Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell became recluse as her past returned to haunt her
The socialite daughter of a British newspaper tycoon became the alleged co-conspirator of a billionaire paedophile. Then ran as it all unravelled.
In grainy video recorded by police when they raided Jeffrey Epstein’s Malibu mansion in 2005, a framed picture of Ghislaine Maxwell sitting with a dog can be seen on the wall above a writing desk.
Below that picture is another photograph of a naked young woman stretched on the floor, her chin propped up by her arm. Officers said the house was full of pictures of naked girls.
What they may have wondered was how Ms Maxwell, the Oxford-educated daughter of a British newspaper tycoon, had become the confidante of a paedophile in a relationship that would entangle politicians and royalty.
According to a perhaps apocryphal account, Ms Maxwell first sought out Epstein after finding his name in her father’s private papers aboard the yacht from which he fell to his death in 1991.
Months later, the story goes, she flew to New York by Concorde to find the financier who had been so helpful hiding the millions of pounds her father had looted from the Mirror Group pension fund. According to one friend, she was dating him “in no time at all”.
The pair were at the top table of New York’s party scene but to many they made an odd couple. Ms Maxwell, who grew up in a 53-bedroom house in Oxfordshire, was in thrall to Epstein, a working-class college dropout who had had a shady career in financial derivatives. But Epstein, who was said by contemporaries to be very persuasive, kept Ms Maxwell in the comforts to which she was accustomed.
Vicky Ward, a journalist who wrote a profile of Epstein, said Ms Maxwell saw him as a wealthy man to replace her father. She told the Netflix documentary Filthy Rich: “She was Oxford-educated, very witty, very funny, she was a great connector for Jeffrey. They met in New York — he’s an introvert, she’s an extrovert. He revels in being the man of mystery. Ghislaine is a very engaging personality, extremely charismatic and bubbly.
“Her father, Robert Maxwell, had been an incredible figure, a newspaper publisher, a conman and a fraudster. When Ghislaine came to New York her whole world had fallen apart, her father, who she was incredibly attached to, had died in very murky circumstances and his entire reputation had been shattered. Jeffrey felt like a safe haven.”
Ms Maxwell was 30 when she met Epstein; he was 38. Although she wanted to get married that was of no interest to Epstein. However, they developed a relationship closer than some marriages. According to friends, the pair were a power couple, he with his cheque book and she provided him with a social standing beyond his humble upbringing. Thomas Volscho, a professor at the City University of New York who wrote a book about Epstein, once said: “For Epstein, Maxwell was a conduit for him to socialise with people who were way beyond his social level.”
Although the pair soon split up as a couple they remained closely linked and Ms Maxwell became Epstein’s fixer, managing his home and his life.
Euan Rellie, an investment banker who attended parties that Ms Maxwell and Epstein hosted in New York, said that she “seemed to be half ex-girlfriend, half employee, half best friend, and fixer”. Epstein would describe her as his best friend. They soon became the subject of more sinister gossip.
“There were whispers that Jeffrey had a soft spot for teenage girls and that Ghislaine was ever so obliging in finding them for him,” a friend said. “It seems stupid to say it now but it just seemed naughty rather than the depravity we’ve learnt of since.”
Procurer and sexual abuser claims
The first detailed allegations of Ms Maxwell being a procurer and sexual abuser emerged in 2015 with a lawsuit filed in a Florida court under the pseudonym Jane Doe 102. That woman was Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Ms Giuffre claimed that in summer 1998 Ms Maxwell had “recruited” her as a masseuse for Epstein when she was 15 and working at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. She told Filthy Rich: “Not very long into working at Mar-a-Lago, an English lady came up to me. She introduced herself as Ghislaine Maxwell. She was beautiful, she looked educated, she was nice. She said, ‘Oh that’s interesting you’re reading a book about massage therapy, I actually know this guy who’s looking for a travelling masseuse if you want you can come by this afternoon after work and you can come meet him.’”
Ms Giuffre claimed that later that day Ms Maxwell encouraged her to give Epstein a massage. She said that the older woman stripped and encouraged her to do the same, before persuading her to have sex with Epstein, touching her as she did so. It was the beginning of an arrangement, Ms Giuffre alleged, that was to last for two years, in which she would be joined by Ms Maxwell and young women for sexual trysts and would culminate in her allegedly having sex with the Duke of York.
Ghislaine and Prince Andrew
In an interview with BBC’s Newsnight last year Prince Andrew talked of having known Ms Maxwell since her university days, and of her introducing him to Epstein in 1999. A friend once said of Andrew’s friendship with Ms Maxwell: “I’m not at all surprised that [he] likes her. She would ring and say ‘Ten of us are going to a restaurant then a club. Do come, it will be fun’.”
In March 2001, it is alleged, after an evening at Tramp nightclub in central London, Andrew, Epstein and Ms Maxwell went to Ms Maxwell’s mews house in Belgravia, where the prince had sex with Ms Giuffre, then 17. Ms Giuffre told the BBC that in the car on the way, “Ghislaine tells me I have to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey, and that just made me sick”. A photograph shows Andrew with his arm around Ms Giuffre next to Ms Maxwell at the house. Ms Giuffre told the BBC that after having sex with Andrew then she slept with him at Epstein’s New York flat and his island in the Caribbean. Andrew denies the claims, denies the authenticity of the photograph and has said that he has no recollection of Ms Giuffre.
Ms Giuffre’s case against Epstein was settled out of court.
The prince’s former wife Sarah, Duchess of York, was apparently worried about the relationship between him and Ms Maxwell. In 2001, when Andrew was about to take up his role as Britain’s trade envoy, a friend of the duchess told The Mail on Sunday: “Fergie and a lot of other people who love Andrew believe his friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein has become really dangerous. They’re using him just for his name and access and he is so innocent he doesn’t realise.”
The duke belatedly severed his ties with Epstein after he was photographed walking with the financier in Central Park in 2010. But he kept up his friendship with the woman described by one US private detective as “Jeffrey’s pimp”.
In the Newsnight interview, Andrew admitted that he had seen Ms Maxwell in the spring or summer of last year, a claim that caused shock given the details of Ms Giuffre’s deposition. In the court documents Ms Giuffre claimed Ms Maxwell was “Epstein’s primary manager” of the recruitment and training of girls who Epstein paid for sexual services, and had participated in abuse.
Ms Giuffre said she had been made to have sex with “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders”.
Giving evidence, Ms Maxwell said that “a very small part” of her role in Epstein’s life had been to find “adult professional massage therapists” for him. She admitted to knowing Ms Giuffre, but said she did not know how often the woman had visited Epstein. “What I can say is that I barely would remember her, if not for all of this rubbish.”
Asked if Epstein had sexually abused minors, she replied: “I can only testify to what I know. I know that Virginia is a liar and I know what she testified is a lie. I can only categorically deny everything she has said.” Like Ms Giuffre’s earlier suit against Epstein, the defamation suit was settled out of court in 2017.
Maxwell’s retreat from party circuit
The allegations were followed by claims from other women. Another Epstein victim, Sarah Ransome, claimed in a lawsuit that Ms Maxwell oversaw and trained recruiters for Epstein’s sex trafficking and helped to conceal the activity from the authorities. “Ghislaine controlled the girls,” she said. “She knew what Jeffrey liked.” Ms Ransome settled a lawsuit with Epstein and Ms Maxwell in 2018.
In 2016 Ms Maxwell disappeared from the party circuit. She continued to run Terramar, a non-profit environmental organisation which ceased operation last year. It was suggested that she had been living under the radar with a boyfriend in Manchester-by-the-Sea in Massachusetts. Last August a photograph of her was taken at a burger restaurant in Los Angeles. A source familiar with her new life said: “She’s become a real homebody — she rarely ventures out. She’s the antithesis of the woman who travelled extensively and partied constantly with Epstein.”
The Times
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