What Happened to the Jeffrey Epstein Tapes?

The continuing disappearance of videos related to the case

Maria Farmer in 1995 was twenty-six years old and had taken a job working the front desk at Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion in Manhattan. She could not help but notice the procession of young women coming in and out of the residence on a regular basis. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s literal partner in crime, told her they were “getting Victoria’s Secret models.” Maxwell obtained girls for Epstein on a daily basis, visiting areas such as Central Park to accomplish the task. Farmer even witnessed Maxwell do this “a couple of times in the car . . . She would say, ‘Stop the car,’ and she would dash out and get a child.”

Farmer’s curiosity got the best of her one day, asking Epstein directly, “What goes on in this house? Why are you always upstairs?” He replied, “I’ll show you.”

Taking Farmer upstairs in an elevator, he showed her Maxwell’s quarters, his personal bathroom where he received massages, and his camera system. “I looked on the cameras,” she recalled, “and I saw toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed.”

I’m never going to use the restroom here, and I’m never going to sleep here, she thought. Epstein revealed to her that he stored the footage: “I keep it. I keep everything in my safe.” Farmer was not the only person he told about the cameras. Another friend visiting with his wife years later learned that the cameras were a point of pride for Epstein. “He was doing it for some reason,” the friend said. “He didn’t tell me what the reason was, but here’s a good guess: there’s a lot of famous people he had something on.” Epstein said of the surveillance camera room to another young woman, “This is where I can make tapes that will protect me in the future.”

Maxwell’s recruitment methods were similar in Palm Beach, Florida where Epstein had another residence. She drove to spas and trailer parks to recruit teenage girls with promises of money, connections, and a better life. What would often start out as a massage session would inevitably lead to sexual abuse from Epstein, on occasion with Maxwell participating herself. As an enabler and confidant, Maxwell’s devotion to Epstein was steadfast as she sought to fulfill his every whim. The victims were incidental to her and disposable. “They’re nothing, these girls,” Maxwell said. “They are trash.”

The Prince

“Wake up, sleepy head.” Virginia Roberts woke up in a London townhouse to the sound of an unusually cheerful Ghislaine Maxwell opening the bedroom window’s shutters. Having never seen her act this way before, Roberts knew that something consequential was afoot. Having only arrived in the country the night before, she inquired as to the reason for the wake-up service. “Besides the fact it is ten o’clock in the morning and nearly time for brunch, we have a big day planned out for you today,” Maxwell explained.

“What are we doing?” Roberts wondered.

“We’re going shopping for a new ensemble . . .” Maxwell paused for effect. “To go dancing with a Prince of England this evening.”

Roberts’ enthusiasm was quickly dampened when she learned this was not to be a young royal, but rather Prince Andrew, Duke of York, who was 41 years old at the time in 2001. She feigned excitement: “What . . . wow!” They spent the day shopping for outfits, with Maxwell coaching her on how to treat a royal (“Make sure you’re bubbly and energetic, nobody wants a dead horse”) and pitching it as an opportunity (“Who knows where this could lead for you”).

The build-up throughout the day caused a sense of trepidation in Roberts. She took “a few Xanax” to calm her anxiety and sat with Epstein downstairs in the early evening as they waited for Maxwell to get ready. They sat in silence while Roberts stared at a mural in front of her, an illustration of a happy family on a bench surrounded by a picturesque English scene, with an extravagant home featured on a vast piece of land. Epstein noticed her interest and explained that the mural was in fact a portrait of Ghislaine’s proudest memory of her family. He went much further, taking this opportunity to provide a history lesson on Maxwell’s father:

Her father was born of poor Jewish descent in Czechoslovakia, most of his family being killed upon Nazi invasion in 1939. Fleeing to join the British army as a young man, he changed his name a few times and made a lot of contacts in the field. After the war, a newfound Robert Maxwell went into publishing using his army contacts to establish a business initially built upon publishing scientific books from occupied Germany. In time, Maxwell acquired several British newspapers, among them the Daily Mirror, countering his wits against the likes of Rupert Murdoch along the way. However, whilst constructing his publishing empire, Maxwell compiled astronomical debts, and his equivocal financial dealings attracted the attention of governing authorities that judged him not to be looking out for his companies’ best interest and in the end it transpired that Robert Maxwell had been using proceeds from his employees’ pension funds to meet his financial debts, ruining the futures of thousands of employees. Once an esteemed Member of Parliament and publishing mogul, Robert’s body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean after he was found to be missing from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine (named after his favorite child), whilst cruising the Canary Islands in 1991.

Epstein noted that Ghislaine had been inconsolable after her father’s death and he credited their relationship with rescuing her from the “trenches of despair.” They had remained together ever since, Maxwell not minding the constant presence of young girls by his side. Virginia surmised this attitude may have had its roots in Ghislaine’s childhood watching the actions of her father, a reported womanizer who took on a second wife while still married to his first, Ghislaine’s mother.

Not long after this discussion on her personal family history took place unbeknownst to her, Maxwell joined Epstein downstairs and the pair passed the time by making fun of Roberts’ nervousness. A few minutes after 6:00 pm, Prince Andrew arrived with two guards and a driver who waited in the car. Epstein and the Prince shook hands, while Roberts gave Andrew a kiss on the cheek, as she had been instructed to do. Roberts watched as over tea and biscuits, the trio made disparaging remarks about Andrew’s ex-wife Fergie, from whom he had divorced in 1996, while expressing sympathy for his two daughters. Andrew in turn asked about Virginia, his assigned young companion for the evening, whom Maxwell and Epstein knew by the pseudonym of Jenna. Maxwell proposed an icebreaker of “How old do you think Jenna is?” Andrew was immediately able to pinpoint her precise age: 17. Maxwell was surprised, thinking Roberts could pass for younger. She remarked, “I guess we are going to have to trade you in soon,” as the adults laughed. Roberts later reflected on an uncomfortable fact she was unaware of at the time, which was that Andrew’s eldest, Princess Beatrice, was only five years younger than her. “I was finding it hard to make much conversation in the beginning,” she recalled, “just laughing when the occasion called for it, and keeping up with Andrew’s constant glances in my direction, was all I could manage.”

Seated next to the Prince at dinner, Roberts could not bring herself to flatter him and “act like a bimbo for him” in the way Maxwell wished. As planned, they next visited Tramp, a members-only private nightclub in central London and a favorite celebrity haunt. Prince Andrew in particular was known to have brought dates there in the past, including his ex-wife. Epstein located a corner seat and spent the rest of the evening watching the events unfold. Andrew purchased drinks at the bar (sparkling water for Epstein who Andrew knew did not drink alcohol) and once they had finished their cocktails Roberts and the Prince headed to the dance floor. She was surprised that, being in public, he began “whispering sweet nothings into my ear and kissing my deck.” She had a difficult time feigning to appear impressed with his terrible smile and dance moves: “He was the most incredibly hideous dancer I had ever seen,” which made her laugh and exchange glances with Epstein and Maxwell “who were having a good time laughing at my expense,” a situation to which she had grown accustomed as a matter of course.

Following an hour of “pelvic smashing” on the dance floor, the Prince, sweating profusely, requested that they leave so he and Roberts could be alone. Before acquiescing, Epstein and Maxwell told her they were impressed with her work so far and that the Prince was having a great time. Returning to Maxwell’s townhouse, which had been recently purchased by Epstein and refurbished as a gift for Maxwell, the Prince’s guards waited outside in the car as the remainder of the ensemble entered. They all spoke for a few minutes in the study upstairs, where Roberts asked Epstein to take a photo of the trio. Prince Andrew put his arm around Roberts’ waist in a photograph that, once released years later, caused immense headaches for the Royal Family. Within moments, Epstein and Maxwell “walked away giddy as if they were teenagers imposing on young lovers about to embark on a romantic evening.” Roberts and the Prince moved next to the bathroom tub for foreplay, where the Prince indulged in his foot fetish (“That was definitely a first for me” Roberts remarked). Following their bath, they dried off and went to the bedroom “for the longest ten minutes of my life,” she remembered with regret. Once the Prince was finished, Roberts was relieved the experience was over, but left with a sinking feeling that a life of being exploited by “wealth, power, and privilege” was taking its toll. “Later in my life,” she wrote, “I had nothing but memories filled with sorrow to remember of my teenage years.”

Roberts’ account can be found in her unpublished memoir entitled The Billionaire’s Playboy Club. Recruited by Maxwell from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in the summer of 1998, Virginia Roberts was 15-years-old when her abuse began at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell. Already a victim of abuse previously in her life, Roberts recognized she was one of many in a long line as she was led through Epstein’s Palm Beach estate:

I noticed a different girl in each photograph in his collection of half-nude and topless girls on display around his mansion. I couldn’t believe how many girls there were, it’s not like Jeffrey was much to look at. He was an aging man in his early fifties with shiny grey hair and characteristic lines drawn down his face as if he had seen harder days. With no prospects of ever settling down or having a family of his own, Jeffrey treated us girls like a piece of clothing he could try on for the day and get rid of the next.

Roberts pinned Maxwell’s willing participation down to maintaining a lifestyle her family once had: “we were all under the shade of Jeffrey’s money tree,” Roberts wrote, “and not even someone like her could escape from its lure.” Once his crimes were exposed, the legal system was similarly enthralled and unable to function appropriately. His first and only conviction in 2008 allowed him to largely remain free and left him with the impression that his transgressions were minor. “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an offender,” he told the press. “It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.” Prince Andrew remained his friend, staying at his New York mansion for three days in 2010, with the pair photographed walking in Central Park. Roberts learned at a young age how the privileged protected their own and seemed to have no sense of compunction when it came to Epstein. Having never known a different world, Roberts assumed the worst of high society:

Being surrounded by so many of Jeffrey’s colleagues and his likeminded people that were considered the most sophisticated and the highly esteemed of today’s world nearly made the way I was living lately more fathomable, at least to myself. I thought if everyone looks up to these people and they are all accepting of it, it must be just the way the world turns.

The way the world worked meant for Roberts that she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to Epstein’s ruling-class friends. Her abusers included a United States senator, a Harvard professor, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist. She expressed particular distain for Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout, who supplied Epstein with young girls from Europe, most of whom could not speak English. She had difficulty hiding her disgust when Epstein relayed to her that Brunel had recruited three 12-year-old sisters for him as a birthday gift. Most media accounts report the youngest Epstein victims as 14 years old (likely only accounting for American victims), but Roberts could not forget the disturbing details and the way Epstein laughed and reveled in retelling the story. “A 12-year-old, are you serious?” Roberts remembered thinking. “He went on to tell me how Brunel bought them in Paris, France, from their parents. Offering them the usual sums of money, visas, and modeling career prospects was a bribe of the worst kind, they were just children. Laughing the whole way through, Jeffrey thought it was absolutely brilliant how easily money seduced all walks of life . . . [there was] nothing or no one that couldn’t be brought in his eyes.”

There were to be further encounters with the Prince, all with the same goal. At Epstein’s Palm Beach house, after Andrew “cupped my breast with a doll made in his image,” Maxwell snapped a photo with Roberts and another Epstein assistant on Andrew’s lap (this one remained unseen by the general public). She was again subject to sexual assault by Prince Andrew in Palm Beach, as well as in New York, Epstein’s ranch in Sante Fe, and his private island in the Caribbean. Steve Scully, an IT employee of Epstein’s, was an eyewitness to the pair in a pool on Epstein’s island. “She was young, she didn’t have any top on. They were engaged in foreplay. He was grabbing her and grinding against her.” Roberts became addicted to cocaine and pills as the abuse continued unabated. “I sure as hell didn’t feel like a 17-year-old anymore.”

The Prison Footage

After Epstein’s final arrest in New York on sex trafficking charges, he was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), where on July 23, 2019, he was found partially conscious on the floor of his cell with injuries to his neck at 1:30 am. His cellmate, in prison accused of a quadruple homicide, professed to have nothing to do with the incident, stating that he had found Epstein attempting to commit suicide by tying a bedsheet around his neck. Epstein was placed on suicide watch temporarily and the truth of the incident was impossible to verify, as the surveillance video mysteriously disappeared. Prison officials stated that the footage had been destroyed by mistake due to “technical errors.”

On the night of Epstein’s death that year, video showed two MCC guards at a desk 10-15 feet from Epstein’s cell failing to carry out their duties from 10:00 pm on August 9 to 6:00 am on August 10. Rather than check on prisoners every 30 minutes as per their procedures, they filed false entries claiming they had checked on Epstein’s cell, when in reality they never left the desk. “We messed up,” one of the guards admitted to a supervisor. “We didn’t do any rounds.” For two hours, they appeared to be asleep and for the time they were awake, they spent time surfing the Internet, browsing for furniture and motorcycles. An inmate working in the MCC kitchen reported hearing the sound of bedsheets being torn apart that night in Epstein’s cell, saying “nobody came into the tier all night.”

The camera in the hallway outside of Epstein’s cell was not functional at the time of his death, the footage being reported as corrupted. In terms of the camera that was functional and captured the negligence of the two guards, it showed that no one entered or left Epstein’s cellblock that night, which included eight jail cells that could house a total of 16 men. Strangely, in a continued trend with Epstein-related evidence, the footage eventually disappeared. Attorney General William Barr in November 2019 personally viewed the footage to confirm that no one entered Epstein’s area that night, which led to his conclusion that the death was a suicide. The New York City medical examiner ruled the death a suicide by hanging, viewing nine minutes of footage from a MCC security camera according to Epstein’s lawyers. The public was never able to see this for themselves as by January 2020, the footage no longer existed due to “technical errors.”

The Personal Footage

Epstein claimed to have connections with the Palm Beach Police Department, making substantial donations ($100,000 at a time, he told Roberts) to the force and making a police investigative issue disappear for Roberts with a simple phone call. This relationship may have helped tip him off to the first proposed raid on one of his properties, a search warrant issued for his Palm Beach mansion. Three computers were removed in advance by an Epstein assistant, as confirmed by the house’s manager in a legal deposition. When the police raid finally occurred in 2005, six computer hard drives were reported as missing and unplugged wires hung from monitors in several areas of the house. “All the wires were still there, as if someone had pulled them just before we arrived,” reported a detective on the scene. While some photographs of nude girls were covered by police in some of Epstein’s closets, the framed pictures previously witnessed by Roberts in the house were gone, in addition to surveillance videos, the cameras found disconnected. The police later discovered that the computers were in the possession of Epstein’s lawyers, but by this time the detective in charge of the case was already receiving pushback from the state attorney’s office. Alexander Acosta, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, offered Epstein an extremely lenient plea deal, granting him immunity from federal criminal charges and settling for two felony prostitution charges with an 18-month sentence. Acosta claimed he was told the matter was above his pay grade, to “leave it alone,” and that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Epstein was allowed to leave jail six days a week, 10:00 am to 10:00 pm, essentially only visiting jail to sleep. Roberts noted that Epstein rarely stayed up late, so this arrangement suited his lifestyle perfectly and she estimated that around 70 girls would have visited him during this period.

Once while staying at Epstein’s New York mansion, Roberts was permitted to catch a glimpse of Epstein’s security room, which she had not realized existed in her three years of visiting the home. She saw around 20 screens monitored by a man at a desk, who was tasked with watching footage that was for more than security. “Kill two birds with one stone Jeffrey thought,” she wrote, “free porn to share with all of his pedophile friends and when the occasion called for it, a security system all at one expense.”

In July 2019 after Epstein’s final arrest, the FBI found Epstein’s safe in a dressing room on the 5th floor of his New York mansion in a search that took 12 hours to cover the house’s 40 rooms. Using a saw to open the safe, among the items found were CDs and hard drives, which were left on top of the safe as the FBI lacked a proper warrant to seize them. Returning with such a warrant four days later, the CDs and hard drives were gone. FBI Special Agent Kelly Maguire phoned one of Epstein’s lawyers, Richard Kahn, who brought the items to her in two suitcases about 30 minutes later. Maguire confirmed the items were accounted for, but could not confirm if the content was the same, as the evidence had not been analyzed at the time of discovery. In other boxes of CDs and hard drives found in other rooms, including his massage room, some were sealed with “evidence tape” not put there by police. A shelf filled with black binders containing CDs with photo files had labels that needed to be blacked out in court as they identified “information for third parties.” In a court filing to deny Epstein’s bail that same month, prosecutors revealed in part the CD labels included titles such as “Young [Name] + [Name],’ ‘Misc nudes 1,’ and ‘Girl pics nude.’”

Ghislaine Maxwell told a friend that Epstein’s island in the Caribbean was similarly “completely wired for video,” which the friend interpreted as recording material for the potential for blackmail. Only after Epstein’s death did the FBI raid the island and take away two desktop computers as part of their search.

The Aftermath

No case demonstrates the hollowness of the notion that “no one is above the law” better than Jeffrey Epstein’s decades of evasion from justice. Maria Farmer was the first person to provide authorities with a criminal complaint against Jeffrey Epstein, reporting sexual misconduct to the New York City Police Department and the FBI in 1996. Allowed to continue his crimes unabated, Epstein abused dozens more over the ensuing years. Julie K. Brown, investigating for the Miami Herald, estimated a total of 80 victims, 60 of whom she was able to locate.

Alexander Acosta was appointed as the U.S. Secretary of Labor in 2017 and was forced to resign from the Trump administration when his role in Epstein deal garnered more scrutiny following Epstein’s 2019 arrest. In an internal Department of Justice review from November 2020, Acosta was found to have shown “poor judgment” in permitting a non-prosecution agreement for Epstein and failing to notify victims of the arrangement, but stopped short of alleging professional misconduct.

The two prison guards who failed to check on Epstein the night of his death were charged with falsifying records and of conspiracy to defraud the government. The case was dropped in December 2021 after both admitted to having falsified the records “willfully and knowingly” that fateful night. The defendants agreed to perform 100 hours of community service and to participate in a federal inquiry into Epstein’s death.

Virginia Roberts, now Virginia Giuffre, sued Prince Andrew in January 2022 in civil court for “sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Prince Andrew had for years attempted to use every possible excuse to evade responsibility for his actions (most interestingly, claiming that he was physically unable to sweat). After exhausting every legal argument against the case and following a decade of denials, the Prince agreed to settle the case in February 2022. Estimated at $16.3 million, the out-of-court settlement will in part fund Giuffre’s victim support charity.

The video recordings, to the extent they still exist, may remain the last hope of any further Epstein co-conspirators being criminally charged. Of note in Giuffre’s latest lawsuit is the allegation that an instance Prince Andrew’s sexual abuse occurred at the New York mansion, which undoubtedly would have been captured on one of the many cameras hidden throughout the building. Some have claimed to have copies of the recordings but no proof of this has ever been produced. One of the only accounts revealing some of what may be found on the video recordings comes from 60 Minutes producer Ira Rosen, who spoke to Ghislaine Maxwell. Their conversation about the videos’ contents implied that the recordings included footage of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Rosen main interest was to obtain footage of Trump to influence the 2016 election. “I am the daughter of a press baron,” she said to him in response. “I know the way you people think. If you do one side, you must do the other. If you get the tapes on Trump you have to do Clinton.” However, Maxwell claimed that Epstein never told her where the tapes were and was therefore unable to retrieve them.

Epstein made no secret of his recordings and claimed to have dirt on powerful people, telling a reporter that some of it was “potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.” “He was like the Godfather of the sky,” Epstein’s personal chauffeur said. “He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and nobody could touch him because he had money, he had influence, and he had dirt on all these people. And he was able to control and manipulate everything because everybody was afraid of him. Nobody would want that stuff to come out.” Investigative reporter Julie K. Brown remains skeptical of the idea that the Epstein surveillance videos will ever be seen again:

I don’t think the Feds are ever going to release them. The only other people that would know about its contents are probably the people that are now in charge of his estate, the people in his closest, closest inner circle. I mean, do I think that the FBI should release everything? Yes. Do I think that they should at least investigate with the goal of prosecuting more people who were involved? Yes. Will they? I don’t think so.

Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted for child sex trafficking and other crimes in a U.S. court December 2021. The only witness to use her real identity during the trial was Annie Farmer, Maria’s sister. Only further civil cases of co-conspirators may ultimately occur if the door is in fact being shut on further criminal prosecutions. Maxwell no longer objects to releasing the names of former associates of the couple as part of a 2015 defamation lawsuit launched by Roberts. “Justice to me looks like holding all of these people involved in the sex ring,” Giuffre now says, “those who greased its wheels, named and shamed.”

At 1:50 am on February 19, 2022, former Epstein co-conspirator Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead, hanging in his cell in a Paris prison in an apparent suicide, awaiting trial to answer for charges of rape and sex trafficking. While there were no cameras immediately outside his cell, there is no word yet on the quality or availability of the hallway surveillance camera footage to determine if three visual checks by guards occurred during the night.

“Jeffrey knew all of the right people in this game, and trading girls for favors is how he kept in the circle,” Virginia wrote in her memoir. “He was at the center of it all.” With the main perpetrator dead and the associated evidence likely never to see the light of day, those in the circle who have still evaded justice for years may continue to do so, demonstrating that wealth, power, and privilege remain the most important caveats to the rule of law.