New details have emerged about the police investigation into Jeffrey Epstein in Florida, which culminated in the notorious sex trafficker and abuser reaching a widely condemned sweetheart plea deal with Palm Beach prosecutors.
A second batch of newly unsealed court documents was released to the public on Thursday, after US judge Loretta Preska ordered that the filings in a lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell finally be shared with the public.
The first batch of documents was released on Wednesday, unmasking dozens of names of Epstein associates, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and magician David Copperfield.
The naming of individuals does not indicate any wrongdoing or indicate that they were involved in any way in Epstein’s crimes.
On Thursday, 19 additional court documents were also unsealed.
This time, they contain some never-before-seen filings about the dead paedophile’s campaign of preying on underage girls and young, vulnerable women, including testimony from witnesses and victims themselves.
The papers also contain details about the police investigation into Epstein in Palm Beach in the mid-2000s – with the documents raising fresh questions about the soft penalty the paedophile got away with and the lack of any charges against Maxwell at the time.
In a June 2016 deposition, Palm Beach Detective Joseph Recarey – the lead detective on the mid-2000s case into Epstein – testified that he had spoken to around 30 underage girls who all claimed that they were recruited by Epstein and Maxwell to come to his luxury mansion under the pretence of performing massages.
Jeffrey Epstein in court in Palm Beach in 2008— (AP)
The detective detailed how Epstein and Maxwell procured the girls – and then enlisted these victims to recruit other young girls.
“Ms Maxwell, during research, was found to be Epstein’s long-time friend. During the interviews, Ms Maxwell was involved in seeking girls to perform massages and work at Epstein’s home,” he said.
When asked how many girls he interviewed that were sought to give or that actually gave massages at Epstein’s home, the detective said: “I would say approximately 30; 30, 33.”
Of this roughly 30 girls, only one had previous massage experience, he said.
This individual was older than the other girls, he said.
“And were the majority of those girls that you interviewed over or under the age of 18?” the interviewer asked.
“The majority were under,” the detective testified.
The detective testified that each of the underage victims who went to Epstein’s house were in turn asked to bring friends with them.
The victims would then be paid for giving a massage and also paid for the recruitment of other victims, he testified.
Mr Recarey went on to testify that the word “massage” appeared to be code for giving Epstein sexual gratification.
Once inside his home, the victims would allegedly be led upstairs and the incident would begin with them massaging Epstein.
Then, he would sexually assault them.
“Epstein would either attempt to fondle the girls or touch the girls inappropriately, and at which point he would masturbate. And when he was done, he would get up and go wash off while the girls would get dressed and go back downstairs and get paid,” he testified.
When asked “so did you determine that “massage” was actually a code word for something else?”, he replied: “When they went to perform a massage, it was for sexual gratification.”
Jeffrey Epstein’s West Palm Beach home— (US Department of Justice)
Following the investigation, Epstein was convicted in 2008 of procuring an underage girl for prostitution in Florida.
But, under the terms of his sweetheart plea deal, he pleaded guilty to just one charge and was sentenced to just 18 months in prison – most of which he served out of prison in a work-release program. On his release, he was ordered to register as a sex offender.
In July 2019, he was finally arrested on a slew of sex trafficking charges in New York. He died by suicide one month later in his jail cell.
Maxwell, meanwhile, faced no criminal charges until July 2020 when she was arrested in a raid in a sleepy New Hampshire town.
She was convicted in December 2021 of six counts of enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking of a minor, and three counts of conspiracy related to the other counts. She is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison in Florida.
The thousands of new documents unsealed are part of a defamation lawsuit brought against Maxwell back in 2015 by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.
Ms Giuffre filed the suit after Maxwell accused her of lying about the years-long abuse she had suffered at the hands of Epstein and some in his inner circle.
The suit was settled in 2017 but was placed under a protective seal – with the identities of those named in the filings kept under lock and key.
The Miami Herald sued for the release of the sealed documents while Maxwell’s legal team sought to block it.
Around 2,000 pages of documents were first unsealed in 2019, with further documents released over the following years.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell together— (US District Court for the Southern New York)
But, this current trove of documents remained sealed – and the names of hundreds of people associated with the dead paedophile were kept secret, known only as Jane and John Does.
Then, in a landmark ruling last month, US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled that the trove of documents could be released and the names unsealed in full after 1 January.
While the federal judge ordered the names of several Epstein victims to remain anonymous, she said that there was no legal justification to keep the names of Epstein’s associates redacted as “John and Jane Does”.
This has now paved the way for several famous figures to find themselves tied to the notorious disgraced financier.
Among the names revealed in the first batch of the filings released are former president Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump.
The naming of individuals does not indicate any wrongdoing or any involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
Several more documents – and names – are expected to be released over the coming days.
