Six years after his death, conspiracy theories still swirl around the financier and sex offender. Why?
What explains the fascination?
Epstein's story inspires both grim curiosity and conspiratorial thinking: there is the horrific nature of his crimes; his great wealth; his collection of famous friends; at least one attested cover-up; his sudden death in suspicious circumstances; and a series of unanswered questions. The financier, who died in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, left a $578 million (£422 million) estate that included a palatial Manhattan townhouse, a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and two Caribbean islands, Little and Great Saint James. The FBI concluded that Epstein had abused more than 1,000 girls and young women. Court documents detail how he trafficked girls as young as 12 to his properties and held them in sexual servitude.
How did he become so wealthy?
It's something of a mystery. Born to working-class parents in Brooklyn, Epstein never graduated from college but was hired by New York's prestigious Dalton prep school, where he taught maths and physics in the mid-1970s. He was fired for "poor performance", but not before impressing Dalton parent and Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg, who hired him at the investment bank. Epstein founded his own money management firm in 1988. He described himself as a "bounty hunter" who recovered stolen assets; he worked with the fraudster Steven J. Hoffenberg; but he was never a major Wall Street player. Various theories have circulated about the source of his riches – including that Epstein might have blackmailed influential people by collecting footage of them having sex with underage girls. What is known is that most of Epstein's money came from two clients, Victoria's Secret owner Leslie Wexner, and private equity mega-investor Leon Black, who together paid him a hefty $370 million (£273 million) in fees. Both Wexner and Black say they regret their ties with Epstein and deny wrongdoing.
Who did he associate with?
Epstein cultivated friendships with politicians, business leaders and celebrities. His social circle included Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Woody Allen, the former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, the law professor Alan Dershowitz, the former senator George Mitchell, the computer scientist Marvin Minsky – and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was first his girlfriend and then his accomplice and enabler. Some, including Clinton, Trump and Gates (all of whom deny wrongdoing) flew on Epstein's private plane, later nicknamed the "Lolita Express". Trump and Epstein socialised frequently from the 1980s to early 2000s, and in 2002, Trump told New York Magazine that Epstein was a "terrific guy" who "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side". The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump had sent a bawdy message to Epstein on his 50th birthday, referring to a "secret". However, their friendship ended in 2004 amid a bidding war over a Palm Beach mansion.
When did the abuse start?
At Maxwell's 2021 sex-trafficking trial, a woman identified as Kate testified that Maxwell befriended her when she was 17 in 1994, promising to help her musical career. Maxwell pushed Kate to give Epstein massages that soon turned sexual, and to recruit other "cute" girls. It is clear that, in the early 2000s, Epstein entrapped scores of underage victims – many from broken homes – with the promise of modelling careers or other work. Courtney Wild, groomed by Epstein at 14, said she recruited "70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old" for him. Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, said she was "passed around like a platter of fruit" and forced to have sex with Epstein associates such as Prince Andrew (who denies this). Many of the alleged crimes took place in Palm Beach and at Little Saint James. According to one lawsuit, a 15-year-old victim tried to swim away from the island; she was caught and returned.
When did law enforcement get involved?
In 2005, the stepmother of a 14-year-old told Palm Beach police that Epstein had paid her step-daughter to perform a naked massage. An investigation uncovered many more victims, but produced an infamous 2008 sweetheart deal: Epstein received an 18-month sentence on minor prostitution charges; in return, an FBI probe was called off and immunity was given for "any potential co-conspirators". He had a prison wing to himself and was chauffeured six days a week to his West Palm Beach office, before being released five months early. He abused more girls during and after his sentence, according to lawsuits. It took an exposé in the Miami Herald many years later, in 2018, to stir up a national outcry. Trump's then labour secretary, Alexander Acosta – who had helped broker the 2008 deal as a federal prosecutor – resigned, and Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in July 2019. Weeks later, the financier was found dead, aged 66, in a New York jail cell with a bedsheet around his neck.
Is there much we still don't know?
The full scope of his abuse, and whether he had other accomplices, is still not clear. Campaigning last year, Trump pledged to release all the Department of Justice's files on Epstein, and in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have his client list on her desk. But in July, the Justice Department stated that the list didn't actually exist. The FBI then concluded that there was no evidence incriminating third parties, or that Epstein had blackmailed prominent individuals; and it found that he had definitely died by suicide. Trump urged his supporters to move on from this "boring" case. This inflamed conspiracy theorists and others. "This was a man that was allowed to abuse girls and women for two decades," said Julie K. Brown, who reported on Epstein for the Miami Herald in 2018. "The victims deserve to know whether our government did the job that they were supposed to do."
Shadowy elites and loose ends
The Epstein case has become an obsession for many on the Republican Right, partly because it chimes with a widely held belief: that a liberal elite is committing crimes while remaining above the law, perhaps even conspiring to abuse children. Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that circulated around the 2016 election, held that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizza parlour. Followers of "QAnon" believe that thousands of children are being "harvested" by elites. So Trump's decision to close the Epstein case down, not to release files, and to dismiss it as a "hoax" was seen as a betrayal. Democrats joined the fray, accusing Trump of "hiding the Epstein list", and hinting that he himself might be implicated.
There remains very little hard proof to back up the more sensational claims: of a blackmail racket, of the widespread abuse of his victims by other powerful men (only Giuffre has publicly made such claims). But there are enough loose ends and clues to keep people asking questions: from reports that Epstein was a US intelligence asset to questions about why he wasn't checked on by guards on the night of his death. Politicians from both parties, returning from recess, are demanding "transparency" from the White House.
