of Victoria’s Secret and the richest man
in Ohio, for whom Epstein managed
money and had some sort of deep
emotional relationship, seemed as ill
at ease as Epstein was forthright.
Women who dined with Wexner found
him awkward and without the gift
of gab, which Epstein had in spades.
A Sports Illustrated model says that
in the 1990s, Epstein sent her, as a
lark, to deliver Wexner’s prenup at his
office; the rumor was she went to
Wexner’s office, lay down on the table,
and had him sign the prenup on her
belly, but she says this isn’t true. “Jeffrey
told me to wear something sexy
and that it would be a great practical
joke, but when I got there, it was
very uncomfortable, and Les was like,
‘What are you doing here? Okay, I’ll
sign, and then you should go.’ ”
The longer these women dated
Epstein, the stranger he became.
A former girlfriend describes him as
almost agoraphobic, with a fear
of groups and a dislike of shaking
people’s hands; he preferred one-
on-one relationships, which were more
conducive to sharing secrets. Other
than the trips he took on his privateEpstein always had a story to tell,
even about his home. “He was
obsessed with jewelry boxes and very
detailed ornate designs—he told
me the pope actually gave him artisans
who teamed up with this one jewelry-
box maker from Paris to make his
dining room look like a giant version
of the inside of a Parisian jewelry
box,” says an ex-girlfriend. Epstein
also said that his friend Lynn Forester,
now married to billionaire Evelyn de
Rothschild, needed his financial
help during her 1990s divorce from
politician Andrew Stein, and that
he had graciously floated her. “One
hundred percent false,” says a
spokesperson for Forester. He claimed
that the producers of The Apprentice
had first approached him to make
a show about a reclusive billionaire
living an extravagant life, but he
said no, and then introduced them to
Trump. (A spokesperson for Mark
Burnett denies this.)
Epstein liked having secrets and
enjoyed the way those secrets
kept people off-balance. “He always
wanted to give the impression
that he was an international man of
mystery—‘I control everyone
and everything, I collect people, I own
people, I can damage people,’ ”
says an ex-girlfriend. One of the most
mysterious parts of his life was his
relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell,
the favorite daughter of embezzling
British press baron and rumored
Mossad spy Robert Maxwell, who died
when he fell, or was pushed, from
his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. Epstein
told them the raven-haired A-lister
Maxwell, who opened her Rolodex for
him, was a former girlfriend who
had fallen on hard times, and he had
taken it upon himself to maintain her
position in society; young women have
since alleged that she was both part
of the sex-trafficking ring, bringing
underage girls to Epstein, and a
sexual participant. “Ghislaine floated
in and out of the house with the keys,
and even though Jeffrey told me they
didn’t have a sexual relationship, she’d
drop under her breath that she was
sleeping in his bed from time to time,”
says an ex-girlfriend. A friend of
Maxwell’s says she used to joke abouta model on his arm,” says the Sports
Illustrated model. “He was emotionally
infantile, stunted, without an inner
world.” She describes Epstein watching
her brush her hair and asking, “Do
you use a Mason Pearson brush?”—
the expensive brush favored by stylists
in the fashion industry. She said
yes, and he responded, excitedly, that
he did too. “He said, ‘Oh, yes, they’re
the best.’ He was like a little boy who
got his cool toy. And then he’d
collect people just like that hairbrush.
It was so odd.”
Epstein was always talking about
how well connected he was: “He was a
total starfucker,” says a woman in his
orbit. In his secret life he was grotesque,
but in society he was thought of as
a practical joker who enjoyed messing
with those he regarded as lower on
the food chain. The Sports Illustrated
model describes meeting Donald
Trump at one of Trump’s parties in the
penthouse of the Plaza hotel back
then. Trump goaded Epstein for her
number. “Jeffrey said he wouldn’t give
it to him, and he had to get it from
me,” she says. She finally gave it to him
on another occasion, but he lost it.plane, Epstein preferred to socialize at
home, where he could control the
food, the conversation, the temperature.
In Manhattan he lived in a $56 million
town house that once housed the
Birch Wathen prep school, with his
initials emblazoned next to the door,
and he hired a white-gloved butler
to serve high tea. But underneath this
pose lurked someone quite different.
“He was so insecure—he had that
outer-borough thing of always needing“Trump called Jeffrey, trying to get
it again, saying, ‘She gave it to me! You
know she gave it to me! You can give
it to me now!’ but Jeffrey wouldn’t
do it.” She laughs. “Donald was such a
joke to all of the models back then—
we all knew he was bankrupt and had
no game. I remember Jeffrey once
saying he was going to be late to pick
me up because he had to drop off food
for Donald—he was at home crying
under the covers.”A woman who dated Epstein says
he slept with a gun in a holster on
the side of the bed and was always
playing “spy games.”
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