THE ‘PALACE’ OF PERVERSION
Ghis made staff follow Buckingham rulebook at Epstein lairs: vic att'y
WHEN Ghislaine Maxwell was put in charge of running Jeffrey Epstein’s various homes around the world in 1991, she took a page straight out of the Buckingham Palace servants guide — and forced household staff to follow the royal rules.
That’s one of the revelations in “Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein,” a book by crusading lawyer Bradley Edwards that the British socialite oddly kept a copy of at her bedside table while she was hiding out at a secluded New Hampshire mansion before getting busted July 2.
“It’s hard to tell exactly why she wanted to know what it was that I knew about her in the book,” said Edwards, 44, a Florida lawyer who has been representing 56 alleged Epstein victims for more than a decade.
In addition to his access to the accusers, Edwards spent a great deal of time over the last decade interviewing Epstein’s household staff, who shared how Maxwell ruled the pervert’s palaces with an iron fist and made them follow actual royal protocol.
Maxwell, 58 — who counted Prince Andrew among her friends and once posed for a photo with disgraced actor Kevin Spacey sitting on the Buckingham Palace thrones of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip — distributed a guide for royal help that all of the servants were required to read, according to butler Juan Alessi (inset).
Among the most important rules: “The staff never look the master, Jeffrey Epstein, in the eye.”
Household staff had to linger in the background and could not speak unless they were spoken to.
Edwards added, “Ghislaine was deeply controlling and did things Juan did not appreciate.”
Among those things was having Alessi drive her around Palm Beach, Fla., on her missions to recruit young masseuses, which a recently unsealed federal indictment says she began doing as early as 1994.
Edwards believes it was the start of a global sex-trafficking scheme that entrapped more than 500 women, some as young as 14.
Maxwell, transferred last week to a Brooklyn federal lockup, began overseeing Epstein’s properties in Palm Beach, New Mexico, the Caribbean and Paris as early as 1991. She became the woman of the house, replacing Eva Andersson, a former Miss Sweden now married to hedge-fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, as Epstein’s live-in girlfriend, Edwards said.
Edwards found out much about their domestic arrangements in 2009, when he deposed Alessi, who worked at the Palm Beach mansion from 1991 to 2002. Alessi had met Epstein through Leslie Wexner, the billionaire owner of Victoria’s Secret. Alessi used to do repair work for Wexner, and did the same for Epstein when he was first hired as a handyman. “Alessi liked Eva because she was well-mannered, considerate and respectful of household staff,” Edwards writes. “When Eva was in charge, Alessi said, there weren’t other females, including young girls, around the house.”
As soon as Maxwell took over, he said, “there were female visitors there who were referred to as ‘masseuses’ but who did not look professional and appeared too young.”
Edwards writes that Maxwell loved to take nude pictures of the girls, and that following the “massages,” Alessi would be dispatched to the rubdown room to clean up. Alessi said he would find used dildos and use rubber gloves to retrieve and rinse them off, then deposit them in a laundry basket filled with sex toys that Maxwell kept in her closet.
Maxwell’s 18-page indictment focuses on three young women she allegedly procured between 1994 and 1997 for Epstein, who died in an apparent suicide in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan on Aug. 10 while awaiting trial.
Edwards refused to discuss any details of the federal case against Maxwell.
He said he was also prohibited from disclosing anything about Maxwell’s 2016 deposition in a related defamation case brought against her by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims she was brought to England as a 17-year-old to have sex with Prince Andrew.
That deposition, which contains what Edwards called “more surprises,” remains under seal.
MAXWELL has previously denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s alleged sexual misconduct.
But the full deposition may be made public if Maxwell’s case proceeds to trial. In the federal indictment against her, she is accused of lying in the 2016 legal interview, which took place over several days, Edwards said. In the deposition, Maxwell is asked about Epstein’s scheme to recruit girls for sexual massages.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maxwell replied, according to court papers.
“Were you aware of the presence of sex toys or devices used in sexual activities in Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach house?”
Maxwell said she couldn’t recall them, the documents say.
Edwards claims he didn’t know the federal indictment was imminent and says he was surprised by Maxwell’s arrest.
“I was just fascinated that she had my book,” he said. “Certainly, if Jeffrey Epstein was around he would read the book.”
Edwards began representing Epstein’s victims 11 years ago, beginning with Courtney Wild, who alleged Epstein hired her as a masseuse at age 14 and later paid her to lure her underage friends to his Palm Beach mansion.
In the years that he squared off against Epstein in the courtroom, Edwards said, he became well acquainted with his calculating and domineering adversary.
In 2015, the billionaire reached out to Edwards by phone and the two began a series of meetings at a Starbucks in Boca Raton, Fla.
Epstein, whose number showed up on Edwards’ cellphone as a row of zeros, wanted to figure out a way for them to “divorce” each other and settle the legal actions
between them, said Edwards.
Epstein had sued Edwards in 2008, linking him to convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, a Florida lawyer who stole millions of dollars from his firm’s investors. Edwards worked for Rothstein for a short time and was accused by Epstein of aggressively going after him to generate cash for the Ponzi scheme. But Rothstein denied Edwards knew about the scam, and Edwards countersued Epstein for malicious prosecution.
The legal impasse ended with a deal they hammered out in the coffee shop, with Epstein agreeing to apologize publicly to Edwards
in 2018. Edwards then dropped his countersuit.
Edwards met Epstein for the last time in May 2019, two months before Epstein was arrested. Although Epstein appeared harried and nervous, “he was still the king of the chessboard,” he said.
Edwards firmly believes Epstein committed suicide, saying that, for Epstein, going to jail and being forced to give up his lifestyle was the ultimate loss of control.
Edwards believes a similarly strategic Maxwell has that “same desire to control,” which may explain why she was reading “Relentless Pursuit” in hiding. Like
Epstein, she wants to get into Edwards’ head and find out what victims have told him about her as she readies for her battle with federal authorities, Edwards said.
Her control issues made her “a crucial figure to the spider web of victims . . . She was the groomer, the enabler and the facilitator.”
EDWARDS said he was relieved when Maxwell was arrested. “I felt there was new hope to finally hold everyone accountable,” he said, adding that victims were denied their day in court in 2008 after Epstein cut a sweetheart deal with federal prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to plead guilty to minor charges of soliciting a prostitute and spend little time in jail.
Now, after Maxwell’s blockbuster arrest, Edwards is urging anyone who has any information about Epstein and Maxwell to call him “immediately.”
“Whether they are a billionaire or a 16-year-old girl on the streets of New York, we want to hear from them,” he said.
He’s already been flooded with phone calls from purported victims, but he won’t say how many.
“They continue to come forward, almost every day.”