Daily Mail, Monday, August 12, 2019 Page 13
QQQTurn to next page
Virginia Roberts with Prince Andrew and Miss Maxwell in 2001by Richard
Pendlebury
G
hislaine Maxwell
was last night
reported to be ready
to co-operate with
the american
authorities in their ongo-
ing investigation into
Prince andrew’s late
friend Jeffrey epstein.
The socialite daughter of
the disgraced late media
tycoon Robert Maxwell has
been accused of recruiting
underage girls for the finan-
cier epstein, her benefactor
and sometime boyfriend.
she has even been described
as the ‘madam of the house’ by
a former housekeeper at
epstein’s mansion in Palm
Beach, Florida. hitherto, she
has always emphatically denied
misconduct.
Virginia Roberts, epstein’s
former ‘sex slave’ who claims
she was loaned out to Prince
andrew, alleged in a a docu-
ment newly released by a Us
court that Miss Maxwell took
part in sex sessions as well.
Thomas Volscho, an associate
professor of sociology at the
City University of new York
who is writing a book about the
epstein case, said that Miss
Maxwell was now ‘target
number one’ for prosecutors.
‘They are going to want to hold
somebody to account and there
is going to be enormous pres-
sure on Maxwell as she has been
accused of being heavily involved
with epstein,’ he said. ‘i would
imagine she is petrified’.
The suggestion that Miss Max-
well, 58, will assist the criminal
case presents a further dramatic
twist in a story which threatens
to do yet more damage to the
Royal Family’s public image.
it was Prince andrew’s ex-
wife, sarah, who first intro-
duced him to ‘Good Time Ghis-
laine’, as her friends called her.
The first report of their friend-
ship was a footnote in a news-
paper diary column from early- ‘Prince andrew keeps
interesting company these
days,’ it began. ‘he’s just
attended a dinner hosted by
Ghislaine Maxwell.’
By april 2000 Ghislaine and
andrew were spotted sharing
one of several intimate lunch
dates together. They sat hand
in hand while dining on lobster
salad – she sipped a champagne
cocktail – at nello restaurant on
new York’s Madison avenue.
his police bodyguard watched
discreetly and fell in step behind
andrew once he had paid the
£90 bill in cash. Miss Maxwell
left separately in order to avoid
the paparazzi.B
UT, she and the Duke of
York were not in a
romantic relationship.
indeed, as his new found
confidante and social fixer she
was far, far more important to
him than that.
andrew had turned 40 in the
first weeks of the Millennium
and was in the throes of a midlife
crisis, according to some royal
observers. Divorced, teetotal,
and piling on the pounds, he had
few interests beyond his daugh-
ters, watching videos and golf.
now, Miss Maxwell was to
introduce him to another,
strange and no doubt far more
exciting world; that of a wealthy
trans-atlantic demi monde.
and at its heart was her myste-rious boyfriend-cum-patron
and father figure, the multi-mil-
lionaire new York financier Jef-
frey epstein.
Private jets, ViP nightclubs
and beach resorts were the nec-
essary accoutrements for this
social whirl. and with them
came an endless supply of beau-
tiful young women, often very
young. Unfortunately, the
prince has paid a high price for
his brief sortie into this envi-
ronment. he has become fixed
as one of the characters in a
celebrity paedophile sex scan-
dal which will not go away.
a tranche of court papers
relating to a libel case brought
by Virginia Roberts against
Miss Maxwell for calling her a
liar were released on Friday.
among the allegations were
that the prince fondled an
underage girl called Johanna
sjoberg in epstein’s Manhattan
apartment and slept with Miss
Roberts while on a night out
with the financier in london.
Thousands more legal docu-
ments containing allegations of
sexual activity by epstein and
his cronies with girls who were
underage in the Us have yet to
be released.
One wonders at the conversa-
tion over the breakfast table
yesterday morning at Balmoral
Castle, where andrew is stay-
ing with the Queen. For all hisepstein were joined by two women
named only as Janice and Jessica.
as for Donald Trump’s contacts, he
was far more likely than Bill Clinton to
have encountered epstein because
they were both prominent on the social
scene in the close-knit millionaires’
community of Palm Beach, Florida. in
2002, Mr Trump told an interviewer:
‘i’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Ter-
rific guy. he’s a lot of fun to be with. it
is even said that he likes beautiful
women as much as i do, and many of
them are on the younger side. no doubt
about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.’
But by last month, the President’s
opinion had changed drastically – he
was ‘not a fan’ of epstein and that the
two had had a ‘falling out’ (reportedly
over a failed business deal) and had
not spoken for some 15 years.
in 1992, Mr Trump threw a ‘calendar
girl’ competition at his Mar-a-lago
Prince has always denied – was one of
several accusers who say they were
recruited while working at Mr Trump’s
Mar-a-lago resort.
When epstein first faced sex charges
in 2006, Mr Trump publicly banned
him from the club.
sam nunberg, a former Trump cam-
paign aide, claims that he warned Mr
Trump about his epstein links before
his 2016 presidential run. however, he
claims, Mr Trump was confident that- thanks to a close friend who owned
the national enquirer, a Us tabloid,
and who claimed to have compromis-
ing pictures of Mr Clinton on epstein’s
island – the paedophile financier would
cause more problems for the Clintons
than he would for him. it appears from
his incendiary tweets at the weekend
that Mr Trump still believes that.
Whatever the truth of his White
house connections, there is no ques-
tion that Jeffrey epstein travelled a
long way from his roots. he was born
in Brooklyn, the son of a parks gar-
dener and grew up in the blue-collar
new York borough of Coney island.
after dropping out of two universi-
ties, he became a teacher before land-
ing a job at the Bear stearns bank in
the mid-1970s. he had a chequered
investing career before branching out
into managing the wealth of mega-
rich clients. he was secretive about
their identity and it’s now clear he,
while valued at $500million, hugely
exaggerated his wealth and investing
success. Rumours persisted that he
was a spy, possibly working for the
Cia or israel’s Mossad.
he never married or had children.
instead, epstein told scientists that
he wanted to ‘seed’ the human race
with his superior Dna by having
young women impregnated at his
new Mexico ranch. For decades he
felt invincible. now he and his sleazy
empire are no more – a fact that two
american presidents must view as a
cause for celebration if not relief.
‘Seed human race
with superior DNA’
club in Palm Beach, flying in 28 con-
testants for a party at which he and
epstein were the only men invited.
TV footage showed the pair appar-
ently discussing and crudely sizing up
the ‘hot’ women there.
George houraney, who organised
the event, says his warnings to Mr
Trump about epstein chasing
‘younger girls’ were brushed aside.
Roger stone, a former Trump adviser,
said Mr Trump visited epstein’s Flor-
ida home at least once, later joking
about the underage girls he saw. ‘The
swimming pool was filled with beauti-
ful young girls. “how nice,” i thought,
“he let the neighbourhood kids use his
pool”,’ he reportedly told stone.
There are other alleged Mr Trump-
epstein connections. Virginia Rob-
erts, the former epstein ‘sex slave’
who claimed she was ‘farmed out’ to
Prince andrew – a claim that the
Infamous: Footage shows Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein
admiring women in 1992. Inset: Mr Trump with future wife
Melania and Epstein with socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000WILL MAXWELL’S
DAUGHTER SPILL
PAEDOPHILE’S
SECRETS TO FBI?
V