20/20
True Crime Vault: Notorious: Ghislaine Maxwell
Wed, 25 Dec
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An inside look at the life of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's alleged co-conspirator. Originally aired: 06/25/21 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the shocking allegations against Ghislaine Maxwell?
Robert Maxwell was born into a Hasidic family in Czechoslovakia. His name was Jan Ludwig Haack, and he fought in battles across Europe. was one of nine children himself that was so poor that they had to share shoes. They all slept in the same room. And a good portion of his family was murdered in the Holocaust.
By the time he was 23, he'd changed his name four times. He fixed on Robert Maxwell because it sounded faintly Scottish, which he quite liked. Five minutes to midnight before the offer went out to withdraw... You know how Americans love that British accent? He had a really nice upper-crush British accent, which is funny because he's from Czechoslovakia.
There's no problem about it. He picks up from a very, very well-educated British Army officer during the war the accent he ends up with. And so he sounds incredibly posh. Robert Maxwell lived in a 50-room mansion, Headington Hall. A BBC documentary called Robert Maxwell Downfall showed what it was like inside the mansion. All kinds of rich and powerful and famous people were in the house.
And little Ghislaine was right there for parties. They had a private jet and they had helicopters. And their kind of royalty without the letters in front of their name. Ghislaine was the baby sister, the ninth child born on Christmas Day in 1961.
And pretty much the same week that Ghislaine was born, the oldest son, Michael, was very badly injured in a car crash, and indeed was in a coma for the next seven years. The whole family were completely shattered because he was, in many ways, he was the leader of the tribe, he was the apple of my parents' eyes, and so on. And Ghislaine was, to an extent, really ignored.
So much so that aged about four, she walks into her mother's room one day and stamps her foot and says, you know, mommy, I exist. Ghislaine's mother wrote in her book that Ghislaine actually suffered from anorexia when she was just three or four years old. I mean, that is pretty shocking.
Gillian's my youngest sister. Her nickname is Sprat. S-P-R-A-T, Sprat. It's the smallest little fish in the ocean. It was a name given to her by our father. And so I always start my letters, Darling Sprat. We're a very, very close family. We have a very strong father. If you've got an alpha male father in your life, you tend, as children, to cling together.
Betty Maxwell, in her book, says that he would shout and threaten and rant at the children until they were reduced to pulp. That's a quote. Len has spoken about her early life and she said it was lots of stick and very little praise, but she said it was also inspiring.
She was ostensibly her father's favourite daughter. He treated her like he did all his children. One moment they were in favour, one minute they were not. I think she was a little spoiled. I think I could see that. Maybe it was my parents feeling guilty that they had ignored her, really, for the first few years of her life.
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Chapter 2: How did Ghislaine Maxwell become involved with Jeffrey Epstein?
She was pretty much on her own. She had a few friends. Were you worried about your sister at this time? I mean, Ghislaine's very resilient as a personality. She said rather presciently, as it turned out, you haven't heard the last of the Maxwells.
So it's about a year after her father's death when a tabloid reporter and photographer apparently spotted her. Ghislaine is pictured in an airport, but a story that accompanied the photos notes that she was not by herself. The newspaper wrote, it is to this man that 30-year-old Ghislaine has turned to ease the heartache of her father's shame. His name is Jeffrey Epstein.
I don't think she could have found a greater facsimile to her father than Jeffrey Epstein. He came from nothing. He talked his way into position after position. What was understood about Jeffrey at that time was that he was a former high school math teacher who had some sort of genius equation for solving the market and built himself up from like nowhere in Brooklyn.
Epstein worked his way into a job on Wall Street at Bear Stearns, and then somehow he connects with Leslie Wexner. Leslie Wexner is a billionaire. He's the founder of The Limited Company. They own Victoria's Secret.
He and Wexner apparently hit it off, and Epstein begins to tell people that he's a money manager for billionaires only. But at the time, the only publicly known client was Leslie Wexner. And what he does for that one client, I don't think anybody really totally knows yet, but he becomes this ultra-rich, mega-rich guy. Glenn has been asked in depositions about how she met Jeffrey Epstein.
When did you first meet Jeffrey? Some point in 1991. And did Jeffrey know your father? No. How were you introduced to Jeffrey? Some friend introduced us.
I had no knowledge of their life or the life that Ghislaine was leading in any great detail. I met him briefly. What were your impressions when you did? You can meet some people you really feel, this is a great guy to have a drink with. I never had that impression, but he was clearly an intelligent man and he had a charisma.
I actually saw them together for the first time in Palm Beach. You know, I was surprised. She spoke the Queen's English and Jeffrey was quite the opposite. He's from Brooklyn. He speaks Brooklyn. And the question is, what drew them together? The theories are his money, her Rolodex. Ghislaine brought a lot to the table as far as contacts.
This is Jeffrey Epstein at a party in the Upper West Side, 1995. On the other end of the room was Ghislaine with Prince Dmitry of Yugoslavia. You know, my father was an extraordinarily well-connected man, so she had grown up in that world and was able to move in it very freely.
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Chapter 3: What role did Ghislaine Maxwell play in Epstein's crimes?
I arrived at the airport, and there was a man with a little sign that had my name on it. It was the first time I'd ever experienced something like that. Annie gets there, there aren't all of these other kids. There is no school program. It's just Jeffrey, Ghislaine, and now 16-year-old Annie Farmer. This is a picture I took of Annie. I got her ready for prom. So she's 16 here.
When I look back at those photos now of myself at the time, I feel like I was a baby. And Jeffrey was calling. When she was getting ready for prom, he was calling to talk to her.
Annie Farmer is one of the underage victims at the center of the criminal case against Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty. ABC News first spoke to Annie Farmer in 2019 about her experiences with Maxwell and Epstein and about what she says happened to her at his ranch in New Mexico. Can you just sort of describe the New Mexico property?
The ranch was not in Santa Fe, you know, it was really in the middle of nowhere. I think it might have actually been a temporary residence that they had while the main property was being developed. Upon arrival, your expectation was this was some kind of group thing for students, right? Right. So when you get there, it's not. So what you think was happening, then what did you see?
It wasn't an immediate alarm. It was just sort of, okay, I guess, you know, this is somewhat different than what I must have misunderstood. When I first met Ghislaine, she was very charming. She was witty and quick and instantly engaging in conversation. I remember I had, you know, brought some homework with me that I needed to work on.
And so I think I was actually doing paper about some British writers. And so I remember talking to Ghislaine about that. And I felt quickly comfortable with her. And as a young woman, I looked up to her as maybe an older sister type. We went shopping in Santa Fe, and she took me to sort of a natural food store. She was encouraging me to pick out things that I might like.
You know, so it just felt like girl time together. The first thing that gave me pause was I remember being in this living room area with Epstein and Maxwell and Maxwell telling me that Epstein really liked to get foot rubs and that it would be a good idea for me to learn how to massage his feet. I think if Epstein had been suggesting that, I would have been clearly alarmed.
But because it was her, I was more open to that. They were really, really good at figuring out how to push boundaries so that I didn't say, no, I'm not going to do this. I just felt uneasy, but did it. The next thing I remember is we went to the movies in a theater in Santa Fe and we were kind of waiting around in the mall outside of the theater.
And I remember Maxwell sort of acting like she was going to like pull Epstein's pants down. They were doing it with each other. They didn't do that to me, but it was weird. Epstein sat himself next to me and very quickly started holding my hand and caressing me and kind of touching my feet and my leg. He did not appear to be hiding it from Ghislaine, which was odd to me.
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Chapter 4: What do the victims say about Ghislaine Maxwell?
Andy describes in court filings what she says happened next. She says Maxwell repeatedly insisted on giving her a massage.
I laid on the table and I was very aware that the door was open and I could be seen getting a massage. And then at some point she just takes the sheet down. So she exposed my breasts and I feel uncomfortable. I feel like Epstein can probably see me right now. And she touches me around my chest, but blurring the boundaries of normal or not normal. This was such a scary situation for me.
So I just needed to, like, just to manage that and to go on as if everything was normal. She is isolated on this ranch in New Mexico. She has no way to communicate with anyone. She's alone there with two adults she does not know. She's only 16 years old.
I was sleeping in a small room. I was in my pajamas under the covers, and Epstein just sort of bounded in and said, oh, I'd like to cuddle. Of course, he wasn't waiting for me to agree to that. He got into bed with me then. This was one of those boundary violations that was so clear. But knowing she's there, it makes me confused. Well, if they're partners, why? That doesn't make sense.
Annie says that Epstein physically restrained her and started pressing up against her. And she says she was frozen in fear. I do remember getting out of bed and getting into the bathroom and shutting the door. I didn't want to admit what was going on was going on.
My sister never shared with me anything about what had happened with Ghislaine and Jeffrey. I didn't understand until much later. They thought it was okay to touch a 16-year-old, the person that I loved more than anyone in the world, and there is nothing okay about that.
In 2019, Annie Farmer filed a lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein's estate and Ghislaine Maxwell. She eventually accepted an offer from the Epstein Victims' Compensation Fund, which required her to drop the lawsuit. Galen Maxwell's lawyers have said in court filings that Maxwell denies she was part of any of the activity that Annie Farmer says took place.
Looking back at the series of events now, it's just so clear how Maxwell was a really important part of the grooming process, and they worked together as a team, I think. Annie Farmer is only one of a number of women who will make accusations about Ghislaine Maxwell, not all of them underage. She told me to give Jeffrey what he wants because Jeffrey always gets what he wants.
He was behind the curtain, but she was the puppeteer, you know, orchestrating it all. By the year 2000, Ghislaine Maxwell appears to have moved to a $5 million mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, about five blocks south of Jeffrey Epstein's mansion. He was in her life, for sure. But she was living in her place, and he was living in his place. So they were not a couple in that sense.
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Chapter 5: How did Ghislaine's upbringing influence her life choices?
They come up with the same pattern that they go to his house, they go to the kitchen, and then they're led upstairs to his bedroom. And then he comes in in a towel. They rub his back or his feet for a little bit, and then eventually he turns over nude and then proceeds to lure and sexually assault them.
They were all telling us that they had either been recruited by an older female to them, meaning someone over 18, somebody in their 20s, or by someone who had already been a victim. It was a whole network working together to solicit and bring these girls into his home. Ghislaine Maxwell says that at the time of the police investigation in Palm Beach, she was very rarely in Florida.
Ghislaine said that her role in his life was greatly reduced compared to what it was. Investigators certainly knew that Ghislaine Maxwell was associated with him. There were phone messages. She would call him, leave messages for him. But investigators never developed any information at that point that she was involved in this.
A South Florida billionaire has been arrested on prostitution charges. 53-year-old Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach where investigators say he paid women to have sex with him in his mansion. Epstein was charged by a grand jury with one count of solicitation of a prostitute. No mention of underage victims or minors.
Palm Beach police said they had found multiple alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein and they were not pleased with this single charge. They immediately contacted the FBI and said, here, maybe you can do something with this. But on June 30th, 2008, we learned that Epstein has somehow cut a deal.
The deal? That there would be no federal charges. Epstein would just quietly plead in state court to one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of a minor. You served only 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail.
At this point, Epstein is a convicted sex offender. But Maxwell did not completely cut ties with him. She's acknowledged in a deposition that even after he went to jail, she occasionally did some work for him at his properties. Why did you continue to maintain contact with Jeffrey Epstein after he pled guilty?
I'm a very loyal person. And Jeffrey was very good to me when my father passed away. And I felt that it was a very thoughtful, nice thing for me to do to help in very limited fashion. Many of the victims, very angry at the process, filed civil lawsuits against Jeffrey Epstein.
As the civil cases are winding through the courts, the victims' lawyers discover Ghislaine was a bigger part of Jeffrey's life than anybody had thought before. It was in the summer of 2009 when Virginia Roberts filed her lawsuit under the pseudonym Jane Doe 102.
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Chapter 6: What was Ghislaine Maxwell's relationship with her father?
Buckingham Palace issued a statement on Prince Andrew's behalf saying it is emphatically denied the prince had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Geoffrey. people really started to put the microscope on Ghislaine. I'll ask you about all the allegations that have come out, Ghislaine. Happy New Year.
Obviously, they're very damning, involving British royalty. Have you got no comment at all? I've made a statement. Thank you. Ghislaine Maxwell, through an agent, releases a statement that says Virginia's allegations are not true, that they are obvious lies. Do you know Virginia? Can you at least say if she's been in your house? Okay, you're obviously not gonna speak, so have a good day.
I'm wishing you a happy new year, thank you. You too, thank you. She actually starts consulting with Jeffrey Epstein. She writes him an email and Jeffrey replies, you have done nothing wrong and I would urge you to start acting like it. Go outside, head high, not as an escaping convict. Go to parties, deal with it.
A judge decided that Giuffre's allegations about Maxwell didn't belong in the case against the U.S. government. So what happened next? Virginia Roberts Giuffre takes the fight directly to Ghislaine Maxwell with a defamation lawsuit for calling her claims obvious lies.
All bets were off. You're now being litigated against, and once you're subpoenaed, you got to show up. A deposition is like testimony. You are under oath. Anything you say can then be used against you in future proceedings. There were two depositions. Both were sealed until a court ordered them to be released last year. We don't have audio or video, but we do have the transcripts.
Did Jeffrey Epstein have a scheme to recruit underage girls for sexual massages? I don't know what you're talking about. When I was there, at the time I was present, the people that gave Jeffrey men and women who gave Jeffrey massages were adults over the age of 18. Ghislaine Maxwell presents a fairly black and white version of events. This never happened. Well, I didn't see anything.
I never saw any inappropriate underage activities with Jeffrey ever. Maxwell accused Jouffre of inventing details to, quote, make the story more exciting. You know she lied about absolutely everything. She is a liar, an exaggerator, a fantasist, and an absolutely true terrible person.
Maxwell claims she would barely remember Virginia at all if not for the allegations, although according to flight records, someone with the initials GM had been on Epstein's planes with Virginia more than 20 times. When Virginia's lawyers ask, well, you were on a plane with Virginia, Ghislaine says, oh, a G and an M listed in the flight records, that could be somebody else.
Is it your testimony that on the flight logs when it represents GM that it is not you flying on the plane? It could be Georgina, George. This was a very contentious deposition. At one point in the deposition, Ghislaine Maxwell says, I have to object. Lawyers just love it when the client jumps in and starts lawyering on their own behalf.
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