‘Can’t believe Virginia Giuffre’: Ghislaine Maxwell refutes Andrew picture

Sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell claims the night when a now infamous photograph was taken of Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre never happened.

Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell at her London townhouse. Picture: AFP.

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed Virginia Giuffre kept changing her story over claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew; and the night when a now infamous photograph was taken of the three of them never happened.

Speaking for the first time from behind bars in her Florida prison, Maxwell delivered a scathing take down of Ms Giuffre, who dropped an eight-year legal claim against the US lawyer Alan Dershowitz late last year believing she may have made a mistake over his identity.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 after being found guilty of the enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls for pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who apparently killed himself in prison in 2019.

She said Ms Giuffre’s memory was so bad “you can’t credit anything she says. and once you retract on too many claims that your memory is faulty, you have to question everything she said’’.

In an interview with Talk TV host Jeremy Kyle, Maxwell said of the 2001 night when the photo was supposed to have been taken: “I don’t believe it happened, certainly the way as described was impossible. It would have been impossible. I don’t have any memory of going to (private London nightclub) Tramp (where Ms Guiffre said Andrew danced with her, after which they had sex). Certainly it’s not an outfit I would have worn.”

Ghislaine Maxwell pictured in prison.

Andrew has claimed he could not remember Ms Giuffre, and the royal’s friends have claimed the photograph was faked.

Maxwell agreed: “Well, it’s a fake. I don’t believe it’s real for a second. In fact I’m sure it’s not … There’s never been an original. Further, there’s no photograph; I’ve only even seen a photocopy of it.”

Her claims oppose previous comments, when she confirmed the picture was authentic. Ms Giuffre said she provided the FBI with the photograph, which she said was taken in 2001, as well as giving it to a Mail on Sunday photographer in 2011 and has previously ridiculed suggestions that the image was not real.

She has claimed to have been pimped by Epstein to Andrew on three occasions when she was 17: in London, on the billionaire financier's private Caribbean island, and at one of his properties in the United States.

Andrew is currently considering legal action to overturn a US$20m civil settlement he struck with Ms Giuffre last year.

Maxwell, 61, appeared on the show via a telephone link where she repeatedly rubbed her hair out of her eyes and appeared tired.

She said she honestly wished she’d never met Epstein, whom she described as “awful” and said she should have stayed in Britain.

She had moved to the United States meeting Epstein shortly after her media mogul father Robert Maxwell had died in 1991 found floating in the sea off the Canary Islands.

During the interview Maxwell said she believed Epstein, who died in 2019, had been murdered. He had been facing further sex charges and was found dead while detained inside the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York.

She said: “I believe that he was murdered. I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened because as far as I was concerned, he was going to … I was sure he was going to appeal. And I was sure he was covered under the non-prosecution agreement.”

Blaming prison officials for letting Epstein die, she advised his victims to take out their anger on US authorities.

“I say that Epstein died and they should take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities who allowed that to happen,” she said, adding: “I hope they have some closure by the judicial process that took place,” she said.

“But I wasn’t in the indictment. I wasn’t mentioned. I wasn’t even one of the co-conspirators.

“I honestly wish I had never met him.

“Looking back now, I probably wish I had stayed in England. But leaving that aside, you know, I tried to leave and start another new job and move on from the end of ’98, ’99.

“So I wish I had been more successful in moving on. “Because I’d been a banker and so I should have moved on completely.”

Maxwell added that at the time she didn’t know Epstein “was so awful” adding, “obviously now, looking back with hindsight, of course”.

She said of her tarnished public image: “I feel completely divorced from the person that people reference and talk about in all the various newspaper articles and TV shows and podcasts.”