to them, Epstein spent most of his time coming up with creative new ways for the rich to avoid paying taxes. The commission for tax-avoidance deals was enormous, although the number of deals Epstein was involved with is a matter of conjecture, as is his record of successes and failures.

But Epstein�s business model was evolving. He�d charge a flat fee. No fancy math. No percentages.

Pay me fifty million dollars. Or pay the IRS seven times that amount.

At first Epstein did not demand his fee up front. Instead he asked that the payment-often a substantial one-be put into escrow. If his strategy worked, he�d get paid. If not, the money bounced back to the client.

In the eighties, when tax rates on the top 1 percent were much, much higher than they are today, topping out at close to 50 percent, it was an extremely effective pitch. And then there were other ways to make money.

Steven Hoffenberg: July 10, 1987

Before there was Bernie Madoff, there was Steven Hoffenberg.

In 1987, Hoffenberg was the head of Towers Financial Corporation, a company that bought debts, such as unpaid medical bills, at a very steep discount while pressing the debtors to repay in full. He�d started the company fifteen years earlier with two thousand dollars and just a handful of employees. Thanks, in part, to a grueling work ethic, he�d turned that into a much bigger concern, with twelve hundred employees and stock that traded over the counter. But Hoffenberg still spent fifteen hours each day, six days a week, in his office.

He wanted more. Hoffenberg was a Wall Street outsider. A Brooklyn boy. A college dropout, like Epstein.

One thing Hoffenberg wanted was respect. The other was someone who was familiar with Wall Street�s inner workings. Jeffrey Epstein, who had traded options for Bear Stearns, fit the bill.

Hoffenberg began paying twenty-five thousand dollars per month for Epstein�s expertise as a consultant.

The SEC had already looked into Hoffenberg�s affairs, settling with him out of court in a matter relating to unregistered securities. But Hoffenberg was dangling a very big prize.

In the 1980s, several major financial players were involved in the greenmailing of publicly traded companies. What greenmailing means, in practice, is that a brokerage house or group of investors will start buying shares in companies that seem to be vulnerable to takeover attempts. To ward off the attempts, executives at those companies will buy the shares back at a premium. It�s risky, but very often the investors stand to make a handsome profit.

Yet another thing Hoffenberg wanted was to take over Pan American World Airways. The iconic airline had already entered its downward trajectory, but it was still a giant.

For Hoffenberg, the greenmailing profits could have been huge.

Robert Meister: 1985

Robert Meister, the vice chairman of a giant insurance brokerage and consulting firm called Aon, met Jeffrey Epstein in the mid-eighties, aboard a flight from New York to Palm Beach. Both men were flying first class. Each one thought the other looked familiar. They talked in the course of that flight, and Meister filed the conversation away, only to recall it in 1989. At that time, Les Wexner, who was Meister�s friend and a client of Meister�s insurance company, was complaining to him about the people managing his money.

Wexner was a billionaire, but for all his wealth, his finances were in a tangle. Maybe Epstein could help. And perhaps Epstein would also be grateful for the introduction. Hard as it is to believe, there�s evidence to suggest that Epstein really had spent the last of his last Bear Stearns bonus-along with his share of the money he�d recovered for Ana Obreg�n-and was broke, again, at the time.

One estranged friend says that he had to loan Epstein money to pay the bill at Epstein�s garage, which had seized Epstein�s car for nonpayment.

Another estranged friend says that Epstein didn�t have two nickels to rub together.

Diana Crane, a former model, says that Epstein always had first-class upgrades he would give to his friends so they didn�t have to fly economy class.

�No one knew where or how he got them,� Crane recalls. �Sometimes they worked, and other times they didn�t. I remember he saw a friend of mine wearing a Concorde jacket. He asked if he could borrow it for a day or so. My friend never got the jacket back. But Epstein would tell people he always flew on the Concorde-a total lie.�

But even if Epstein were flush, Les Wexner would have been a big fish to catch.

From the get-go, Meister�s wife, Wendy, had her suspicions about Epstein. About the way he presented himself and the way he worked himself into their inner circle.

Before long, Wendy was calling Epstein the virus.

But for Epstein, the Meisters weren�t the point. Wexner was.

And hard as it is to understand why the billionaire would associate with a man who�d worked with a Ponzi king like Steven Hoffenberg, it turned out that Wexner and Epstein would get along perfectly well.

Ghislaine Maxwell: 1991

Robert Meister was not the only friend who helped Jeffrey Epstein, the boy from Coney Island, on his way up the social ladder. There was also Ghislaine Maxwell, a wealthy heiress from the United Kingdom who�d retained her ties to some of the world�s most glamorous and scandalous jet-setters.

Maxwell was the youngest and most favored child of one of the most famous-even infamous-men in Europe. Her father, Robert Maxwell, was a Czech refugee who had fought in the French Foreign Legion and with the British in World War II and had gone on to become a member of Parliament. By the 1960s, he�d become a media baron. Born into a Hasidic family-his birth name was J�n Ludv�k Hyman Binyamin Hoch-Maxwell died in disgrace in 1991 after falling or perhaps jumping off the side of his supersize yacht, the Lady Ghislaine.

�The shtetl Solotvyno, where I come from, it is no more,� Maxwell said a few months before his demise. �It was poor. It was Orthodox. And it was Jewish. We were very poor. We didn�t have things that other people had. They had shoes, they had food, and we didn�t. At the end of the war, I discovered the fate of my parents and my sisters and brothers, relatives, and neighbors. I don�t know what went through their minds as they realized that they�d been tricked into a gas chamber.�

Maxwell�s own death was followed by an international scandal. It turned out that he�d stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies� pension funds and used them to prop up his empire. Two of his sons were tried for conspiracy to commit fraud and ultimately exonerated. But Ghislaine, who had grown up in luxurious surroundings and counted the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, among her intimates, could not escape the dark shadow her father had cast. Looking to start fresh, she took the Concorde to New York City.

Leslie Wexner: 1993

Leslie Wexner, the richest man in Ohio, is a proud midwesterner. Born into the rag trade (Wexner�s parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants), he grew up to be a straight shooter-taciturn and camera-shy.

For several years running, his 315-foot boat, the Limitless, was the largest yacht owned by an American.

Wexner�s employees loved him, and he was known to be fiercely loyal to them.

In time, he�d come to see the same qualities in Jeffrey Epstein.

�Everyone was mystified as to what [Epstein�s] appeal was,� says Robert Morosky, a former vice chairman of the clothing retailer the Limited, founded by Wexner.

�Almost everyone at the Limited wondered who he was,� another former employee of Wexner�s recalls. �He literally came out of nowhere.�

But it seems that Epstein did work hard to untangle Wexner�s finances. And it appears he succeeded. �Jeffrey cleaned that up right away,� a former associate of Epstein�s says.

The two men became all but inseparable.

�Very smart, with a combination of excellent judgment and unusually high standards,� Wexner said of Epstein at the time. �Also, he is always a most loyal friend.�

When Wexner wanted to break up with a woman he�d been dating for several years-a woman who moved to Ohio and converted to Judaism to make him happy-he dispatched Epstein to do the dirty work.

When Wexner hired a decorator for his Ohio mansion and wanted someone to verify the authenticity of several expensive antiques, Epstein flew in his friend Stuart Pivar, the renowned art collector and author. (According to Pivar, most of the antiques were cheap imitations.) When Wexner traveled abroad, he�d bring back trinkets and gifts for Epstein. When Wexner wanted to see Cats, Epstein arranged to have the cast perform in his mansion.

Mc2 Model Management�s NYC branch is looking for �highly motivated and energetic� interns to assist their agents part-time or full-time. If you�re thinking to yourself, who?, it�s the agency founded by Jean-Luc Brunel, the guy who first signed Christy Turlington when she was just fourteen. Responsibilities include scanning pictures, answering phones, assisting with updating models� portfolios, and working in Photoshop, Word and Excel (so you have to already know what you�re doing in those). You Must: Be interested in the fashion, modeling and photography industries, outgoing, well spoken, and able to keep cool while five different people demand Starbucks / copies / phone calls / etc. This is a great opportunity to get hands-on experience at a smaller agency, plus they can offer a stipend and a Metrocard as well as school credit if needed. Send your resume to intern@mc2mm.com Good luck!

��Julia Hermanns, Fashionista, January 30, 2009

Jean-Luc Brunel: 2005

For Jeffrey Epstein, Leslie Wexner is more than a mentor. More than the last in a line of older men-father figures-whom Epstein cultivated while making his way in the world.

Wexner is also a steady, if indirect, source of beautiful women.

After all, Wexner is the man in charge of Victoria�s Secret, part of the Limited family of companies and-better yet-in charge of the Victoria�s Secret catalog. What this means for Epstein is models galore. In fact, like a fox that�s gotten hold of the lease to a henhouse, Epstein, according to evidence collected in a later lawsuit brought by Epstein victims, eventually provided financial support for a modeling agency, and provided support for models employed by that agency, in New York City.

This story begins with a Frenchman-a playboy modeling agent named Jean-Luc Brunel-who was an owner of the Karin modeling agency.

Brunel had been working as a modeling agent since the seventies. He claimed to have launched the careers of Monica Bellucci, Estelle, Jerry Hall, Rachel Hunter, Milla Jovovich, Rebecca Romijn, Kristina Semenovskaya, Sharon Stone, and Estella Warren, as well as Christy Turlington and other well-known cover girls. Brunel had also been a subject of a 60 Minutes investigation, broadcast in 1988, into sexual exploitation in the modeling industry. That expos� had caused Eileen Ford of the elite Ford modeling agency to sever her ties with the playboy. (Brunel�s activities were also chronicled in a 1995 book about the fashion industry-Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, by Michael Gross.)

But Brunel�s reputation did not prevent Jeffrey Epstein from getting involved in his business.

According to a summary judgment court filing by Bradley Edwards, a victims� lawyer defending against a lawsuit by Jeffrey Epstein alleging fabrication of sexual assault cases against him, Epstein had provided support for Brunel�s agency, which changed its name, in 2005, from Karin to MC2-as in E = mc�.

As a scout for MC2, Brunel traveled the world in search of undiscovered talent, favoring Scandinavia, Israel, central Europe, the former Soviet republics, and South America, setting up modeling competitions and negotiating with other international modeling agents and agencies.

But according to the court filing, in which Edwards detailed the information he had gathered in support of victims, Epstein and Brunel had used the agency to bring underage girls from foreign countries into the United States by promising them modeling contracts. These girls were then housed in condominiums belonging to Epstein. �Epstein and Brunel would then obtain a visa for these girls,� the document states, �then charge the underage girls rent, presumably to live as underage prostitutes in the condos.�

�I strongly deny having participated, neither directly nor indirectly, in the actions Mr. Jeffrey Epstein is being accused of,� Brunel would say. �I strongly deny having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing in the course of my work as a scouter or model agencies manager. I have exercised with the utmost ethical standard for almost forty years.�

According to Brunel, his association with Jeffrey Epstein ended up having a strong negative impact on his reputation and business. Several photographers refused to work with him. Other agencies, such as Modilinos Model Management, curtailed their relationships with Brunel. And in 2015, Brunel filed his own civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein, denying that he had any role in Epstein�s illegal activities, alleging that Epstein had obstructed justice by telling him to avoid having his deposition taken in the criminal case the Palm Beach PD had built against Epstein, and claiming that false allegations of Brunel�s links to Epstein�s activities had harmed his reputation and cost him a great deal of business.

In his filing, Brunel included several e-mails from industry contacts who expressed their doubts about placing models with his agency. �Parents don�t want their daughters coming to us because [when] they google your name and the agency name the only things they see is �Sex Trafficking�!!!� one correspondent had written.

Nadia Marcinkova: circa 2000

MC2 has offices in New York City. But Jeffrey�s always in motion-flying to his homes in New Mexico and the Virgin Islands. Often to Palm Beach. Sometimes to Paris. And when he comes home to New York he hosts parties where important people-corporate titans, real estate tycoons, university presidents, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, princes, ex-presidents, and heads of state-mingle with beautiful women.

Some guests marvel in public: Who are these women? Where do they come from?

Nadia Marcinkova comes from Slovakia. She looks like a model. But Nadia�s done very little modeling, if any. Instead she�s become another of Epstein�s girlfriends.

According to statements given to the Palm Beach police, she�s also served as a willing accomplice in Epstein�s sexual assaults on underage females.

Epstein prefers diminutive women, but Nadia is tall. She�s rail-thin and blond like the sun, with glowing skin, a wide smile, and sky-high cheekbones.

On a good day, she could pass for a Bond girl-a woman caught up in a web of crime and intrigue. But of course, that�s exactly what she is.

Virginia Roberts: 1999

Trump�s estate, Mar-a-Lago, had once belonged to the fabulously wealthy heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. It sits on twenty perfectly manicured acres less than two miles away from Jeffrey Epstein�s home on El Brillo Way. It�s home to the exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club, which has a spa, tennis courts, and a very posh restaurant.

Donald Trump had fought the town council for decades as they blocked all his efforts to turn the place into a private resort. Other clubs on the island-those with a history of excluding blacks and Jews-had never faced such restrictions, Trump had argued. At one point he sent copies of two movies to every member of the town council: Guess Who�s Coming to Dinner, in which Sidney Poitier confronts his girlfriend�s racist parents, and Gentleman�s Agreement, in which a journalist confronts anti-Semitism in Connecticut and New York City.

�Whether they love me or not, everyone agrees the greatest and most important place in Palm Beach is Mar-a-Lago,� Trump told the Washington Post after winning his battle. �I took this ultimate place and made it incredible and opened it, essentially, to the people of Palm Beach. The fact that I owned it made it a lot easier to get along with the Palm Beach establishment.�

The Breakers hotel, Trump explained, �gets the [island�s] leftovers.�

It cost $100,000 to join the club. Members paid $14,000 yearly in dues. And although Epstein had never properly joined the club, Trump�s friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell gave Epstein unlimited use of the facilities.

This arrangement ended when a member�s young daughter complained to her wealthy father: while relaxing at Mar-a-Lago, she�d been approached and invited out to Epstein�s house.

The girl said that she had gone and that Epstein had tried to get her to undress.

The girl�s father had gone directly to Trump, who-in no uncertain terms-told Epstein that he was barred from Mar-a-Lago.

Because no complaint was filed, the police had taken no action. But years later, a woman named Virginia Roberts would say that, as a young girl, she�d had an identical encounter at Mar-a-Lago.

According to a court document Virginia filed in her civil lawsuit against Epstein, she was a changing-room assistant at Mar-a-Lago, earning about nine dollars an hour, when Ghislaine Maxwell approached her. Maxwell asked Virginia if she was interested in learning to be a massage therapist-which, it turned out, she was. Like the other girl, Virginia told her father, who was also employed at Mar-a-Lago as a maintenance manager. But Virginia�s father saw nothing wrong with the offer, and he drove her, later that day, to Epstein�s house on El Brillo Way.

There, according to the document, Maxwell assured Virginia�s father that Ms. Maxwell would provide transportation home for his teenage daughter. Then she led Virginia upstairs, to a spa room equipped with a shower and a massage table. Jeffrey Epstein was lying, naked, on the table.

Virginia was shocked, she says in the filing, but, with no experience with massages, thought this could be massage therapy protocol. �Ms. Maxwell then took off her own shirt and left on her underwear and started rubbing her breasts across [Jeffrey�s] body, impliedly showing [Virginia] what she was expected to do,� the filing continues. �Ms. Maxwell then told [Virginia] to take off her clothes. The minor girl was apprehensive about doing this, but, in fear, proceeded to follow Ms. Maxwell by removing everything but her underwear. She was then ordered to remove her underwear and straddle [Epstein]. The encounter escalated, with [Jeffrey] and Ms. Maxwell sexually assaulting, battering, exploiting, and abusing [Virginia] in various ways and in various locations, including the steam room and the shower. At the end of this sexually exploitive abuse, [Epstein] and Ms. Maxwell giddily told [Virginia] to return the following day and told her she had �lots of potential.� [Epstein] paid [Virginia] hundreds of dollars, told her it was for two hours of work, and directed one of her employees to drive her home.�

At the time, Virginia was fifteen years old.

Declaration of Virginia Roberts Giuffre: January 19, 2015, filed on January 19, 2015 by attorneys representing Jeffrey Epstein�s victims

1. My name is Virginia Giuffre and I was born in August, 1983.

2. I am currently 31 years old.

3. I grew up in Palm Beach, Florida. When I was little, I loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. But my life took a very different turn when adults-including Jeffrey Epstein and his close friend Alan Dershowitz-began to be interested in having sex with me.

4. In approximately 1999, when I was 15 years old, I met Ghislaine Maxwell. She is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who had been a wealthy publisher in Britain. Maxwell asked that I come with her to Jeffrey Epstein�s mansion for the purposes of teaching me how to perform �massages� and to train me personally in that area. Soon after that I went to Epstein�s home in Palm Beach on El Brillo Way.

5. From the first time I was taken to Epstein�s mansion that day, his motivations and actions were sexual, as were Maxwell�s. My father was not allowed inside. I was brought up some stairs. There was a naked guy, Epstein, on the table in the room. Epstein and Maxwell forced me into sexual activity with Epstein. I was 15 years old at the time. He seemed to be in his 40s or 50s. I was paid $200. I was driven home by one of Epstein�s employees.

6. I came back for several days following and did the same sorts of sexual things for Epstein.

7. After I did those things for Epstein, he and Maxwell said they were going to have me travel and were going to get an education for me. They were promising me the world, that I would travel with Epstein on his private jet and have a well-paid profession. Epstein said he would eventually match me up with a wealthy person so that I would be �set up� for life.

8. So I started �working� exclusively for Epstein. He took me to New York on his big, private jet. We went to his mansion in New York City. I was shown to my room, a very luxurious room. The mansion was huge. I was very young and I got scared because it was so big. Epstein brought me to a room with a massage parlor. Epstein made me engage [in] sexual activities with him there.

9. You can see how young I looked in the photograph below [see insert page 3].

10. Epstein took me on a ferry boat on one of the trips to New York City and there he took the picture above. I was approximately 15 or 16 years old at the time.

11. Over the next few weeks, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell trained me to do what they wanted, including sexual activities. The training was in New York and Florida, at Epstein�s mansion. It was basically every day and it was like going to school. I also had to have sex with Epstein many times.

12. I was trained to be �everything a man wanted me to be.� It wasn�t just sexual training-they wanted me to be able to cater to all the needs of the men they were going to send me to. They said that they loved that I was very compliant and knew how to keep my mouth shut about what they expected me to do.

13. Epstein and Maxwell also told me that they wanted me to produce information for them in addition to performing sex on the men. They told me to pay attention to the details about what the men wanted, so I could report back to them.

14. While I had juvenile hopes of bettering my life, from very early on I was also afraid of Epstein. Epstein told me he was a billionaire. I told my mother that I was working for this rich guy, and she said �go, go far away.� Epstein had promised me a lot, and I knew if I left I would be in big trouble. I was witness to a lot of illegal and bad behavior by Epstein and his friends. If I left Epstein, he knew all kinds of powerful people. He could have had me killed or abducted, and I knew he was capable of that if I did not obey him. He let me know that he knew many people in high places. Speaking about himself, he said �I can get away� with things. Even as a teenager, I understood what this meant and it scared me, as I believe he intended.

15. I visited and traveled with Jeffrey Epstein from 1999 through the summer of 2002, and during that time I stayed with him for sexual activities at each of his houses (or mansions) in locations including New York City, New York; the area of Santa Fe, New Mexico; Palm Beach, Florida; an island in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and Paris, France. I had sex with him often in these places and also with the various people he demanded that I have sex with. Epstein paid me for many of these sexual encounters. Looking back, I realize that my only purposes for Epstein, Maxwell, and their friends was to be used for sex.

16. To illustrate my connection to these places, I include four photographs taken of me in New Mexico [see insert page 3 for one of the photographs mentioned]. The first one is a museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had gone sightseeing for the day. Epstein took this picture of me. I was approximately 17 at the time, judging from the looks of it. At the end of the day we returned to Epstein�s Zorro Ranch. The second picture is me on one of Epstein�s horses on the ranch in New Mexico. The following two are from wintertime in New Mexico.

17. When I was with him, Epstein had sex with underage girls on a daily basis. His interest in this kind of sex was obvious to the people around him. The activities were so obvious and bold that anyone spending any significant time at one of Epstein�s residences would have clearly been aware of what was going on.

18. Epstein�s code word for sexual encounters was that it was a �massage.� At times the interaction between Epstein and the girls would start in the massage room setting, but it was always a sexual encounter and never just a massage.

19. In addition to constantly finding underage girls to satisfy their personal desires, Epstein and Maxwell also got girls for Epstein�s friends and acquaintances. Epstein specifically told me that the reason for him doing this was so that they would �owe him,� they would �be in his pocket,� and he would �have something on them.� I understood that Epstein thought he could get leniency if he was ever caught doing anything illegal, or that he could escape trouble altogether.

Roberts submitted her declaration in support of a motion to be added as a plaintiff in a suit (ongoing, as of this writing) that sought to overturn a non-prosecution agreement that Jeffrey Epstein would reach with the government. Roberts was seeking to join a case brought against the government by two other victims, but a judge denied her motion in April of 2015, explaining that the case had already been pending for several years, and it was unneccesary to add an additional plaintiff.

Roberts�s declaration, which goes on for another eight pages, and makes twenty-four additional points, was stricken from the record-the judge explained that the �lurid� and �unnecessary details� involving �non-parties� to the lawsuit against the government, were �immaterial and impertinent� to the proceedings.

Through a representative, Ghislaine Maxwell called the allegations against her �obvious lies,� after which Roberts filed a defamation suit against Maxwell. In an answer filed in the suit, Maxwell elaborated that Roberts�s �story of abuse at the hands of Ms. Maxwell� was �fabricated� for financial gain.

Alicia: May 20, 1997

Donald Trump�s instincts regarding Jeffrey Epstein were solid. But if the reporters who were beginning to look into Epstein�s mysterious background had dug a bit further, there�s a chance they would have hit pay dirt as well-and not just in Palm Beach.

In California, for instance, a paper trail already stretched from the Santa Monica Police Department to Epstein�s front door.

In the spring-almost the summer-of 1997, a call came in to the police. The young woman who placed it-a young actress who�d appeared on Baywatch and General Hospital-said she�d been sexually assaulted at a trendy hotel called Shutters on the Beach.

The officer who took the call knew the woman�s name-Alicia*-and her voice. A week earlier, she�d told him about an encounter with Epstein. The woman had not wanted to make a formal complaint at the time. But she had taken the cop�s card, and now he was happy to hear that she�d changed her mind.

In a shaky voice, Alicia described Epstein as a tallish man-five feet eleven or six feet in height was her guess-with gray hair and brown eyes. He was the owner of a large black four-door Mercedes and was a regular at Shutters on the Beach, which was the kind of place that cost one thousand dollars a night and was frequented by actors, agents, and other Hollywood types.

Alicia told the cop that she was a model and actress herself. She�d known Epstein for about a month. They had a friend in common, and she�d sent him her head shots.

Then, through an assistant, Epstein had invited her to meet in his room at the hotel.

Alicia said she was having reservations, the officer wrote in his report, because generally interviews are not conducted in hotel rooms.

According to her, things turned frightening quickly.

Graydon Carter: December 2002

Graydon Carter, the legendary editor of Vanity Fair, likes to get to his office early, well before the rest of his staff files in.

Most monthly magazines operate at a leisurely pace-three weeks of coming up with ideas, assigning articles, and shooting the shit in the corporate kitchen followed by one frantic week when all the actual editing gets done. But this isn�t the case at Vanity Fair, which runs hard-hitting investigative pieces alongside its glitzy celebrity profiles. There are also parties to plan and host-incredibly glamorous parties, including the annual Oscar-night bash, which is more fun and far more exclusive than the Academy Awards ceremony itself. Vanity Fair is an old, famous brand. But Carter is its public face, just as Anna Wintour is the face of Cond� Nast�s iconic fashion magazine, Vogue.

One cover of Vanity Fair can turn a minor celebrity into a superstar. And a single thoroughly researched story can bring down a corporate overlord.

Carter�s easy to recognize: the pompadour of white hair, like a lion�s mane. The Santa Claus body stuffed into an impeccably tailored bespoke suit. He wears his fame lightly. But he could not be more serious about his responsibilities, which are weighing heavily on him this month. Months earlier, he�d assigned a piece to Vicky Ward, an Englishwoman who wrote frequently for Vanity Fair. He�d meant for it to be an easy assignment: Ward was pregnant with twins. She wasn�t allowed to fly. But here was a story right on her doorstep. A nice, easy profile of Jeffrey Epstein. Who was he, really? Carter knew he threw fabulous parties attended by academics, billionaires, and beautiful women. Recently he�d flown Bill Clinton to Africa. But no one seemed to know how he had made his fortune. Epstein�s story reminded the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald�s The Great Gatsby.

Carter himself could have stepped out of a novel-though in his case, the author would be Horatio Alger. A Canadian college dropout who�d worked as a railroad lineman, he arrived in New York in his late twenties and commenced an astonishingly quick rise up the social and media ladders. But where Carter was open and outgoing, Epstein really was Gatsby-like-very little about him was known. Maybe, Carter thought, Ward could find out. What did Epstein do, exactly, for money? Why was he so secretive? Why were so many brilliant and powerful men drawn to him? And where did those beautiful women come from?

Almost immediately, Epstein began a campaign to discredit Ward. He prevailed upon Conrad Black, the press baron and Epstein�s Palm Beach neighbor-who was also a step-uncle of Vicky Ward�s husband-to ask Ward to drop the story. But Ward was tenacious, and what she came back with was dynamite. More interesting and much more salacious than anything Carter had imagined.

Now Carter�s staff was putting in the hours it would take to confirm all the things she�d uncovered, picking the ones they could publish and laying them all out in a narrative that would be no less explosive than the facts it contained.

Vicky Ward: October 2002

Epstein went out of his way to spin the Vanity Fair story to his own ends, and soon after she got the assignment, Vicky Ward�s phone began to ring off the hook: calls from Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne, the current head of Bear Stearns; from Les Wexner; from academics, scientists, and movers and shakers who counted Epstein among their friends.

Then there were the calls from Epstein himself. He wouldn�t go on the record, but despite the rumors he�d spread behind Ward�s back, he was happy to talk informally, even give her a tour of his Manhattan mansion and trot out stories that he had dined out on for years. By most accounts, Epstein could be extremely charming-even if it had taken Ghislaine to teach him which forks to use when-and he did his best to charm Vicky Ward. But she was not easily seduced, and she turned out to have a keen eye for Epstein�s missteps.

Over tea in his town house, she noticed, Epstein ate all the finger food that had been put out for both of them. She found it odd that the only book this supposedly brilliant man had left for her to see was a paperback by the Marquis de Sade. And then there was the call afterward from one of Epstein�s assistants-a woman Ward did not know-who told her, �Jeffrey wanted me to tell you that you looked so pretty.�

Ward is pretty, with fine English features and flowing blond hair. She was also very pregnant then, with a bad case of morning sickness. She threw up often, sometimes in public, and these clumsy advances on Epstein�s part only added to her ever-present nausea. For a man who was supposedly brilliant, he�d struck her, oddly, as not very smart.

�Epstein is charming, but he doesn�t let the charm slip into his eyes,� she wrote. �They are steely and calculating, giving some hint at the steady whir of machinery running behind them. �Let�s play chess,� he said to me, after refusing to give an interview for this article. �You be white. You get the first move.� It was an appropriate metaphor for a man who seems to feel he can win no matter what the advantage of the other side. His advantage is that no one really seems to know him or his history completely or what his arsenal actually consists of. He has carefully engineered it so that he remains one of the few truly baffling mysteries among New York�s moneyed world. People know snippets, but few know the whole.�

The testimonials Epstein�s friends gave were glowing: �I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns,� Les Wexner told her. �Jeffrey sees patterns in politics and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends. My skills are not in investment strategy, and, as everyone who knows Jeffrey knows, his are not in fashion and design. We frequently discuss world trends as each of us sees them.�

�I�m on my 20th book,� said Alan Dershowitz, who�d met Epstein in 1997. �The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey.�

But Ward also talked to other sources, who had their own questions and qualms about Jeffrey Epstein. Some were involved in lawsuits against him. Others had served on prestigious boards with him. One who had witnessed Epstein�s aborted stint on the board of Rockefeller University called him arrogant.

One powerful investment manager wondered about Epstein�s conspicuous absence from New York�s trading floors. �The trading desks don�t seem to know him,� he says. �It�s unusual for animals that big to not leave any footprints in the snow.�

Ward uncovered legal documents, including Epstein�s interview with the SEC, given in the wake of his departure from Bear Stearns. She visited a federal prison in Massachusetts and spoke at length with Steven Hoffenberg, who told her that Epstein had made a major mistake in taking Bill Clinton to Africa. �I always told him to stay below the radar,� Hoffenberg said. He made other accusations, about Epstein�s financial practices, which Epstein denied-and Ward knew that Hoffenberg, the Ponzi-scheme mastermind, was not to be trusted. But she did find it strange that throughout the reporting process Epstein was much less openly concerned with what she�d found out about his finances than with what she�d uncovered about his dealings with women.

Time and again, he would call and ask her: �What do you have on the girls?�

Vicky Ward: November 2002

What I had �on the girls,�� Ward explained in a Daily Beast article published after Epstein�s arrest, �were some remarkably brave first-person accounts. Three on-the-record stories from a family: a mother and her daughters who came from Phoenix. The oldest daughter, an artist whose character was vouchsafed to me by several sources, including the artist Eric Fischl, had told me, weeping as she sat in my living room, of how Epstein had attempted to seduce both her and, separately, her younger sister, then only 16.�

Ward had written it all down in her notes. She had crossed the t�s, dotted the i�s.

But when she called Epstein to get his response, he denied the allegations completely.

�Just the mention of a 16-year-old girl,� Epstein told her, �carries the wrong impression. I don�t see what it adds to the piece. And that makes me unhappy.�

If some sort of criminal investigation had taken place, that would have been one thing. But, at that time, no criminal investigation into Epstein�s affairs had been launched. And in the absence of an investigation, the rumors of Epstein�s dealings with very young women seemed to be just that-rumors.

Graydon Carter consulted his lawyers, his editors, and his fact-checkers. And then something odd and disturbing happened at the Cond� Nast building, then in Times Square.

Todd Meister: June 2015

Harry Cipriani, on Fifth Avenue, is a New York institution. The restaurant began its life as an American outpost of Harry�s Bar-which was itself a famous American outpost in Venice. Located inside the Sherry-Netherland hotel, it�s a theme restaurant-the theme being money. And today, a hedge-fund manager named Todd Meister is talking about a very wealthy man-Jeffrey Epstein-whom he knows through his father, Epstein�s sometime friend Bob Meister.

�I�ve known Jeffrey since I was nineteen,� Meister says. �So let me tell you what I know-whatever everyone knows and everybody else says. First off, he�s no billionaire. Second off-and here�s why-he has no clue how to invest. He has people do that for him.�

Meister knows how to invest. He does it for other people and, as the son of a superrich father, for himself. He also knows about the good life. Parties in Vegas; weekends in the Hamptons; affairs with beautiful women that end up getting splashed all over the tabloids.

It makes sense that, once upon a time, he and Epstein would have gotten along.

�As for the girls,� Meister says, �that was just business. He�d seat them strategically at client dinners. When he went to the movies, he�d take three or four girls with him. They�d take turns massaging his back, arms, and legs.�

According to Meister, Epstein used to boast that he �liked to go into insane asylums because he liked to fuck crazy women.�

�Who knows if it�s true?� Meister adds. �But I�m telling you, he used to say it.�

Michael Reiter: January 2006

As far as Michael Reiter�s concerned, the case that his team has built against Epstein-slowly, meticulously, over the course of an entire year-is airtight. Even now, Detective Recarey�s finding new pieces of evidence. And already Reiter�s been laying the groundwork with prosecutors. State attorney Barry Krischer has a reputation for toughness. He�s known, nationally, for his prosecution of juvenile offenders. And Reiter�s been keeping him abreast of the investigation. With Jeffrey Epstein, it�s not simply a matter of seeing him punished. It�s a matter of getting a sexual predator off the streets of Palm Beach.

Krischer assures the chief that he�s taking this case very seriously.

The state attorney�s office will have Reiter�s back at every turn.

�I told him that we had an investigation that was very serious that involved a very noteworthy person and that involved a number of underage females,� Reiter would say in his deposition for the suit that was later settled by Epstein. �That it was of a sexual nature. I was concerned that we had not reached all of the victims, and we hadn�t, I�m sure, at this point. I told him that I felt like the suspect would probably become aware of the investigation at some point and that we should probably expect some contact from�Mr. Epstein�s lawyers. And I told him that I wanted to keep him very well informed on this and that I hoped that he would do the same. And that we would have to have more contact in making sure it was handled responsibly, intelligently, and appropriately as it moved forward.�

Reiter would say that Epstein�s name did not seem to ring a bell with the state attorney. But shortly afterward, the chief became aware that in certain powerful circles his investigation was being looked upon unfavorably. �I had many people-related conversations�on the cocktail-party circuit that suggested we approach this in a way that wasn�t necessary,� he would say.

Michael Reiter was a good cop. A good man. But he was about to discover that when it came to men with the power and influence Epstein wielded, fairness under the law was a relative, malleable concept.

Detective Recarey: February 2006

For months, Joe Recarey�s been interviewing girls who�d been brought to Epstein�s house, subpoenaing telephone and car-rental records, conducting surveillance. Ultimately, according to a source within the Palm Beach PD, the department would identify forty-seven underage girls who�d been molested on El Brillo Way.

Recarey interviewed one of Epstein�s pilots, a man named David Rogers, as well as Epstein�s houseman, Alfredo Rodriguez. He also spoke to a woman who really was a massage therapist.

It turned out that Epstein paid just one hundred dollars for actual Swedish deep-tissue massages that the therapist provided for him and his friends, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz among them.

Did anything untoward ever happen? Recarey asked. Had Epstein ever asked the woman to rub his chest?

No, she told him. She wasn�t Epstein�s type. The girls she�d seen at his house were very thin and beautiful and did not have tattoos. This massage therapist had several tattoos that were visible, and on quite a few occasions Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell had made negative comments about them.

According to a Palm Beach Police Department Incident Report filed by Recarey on July 25, 2006, the detective had also heard from Mary�s father, who said that a private eye had been to his house, photographing his family and chasing visitors away.

Mary�s dad had gotten the license plate-Florida E79-4EG.

Recarey traced it back to one Ivan Robles of West Palm Beach. Robles turned out to be a licensed private investigator.

Recarey informed the state�s attorney�s office.

Alison also contacted Recarey and told him that she�d been approached by someone who was in touch with Epstein. Alison had been told that she�d receive money if she would refuse to cooperate with the police.

Those who help him will be compensated, she was told, according to Detective Recarey�s incident report. �And those who hurt him will be dealt with.�

Recarey reassured the girl and told her that tampering with a witness in a case like this was a serious, arrestable offense.

Then he told an assistant state attorney.

The detective was leaving no i undotted and no t uncrossed.

But he did wonder if the state attorney�s office itself had become part of the problem.

Barry Krischer: April 2006

State attorney Barry Krischer was an elected official, but before taking his post, he�d been a lawyer in private practice in and around Palm Beach. Elected twice to his office, in 1992 and 1996, he had run unopposed for state attorney in 2000 and 2004. During the course of his long career, which began in 1970 with a three-year stint in the district attorney�s office in Brooklyn, he received a number of awards: the pro bono award from the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County for his service with the juvenile justice system and for his work with the child protection team; the Peace at Home award, presented by Governor Jeb Bush, for his work with victims of family violence; a lifetime achievement award from the Florida Bar. He was a board member of the National District Attorneys Association. And he was not necessarily averse to going after the rich and powerful. In 2003, he launched an investigation into Rush Limbaugh�s use of, and means of obtaining, oxycodone and hydrocodone. (A few years after Limbaugh�s arrest, which coincided with Chief Reiter�s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the talk-show host settled with prosecutors, agreed to submit to random drug testing, and gave up his firearms permit.)

Krischer himself, however, had been accused of sexual misconduct.

In October of 1992, Jodi Bergeron, a legal secretary who�d worked for Krischer, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him in the Palm Beach County circuit court. That suit was dismissed, but a few months later, the woman took Krischer to federal court, accusing him of making unwanted advances and demanding recompense for battery, negligence, invasion of privacy, and emotional distress.

Krischer had placed his hands, violently, inside her blouse, the woman said. He�d forcibly fondled her breasts, forcibly kissed her, and rubbed her shoulders while brushing her buttocks with his hands and knees, all while accompanying the gestures with verbal advances.

When she declined those advances, the woman claimed, Krischer fired her.

Krischer denied the allegations. At the time, he was making his first run for the state attorney�s office. The charges were politically motivated, he said. Members of a local chapter of NOW-the National Organization for Women-had stood by the lawyer, citing his efforts to stop domestic violence, among his other virtues.

�I am here to support Barry Krischer for the work his office did in my daughter�s case,� one woman said during a rally that took place in front of the courthouse. �Her murderer received the maximum sentence, a life sentence.�

The second lawsuit had also been dismissed-after Krischer�s former law firm agreed to pay Bergeron�s attorney seven thousand dollars in legal fees.

Palm Beach Police Department Incident Report Filed by Detective Joseph Recarey: July 25, 2006

Michael Reiter: May 2006

A plea offer?

Chief Reiter is outraged. His team has logged thou-sands of hours of work. They�ve assembled mountains of evidence. But instead of going to trial, the state attorney wants to see Epstein get off with a misdemeanor, five years of probation, and a psych exam.

Why?

Alan Dershowitz has presented the prosecutors with his own pieces of evidence-printouts from the victims� Myspace pages.

In her �About Me� column, under �Best physical feature,� Mary has written �Ass and eyes.�

Under �Ever drank� and �Ever smoked pot,� she�s written �Yeah.�

Under �Ever shoplifted�: �Lots.�

Under �Ever skinny dipped�: �Yeah.�

Under �[Do] you wanna lose your virginity�: �I already lost it.�

One of the victims has been caught with drugs and arrested. She�s also been caught stealing from Victoria�s Secret. From the state attorney�s perspective, these girls look like compromised women. And if what they say about Epstein is true, wouldn�t that make them prostitutes?

As witnesses, they would be weak, while the lawyers on Epstein�s side were exceptionally strong.

Alan Dershowitz had represented Claus von B�low, the British socialite who was acquitted of the murder of his wife, Sunny. Dershowitz had been on O. J. Simpson�s team when the former football star was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and Nicole�s friend Ronald Lyle Goldman. And rich as von B�low and Simpson had been, neither one had had the resources that Epstein was willing and able to deploy in his own defense.

Neither of them had been intimate friends with his lawyer.

As far as Reiter was concerned, none of that mattered. Even if Epstein thought that the girls he�d molested were eighteen years old-even if they had lied to him-it didn�t matter under Florida law. The chief grew worried that in Epstein�s case exceptions were being made, and he grew even more concerned with each unreturned call that he made to the state attorney�s office.

On May 1, the Palm Beach PD asked the state attorney�s office to issue an arrest warrant for Jeffrey Epstein.

That same day, Chief Reiter took the extraordinary step of writing Barry Krischer a letter all but demanding that he recuse himself from the case.

Videotaped Deposition of Michael Reiter in B.B. vs. Epstein, a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein: November 23, 2009

Q:At some point you sent a letter to state attorney Barry Krischer. Let me show you what we�ll mark as exhibit 3. Let me give you a chance to read through this letter again to help refresh your recollection.

A:I�ve read it.

Q:At this point, in May of 2006, I�m assuming based on what you told us before that you had had some conversations with Barry Krischer directly�by phone-correct?-prior to this letter.

A:I had conversations in person and by phone.

Q:Okay. But nonetheless in May-May 1, 2006-you felt the need to write this letter; is that correct?

A:Yes.

Q:Can you tell us why?

A:Well, I felt the handling-and just continued to feel that the way the state attorney�s office handled this case was extremely unusual. I knew that Mr. Krischer was making decisions about this case. I felt that his objectivity was lacking, and I felt that the appropriate way, after reading the statute that governed the assignment of cases to other circuits-I felt that his action met the standard. I used some of the words from the statute in here. And I attempted to call him, and he wouldn�t return my phone calls.

The detective attempted to contact-his contact in the state attorney�s office, Lanna Belohlavek, however you pronounce that�and she wouldn�t return his calls. So I wrote the letter in hope that he would think about his situation and realize that his objectivity was insufficient to prosecute the case and ask the governor to appoint someone else. And I felt like that was necessary for a fair prosecution of our case that had been submitted to him.

Q:Could you tell us, explain to us, why you felt that his objectivity may be lacking in regards to this prosecution�? In other words, what evidence did you see here, uncover, that you felt made it potentially nonobjective?

A:Well�when I first told him about the case, and I realized that it was a serious case, [that] there were multiple victims, [and] that the suspect was very well known, I told him about it. And we were-it was in person. I talked to him after a meeting that he and I were both involved in. And I had known him to be a victim advocate and to protect the rights of children. Well, I know that he even wrote a portion of the statute that addresses those issues. And when I told him originally, he said, �Let�s go for it; this is an adult male in his fifties who�s had sexual contact with children of the ages of the victims.� He said this is somebody who we have to stop. And whatever we need, he said, in the state attorney�s office, we have a unit that�s equipped to investigate and prosecute these kinds of cases. And I didn�t have too many facts early on when I talked with him, but I knew that there were multiple victims and to our detectives they were believable. So when time went on and Mr. Epstein became aware of the investigation and his lawyers contacted the state attorney�s office, they told me that.

And from that point on, and I believe it was Mr. Dershowitz initially, the tone and tenor of the discussions of this case with Mr. Krischer changed completely. [At] one point he suggested that we write [Epstein] a notice to appear, which would be for a misdemeanor. He just completely changed from not only our first conversation about this[-when] he didn�t know the name Jeffrey Epstein-till when he had been informed on Mr. Epstein�s reputation and his wealth, and I just thought that very unusual.

I feel like I know him or knew him very well, the state attorney, and I just felt like he could not objectively make decisions about this case: that is why I wrote it.

Detective Recarey: May 2006

Chief Reiter�s letter to the state attorney had no perceptible effect.

Krischer did not recuse himself from the case. No arrest warrant was issued. And on the afternoon of May 3, Detective Recarey received a telephone call from assistant state attorney Daliah Weiss, who advised him that she had been taken off the Epstein case.

Weiss had been the perfect person to prosecute Epstein. As a member of the special victims unit, she focused on sex crimes and crimes against children, prosecuting high-profile cases involving rape, aggravated child abuse, and neglect. But Epstein had added another lawyer, a man named Jack Goldberger, and made Goldberger his attorney of record.

Goldberger was friendly with Barry Krischer-and an associate of Goldberger�s was married to Daliah Weiss.

If Epstein�s legal team had wanted to remove Weiss from the case, this would have been a good way to do it.

Nine days later, Detective Recarey met with ASA Lanna Belohlavek, who told him that her boss, Barry Krischer, had asked her again to take the case to the grand jury. Recarey told Belohlavek that he had already requested arrest warrants for Epstein, Sarah Kellen, and Wendy Dobbs. The Palm Beach PD had finished its investigation months earlier, he said, and had been waiting since then for the case to move forward. He asked her once more to issue the warrants. Once again Belohlavek declined, saying that the original offer her office had made to Epstein�s old lawyer had been resubmitted to the new lawyer. When Epstein�s reply came, she would call.

While waiting for that call, Recarey received several calls from Mary�s father, who told him that he was being followed by a green Chevrolet Monte Carlo-tailed so aggressively that other vehicles were being run off the road. Recarey ran the plates and found that the Chevy was registered to one Zachary Bechard of Jupiter, Florida.

Bechard was a licensed private eye.

Mary: July 2006

On June 29, assistant state attorney Lanna Belohlavek told Detective Recarey that despite his protestations, the case would be going to a grand jury after all. One had been convened for July 19.

On July 12, Recarey spoke with Mary�s stepmother, who said that she still hadn�t heard from the state attorney�s office. This, too, was odd, since Recarey knew that Mary would be called upon to testify.

She was back in Palm Beach now, after months of living with out-of-state relatives.

All in all, it had been a very tough year for Mary.

�What has happened to my daughter�s life is criminal,� her father would say.

Mary had been sent to a school for troubled children. For her it was the wrong place at the worst time in her life. She had gotten into more fights there, growing depressed and withdrawn from her sister and parents. Helplessly, her parents watched her spiral out of control. As they neared the end of their rope, they sent her out of state. But after the move, Mary had fallen apart completely. She used drugs, fell in with a bad crowd, ran away from her relatives, and shacked up with a gang of drug dealers.

When the gang was busted by local police, the dealers blamed Mary for snitching and put out the word that they wanted her dead.

�We had to move her again,� Mary�s father explained. �We finally got her into therapy-she�s still seeing the therapist. And worst of all, she developed HPV. She�s already had to have a serious operation.�

Mary�s troubles didn�t end there. On June 28, she was brought in front of the grand jury. She hadn�t been briefed by the state attorney-she hadn�t even met the prosecutors-and she had no idea what she would be asked.

Almost immediately, she found that she was being treated more like a criminal than like a witness or victim.

�The prosecutor produced a printout of our daughter�s Myspace page,� Mary�s father recalls. �Mary was stunned. She began to cry. The prosecutor accused her of all sort of things; it was like she was working for Epstein.

�All this time, we knew that we were being watched. Creepy guys. Private investigators from Miami. They would follow us, scaring the hell out of my wife and Mary�s sister. My car was vandalized. It was like living in hell.�

By this point, Epstein�s defense dream team included Jack Goldberger, Alan Dershowitz, and Gerald Lefcourt. All of them had excellent track records. Dershowitz and Lefcourt were two of America�s most famous lawyers, and before long, another celebrity lawyer-Ken Starr, the former solicitor general who had had Bill Clinton impeached for perjury-would join Epstein�s team.

As far as Mary�s parents were concerned, their daughter had walked into an ambush. Everyone in the courtroom seemed to be playing defense on the side of Jeffrey Epstein. And as for the second girl-Alison, who claimed that she had been raped-she never testified in court at all.

Michael Reiter: July 2006

On July 28, the grand jury reached a verdict that floored the Palm Beach PD.

The original plea deal that Krischer had offered to Epstein had been bad enough. Now the grand jury was recommending that Epstein be charged with just one felony count of solicitation of prostitution.

There was no mention of underage girls. The original accusation-four felony counts of unlawful sex acts with minors and one felony count of lewd and lascivious molestation-had simply evaporated.

It wasn�t enough to send Epstein to prison.

Epstein was allowed to surrender on a Sunday, when no one would know he�d been arraigned. A few hours later, he was released on three thousand dollars bail.

The Palm Beach PD was not even notified.

Once again, Chief Reiter was outraged. So much so that he took the extraordinary step of calling the FBI and the federal prosecutor�s office.

At the time, the federal prosecutor of the Southern District of Florida was a Republican named R. Alexander Acosta. Chief Reiter recalls being present at Acosta�s swearing-in ceremony and remembers Acosta�s declaration that one of his goals would be the prosecution, to the fullest extent of the law, of anyone who takes advantage of the weak-especially perpetrators of sex crimes. Disgusted with Krischer�s laissez-faire attitude, Reiter recalls thinking he�d found his man.

In Acosta, the chief saw a prosecutor who wouldn�t shy away from confronting a man with Jeffrey Epstein�s resources and connections.

But it turned out that Acosta had worked under Ken Starr at Starr�s high-powered multinational law firm, Kirkland & Ellis. And while Acosta had a sterling r�sum�, which included a stint clerking for future Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, he had only argued two cases before a judge.

At the time, Reiter did not know this. All he knew was that someone had to look much more seriously into Jeffrey Epstein�s crimes.

Reiter�s actions did not necessarily make him a hero-at least, not in every corner of the community he served.

�I had individuals suggest that the department�s approach to the investigation and my referral of the investigation to the FBI was more horsepower than the investigation deserved. And I had other individuals suggest that-yeah, the term �back off� probably fits,� Reiter said in his deposition for B.B. vs. Epstein.

�I had people in the community in Palm Beach who either made comments directly to me or to others who relayed them to me that I didn�t need to take the tack in the investigation that we did, which is [to] completely investigate it and then refer it to the FBI after the state case was resolved,� Reiter said in the deposition. �I had one individual who came to see me a couple of times about this.�

According to the chief, the individual in question was a prominent Palm Beach politician.

�He said this wasn�t necessary; this was a case that was really very minor,� Reiter recalled. �The victims had lifestyles that don�t make them-shouldn�t make them believable to the police department.�

�I told him that those kinds of suggestions to me were improper and he should stop,� said Reiter. �That he had taken a couple of steps down the road toward something that could eventually constitute a crime. We talked several times. Early on it didn�t end favorably. You know, this is an individual [whom] I had to interact with in my official capacity and in his official capacity as well.�

The Palm Beach politician wasn�t the only one to pressure the police chief. �I received comments from a variety of different viewpoints�in some cases I had people tell me, hey, he�s a Palm Beacher, why are you investigating a Palm Beacher?� Reiter would say when deposed. �I had people that said it was an unfavorable career move for me to ask the state attorney to remove himself from the case and to refer it to the FBI�I had plenty of people that told me that that was a mistake.�

Reiter didn�t back off. To have done so would have been a betrayal-not only of the victims but also of his vocation and the community he had sworn he would serve.

�My responsibility was to protect everyone that lives in Palm Beach and preserve their constitutional rights and be the police department for all,� Reiter said. �And I think that under the law, particularly under the criminal laws, that all people have to, by the nature of our system, be treated exactly alike.�

But along with handing the case off to the FBI and the US attorney, Reiter took another unusual step. He wrote personal letters-on Palm Beach PD letterhead-to the parents of the victims in the case.

He delivered the letters by hand.

Jeffrey Epstein: September 2007

In the winter of 2013, Scott Blake, a forty-seven-year-old middle school principal from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, would be sentenced to the minimum mandatory sentence-ten years in prison, with ten years of probation on top-for pleading guilty to one charge of soliciting sex with a minor.

Blake�s crime? He sent sexually charged messages to a Boynton Beach police officer who was pretending to be a fifteen-year-old boy. But in a sense, Blake was lucky: he could have been sentenced to life. The case was an interesting example of the kind of treatment regular Florida folks could expect just for soliciting sex with a minor. But nothing about Jeffrey Epstein was regular-and the plea deal he managed to strike in 2007 was simply extraordinary.

Epstein had bought himself one of the best defense teams ever assembled. His connections and contributions to Democratic causes had made him a player on that side of the political aisle. He had a famous Republican, Bill Clinton�s nemesis, Ken Starr, working the other side. And just to make sure they�d covered the bases, Epstein�s team also recruited Roy Black-the lawyer who�d cleared William Kennedy Smith of rape and kept Rush Limbaugh out of prison for his alleged illegal drug use-and Jay Lefkowitz, a defense attorney who�d worked with US attorney R. Alexander Acosta at Ken Starr�s law firm.

And so in September, the US attorney�s office reached a formal agreement with Epstein�s team: the United States would defer federal prosecution in favor of prosecution by the state of Florida.

A non-prosecution agreement (NPA) was drafted; among other things, it assured Epstein that he would not be prosecuted in the Southern District of Florida for felony offenses involving the sexual abuse of underage girls. (By that point, thirty known victims had been discovered.) Instead it allowed him to plead guilty to state felony offenses for solicitation of prostitution and the procurement of minors for prostitution. The NPA established a procedure that allowed Epstein�s victims to sue him in civil court and took the extraordinary step of ensuring that �any potential co-conspirators� of Epstein�s would be immune from prosecution.

�In consideration of Epstein�s agreement to plead guilty and to provide compensation in the manner described above, if Epstein successfully fulfills all of the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein,� the agreement stated, mentioning Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marcinkova by name.

�The parties anticipate that this agreement will not be made part of any public record,� the document concludes. �If the United States receives a Freedom of Information Act request or any compulsory process commanding the disclosure of the agreement, it will provide notice to Epstein before making that disclosure.�

Remarkably, despite assurances they�d received from the feds, none of the victims was consulted prior to the drafting of this NPA.

If Epstein did not sign the agreement, he faced a fifty-seven-count indictment and a decade or more in prison. But Epstein�s team of lawyers had gotten him a deal so sweet it could have rotted all the teeth in South Florida.

For all his protestations of innocence, there was every reason in the world to agree to an NPA.

On September 24, 2007, Epstein did sign it.

Once again, none of the victims had been consulted or notified.

Jane Doe: February 2008

As a result of the non-prosecution agreement, a fifty-three-count indictment that federal prosecutors had prepared against Jeffrey Epstein-one that claimed he�d abused dozens of underage women-never was filed.

But as far as lawyers representing Epstein�s victims were concerned, the fact that those victims were not consulted about the non-prosecution agreement was inexcusable. The �government deliberately kept crime victims �in the dark� so that it could enter into a plea arrangement designed to prevent the victims from raising any objections,� they would argue, in documents filed on February 10, 2016. For nine months, the lawyers claimed, from the time that the NPA was signed, on September 24, 2007, Krischer�s office, �doing Epstein�s bidding, [had] concealed the NPA�s existence from victim[s]� and continued to do so until the moment that Epstein had to plead guilty in court, which he finally did June 30, 2008.

In the interim, according to their lawyers, Epstein�s victims were only told, �This case is currently under investigation.�

A lawsuit that Bradley Edwards, a victims� rights attorney in Fort Lauderdale, filed in July of 2008 cited the Crime Victims� Rights Act, or CVRA (title 18, section 3771, of the US Code), which states that �victims of federal crimes have rights, including the right to be heard in court, and most particularly, not to be precluded from court proceedings, and the right to be treated fairly.�

According to him, prosecutors had violated the CVRA rights of the victims. Edwards, who said he was working pro bono, knew that this suit against the government would not allow for monetary recovery of any sort (including lawyers� fees). But he also knew that if the government, urged by Jeffrey Epstein, had entered into a contract that improperly or illegally violated the rights of Epstein�s victims, then that contract, by nature, would have been improper in and of itself-in which case, the only remedy would have been to have the contract invalidated. And while it is difficult to know what, exactly, would happen if the contract is overturned, one possibility is that the government could prosecute Epstein for crimes against his victims, if the statute of limitations on those crimes has not expired.

At the time of this writing, that case is winding its way through the courts. It has all the earmarks of a modern-day Bleak House-the Charles Dickens novel about a legal case that is so massive and so complex that it drags on forever and drags everyone involved into the mire.

Jeffrey Epstein: June 30, 2008

On June 30, 2008, more than three years after the start of Officer Pagan�s investigation into his dealings with underage girls, Jeffrey Epstein reported to the Palm Beach County jail.

A few days earlier, Epstein had taken a phone call from the New York Times. At the time, he�d been working, or vacationing (the line having long since blurred), at his compound on Little Saint Jeff�s.

�I respect the legal process,� Epstein had said. �I will abide by this.�

He�d spent years fighting the charges-fighting the state, then the federal government, in an effort to avoid a sentence that would have seen him emerge from prison an old man. But the battle had aged him. Mellowed him, even. Months earlier, he had all but boasted to a journalist from New York magazine.

�It�s the Icarus story, someone who flies too close to the sun,� that journalist said in reference to �the agony� of Epstein�s legal �ordeal.�

�Did Icarus like massages?� Epstein responded.

But after Epstein�s indictment, there were no more boasts. For the most part, he kept silent in public and retreated into his Eyes Wide Shut world. And when the New York Times did manage to get him to speak on the record, he spoke like a chastened man.

Sitting on his patio down on Little St. James, Epstein likened himself to the shipwrecked Gulliver after he washes ashore on Lilliput.

�Gulliver�s playfulness had unintended consequences,� he said.

On the eve of his departure, he had a few more things to say:

�That is what happens with wealth. There are unexpected burdens as well as benefits��

�Your body can be confined, but not your mind��

�I am not blameless��

Outside of the agreement he�d signed with the prosecutor�s office, this was the closest Epstein had come to admitting his guilt. But strange details were sprinkled throughout the story. He had formed a �board of directors of friends� who would counsel him on his behavior. And, seemingly for the first time, he�d hired a full-time masseur-a man.

Readers of the New York Times might have wondered: Epstein was going to jail for eighteen months. What need would he have for a full-time masseur?

The story�s last line hinted at the answer: in preparation for incarceration, Epstein had set up an e-mail alert.

From then on, his automatic reply would read �On vacation.�

Jeffrey Epstein: June 30, 2008

The Palm Beach County Main Detention Center is on the west side of Lake Worth Lagoon, which separates West Palm Beach from the island of Palm Beach. Epstein�s home on El Brillo Way is five miles to the east. Mary�s high school is several miles to the west.

It�s fitting, somehow, that this jail-which is the jail Epstein ends up in, after turning himself in to the local sheriff-lies in between the two points.

The detention center�s inmates, their families, and their lawyers call it the Gun Club, a reference not only to the jail�s address, on Gun Club Road, but also to its population of hustlers, burglars, drug dealers, rapists, and murderers. There�s the occasional hooker as well. And, from time to time, Haitian refugees are lodged there.

There are three thousand inmates in all.

Some wait a year before making their way to the courthouse, their date with the public defender, and an appearance before the judge. Some get out much sooner, if only they can make bail. But there�s no bail without money-or at least collateral-and, of course, being without money is often what lands people in jail in the first place.

Jeffrey Epstein could have posted bail for every single inmate in the Gun Club.

But that�s just one of the ways in which Epstein is unlike his fellow inmates. He�s an admitted pedophile now. Even a famous one.

And, famously, pedophiles tend to fare poorly in jail.

Luckily for Epstein, Ric Bradshaw, the sheriff in charge of local jails, transfers Epstein to the infirmary, where he spends exactly one night before being transferred seven miles up the road to a much smaller, safer location: the Palm Beach County Central Detention Center-or, as it�s known, the Stockade.

�It�s not somewhere we�d put a serial killer,� Ric Bradshaw says.

Most of the residents here are addicts who take part in drug education programs, prostitutes, petty criminals, and drunks. It�s a far safer place for Epstein to be, and, unlike other inmates (except, of course, those being held in solitary), he�ll end up with his own cell, even his own wing, which he has to himself. Epstein�s allowed to pay for a security guard, who sits outside the cell and keeps watch. And he�s allowed any number of visitors.

For a convicted felon, it�s an extraordinary benefits package.

But according to Sheriff Bradshaw, who also oversees the Stockade, Epstein is incredulous over the treatment he is receiving.

�He was astonished that he had to go to prison at all,� Bradshaw remembers.

�Let�s just say he didn�t think he belonged there.�

Sheriff Ric Bradshaw: June 2015

Our job,� says Ric Bradshaw, �was to make sure nobody killed him.�

Sheriff Bradshaw could have stepped off the set of a Western. Imposingly tall, with his cowboy hat, Kurt Russell mustache, and slow, southern drawl, he looks exactly like an old-school law officer-the kind you once would have found patrolling the streets of Tombstone, Deadwood, or Dodge City. He�s been a lawman for forty-four years, eleven of which have been spent as the head of the county�s jails. As a rule, he doesn�t talk to the media, and today, as he talks about Jeffrey Epstein, he�s clearly uncomfortable, fidgety, and ill disposed.

But here in his wood-paneled office on the first floor of the Gun Club, Bradshaw remembers Epstein quite well.

�We have a thousand sexual predators in the county,� he says. �When he arrived here, he was one of them. He definitely fit the category we have to ensure the general population is not going to take their anger out on.�

Although he understands that Epstein is a sex offender and has a sense of the scope of his alleged crimes, Bradshaw�s also aware that the actual conviction was for a �low-level felony.� At the request of Epstein�s attorneys-a request that is confirmed by a court order-Epstein is quickly granted �work release.�

What it means in practice is that six days a week, for up to sixteen-sixteen!-hours each day, Epstein is allowed to leave the Stockade to be driven by a designated driver in a car earmarked especially for him to any one of three places: his lawyer Jack Goldberger�s office in downtown West Palm Beach, the Palm Beach office of a science foundation that he�s established, and his house on El Brillo Way.

Despite the ankle bracelet he wears, it could be argued that as a fabulously rich prisoner with two of his own jets parked nearby, at the Palm Beach International Airport, Epstein might have posed a flight risk.

Instead, every day of the week save one, he�s allowed to go to his lawyer�s, to go to his office, or simply to go home.

Did the deputy in charge of Epstein go to the house on El Brillo Way?

Ric Bradshaw considers the question.

�Yes,� he says, �he did.�

Did the deputy go inside the house?

�Yes, he did.�

If so, the deputy might have encountered Nadia Marcinkova, who was staying on El Brillo Way at the time. He may also have met a suave short-haired gentleman who spoke with a distinct French accent.

That would be Jean-Luc Brunel.

For the duration of Jeffrey Epstein�s stay-or half stay-in the Stockade, Brunel�s taken up residence in the house on El Brillo Way.

Jeffrey Epstein: June 30, 2008-July 21, 2009

According to Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, the treatment Jeffrey Epstein received in the Stockade was not preferential. By some measures, he isn�t wrong.

In 2010, millionaire polo mogul John Goodman killed a young man while driving drunk. He was convicted but was allowed to spend two years under house arrest while his appeal was being tried.

Like Epstein, Goodman was allowed visitors. But Goodman�s visitor list was nothing like Jeffrey Epstein�s.

Nadia Marcinkova is said to have visited Epstein in jail more than seventy times.

Epstein�s assistant Sarah Kellen also visited Epstein in the Stockade.

A Russian mixed martial artist named Igor �Houdini� Zinoviev was another visitor, as was a disbarred lawyer and financial fraudster named Arnold Prosperi, whose own prison sentence had been commuted by Bill Clinton on the day before Clinton left office.

Sheriff Bradshaw wants to be clear: none of these visits was conjugal.

But even US attorney Acosta, who negotiated Epstein�s unusual agreement with the government, would say that Epstein�s arrangement was highly irregular.

�Epstein appears to have received highly unusual treatment while in jail,� Acosta would say in a letter addressed to the general public. �Although the terms of confinement in a state prison are a matter appropriately left to the state of Florida and not federal authorities, without doubt, the treatment that he received while in state custody undermined the purpose of a jail sentence.�

And, of course, Epstein�s stay at the Stockade was subsidized by taxpayers.

R. Alexander Acosta�s letter to the general public, March 20, 2011

To whom it may concern:

I served as U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida from 2005 through 2009. Over the past weeks, I have read much regarding Mr. Jeffrey Epstein. Some appears true, some appears distorted. I thought it appropriate to provide some background, with two caveats: (i) under Justice Department guidelines, I cannot discuss privileged internal communications among department attorneys and (ii) I no longer have access to the original documents, and as the matter is now nearly 4 years old, the precision of memory is reduced.

The Epstein matter was originally presented to the Palm Beach County State Attorney. Palm Beach Police alleged that Epstein unlawfully hired underage high-school females to provide him sexually lewd and erotic massages. Police sought felony charges that would have resulted in a term of imprisonment. According to press reports, however, in 2006 the State Attorney, in part due to concerns regarding the quality of the evidence, agreed to charge Epstein only with one count of aggravated assault with no intent to commit a felony. That charge would have resulted in no jail time, no requirement to register as a sexual offender and no restitution for the underage victims.

Local police were dissatisfied with the State Attorney�s conclusions, and requested a federal investigation. Federal authorities received the State�s evidence and engaged in additional investigation. Prosecutors weighed the quality of the evidence and the likelihood for success at trial. With a federal case, there were two additional considerations. First, a federal criminal prosecution requires that the crime be more than local; it must have an interstate nexus. Second, as the matter was initially charged by the state, the federal responsibility is, to some extent, to back-stop state authorities to ensure that there is no miscarriage of justice, and not to also prosecute federally that which has already been charged at the state level.

After considering the quality of the evidence and the additional considerations, prosecutors concluded that the state charge was insufficient. In early summer 2007, the prosecutors and agents in this case met with Mr. Epstein�s attorney, Roy Black. Mr. Black is perhaps best known for his successful defense of William Kennedy Smith. The prosecutors presented Epstein a choice: plead to more serious state felony charges (that would result in 2 years� imprisonment, registration as a sexual offender, and restitution for the victims) or else prepare for a federal felony trial.

What followed was a year-long assault on the prosecution and the prosecutors. I use the word assault intentionally, as the defense in this case was more aggressive than any which I, or the prosecutors in my office, had previously encountered. Mr. Epstein hired an army of legal superstars: Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, former Judge and then Pepperdine Law Dean Kenneth Starr, former Deputy Assistant to the President and then Kirkland & Ellis Partner Jay Lefkowitz, and several others, including prosecutors who had formerly worked in the U.S. Attorney�s Office and in the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department. Defense attorneys next requested a meeting with me to challenge the prosecution and the terms previously presented by the prosecutors in their meeting with Mr. Black. The prosecution team and I met with defense counsel in Fall 2007, and I reaffirmed the office�s position: two years, registration and restitution, or trial.

Over the next several months, the defense team presented argument after argument claiming that felony criminal proceedings against Epstein were unsupported by the evidence and lacked a basis in law, and that the office�s insistence on jail-time was motivated by a zeal to overcharge a man merely because he is wealthy. They bolstered their arguments with legal opinions from well-known legal experts. One member of the defense team warned me that the office�s excess zeal in forcing a good man to serve time in jail might be the subject of a book if we continued to proceed with the matter. My office systematically considered and rejected each argument, and when we did, my office�s decisions were appealed to Washington. As to the warning, I ignored it.

The defense strategy was not limited to legal issues. Defense counsel investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for personal peccadilloes that may provide a basis for disqualification. Disqualifying a prosecutor is an effective (though rarely used) strategy, as eliminating the individuals most familiar with the facts and thus most qualified to take a case to trial harms likelihood for success. Defense counsel tried to disqualify at least two prosecutors. I carefully reviewed, and then rejected, these arguments.

Despite the army of attorneys, the office held firm to the terms first presented to Mr. Black in the original meeting. On June 30, 2008, after yet another last minute appeal to Washington D.C. was rejected, Epstein pled guilty in state court. He was to serve 18 months imprisonment, register as a sexual offender for life, and provide restitution to the victims.

Some may feel that the prosecution should have been tougher. Evidence that has come to light since 2007 may encourage that view. Many victims have since spoken out, filing detailed statements in civil cases seeking damages. Physical evidence has since been discovered. Had these additional statements and evidence been known, the outcome may have been different. But they were not known to us at the time.

A prosecution decision must be based on admissible facts known at the time. In cases of this type, those are unusually difficult because victims are frightened and often decline to testify or if they do speak, they give contradictory statements. Our judgment in this case, based on the evidence known at the time, was that it was better to have a billionaire serve time in jail, register as a sex offender, and pay his victims restitution than risk a trial with a reduced likelihood of success. I supported that judgment then, and based on the state law as it then stood and the evidence known at the time, I would support that judgment again.

Epstein�s treatment, while in state custody, likewise may encourage the view that the office should have been tougher. Although the terms of confinement in a state prison are a matter appropriately left to the State of Florida, and not federal authorities, without doubt, the treatment that he received while in state custody undermined the purpose of a jail sentence.

Some may also believe that the prosecution should have been tougher in retaliation for the defense�s tactics. The defense, arguably, often failed to negotiate in good faith. They would obtain concessions as part of a negotiation and agree to proceed, only to change their minds, and appeal the office�s position to Washington. The investigations into the family lives of individual prosecutors were, in my opinion, uncalled for, as were the accusations of bias and/or misconduct against individual prosecutors. At times, some prosecutors felt that we should just go to trial, and at times I felt that frustration myself. What was right in the first meeting, however, remained right irrespective of defense tactics. Individuals have a constitutional right to a defense. The aggressive exercise of that right should not be punished, nor should a defense counsel�s exercise of their right to appeal a U.S Attorney to Washington D.C. Prosecutors must be careful not to allow frustration and anger with defense counsel to influence their judgment.

After the plea, I recall receiving several phone calls. One was from the FBI Special Agent-In-Charge. He called to offer congratulations. He had been at many of the meetings regarding this case. He was aware of the tactics of the defense, and he called to praise our prosecutors for holding firm against the likes of Messrs. Black, Dershowitz, Lefkowitz and Starr. It was a proud moment. I also received calls or communications from Messrs. Dershowitz, Lefkowitz and Starr. I had known all three individuals previously, from my time in law school and at Kirkland & Ellis in the mid 90s. They all sought to make peace. I agreed to talk and meet with each of them after Epstein pled guilty, as I think it important that prosecutors battle defense attorneys in a case and then move on. I have tried, yet I confess that this has been difficult to do fully in this case.

The bottom line is this: Mr. Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire, served time in jail and is now a registered sexual offender. He has been required to pay his victims restitution, though restitution clearly cannot compensate for the crime. And we know much more today about his crimes because victims have come forward to speak out. Some may disagree with prosecutorial judgments made in this case, but those individuals are not the ones who at the time reviewed the evidence available for trial and assessed the likelihood of success.

Respectfully,

R. Alexander Acosta

Former U.S. Attorney

Southern District of Florida

Jeffrey Epstein: July 2009

Jeffrey Epstein walks out of the Stockade on July 21, 2009, having served less than thirteen months of his eighteen-month sentence. One of the concessions his lawyers have gotten while working out his plea-deal guarantees is that the media not be alerted to the time and day of his departure.

But from now on, Epstein, who is fifty-six, will carry the mark of a level 3 sex offender-level 1 being the lowest, and level 3 indicating the highest possible risk of a future criminal act of a sexual nature. Wherever he goes, he will be forced to register as such.

Every ninety days, Epstein will have to check in with the authorities. Every year, the New York City Police Department will take his mug shot. And for a full year, Epstein will be under house arrest in Palm Beach.

This last prohibition doesn�t stop him from flying, with court approval, on his own planes to New York and to Little Saint Jeff�s, where the locals have taken to referring to Epstein�s 727 as the Lolita Express.

There are other restrictions, of course, that Epstein is supposed to abide by. He has to provide the state of Florida with a list of all the motor vehicles, boats, and airplanes he owns. The full list includes two Escalades, six Suburbans, two Ford F-150s, two Harley-Davidsons, a Land Rover, a Hummer H2, a thirty-four-foot JVC boat, and a thirty-five-foot Donzi powerboat.

Three of his five planes turn out to be registered to a company called Air Ghislaine, Inc.

As a registered sex offender, Epstein is legally obliged to undergo psychiatric treatment. This is a restriction he�ll get around by having his own psychologist submit a report to law enforcement officers.

Epstein is also prohibited from accessing pornography on the Internet and using social networking for sexual purposes.

For Jeffrey Epstein, there will be no Bangbros, Tinder, or Swingles.com.

There will be lawsuits.

Six weeks before probation ends, he settles with seven women who sue him in civil court. But Epstein can easily afford the settlement payments. He won�t be going back to jail, and in regard to further prosecution for any criminal actions, his troubles are behind him.

Not everyone who�s spent time in his company will be so lucky.

Alfredo Rodriguez: August 2009

Epstein�s houseman, Alfredo Rodriguez, also ends up with a prison sentence.

In a sworn statement, Rodriguez talks about Epstein�s maid, Lupita, who had complained to him about having to clean up after Epstein�s �massages.� Lupita, who was a devout Catholic, had cried as she described the stained towel and sex toys.

Rodriguez was fired by Epstein, he says, when he called 911 after seeing a strange car-a �beater�-in Epstein�s driveway.

As it turned out, the car had belonged to one of Epstein�s masseuses.

On his way out of the house on El Brillo Way, he took some of Epstein�s papers, which he failed to produce when questioned by Chief Reiter�s investigators.

For years, Rodriguez tried and failed to find work as a house manager. No one wanted to hire someone who�d worked for Jeffrey Epstein. Finally, desperately, he tried to sell the information he�d stolen.

The papers named underage girls and the places where Epstein had taken them. The list included locations in California, Paris, New Mexico, New York, and Michigan. The papers also included the names, addresses, and phone numbers of famous individuals-Henry Kissinger, Mick Jagger, Dustin Hoffman, Ralph Fiennes, David Koch, Ted Kennedy, Donald Trump, Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton, and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak among them.

This was intriguing, if not at all damning. Epstein made a habit of collecting such information for future use. But information pertaining to the girls would have bolstered the state�s case against Jeffrey Epstein, and by withholding it from the Palm Beach PD and the FBI, Rodriguez had committed a crime.

In his defense, Rodriguez would say that the papers were an �insurance policy.� Without them, he believed, Epstein would have made him �disappear.�

But now Rodriguez needed the money. And so a few weeks after Epstein�s release from the Stockade, he approached a lawyer who was representing some of Epstein�s masseuses. He had the �holy grail,� he insisted. A �golden nugget.� The names of hundreds of girls, he said, who had been abused by Epstein.

The lawyer told Rodriguez in no uncertain terms that he was obliged to turn whatever he had over to the authorities. By demanding money for the information, Rodriguez was committing another crime.

According to a sworn statement by Christina Pryor, a special agent with the FBI, Rodriguez �persisted that he would only turn over the information in his possession in exchange for $50,000.�

Prince Andrew: 2011

Prince Andrew also fares poorly in the wake of Epstein�s imprisonment.

The two men are old friends. They have been ever since Ghislaine Maxwell introduced the prince to her then-beau, sometime in the 1990s. In 2000, Epstein had been invited to Windsor Castle to celebrate the queen�s birthday. Six months later, Epstein flew to Sandringham, the queen�s estate in Norfolk, England, for a party Prince Andrew threw for Ghislaine�s thirty-ninth birthday.

The prince had also visited Epstein on several occasions, in Palm Beach as well as in New York. And if allegations Virginia Roberts made in her 2015 declaration are to be believed, Epstein asked her to give the prince whatever he required, then report back with the details.

According to the Guardian, Epstein and the prince had partied together at Windsor Castle, in Saint-Tropez, and in Thailand, where �Andrew was pictured on a yacht surrounded by topless women.�

According to Roberts�s lawsuit, Epstein had forced her into the prince�s bed on Little Saint Jeff�s.

Anna Salter: November 2015

Why do powerful men do the things that Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew have been accused of doing?

Dr. Anna Salter studies child sex offenders professionally. Educated at Harvard, with a graduate degree in clinical psychology, she spoke, with the benefit of hindsight, about Jeffrey Epstein and others like him from her office in Madison, Wisconsin.

�Consider a car,� says Dr. Salter. �There�s a motor, and there are brakes. We all have sexual impulses we don�t think it would be a good idea to act on. Most of us have good control over our behavior. We have good brakes.

�Sexual offenses and inappropriate sexual behavior are sometimes the result of a bad motor-for example, an attraction to prepubescent children or eleven-to-fourteen-year-old pubescent children as opposed to postpubescent individuals. But they are always the result of bad brakes.

�Antisocial psychopaths don�t have brakes at all.�

Dr. Salter has never met Epstein, but she�s followed his case closely and finds him a familiar type. She�s especially struck by the singular nature of the relationship between powerful, wealthy men and vulnerable, underage women.

�[The men] are more impressive to a fourteen-year-old [girl] than to, say, an adult young woman who is self-supporting and feels more sure of herself,� she explains.

�They are attracted to what they call freshness-barely budding sexuality and lack of sexual experience. The difference between them and their victims feeds their ego.

�Great wealth and access are generally factors that make men feel they are entitled to whomever and whatever they want. Some have narcissistic personalities with inflated self-images. And of course, great wealth and status make such men think they can get away with it. Too often, they�re right.�

On the other hand, Dr. Salter believes that certain conditions, such as the ones exhibited by Jeffrey Epstein, might be an inborn character trait.

Personality can be influenced, sometimes quite heavily, by genetics.

�Virtually no one believes anymore that humans are born a totally blank slate,� she explains.

�We arrive with temperamental and personality variations that, of course, the environment can often, but not always, influence. We arrive with baggage.�

Is Epstein a born psychopath, then?

�Psychopathy is the umbrella term for individuals who do not have a conscience. Pyschopaths are often narcissistic, but narcissists are often not psychopathic. Some individuals who prey on young girls delude themselves into thinking that the abuse will not harm the child. They have a conscience, but they have medicated it with thinking errors. Others are flat-out psychopathic and simply don�t care if it hurts the young girl or not. I can�t say anything about Epstein, as I have not evaluated him, but narcissism and psychopathy are concepts an evaluator would look at concerning anyone who was sexually attracted to postpubescent individuals but who then began to focus on younger teens.

�Psychopaths are often superficially charming, high-stimulus seekers who are bored if not doing something. They lie, con, and manipulate. They do not establish deep affective ties.

�They are callous and remorseless individuals who simply don�t feel bad about harming someone.

�Rules don�t apply to them because they are exceptional. They are sure they won�t get caught.�

Jeffrey Epstein: July 2010

Jeffrey Epstein was done with jail, but he wasn�t done settling suits brought by his victims. Under the conditions of his non-prosecution agreement, he�s even paid for the victims� lawyers. Still, Epstein�s NPA seemed to ensure that he would not be prosecuted again for his crimes. Double jeopardy was working in Epstein�s favor. But in July of 2010, reports began to appear in the press: federal investigators were following other leads-leads that could result in child-trafficking charges and a twenty-year sentence.

The Florida attorney general�s office refused to comment. It was against policy to confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation. One of Epstein�s lawyers told the Daily Beast that he had no knowledge of such an investigation. �Jeffrey Epstein has fully complied with all state and federal requirements that arise from the prior proceedings in Palm Beach,� Jack Goldberger said. �There are no pending civil lawsuits. There are not and should not be any pending investigations, given Mr. Epstein�s complete fulfillment of all the terms of his non-prosecution agreement with the federal government.�

If there was an investigation, nothing had come of it yet. For the moment, Epstein was free-free to turn his attention, again, to intellectual pursuits. He launched a website, JeffreyEpsteinScience.com, that featured blog posts such as �Conversations with Jeffrey Epstein,� �The Value of Quantum Computation to Jeffrey Epstein,� �Why Evolutionary Biology Intrigues Jeffrey Epstein,� and �An Understanding of Theoretical Physics from Jeffrey Epstein.� The latter post began: �This is where Jeffrey Epstein takes you to the very cutting edge of the frontiers of knowledge to explore and discuss our basic understanding of the subtle, simple, and hidden [qualities] that lie beneath�our universe.�

Al Seckel: January 2012

Epstein�s partner in the Mindshift conference, a man named Al Seckel, was known for throwing fabulous parties that were said to have included the actor Dudley Moore, magician James �the Amazing� Randi, and future Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, as well as many of the scientists Jeffrey Epstein would court in the course of his own climb up the social ladder.

In certain Los Angeles circles, Al Seckel was a very good man to know. But, like Jeffrey Epstein, Seckel was a sort of illusionist. According to Mark Oppenheimer, a journalist who knew Seckel and followed his career for fifteen years, Seckel made his money by selling rare books and papers, often through his social and academic connections.

�A number of these transactions resulted in accusations and lawsuits,� Oppenheimer would write. �In speaking to former Seckel acquaintances, I kept hearing variations on a scheme Mrs. Pearce Williams believed he perpetrated against her late husband, the man Seckel said was his mentor. Seckel took books and promised money, or he took money and promised a book; but somehow, the promised party lost money.�

�He was charming, erudite, humorous,� one of Seckel�s marks told the reporter. �I lent him $75,000. When the time came to pay it back he didn�t want to do it.�

Oppenheimer found several people whom Seckel had stiffed and uncovered dozens of lawsuits he�d been involved in. In 2007, Seckel settled a libel lawsuit against a man who�d edited his Wikipedia page. Years later, Oppenheimer spoke with Seckel�s lawyer, Nicholas Hornberger.

�Hornberger confirmed that he�d reached a settlement for the case, a favorable one,� the journalist wrote. �Hornberger added that Seckel has still not paid him for his services.�

He also interviewed Seckel�s wife, Isabel Maxwell.

Al and Isabel met on a blind date and married in Malibu in or �around� 2007 (�I don�t keep the dates in my head,� Seckel explained). A few years later, they moved to the South of France, where Seckel continued to trade in rare books and papers. While living in France, he was sued by a Virgin Islands company that accused him and Isabel of fraudulently attempting to sell rare books and a seventeenth-century portrait of Isaac Newton.

Seckel had also been trying to sell papers belonging to Isabel�s father.

Isabel is Ghislaine Maxwell�s sister and the daughter of Robert Maxwell.

Jeffrey Epstein: February 2, 2011

It�s Groundhog Day, and once-reclusive Jeffrey Epstein is hitting the peak of his fame in a ripped-from-the-headlines episode of Law & Order: SVU that tracks, eerily well, with his own legal history.

The setup for this episode is the rape of a very young French girl. One who�s been flown to New York on a very rich man�s private jet, then flown back-coach class-to Paris.

On the plane, she has a freak-out. She thinks the middle-aged guy sitting next to her is trying to rape her. In Paris, the local police get involved.

�It was just a birthday party,� the tearful girl tells the SVU cops via videoconference from France. �We were his present.�

The cops ask: Whose present?

�The billionaire. The one who owns the jet.�

Does the French girl know his name?

�Jordan. He wanted a massage. But I had to take off my clothes. He climbed on top of me. It hurt. I started to bleed, and it wouldn�t stop. The doctor came.�

�Dominique,� the cops say. �We�re going to arrest this man. But we need you to return to New York so you can testify.�

�Non,� says the girl. �Non! Jamais! Jamais!�

Alan Dershowitz: September 2014

If the ongoing lawsuits are costing Epstein millions, he has millions left to spare. Meanwhile, the FBI�s investigation into whether Epstein trafficked underage women across state lines seems to be going nowhere. As 2014 draws to a close, it�s beginning to look as if Epstein is finally free and clear of the case.

But for Epstein�s friend and sometime lawyer Alan Dershowitz, things are about to get very unpleasant.

At the start of 2008, Bradley Edwards, the Fort Lauderdale lawyer, had filed a motion in a West Palm Beach court on behalf of two unnamed women accusing Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz of participating directly in Epstein�s illegal activities.

Prince Andrew had had no comment to make, and Dershowitz had objected to the accusations in the strongest possible terms.

�There�s absolutely no kernel of truth to this story,� he�d said. �I don�t know this woman. I�ve never been in the same place with her. She�s made the whole story up out of whole cloth.�

Bradley Edwards had already become involved in lawsuits against Epstein. In 2007, working with a former federal judge and University of Utah law professor named Paul Cassell, he had filed a lawsuit on behalf of another unnamed woman. Six years later, that case is still pending, and now, Edwards and Cassell petition to have the two suits combined.

All in all, four Jane Does take part in the lawsuit.

Jane Doe 3 is Virginia Roberts, the girl who says that Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her for Epstein at Trump�s resort, Mar-a-Lago.

Epstein had �lent� her and other young girls to prominent businessmen, important politicians, world leaders, and other powerful men in order �to ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain blackmail information,� Roberts claims.

She says that Epstein forced her and other underage girls to take part in an orgy in the Virgin Islands.

She names Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz as two of the men she�d been forced to have sex with and claims that Dershowitz had been �an eyewitness to the sexual abuse of many other minors by Epstein and several of Epstein�s co-conspirators.�

This time, Prince Andrew does respond to the allegations.

�This relates to longstanding and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States, to which the Duke of York is not a party,� Buckingham Palace says in a short statement. �As such we would not comment on the detail. However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.�

Alan Dershowitz also goes on the attack. Virginia�s claims are part of a plot to extort him, he claims. The motion that Edwards and Cassell have filed is �the sleaziest legal document� he�s ever seen.

�They manipulated a young, suggestible woman who was interested in money,� Dershowitz says. �This is a disbarrable offense, and they will be disbarred. They will rue the day they ever made this false charge against me.� It�s a vehement denial. But then, the allegations made by Virginia Roberts, on January 15, 2015, in a declaration filed against the government in an attempt to overturn Jeffrey Epstein�s non-prosecution agreement, are highly disturbing.

Declaration of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, filed on January 19, 2015 by attorneys representing Jeffrey Epstein�s victims (continued)

20. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz was around Epstein frequently. Dershowitz was so comfortable with the sex [that] was going on that on one occasion he observed me in sexual activity with Epstein.

21. I had sexual intercourse with Dershowitz at least six times. The first time was when I was about 16, early on in my servitude to Epstein, and it continued until I was 19.

22. The first time we had sex took place in New York in Epstein�s home. It was in Epstein�s room (not the massage room). I was approximately sixteen years old at the time. I called Dershowitz �Alan.� I knew he was a famous professor.

23. The second time that I had sex with Dershowitz was at Epstein�s house in Palm Beach.

24. I also had sex with Dershowitz at Epstein�s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico in the massage room off of the indoor pool area, which was still being painted.

25. We also had sex at Little Saint James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

26. Another sexual encounter between me and Dershowitz happened on Epstein�s airplane. Another girl was present on the plane with us.

27. I have recently seen Alan Dershowitz on television calling me a �liar.� He is lying by denying that he had sex with me. The man I�ve seen on television, described as a former law professor, is the same man that I had sex with at least six times. Dershowitz also knows that Epstein had sex with other underage girls and lent me out to other people, but he is lying and denying that�

28. After years of abuse and being lent out, I began to look for a way to escape. I had first gone into Epstein�s household because I wanted to be a massage therapist. Epstein had taken me into his clutches through promises and talk and for some time I believed him. But once he had me under his control, regardless of my doubts and fears, I felt trapped.

29. I kept asking Epstein for my promised training and education. Epstein finally got me a plane ticket to Thailand to go to Chiang Mai to learn Thai massage. This sounded like my chance to escape. In September 2002, I packed my bags for good. I knew this would be my only opportunity to break away.

30. On September 27, 2002, I flew from JFK in New York to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I arrived around September 29 for my training. But Epstein was going to get something out of this trip as well. I was supposed to interview a girl and bring her back to the United States for Epstein.

31. [Left blank in the original]

32. I did the massage training in Chiang Mai. While I was there, I met a great and special guy and told him honestly what I was being forced to do. He told me I should get out of it. I told him that the people I was working for were very powerful and that I could not walk away or disobey them without risking serious punishment, including my life. He told me he would protect me. I had confidence [in] him and I saw his love and help as my opportunity to escape and to be with someone who truly loved me and would protect me. I married him and flew to Australia.

33. I called Epstein and told him I was not coming back. He asked why? I said �I�ve fallen in love.� Epstein basically said �good luck and have a good life.� I could tell he was not happy. I was afraid of what he was going to do to me. I thought he or one of his powerful friends might send someone to hurt me or have me killed.

34. From that point onward, out of concern for my safety and general well-being, I stayed in Australia with my husband. I was in Australia from late 2002 to October 2013. To be clear, I was never in the United States during these years, not even for a short trip to visit my mother. And my absence from the United States was not voluntary-I was hiding from Epstein out of fear of what he would do to me if I returned to the United States.

35. In around 2007, after not hearing from anyone for years, out of the blue I was contacted by someone who identified himself with a plain sounding name and claimed he was with the FBI. It seemed very odd for someone doing an official criminal investigation to just call up on the phone like that. I hadn�t heard Epstein�s name for years. I didn�t know who this person was and what it was really about. I couldn�t tell what was going on.

36. This man said he was looking into Jeffrey Epstein. The man asked if I had been involved with Epstein. My first instinct was to say nothing because I wasn�t sure he was really with the FBI or any authorities. I answered a few basic questions, telling him that I knew Jeffrey Epstein and had met him at a young age. But the conversation didn�t feel right. This man never offered to come and meet with me in person. Instead, he asked me right off the bat about Epstein�s sexual practices. I thought it would be strange for a true law enforcement officer to behave that way, so I became increasingly uncomfortable and suspicious about who was actually calling me.

37. I told the man nothing more about Epstein. The conversation probably didn�t even last three minutes, but it immediately triggered all of the fears of Epstein and his powerful friends that had caused me to escape in the first place. If the call accomplished anything, it only put me back in a state of fear and told me that I could be found quite easily and had nobody officially protecting me.

38. I suspected that the man who called me was working for Epstein or one of Epstein�s powerful friends. I believed that if this was really an agent who was investigating Epstein, he would have known who I was and how I fit into Epstein�s sexual crimes in many different places. He would have interviewed me in a way that would have established his credentials and would have shown how he could provide potential protection from Epstein. That never happened.

39. Getting a call from this supposed FBI agent made me scared all over again. I had left the old life of sexual slavery behind me and started a new life in a new country in hopes that the powerful people whose illegal activities I knew all about would never find me.

40. Shortly after this purported FBI call, I was contacted by telephone by someone who appeared clearly to be working for Epstein. The caller told me about an investigation into Epstein and said that some of the girls being questioned were saying that Epstein had had sexual contact with them. After they made these allegations, the man said they were being discredited as drug addicts and prostitutes, but in my case, if I were to keep quiet, I would �be looked after.� The fact that this call was made shortly after the supposed FBI call reinfor[c]ed my concern that the man I had talked to earlier was not really working for the FBI but for Epstein. I didn�t think that the FBI and Epstein would both be working together and would both get my phone number at almost exactly the same time. I played along and told this person that I had gotten a call from the �FBI� but that I didn�t tell him anything. The person on the phone was pleased to hear [that].

41. A short time later, one of Epstein�s lawyers (not Alan Dershowitz) called me, and then got Epstein on the line at the same time. Epstein and his lawyer basically asked again if I was going to say anything. The clear implication was that I should not. The way they were talking to me, I was afraid of what would happen if I didn�t keep quiet. My thought was that if I didn�t say what they wanted me to say, or not to say, I might get hurt.

42. I promised Epstein and his lawyer that I would keep quiet. They seemed happy with that and that seemed to me to [be the] way to keep me and my family safe. And I did what Epstein and his lawyer told me. I kept quiet.

This declaration, stricken from the record by the judge in the victims� lawsuit against the government, also set in motion events that led to Dershowitz�s and Roberts�s lawyers becoming involved in spectacular lawsuits, which included a complaint by Dershowitz that these allegations were false and had defamed him, and a complaint by Edwards that Dershowitz�s accusations against him were false and defamatory.

Alan Dershowitz: October 2015

About fifteen minutes into the ripped-from-the-headlines episode of Law & Order: SVU that was inspired by the Jeffrey Epstein saga, the plot takes an interesting turn: before officers have a chance to arrest him, Jordan, the character modeled on Epstein, shows up at SVU headquarters.

The twelve-year-old French girl raped him, Jordan says.

Wearing a monogrammed fleece pullover like the ones favored by Jeffrey Epstein, he describes an evening at home.

�The party was in full swing,� he explains. �A friend said she wanted to give me a special present. Told me to wait in my massage room-�

An SVU guy interrupts: �Guy has a massage room?�

�I suffer from chronic back pain,� Jordan says.

�While I was waiting, I fell asleep. Now, at first I thought I must be dreaming. I was aroused. I felt myself being manually manipulated. Then I remembered it was my present. I started to enjoy myself. But then it got rough, and that�s when I opened my eyes.�

�What did you see?�

�A woman. A woman I�d never seen before.�

�A woman? Dominique Moreau was twelve!�

�It was dark. I just wanted her off of me. I tried to stop her.�

�But the twelve-year-old overpowered you?�

�No. She threatened me. She said if I didn�t let her�continue, she was going to scream �Rape.��

�And there was nothing that you could do? You�ve got forty years and a hundred pounds on the girl.�

�The party was going on right outside the door. I knew how this was going to look. I was naked. She was naked. What could I do?�

It was a brilliant plot twist-one that ultimately allowed Jordan to get off scot-free.

But the plot twist that Epstein�s own story ended up taking on the day of Alan Dershowitz�s deposition at a Broward County, Florida, courthouse was even more surprising.

Excerpts from the Deposition of Alan Dershowitz: October 15, 2015

9:46 a.m.

Scott Rothstein: 2009

Scott Rothstein was a flashy Fort Lauderdale ex-lawyer who parked his collection of cars in an air-conditioned warehouse, kept a copy of the Torah on his desk, and hung a portrait of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone outside his office. One of his nicknames was TPOFD, short for �the Prince of Fucking Darkness,� and in private, he�d say things like: �Understand that the repercussions of engaging me could open the gates of hell. Understand that I am capable of evil far beyond anything your imagination could ever conjure up.�

Rothstein hosted receptions for prominent politicians-John McCain, Bobby Jindal, Arnold Schwarzenegger-and handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time in campaign contributions. He gave millions more to charitable institutions: the Joe DiMaggio Children�s Hospital; the American Heart Association. By all outward appearances, he could afford it: seventy lawyers worked in his firm, which had offices in Florida, New York, and Venezuela. But Rothstein�s millions actually came from a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme he�d been running since 2005.

In April of 2009, Bradley Edwards joined Rothstein�s firm. The lawyer brought his papers along, and Rothstein showed those pertaining to Epstein to potential investors. In exchange for a lump sum up front, Rothstein said, investors would receive a far larger chunk of money later, which Epstein would pay in future settlements.

Edwards and Rothstein both say that Edwards had no knowledge whatsoever of the Ponzi scheme. (Prosecutors, and the Florida Bar, agree.) Edwards left as soon as he caught wind of the scheme, in November of 2009. But the few months he spent in Rothstein�s company gave Dershowitz the opening he needed to pry open Virginia Roberts�s accusations.

It was at Edwards�s insistence, Dershowitz would say, as well as Paul Cassell�s, that Virginia Roberts added Dershowitz�s name to the list of men she claimed had abused her.

According to Dershowitz, he�d been pulled into a billion-dollar extortion plot Edwards had hatched. And for Edwards and Cassell, there had been a secondary benefit: Dershowitz had helped to work out Epstein�s confidential non-prosecution agreement with the government. By implicating him directly in Epstein�s abuse of underage women, Dershowitz claimed, Edwards and Cassell were trying to �open up� that agreement.

It might have been a Hail Mary pass on the part of Alan Dershowitz.

But the argument had its own internal logic.