‘Creepy Epstein party attended by Andrew was like Eyes Wide Shut’

It was billed as Jeffrey Epstein’s return to high society. Katie Couric recalls body-part art, a prince, and a mystifying guest list.

Jeffrey Epstein, left, and Prince Andrew, right. Pictures: Supplied/AFP

It was billed as Jeffrey Epstein’s return to high society: a dinner party where the paedophile, fresh from serving a prison term, hosted the Duke of York, broadcasters and celebrities at his Manhattan townhouse.

In the years since, most of the guests have become reluctant to speak of it. But the television presenter Katie Couric has offered a vivid description of the evening in her book, comparing the setting to the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, in which a secret society gathers in a mansion for masked orgies.

The townhouse on the Upper East Side is said to be the largest private residence in Manhattan. Guests entered through a 4.5 metre high oak front door, set in a stone facade bearing the initials JE.

It was “Eyes Wide Shut with a twist — creepy chandeliers and body-part art,” Couric writes, according to an extract published by the Daily Mail. A visitor in 2003 reported that the entrance hall was lined not with paintings but with “row upon row of individually framed eyeballs”, imported from England and originally made for injured soldiers.

Couric said women came to take their coats and her boyfriend remarked at how young they seemed. It was December 2010 and besides Prince Andrew the guests were the broadcasters Charlie Rose and George Stephanopoulos, Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi and the comedian Chelsea Handler.

Epstein’s opulent apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where the party is said to have taken place. Picture: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images)

Couric said Epstein held court before a fireplace. For dinner they were served lasagne in shallow bowls. “I couldn’t imagine what Epstein and Andrew were up to, apart from trying to cultivate friends in the media,” she wrote. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking minors in July 2019 and took his own life the following month. In the days after his arrest, several guests from the dinner expressed regret that they had attended. “I should have done more due diligence,” Stephanopoulos told The New York Times. Handler called the dinner “so awkward and so weird” in an interview on the podcast Literally! “When I got there I was like, ‘What is this gathering?’ Prince Andrew was there with — no, with no one, I guess he was there with Jeffrey Epstein.”

She said Allen was seated next to her and she asked how he met his wife Soon-Yi, the adopted daughter of Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow. “I had forgotten for a moment … but as it came out of my mouth, I knew it was too late,” she said. “The kicker is that Woody Allen was actually amused by the question, because in the company of those men of course he was.”

The guests had been invited at the last moment by the publicist Peggy Siegal, who has since said that she had no idea the Florida charges against Epstein involved minors. Epstein called her on the day of the party, explaining that he was hosting Prince Andrew, she told Vanity Fair last year. “I thought it was strange that someone who actually had a prince in his house as a house guest couldn’t figure out a few people to invite for dinner?

Andrew told BBC’s Newsnight in 2019 the party was merely “a dinner” and he had gone to stay with Epstein to break off their friendship.

The Times