The bully ‘billionaire’
Epstein cheated pals and threatened death to enemies
THAT convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein preyed on young women is common knowledge. Less known is that he had a knack for taking advantage of older ones as well.
According to John Connolly, the former Vanity Fair journalist and coauthor of “Filthy Rich: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein,” Johnson & Johnson heiress Libet Johnson — a Manhattan society fixture before her 2017 death at age 66 — lost untold sums to the financier and possible billionaire, who died in a Manhattan prison cell last year.
“She told people that he took her for more money than all of her husbands combined,” Connolly told The Post of Johnson, who wed and divorced five times. “Supposedly he was managing money for her and she lost a ton.”
It is unclear how much of the funds actually wound up in Epstein’s pockets. But it’s been reported that a $22 million ski chalet was transferred to him by Johnson — who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease — and the financier was listed by her as a resident of her Madison Avenue home.
He also used his relationship with Johnson to bamboozle another socialite. “This other woman owned an Upper East Side townhouse that Epstein wanted,” said Connolly. “At the same time, she wanted to buy an apartment that Libet owned. This other woman was very close to Epstein — to the point that she . . . would tell her sons, ‘If anything happens to me, don’t call your father, call Jeffrey.’ They made a
deal in which Jeffrey would buy the townhouse for $2 million less than asking in exchange for an introduction to Libet.”
The deal was allegedly made, but the introduction wasn’t — Johnson, Connolly said, didn’t know about it — and, the socialite later told Connolly: “If I go to a party or event and Jeffrey is there, I walk out.”
Connolly is one of the participants in the documentary “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” airing Sunday on Investigation Discovery and part of a flood of new Epsteinrelated media, including the Netflix docuseries “Filthy Rich” (based on Connolly’s book co-authored with James Patterson) and the book “A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein,” by Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper — which, as The Post reported, details an alleged affair between Bill Clinton and Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. (Clinton’s spokesperson called that claim “a total lie.”) All reveal the dastardly lengths Epstein would go to in order to get his way.
Connolly told The Post how his former boss, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, allegedly was intimidated by Epstein while the magazine was preparing a 2007 story, by Connolly, on the disgraced financier.
When Carter’s family arrived at their home in Connecticut, Connolly claims, they encountered a gnarly surprise. “There was the head of a cat on their porch,” Connolly said. “No question, it was left by Epstein or by somebody on his behalf.”
That Monday, “I came to the office and Graydon was still upset,” remembered Connolly. “He asked if we should still do the story. I said no . . . it just wasn’t worth it. Epstein surrounded himself with people who can be scary if you’re not a tough guy.”
“There was no investigation and I have no idea who was responsible, but my wife and I remember attributing [it] to the work of aggrieved George W. Bush supporters,” Carter said of the animal, in a statement to The Post. “To suggest that it affected my editorial judgment is . . . wrong.”
Connolly added that Epstein once went so far as to hire shady Russian investigators to look into Palm Beach police chief Michael Ryder, who was mounting an investigation into federal sex trafficking by Epstein.
“That is insane and it takes balls,” said Connolly, himself a former NYPD detective. “Epstein knew no bounds.”
ACCORDING to Connolly, Epstein also threw his weight around in an effort to help his friends and colleagues. Sometimes he didn’t even tell them.
He allegedly stepped up on behalf of attorney Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein on multiple counts of unlawful sex acts with a minor in 2006.
“Dershowitz invested in a fund that Epstein put him into,” said Connolly. “When the financial market blew up in 2007, the guy [overseeing it] folded the fund and Dershowitz lost a lot of money. Jeffrey told the guy, ‘If you don’t make Dershowitz whole, I will kill you and your entire family.’ The guy gave all of the money back,” Connolly claimed. He added that Dershowitz probably didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged threats.
Dershowitz denied it happened: “The guy offered to return some of my investment because I was his only investor who hadn’t previously made money with him.”
Though lacking a college degree and raised working-class near Coney Island, Epstein managed to flit from being a math teacher at The Dalton School on the Upper East Side to doing investment advising for Bear Stearns. He worked at the Wall Street firm from 1976 to 1981 before landing in business with Steven Hoffenberg (briefly an owner of The Post), who headed up Towers Financial Co. — a company that made money through the buying and selling of debt.
Hoffenberg wound up going to jail for being part of a Ponzi scheme. In the Investigation Discovery documentary, he pegs Epstein as a central figure and accuses him of embezzling $17 million from Towers.
Epstein walked away unscathed while Hoffenberg went to prison for 18 years, convicted of stealing $450 million from investors.
“Jeffrey Epstein had the ability to get under your skin, to become the best friend of anybody he targeted,” states Hoffenberg — who once said he fired Epstein “for stealing too much” — in the documentary. “His dynamic personality, his incredible gift of reading the other person’s mind in conversation and saying what the other person wanted to hear [were] remarkable, astonishing.”
“Like all good grifters, he had ways of moving people in directions where they shouldn’t go,” said Connolly. “Once they did, they were screwed.” According to The Wall Street Journal, Johnson, along with other wealthy individuals, put outsized trust in Epstein’s money management — opening their checkbooks and lives as he pitched tax-saving strategies (which Connolly characterized as “either you pay me or you pay the IRS”) and estate planning. Per Connolly, it’s unclear if Epstein kept some of the money himself — or was just not very good at his job and ended up losing it.
PRISON seemed to prove Epstein’s toughguy image was just a façade. Following his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges last July, he was sent to Metropolitan Correctional Center in Tribeca, notorious for reportedly soul-crushing conditions.
Soon after arriving, Epstein was placed on suicide watch. Inmate Bill Mersey, locked up for tax fraud, was his assigned companion.
“The only time I heard him complain was when he was given the wrong laxative — and he took it anyway,” Mersey told The Post.
Paid 40 cents an hour, Mersey was tasked with keeping Epstein company and monitoring his behavior. During their 10-or-so encounters, Mersey asked about onetime close Epstein pal Clinton’s taste in women.
“He said Clinton likes them older,” Mersey said. “But that Bill has had heart operations and that his philandering days are over.”
But Mersey didn’t always believe what Epstein told him.
Such was the case when rumors circulated that Epstein, who shared a cell with killer cop Nicholas Tartaglione, had been beaten up. Mersey saw him a day later with red rings around his neck: “He said he got up for a drink of water and is not sure what went down. I knew he was lying. He might have tried to kill himself. He didn’t have a black eye or anything. You get beaten up in prison and . . . you look like you’ve been beaten up.”
He added that avoiding beatings behind bars was an overriding concern for Epstein.
“He wanted to know how to handle himself [within the general population],” said Mersey. “He asked, ‘Do I need a big schvar [short for schvartze, a Yiddish slur for an African American person] to protect me?’ I told him to look people in the eye and man up.”
Their last encounter was nine days before Epstein’s death. “He was a little downbeat and he said to me, ‘Mersey, do you need any money?’ I said, ‘I could always use money from a billionaire.’ ”
Mersey was stoked. But no money was transferred into his account and Epstein’s body was found in his MCC cell on Aug. 10, 2019. Mersey has no doubt about the medical examiner’s report that Epstein’s death was a suicide and that he had broken neck bones consistent with death by hanging.
Mersey knew the prisoner occupying the cell next to Epstein’s, and “he told me that he heard Jeffrey tearing up sheets the night he killed himself. No one came in and out all night. Around 5 in the morning, guards came in kicking him, trying to wake him up.”
As to how Mersey, who was released in November, felt about the death of a man whom he considered a friend: “I was not shocked. There was a little bit of sadness and a little bit of, ‘Ah, s--t. Now we’re locked down because the f--king guy killed himself. It’s going to be baloney sandwiches for dinner.’ ”