Ghislaine and Epstein latest in long line of crime couples
Scotland’s leading crime expert’s column with his own take on the warped world inhabited by crimelords, killers and creeps
I HAVE a friend who a few years ago was a bit of a star, although our friendship started when his star was on the wane and he was coming back down to Earth.
He told me that at the height of his celebrity he had divided the world into two different groups – people like him and “civilians”.
If you were a star you could do anything that you wanted and, by and large, people didn’t mind what it was. And if you were caught out you could just deny it and be believed.
Civilians on the other hand always had to follow the rules, and obey the law.
I’ve been thinking about his stark, binary division of the world in trying to make sense of the convictions of Elizabeth Holmes and Ghislaine Maxwell in America.
Like buses, you wait for ages for the courts to convict privileged, white people with the best legal teams that money can buy and then all at once along come two in quick succession.
These findings of guilt, while very welcome, leave unanswered the biggest question of all – why did they do it?
The “why” question seems to be more complex for Maxwell, a former girlfriend and close associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who took his own life in prison.
She was found guilty of five of the six counts that she faced, including the most serious charge related to sex trafficking a minor.
The daughter of the publisher and former MP Robert Maxwell, a friend of royalty – most obviously Prince Andrew – educated at Oxford and already wealthy in her own right, why did she find young girls for Epstein to sexually abuse, rather than report him to the police?
A number of explanations spring to mind, such as the well-documented and complicated relationship that she had had with her father – most recently described in John Preston’s book The Fall. How we behave in our childhood and the ways that we learn to navigate the world and the people who are important in our lives provide a template for how we will behave and act when we are adults.
There may indeed be merit in this linear line of reasoning but my work with offenders and sex offenders suggests that a number of other explanations are probably more helpful. Her relationship with Epstein was a classic – a madness shared by two. This is something I have dealt with a lot in my career studying crime – especially in relation to “killer couples” such as Fred and Rose West and, most recently, Christopher and Susan Edwards who were convicted of murdering Susan’s parents – a story told in the Sky series
Landscapers. The two people are in a toxic relationship and begin to see the world only through their own, disordered lens and, as each day passes, come to be convinced that there is nothing wrong with their behaviour.
This idea works only so far. The Wests knew that they had murdered women to satisfy their sadistic, sexual fantasies and therefore they had to hide the bodies in their cellar and garden.
The Edwards kept up a deluded fantasy that Susan’s parents were alive when they knew that they were dead and buried in the back garden.
This is evidence that they understood what they did was wrong. In these circumstances you have to be determined to continue with your
– there is always a dominant and subservient within the partnership, with the former determined to keep going.
With Fred and Rose West it was always clear Fred was the driving force behind their demented campaign of murder and abuse.
So it is with Maxwell and Epstein. It is hard to escape the conclusion that it was Epstein who controlled the relationship with Maxwell.
But that’s no excuse not to have blown the whistle on what was happening or to have backed away from the relationship.
Something else was keeping her close and I believe that there’s an element of hybristophilia here – the sexual interest and arousal that someone has for those who commit crimes, and which also helps to explain why so many violent offenders receive “fan mail”. In other words, some women are simply attracted to evil men.
Until Maxwell – who is appealing her conviction – opens up about what happened we will probably never know what it was that drove her to stay in a doomed relationship with Epstein, although one thing is certain – they were the ultimate “stars” rather than civilians.
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