Epstein’s Shadow: How Ghislaine Maxwell went from socialite to inmate

A true-crime documentary tells the fascinating, inside story of the enigmatic Ghislaine Maxwell, girlfriend of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

There are occasional moments of odd humour to assuage the sordid monstrousness of the tale told in Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislane Maxwell.

Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell is proving popular viewing and is part of the so-called true crime boom across the TV streaming services. This boom has arisen to satisfy an increasing interest not only in grisly events involving serial killers and seemingly unpremeditated murders but also the problems caused by police brutality, corporate greed, government corruption and human rights violations.

Most of all we love stories of character; those investigative narratives where real lives are interfered with, real ongoing criminal cases, which sift through evidence, the filmmakers standing in for us creating something whole from fragments of story.

There seems to be a genuine desire to better understand why people act – and react – as they do in extreme circumstances, and why they contribute to, or even create, the terrible situations in which they find themselves.

Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell is directed by Barbara Shearer, a 20-year veteran reality producer who got her break with an HBO documentary called Women Who Love Killers, about those who fall in love with and, in many cases, marry convicted murderers. Shearer’s latest film is the three-part inside story of Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman who suffered an extraordinary fall from grace.

She is, of course, the British socialite on remand in a notoriously tough detention centre in Brooklyn, New York, with guards at the facility checking in on her every 15 minutes at night by shining a torch against the roof of her cell to make sure she is breathing.

She faces six counts including sex-trafficking of a minor and sex-trafficking conspiracy, as she allegedly procured underage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein and his high-powered friends to sexually abuse. There are a further two charges relating to allegations of perjury in 2016. And newer charges allege Maxwell recruited a 14-year-old girl to provide Epstein with sexualised massages between 2001 and 2004. The girl allegedly was paid hundreds of dollars in cash in return and was encouraged to recruit other young women.

Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to the sex trafficking and other charges.

This is one of those true-crime documentary series that exerts a kind of cloying fascination, exploring mysterious real-life cases of sex, greed, mendacity, betrayal, financial perfidy and murder lurking inside some of the world’s richest homes.

Just how do these people get away with such things? How was it possible for a sexual predator such as Epstein to act with such impunity for so long? Was he in fact aided by his powerful friends, some of whom were possibly involved in what has been called his “pyramid of sexual abuse”? And just who was the woman at his side, the elusive presence who remained so mysterious after he was arrested, seemingly allowed to hide from public view.

Shearer takes a fast and furious look at the life and times of Maxwell, following the investigation and the resolution so far, drawing us to the crossover between celebrity and justice. She calls her approach “colouring in the lights”, fascinated by the way “so many people didn’t even know the name until she was arrested, yet she had been with him for more than 20 years’’. The first episode details Maxwell’s evolution, the second her trajectory and the third her downfall.

Maxwell, the daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell, a ruthless Czech-born Holocaust survivor and war hero, was in a relationship with the financier in the 1990s. Shearer points to similarities between the two men, both having come from impoverished backgrounds, insatiably drawn to money, many of their business dealings unethical, both manipulative egomaniacs.

Epstein’s primary co-conspirator, Maxwell allegedly introduced him to wealthy and powerful figures including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew. Writer Anna Pasternak, a university friend, suggests that “Ghislaine set her sights on Jeffrey Epstein, who could give her the lifestyle she’d become accustomed to”.

As the series shows, Maxwell was the Oxford-educated life of the party, constantly photographed with the rich and famous, from Mick Jagger to Naomi Campbell. “She ran with the fast crowd; Ghislaine was just impossible fun,” says the rather woebegone Christopher Mason, a key interview subject and former friend, sitting forlornly on a sofa into which he almost disappears. “She was able to figure out the comedic potential of everyone at the table so she could have you in stitches.”

Shearer starts her investigation with a terrific opening sequence where Maxwell, head down, a large furry hood obscuring her features, walks quickly down a Manhattan street, hands jammed into her pockets. Horns blare loudly. A reporter traipses along beside her holding out her microphone, trying to keep pace. “Have you anything to say?” she manages to say breathlessly. “Happy New Year,” drawls Maxwell in a well-bred accent. “Have you spoken to Prince Andrew?” Maxwell answers, face hidden, “I made a statement, thank you.” The politeness is biting, the sense of superiority withering; she’s obviously too bright and far too entitled to be entangled in any tabloid sordidness.

For all the recent publicity, Maxwell has remained enigmatic, not only Epstein’s shadow but a somewhat ghostly presence in his evil schemes, so complex, so bizarre, they might have emerged from a Michael Connelly novel. “You’ve got a woman who has been written about and we know has connections to a man who is very much talked about, and yet she’s still a mystery,” says executive producer Emma Cooper, another documentary veteran, who likes to shine a forensic light on high-profile cases.

When she and Shearer were approached about the series they were driven by the invisibility that seemed to cloak Maxwell. Their starting question: “Who is she and how come there’s so little that we know about her?”

The idea is to attempt to find a context through Maxwell’s life for the whole repugnant affair. How did a daughter of entitlement – her father also died under strange circumstances – become involved with a sex trafficker? The incongruity is gold for a biographer and Shearer is an experienced filmmaker in this area, expert at imposing the illusion of order on random events.

Shearer investigates whether in fact it was Maxwell’s class background that habituated her to the alleged criminality, a young woman who seemed to need to be constantly surrounded by powerful men. As her Oxford contemporary Pasternak says: “She was daddy’s little girl. But it all went wrong when daddy turned out to be a crook.”

Shearer’s series is relatively conventional in its approach, mainly a parade of talking heads, interviews with former friends, journalists, lawyers, business associates and alleged victims, “a mosaic which is pretty well-rounded”, according to Cooper.

And it is too. Shearer and her collaborators somewhat relentlessly pile on the details at a propulsive pace, the producers looking for “overlapping testimony” from the 30 on-camera interviews. Many “former friends” understandably refused to co-operate, some even buying the copyright to photos in London and New York to remove pictures from the market that shows them with Ghislaine or Epstein.

There’s also rare footage of the Maxwell family and previously unseen photos along with unsealed court depositions. Interviewees include Prince Andrew’s former girlfriend, Lady Victoria Hervey, former close friend Mason and alleged victim Maria Farmer. And there’s fascinating footage of Maxwell unearthed from a 1992 interview in Central Park. This interview gives some idea of the cryptic mysteries and secrets she carries within her as she’s asked about happiness.

There are occasional moments of odd humour to assuage the sordid monstrousness of the tale. Early in the first episode, there’s a clever, rather witty montage of various newsreaders and commentators struggling to pronounce Ghislaine, the “h” giving them all the terrors. And the soundtrack matches the urgency of Shearer’s presentation of the material, pressing and a little tense, nothing bombastic but simply allowing viewers to determine a scene’s mood or subtext.

It’s certainly a compelling tale of privilege, power and hubris, demonstrating rather graphically what the acerbic Dominick Dunne, that wonderful chronicler of the misdeeds of the rich in his various TV shows, called “the ugly part of being famous”.

There’s also an enticing sense of what crime writer James Ellroy calls “fragrant disorder” about this series that makes it so utterly alluring and takes us to the centre of that scary danse macabre, where the law in the US is such a part of the entertainment industry.

Farmer, one of the most vocal of Epstein’s alleged victims, should have the last word, having spent so much time with Maxwell. “These are the wealthiest people in the world and they have the most power,’’ she says.

“There’s only one way that they don’t get away with everything and that’s if they are killed. So either she gets away with everything, or she gets killed.”

Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell is streaming on Stan.