Scientists were the central currency in this social trade, sup-
plying intellectual heft while certifying him as a man of science,
which he wasn’t, though he had no shortage of loopy ideas, which
reportedly included a plan for Epstein to impregnate dozens of
women at his New Mexico ranch to improve humanity with his
DNA. Epstein began courting academics in the early 1990s at a
moment when geek culture was rapidly gaining power. This was
due in large measure to the promotion of Epstein’s friend, the
New York literary agent and entrepreneur John Brockman, who
transformed academics like Jared Diamond, Daniel Dennett,
Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker into best-selling authors.
With Brockman’s imprimatur, Epstein spent heavily to buy into
the Academy, becoming known as a “science philanthropist” with
a Cheshire smile and a baggy Harvard sweatshirt. He pledged $30
million to Harvard, fêted academics at Champagne-fueled dinners
at his 21,000-square-foot townhouse, hosted science conferences
on his private Caribbean island, and jetted them around on his 727.
Not every scientist bought Epstein’s lines. Dennett recalled
being summoned to a private meeting at Epstein’s townhouse and
thinking he was a phony. “He asked me manipulative questions,
as a conversational gambit. I remember he said, ‘Suppose I gave
you a billion dollars, what would you do with it?’ I said I would
fund an independent news organization for the whole world, and
we’d hire the best reporters and give away the journalism. He had
no interest in my answer. It was about showing o his wealth.”
Pinker recalled a ight on Epstein’s plane to a TED confer-
ence: “At one point I was summoned for an audience with Epstein
in his ‘oce’ on the plane, which included an incongruous big
wooden desk and executive chair. I had been told that Epstein
had a brilliant mind and was interested in the cutting edge of
science—consciousness, genetics, evolution, cosmology—and
that he wanted to discuss my work with me. He would ask me a
question, get bored with my answer after a sentence, interrupt
me, ask another question, impatiently interrupt me again, and so
on, in a conversation that lasted perhaps 10 minutes before I was
dismissed and could return to the more satisfying conversations
at the back of the plane,” Pinker said. “Epstein’s ADD and intel-
lectual laziness led me to conclude he was a kibitzer who liked to
hang out with intellectual celebrities he had bought, and I wanted
no part of him, though could not avoid him entirely because he
would pop up at events he’d partly funded. This was years before
anyone knew about his sexual crimes.” Most of Epstein’s friends
and acquaintances did not abuse the women in his world. But
almost no one (including journalists) pointed out the oddness of
a middle-aged man traveling with several young women. It’s as if
his wealth—and this was what he thought—justi¡ed this behavior.
Epstein’s suicide while imprisoned at one of the world’s most
secure jails—El Chapo, Bernie Mado, and the 1993 World Trade
Center bombers were housed there—will provide him with a per-
fect elitist afterlife of conspiracy theories: Did Mossad kill him, to
cover up that Epstein was an agent running an underage honeypot
operation designed to gather kompromat on intelligence targets,
people asked. Was it superrich friends, for whom he’d outlived
his usefulness? Was it...Hillary Clinton? Trump, not surprisingly,
retweeted a theory to that eect.
But the truth may be simpler, and uglier. In his staggering
entitlement, his narcissism, his heedlessness, his numerous self-
justi¡cations, unapologetic elitism, Epstein is a mirror of the mod-
ern establishment. When the grift stops working, why stay alive?coin, and that the health of capitalism inevitably required both.
The girls—he always called them girls—were there too. For many
in his glittery circle, they were decoration, seen but not heard or
touched. None of them raised alarms about this situation—a per-
son of means did not have to live by the rest of the world’s rules.
Epstein’s own Brooklyn accent and lack of a college degree, his
idiosyncratic background, were no hindrance here but somehow
a badge of his special gifts. He was mysterious, boundary push-
ing, living in that strange house, as big as an embassy, the former
Birch Wathen school on 71st Street.
Then and now, no one knew exactly how he made his money.
Beyond his having managed money for the apparel billionaire Les
Wexner, Epstein’s only public client, who knew what to believe?
The former Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne told people Epstein
made a killing trading foreign currencies. Apollo Global Man-
agement cofounder Leon Black told colleagues Epstein was the
smartest tax adviser he’d ever met. Epstein was said to run money
for the Rockefellers and the Bronfmans, though both denied it.
A longtime Epstein employee con¡ded in friends that she still
has no idea what her boss actually did for a living. “He’d call the
oce and say he wanted her to ¡nd a $10,000 umbrella he saw in
Paris and she’d have to buy it. He was very, very demanding. But you
weren’t allowed to ask questions. It was not a normal coworker rela-
tionship,” a source, familiar with how Epstein’s oce ran, recalled.
Epstein’s glib con¡dence was validating to a cohort that craves
sure things. In this way, he had some resemblance to ¡gures like
Donald Trump, Bernie Mado, Elizabeth Holmes. Jonathan Far-
kas, an heir to the Alexander’s department store fortune, recalled
meeting Epstein in the Hamptons during the recession of 1982 and
being buoyed by Epstein’s absolute certainty that he knew where
the economy was going. “I’ll never forget this. The stock market
had dropped to around 700 points from 1,000. And one day Jerey
just said, ‘You’ll never see it below 1,000 for the rest of your life. It
will never go down,’ ” Farkas told me. “He was right.”
And in those circles, he was clubbable. “He’s incredibly glib. He’s
charming. He’s quick,” one acquaintance, a Wall Street player, re-
called. His casualness—the sweatshirts, the jeans—were an aggres-
sion, keeping his people o-balance. “Epstein treated the fanciest
people in the world with complete irreverence in a way they were un-
accustomed to. He let it be known he called Prince Andrew ‘Andy,’ ”
the Wall Streeter told me. He presented his interest in women as
another noble eccentricity—he never hid it. Epstein reportedly once
told an academic he only had two interests: “science and pussy.”E
pstein had an arsenal of self-presentations, depending on
his audience. “He was one of these people who didn’t talk
much. He wanted you to think he was thinking profound
thoughts. You always wondered if there was any there there,” a
private equity executive who dealt with Epstein told me.
But a constant was his social braggadocio, both vanity and
part of his method. “He name-dropped like crazy. You’d be
with him and he’d say things like, ‘I just got o the phone with
Zuckerberg. I just got o the phone with Rothschild. I just got
o the phone with Gates,’ ” recalled another Wall Streeter who
did business with him. Epstein boasted about buying yachts and
planes and setting up arcane tax shelters for the superrich. “You
didn’t know if any of it was true. But then you’d be meeting at his
townhouse several days later and Gates would be there. Jerey
had a way of making these people materialize.”90