Unsealed Documents Shed New Light on Maxwell’s Relationship With Epstein

Ghislaine Maxwell is seen in New York City on Sept. 20, 2013. Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images

Longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell procured girls who performed massages on the convicted sex offender and worked in his home, according to newly unsealed documents.

Maxwell “was involved in seeking girls to perform massages and work at Epstein’s home,” Joseph Recarey, a detective in Palm Beach, where Epstein owned a house, said in a 2016 deposition that was made public this week.

Approximately 30 girls were either sought to give or ended up giving massages at the house, he added. Only two of them had any experience giving massages before being hired.

In another deposition, John Alessi, Epstein’s house manager, said most of the women who gave massages came from Palm Beach County. He estimated that over the 10-year period of time Maxwell was at the house, over 100 different women he was told were massage therapists came to the home.

Alessi would clean up after the massages, which both Epstein and Maxwell enjoyed. He described finding sex toys after the massages on several occasions and putting them in Maxwell’s closet after he cleaned them.

“Because I knew that’s where they were kept,” he said. “Because I know where everything was in that house. Every single room, every single thing, it was a place, it was placed by me, by the cleaning lady or my wife.”

The hundreds of documents, primarily court filings and depositions, were unsealed in Giuffre v. Maxwell, a federal case brought by Virginia Roberts, also known as Virginia Giuffre.

Roberts alleges Maxwell and Epstein repeatedly abused her sexually and trafficked her to various men, including Prince Andrew.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, a George H. W. Bush nominee, earlier this month ordered the documents unsealed.

Making the documents public would not harm Maxwell’s right to a fair trial in the pending criminal case against her, the judge said, news outlets reported. Another judge, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, who will oversee the trial when it starts in November, ruled recently that two 2016 depositions of Maxwell in the Giuffre case could be used at the trial.

Maxwell, 59, is facing charges including sex trafficking. She is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.

Epstein, at the age of 66, was found dead in a New York federal jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.

Maxwell said in one of the newly unsealed depositions that she was in the Palm Beach “less than half the time” and “barely would remember” Giuffre before the civil case was brought.

She said Epstein would on average receive a massage once a day and did not see him get four or five massages on any day.

Jeffrey Epstein is seen on March 28, 2017. New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP

Multiple women have said they were sexually abused by Epstein, who would allegedly rape them while or after they gave him a massage. Some recalled being paid cash after each encounter.

Epstein pleaded guilty to one count of solicitating a minor for prostitution in 2008 in exchange for other charges being dropped. A Department of Justice investigation found federal prosecutors who oversaw the plea deal exercised “poor judgment” but did not commit “professional misconduct.” A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found officials in the state treated Epstein differently than the average inmate but did not break any laws.

Maxwell said she started working for Epstein in 1992, initially consulting. “What I did was I helped with decorating houses and in hiring staff to help run those houses,” she said.

Epstein owned properties in Florida, New York, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“The nature of my work relationship with him changed over time so from around 2002, 2003, the work lessened considerably,” she said, without elaborating. But she continued to “help him in a very nominal way” until 2008 or 2009.

According to Giuffre’s lawyers, Maxwell was romantically involved at one point with Epstein and shared a home with him from 1999 to 2002, and other years.

Another document released Thursday showed Rinaldo Rizzo, a former chef for hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, recounted Maxwell and Epstein entering the home of Eva Anderson, an ex-girlfriend of Epstein’s, with a 15-year-old girl.

Rizzo said he and his wife were in the kitchen preparing dinner when Anderson brought the girl into the room and told her to sit at a barstool.

“She proceeds to tell my wife and I that, and this is not—this is blurting out, not a conversation like I’m having a casual conversation,” he said in a deposition. “That quickly, ‘I was on an island, I was on the island and there was Ghislane, there was Sarah,’ she said, ‘They asked me for sex, I said no.'”

The girl said she did not know how she got to the home and said Maxwell took her passport before threatening her.