Jeffrey Epstein - Life and Death
A college dropout who styled himself as a brilliant financier, Epstein socialized in elite circles, including former and future U.S. presidents. In 2008, he was registered as a sex offender but continued to maintain ties with powerful players in business and finance. Numerous prominent figures, including CEOs, banking institutions, leading figures in technology, science and business, diplomats, and Nobel Laureates, continued to maintain social and business relationships with Epstein.
Despite living a life of private jets, celebrity friends and private islands, Epstein remained an enigma. In a profile published in 2002, New York Magazine called Epstein an “international moneyman of mystery.” Author James Patterson, who has written a book about Epstein, called him “a total mystery person.” On CBS News, Patterson compared Epstein to author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Jay Gatsby: an impenetrable rich man who “liked to be around famous people and he liked to throw parties.”
Epstein’s start was a humble one. He was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. His father worked for the city parks department. In the mid-1970s, Epstein attended a private college in New York called The Cooper Union. He later attended New York University. Even though he failed to earn a degree from either school, Epstein managed to land a job teaching math at the Dalton School, an elite private school in Manhattan. He was reportedly hired by then-headmaster Donald Barr, father of Attorney General William Barr, according to Newsweek magazine. Epstein quit Dalton in 1976 and started work at the Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, advising clients on tax strategies. By 1980, he “did well enough to become a limited partner — a rung beneath full partner,” Vanity Fair reported.
He left Bear Sterns in 1981 and set up a money management firm, J. Epstein and Co., which later became the Financial Trust Company, based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein’s company was shrouded in secrecy. While Epstein had long claimed to represent several billionaires, his only known client was Les Wexner, the founder of Victoria’s Secret, The Limited and other retail brands. And despite his claims of wealth, Forbes magazine said Epstein was not a billionaire. He never appeared on the magazine’s list of 400 richest Americans.
“The source of his wealth — a money management firm in the U.S. Virgin Islands — generates no public records, nor has his client list ever been released,” according to Forbes. According to Bloomberg, “Today, so little is known about Epstein’s current business or clients that the only things that can be valued with any certainty are his properties.” What was known is that Epstein called home one of the largest private residences in Manhattan, where many of his crimes were allegedly committed. He also owned an island in the Caribbean and properties in Paris, Palm Beach and New Mexico.
Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Israel’s most famous Superspy, Robert Maxwell. claimed her partner-in-crime and ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein, was murdered in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while he was awaiting trial. In a jailhouse interview with Talk TV’s Jeremy Kyle Live, which aired on 24 January 2023, Maxwell stated that she didn’t believe the official narrative that the disgraced financier had committed suicide after he was found hanging in his cell just a month after his arrest. “I believe that he was murdered. I was shocked,” she said.
Epstein’s death had officially been ruled a suicide and the Justice Department said it found no signs of foul play following a two-year investigation. However, many still remained skeptical after it was revealed that video cameras covering Epstein’s cell malfunctioned and the two guards assigned to his cell falsified records stating that they had monitored the sex offender on the night of his death.
Epstein had been put on suicide watch weeks prior after an "apparent suicide attempt" in July 2018, according to the U.S. Justice Department. As a result, Epstein was placed in a special housing unit where guards were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes. Additionally, Epstein was assigned to the cell closest to the correctional officers' desk, fewer than four meters away. Two American prison guards were indicted 19 November 2019 in connection with the death of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A federal grand jury in New York accused the guards of failing to check on Epstein every half hour, as regulations required for prisoners deemed to be suicide risks. Toval Noel and Michael Thomas were charged with six counts of falsifying prison logs and records to mask their dereliction of duty.
His death came a day after the unsealing of a court filing in which a woman who accused Epstein of keeping her as a sex slave said one of the financier's associates had instructed her to have sex with at least a half-dozen prominent men. The claim by Virginia Giuffre came in a deposition that was included in about 2,000 pages of documents related to her defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate whom Giuffre said helped Epstein procure girls for sex.
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