[woman] Raise your hand, please.
Do you swear the testimony you're about to give in this matter
shall be the truth, whole truth,
-and nothing but the truth? -Yes, ma'am.
[lawyer 1] Would you please state your full name?
It's Jeffrey Edward Epstein,
and my residence address is 6100 Red Hook Boulevard
in Virgin Islands.
[lawyer 1] Do you maintain any other residences presently?
I have vacation homes in New Mexico...
uh... Palm Beach, New York and Paris.
[lawyer 1] Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
Yes.
[lawyer 1] What was the crime of which you were convicted?
[stammering] Uh... Two, uh, counts. One soliciting prostitution,
and procuring a minor for prostitution.
[lawyer 1] Did you in fact commit those acts?
I'm going to invoke my Fifth Amendment right.
[lawyer 1] How many times have you solicited a minor for prostitution?
Same answer.
[lawyer 1] How many times have you solicited a minor for prostitution
-in the State of Florida? -Same answer.
[lawyer 1] Have you ever solicited a minor for prostitution in the Virgin Islands?
Same answer.
[lawyer 1] That is that you are invoking your Fifth Amendment...
-Yes. -...right?
Yes, Mr. [inaudible].
[lawyer 1] Have you ever solicited for prostitution in New York?
Same answer.
[lawyer 1] Have you ever solicited for prostitution in New Mexico?
Same answer.
[lawyer 1] Have you ever solicited for prostitution in Paris?
Same answer.
[lawyer 1] Have you ever solicited a minor for prostitution anywhere at any time?
Again, I'm going to assert my right.
[lawyer 2] Let's take a break. We'll go off the record.
[lawyer 1] So you are terminating the deposition at this time?
[lawyer 2] We are recessing the deposition.
[unintelligible dialogue]
[police siren wailing]
I'm Vicky Ward.
I'm an investigative journalist.
I wrote a story about Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair back in 2003.
I heard about Jeffrey Epstein, actually,
long before I was asked to write about him
because he was known
as this sort of Gatsby-like figure of mystery in New York.
He was this single guy,
very wealthy, very good-looking,
and people knew that he had made a lot of money,
but they didn't know how.
He claimed to be the money manager for the uber-rich.
People knew that he hung out with a lot of famous people:
Prince Andrew,
Bill Clinton,
a lot of famous academics, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz,
and that he was always surrounded by very beautiful,
often very young, women.
I knew Ghislaine Maxwell, his then supposed girlfriend.
She was Oxford educated,
very witty, very funny.
She was a great connector for Jeffrey.
Graydon Carter, who was then the editor of Vanity Fair, said to me,
"I've been hearing about this guy, Jeffrey Epstein,
for years, but no one knows anything about him."
And so he gave me the story.
It was a society piece.
It wasn't supposed to be anything more than that.
But right away...
there was a red flag.
One of my sources said,
"I know a woman who had a very unpleasant experience
working with Jeffrey.
And even worse,
her younger sister was abused by him when she was underage.
Maybe they will talk to you."
And, obviously, this took what had primarily been
a business investigation
in a whole...
different... direction.
[woman] I began painting my senior year of college.
I just dedicated myself to painting constantly.
I looked at it like I was an Olympic athlete,
and I was just working all the time, you know, training.
And then I was just giving myself the fresh mind every time to the canvas.
This is my graduate school,
the New York Academy of Art.
I graduated in 1995,
and the night of our graduation, actually, you usually have an art show,
and Eileen Guggenheim used to be the Dean of Students,
and she would run it.
At this show, I decided to enter a triptych.
So that's three paintings, and it was the Alice in Wonderland series.
The show is phenomenal for me. All three of my paintings sold right away.
The first painting I sold for $14,000,
and then the other two for $12,000 apiece.
And I was really, obviously, excited,
but Eileen then walked over to me,
and Eileen's literally like twisting my arm,
and she says, "This couple right here is
who is going to buy your art. Do you hear me?"
And I said, "Well, I've already sold it."
And she said, "That's too bad.
You're gonna tell them that it's not sold, and you're selling to this couple.
They're very important benefactors of the Academy."
And Eileen says, "This is Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, my dearest friends.
And they're just completely delighted,
and you will be selling to them, and they will get a discount."
And so I got 6,000 instead of 12,000 that night.
And Jeffrey Epstein said, "Don't worry. We'll make it worth your while.
Don't worry."
I didn't see or hear from Jeffrey for a couple of months.
And one day the phone rang, and he said, "I have a great job for you."
Jeffrey had just acquired this mansion on 71st Street.
He told me, "This is your new job. You're going to be managing the door,
and you're going to be managing the people coming and going,
the decorators, the visitors."
One day Jeffrey Epstein said, "I would like to know
how many siblings you have."
And I described that I had two sisters,
and I told him that my sister Annie was very intelligent
and has hopes and dreams for a career, probably in Ivy League.
[Annie Farmer] I was 16 years old, and it was my junior year in high school.
Maria was living in Manhattan
and had told us that she'd gotten a job, a great job,
working for this man, Jeffrey Epstein,
and that he might be interested in helping me in some way.
He had proposed it would be helpful for me
to go on some kind of international trip
to Thailand and Vietnam in order to build up my résumé
and to be more appealing for a competitive school.
He agreed that he would pay for that trip.
At the time, it was very...
[laughing] It seemed very expensive, you know, so...
um... I was just feeling really grateful for that.
The trip was supposed to be that summer in July,
and so he suggested that I come out to meet him and Ghislaine Maxwell
at their ranch in New Mexico.
My mom's understanding of what that trip would be was
a chance for me to meet some other students
who would also be going on similar trips.
But when I got there, I realized I was the only one there staying with them.
They showed me around the property.
It was part of building up this sense of, like, look at who I am,
look at all that I have, be impressed by me.
Ghislaine was very interested in whether I had ever had a massage before,
like a professional massage, and I had not.
It was really presented as, like,
you're so lucky that you get to do this, to, you know, get this massage.
She told me to undress,
and there was a table there with a sheet on it.
You know, a portion of it was just pretty typical, um...
but there was a time when she had me lay on my back,
and she, you know, pulled the sheet down so that my breasts were exposed.
Because of the layout of the house and the doors that were open,
I knew that Epstein could see me.
I think the way that she rubbed my chest in, you know,
in the massage also was inappropriate.
The scariest moment of the weekend was
when he came into my bedroom in the morning
and said that he would like to cuddle.
He crawled into bed with me.
And, um... you know, was touching me,
and I don't remember how long that lasted
because I was sort of checking out a bit.
But I remember making an excuse like I needed to go to the bathroom.
Got out of bed, and, like, went into the bathroom,
and kind of shut the door, and was...
you know, very scared of what was going on.
And afterwards, I just avoided it.
I didn't tell my closest friends, and I didn't tell Maria and my family,
and I just thought,
"I'm going to focus on this trip this summer."
And I went to Thailand and Vietnam.
[Maria Farmer] Annie was on this program in Thailand,
and I received a call from Jeffrey saying that we want to help you with your career.
So I was asked to go do an artist-in-residency.
I was to go to Ohio,
and I would be living in this 26,000 square foot home
behind Les Wexner's house.
When I asked Jeffrey who Les Wexner was,
he said, "He is my client and my very good friend,
who happens to be a billionaire,
and he would do anything for me."
So I drove a Penske truck to Ohio because I took all of my art supplies.
I set up shop,
and I started painting.
These paintings were paintings about puberty,
girls partially nude,
voyeuristic kind of private moments,
but not sexual.
My process is that I take photographs, and I work from them.
And I was using my two sisters as the models.
So, Jeffrey and Ghislaine came to visit one day.
[insects buzzing]
[Maria] That night, Ghislaine came and got me and said,
"Jeffrey would like to have his feet rubbed."
And my stomach sank.
I felt like, "Gosh, I don't want them to think I'm not grateful,
but this is so inappropriate," you know?
And so I... [groans] rubbed his feet for a little while...
and he said, "Come up here."
Then he patted over here for me to sit next to him.
Then Ghislaine sat down on the other side of me.
Jeffrey immediately was doing this.
Like, it was really mechanical and bizarre,
and Ghislaine then was doing this on me.
And then they were touching me in different ways on my chest.
It didn't feel right at all, and I didn't like it.
I kind of had like, you know, some tears,
and she goes, "Shh, it's gonna be okay."
And she was like really with her other hand, like,
rubbing on my hand
and telling me that it was going to be okay.
I had escaped my body at that point.
I wasn't really in that moment at all.
And at some point,
I was able to like catapult my body out of that bed.
I went to my room, and I barricaded my door.
I put a piece of furniture against it.
Just kind of huddled up in that room
until Jeffrey and Ghislaine left that morning.
When I woke up, I went and checked to see
if my photographs of my sisters were there,
and realized three photographs had been stolen.
And I was freaking out.
So, I called Annie.
[Annie] My sister confronted me about whether anything had happened to me
when I was at the ranch.
I told her things that had made me really uncomfortable had happened,
but I really don't want to talk about it.
[Maria] I said, "Listen, you're never going to have to deal with them again.
Do not worry.
I am so sorry you were exposed to this."
It was just a very uncomfortable feeling to know that he had these photos of us,
and...
in particular of my younger sister
because she was just 12 when those photos were taken.
And...
it was just so...
um...
It was just upsetting to know that he had those photos,
and to never know what happened to them or how he was using them.
He could be using them to sexually please himself.
[Maria] So the next day, Jeffrey called me,
and he tried to pretend like
it was a really fun time he'd had the night before,
and he tried to kind of play it off like that.
And I said, "That wasn't fun for me."
And then he offered to give me basically what I wanted
to not make a stink about everything, just, "What do you want?"
Like, "How much money do you want? What can I do for you?"
Um...
And I s... I didn't say anything. I hung up on him.
When I got back to New York City,
I told the NYPD everything that had happened.
I told them I'd been assaulted. And they said,
"It's just not in our jurisdiction. Like, we have nothing to do with this.
These things happened in Ohio, New Mexico.
You're gonna have to call the FBI."
When I called the FBI, I laid it out very specifically.
I said, "I'm reporting these people:
Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell."
I told them everything, and I could tell that he believed me.
So, I really had believed that he was going to take care of this.
And then we just actually did not hear back.
[Vicky Ward] Because these sisters had been ignored for so long,
they were very, very frightened of going on the record,
speaking up about what Jeffrey would do to them.
Part of them, understandably,
just thought they could never fight against a man of his power.
We proceed, very reluctantly after a family decision,
um... that we're going to do this thing. We're going to talk about this.
[Ward] I spoke to the younger sister,
who was molested by him
and lived in fear.
[Annie] So, after we had presented our story to Vicky,
then Vanity Fair had to take this account to Epstein
to essentially fact-check it and get his perspective and his side of things.
And when they did that, he came back with his own story,
which was we were in fact women that were infatuated with him.
And that's what this was coming out of. It was,
you know, revenge for that being unrequited.
[Ward] He would say, "Well, Vicky, if I don't like this piece,
it's going to be bad for you and your family."
And I was newly pregnant with twins.
He said, "Where are you giving birth?"
He followed that up with,
"I know all the doctors in all the hospitals,
so it doesn't matter. If you don't tell me, I'll find out.
If I don't like this piece,
I'm going to have a witch doctor place a curse on your unborn children."
He was beginning to spook me out, and these are just conversations.
So I could only imagine
how the women must have felt.
I got a phone call from Graydon.
He was pretty spooked because he'd found a severed cat head in his garden.
He also found a bullet on his doorstep.
And then suddenly, I was told by my editor
that the girls were being taken out of the story.
I was horrified. I said, "Why? They've been so brave.
They've laid so much on the line. Why?"
And the message came back,
"Well, he's obviously sensitive about the girls. That's a sore point."
I'll never forget Graydon Carter saying to me,
"I believe Jeffrey Epstein."
[Annie] I remember buying the copy of Vanity Fair
and seeing the spread, you know, "The Talented Mr. Epstein."
And it said nothing about any of his interest in girls.
I think that Vanity Fair basically got bought off by Jeffrey.
The excuse was, "Well, it's a business story."
It was a business story, but, just like life,
the story was more complicated, far more complicated.
I cried in public. [laughs]
Um...
You know,
so much work,
so much bravery,
and for what?
[Annie] It seemed it was more evidence of the fact that he was powerful,
and he could fix whatever thing came up.
[Ward] Jeffrey Epstein is the ultimate story
of the abuse of power and money.
But, of course, what none of us knew was that the girls who I'd spoken to
were only the tip...
of the iceberg.
And it actually got even worse in Florida.
[sinister music]
[man 1] Jeffrey Epstein bought his Palm Beach mansion in 1990.
Epstein was new money.
He didn't have generations of growing up there,
sailing in the Intracoastal Waterway...
but he had tons of new money.
And if you have enough money, you can buy your way in to any society.
There are things that have been true about Palm Beach since I was a kid.
Some of the protectiveness, some of the clannishness...
It's definitely a very insular world.
There is almost a hermetic seal around it.
It's not just an extremely wealthy zip code.
It's an island.
And I think that...
it almost has a psychological effect on the very wealthy people who move there,
or who have grown up there,
or whose fathers or grandfathers bought estates there,
because there's a sense of security, and safety, and privacy,
and they like it that way.
[man 2] Epstein and I essentially were neighbors.
And why would Jeffrey Epstein... come here?
You know, here it is.
I mean, you're on the ocean.
It's quiet and secluded.
I came down here in 2007,
and back then, there was very little known about Jeffrey Epstein.
What people knew about him was that he was stunningly rich.
The guy was living a life that most people dream about.
He had a 15 to 20 million dollar house here in Palm Beach.
He had one of the largest townhouses in New York City,
a massive apartment in Paris,
his own private island in the Caribbean,
a sprawling ranch in New Mexico,
a helicopter,
two airplanes, one a 727.
[airplane engine roaring]
That's the commercial side of the airport
there where all the JetBlue and everyone else lands.
But the west side of the airport is where all the private jets are.
And that's where Jeffrey parked his jets.
I was a reporter here for 25 years. I also lived over in Palm Beach.
Covered the Epstein case extensively. This guy was a bit of a ghost down here.
Nobody really saw him. Nobody knew him.
In the '80s, he hit it out of the ballpark.
A lot of powerful men liked him and trusted him to handle his money.
Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, they were both wealthy guys from New York,
and they both ended up living a mile apart along billionaire's row in Palm Beach.
They knew each other. Epstein frequented Mar-a-Lago for a time.
There's now a widely circulated quote from Donald Trump,
which he probably would like to reel back in,
"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.
It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do,
and many of them are on the younger side."
[Carl Hiaasen] Palm Beach is a very small town.
It's almost impossible to conceive living there and moving in that world
and not hearing rumors about Epstein
or not being aware of something odd going on at Jeff's place.
[engine starting]
I'm Michael Reiter. I've been here 38 years,
on the Palm Beach Police Department for 28,
and I was Police Chief in Palm Beach from 2001 through 2009.
I first met Jeffrey Epstein somewhere around 2001.
Epstein visited me in my office
to talk about making a donation of equipment to the police department,
which was nearly $100,000.
It was a brief visit. It was just a little bit of chit-chat.
My impression was that he was just a wealthy, very private guy.
Nearly two years later,
we received reports from his neighbors
that there was a large number of young women
going to and from his residence.
We thought, "That's suspicious."
We sent personnel to stop them
and interview them.
They were all adults, the three or four that we talked to,
and they said that they were simply doing office work for Mr. Epstein.
Since they were all adults,
there didn't seem to be any further police interest.
Then in 2005,
the parent of a young girl called the police station.
[dial tone]
[dialing numbers]
[telephone ringing]
-[Pagan] Hello? -[stepmother] Hi, how are you?
[Pagan] I'm good. I'm returning your call, I apologize. I don't know what for.
[stepmother] It's okay. It was an incident that occurred
maybe three and a half weeks ago with one of my stepdaughters.
One day at school, she got into a fight, and she had over $300 on her.
So after asking her and asking her what was going on,
I found out that it ended up being that
they went to Palm Beach to a gentleman's house.
And they start off by giving this gentleman a massage.
And he pays them.
If he likes them and thinks that they're pretty enough,
-he keeps them around to do other things. -[Pagan] Okay.
[stepmother] So I wasn't quite sure if there was an investigation
or if you guys had any word--
[Pagan] Well, this is the first I'm hearing of it.
-[stepmother] Okay. -[Pagan] I'll need some more information.
Would your stepdaughter be willing to come in
to provide me with a statement?
[Michael Reiter] When a juvenile reports
that they have been a victim of a sex crime to the police department,
we immediately take that very seriously.
The parent was asked to bring the victim into the police station.
A detective conducted an interview.
Immediately upon, uh... that victim's report to us,
which we found very credible, we launched an investigation.
The very first victim was about 14 years old at that time.
We were able, from the interview, to figure out exactly where the house was.
From the description the victim provided, it was clear that it was Mr. Epstein.
The case was assigned to our special investigations unit
partly because of the nature of the crime,
and partly because Mr. Epstein was a powerful, influential person.
Joe Recarey was the lead investigator of the case.
Unfortunately, Joe Recarey passed away a few years ago,
but at the time, he believed there were other victims.
So he began contacting them
and listening to their stories.
[Recarey] I appreciate you coming down to talk to me.
-You're not in any trouble. -[Stephanie] Okay.
[Recarey] I want to put that out there right now.
-How did you meet Mr. Epstein? -[Stephanie] Through a friend.
[Joyce] It was like two years ago or so.
[Recarey] About two years ago? That's when you first met him?
[Joyce] Yeah. Yeah.
-[Recarey] You were 17 then? -[Sharon] Mm-hmm.
[Recarey] What is it that you were told you would have to do?
-[Sharon] Give him a massage. -[Recarey] Okay.
[Recarey] During the massage, did he... um...
ask you to remove your pants or...
[Heather] Yes.
[Reiter] Every victim told essentially the same story.
They thought that they would give him a massage.
That's what most of them were told.
That's what lured them there for a small amount of money.
[Recarey] What else happened when you were providing the massage?
[Susan] He took the towel off, and he started pleasing himself,
which I was very uncomfortable with.
-I wanted to leave right when I got there. -[Recarey] Okay.
[Reiter] Our biggest concern was that the victimization not to continue.
That's why we started surveillance right away.
We surveilled the airport...
[camera shutter clicking]
[Reiter] ...the house.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Reiter] As we found additional victims,
one victim would tell us about others,
those others would tell us about others, and it began to multiply geometrically.
[Recarey] Okay. First of all, I know this is hard on you, okay?
Just take a deep breath.
[Heather sighs] I'm trying. It's just...
I wasn't aware that I was going to be alone with him for that ten minutes.
And I thought I was gonna die.
[Recarey] Did you have intercourse with him?
-[Susan quietly] Yes. -[Recarey] Okay.
[Reiter] After two or three months,
we feared that this involved a really large number of victims.
[Recarey] Can you raise your right hand? Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
-so help you God? -[Michelle Licata] I do.
-[Recarey] State your name for the record. -Michelle Licata.
I found the calendar from December 2004...
the month that I met Jeffrey Epstein.
I wrote down my first party that I'd ever been to,
talked to a boy 'til three o’clock in the morning.
And then right before Christmas, that's the weekend that everything changed
in my entire life.
[Recarey] All right. In your own words,
tell me exactly how you were introduced to this gentleman
by the name of Jeffrey in, uh... Palm Beach.
[Licata] Um... My friend told me in class that...
she could find a way of making money for Christmas.
I didn't really know what she was talking about,
but I was like, "Okay."
[Licata] I was a good kid.
I always thought that my life was just ordinary.
I had seven kids in my family.
-[male teacher] Michelle Licata. -[applause]
[Licata] I was really good in school.
I had a lot of friends.
[cheering]
[Licata] In cheerleading,
I got the Spirit Award.
[crowd cheering]
[Licata] Just a normal teenage girl.
[woman] And what are we gonna do?
We're gonna shop!
[woman laughing]
[Licata] One day, this girl wrote me a note in class that said,
"Do you want to make some extra money massaging old guys?"
And I was like, "Okay, that seems weird. But okay."
[Licata] She said to just go to this old guy's house
and just massage him for 45 minutes, and you'll get like $200.
-[Recarey] Okay. How old were you? -[Licata] Sixteen.
[Recarey] Okay.
[Licata] We're driving probably like a good 45-minute ride.
We pulled into a big, expensive-looking mansion.
Before we got out of the car, she said,
"Okay, so if anybody asks, uh, you're over the age of 18,
but I don't think anybody is going to ask, just if they do."
I was only there for like maybe a minute or two,
and then he walked in.
He laid down on his stomach.
He said, "Okay, there's some lotions over there
if you wanted to start massaging my feet and my legs."
He flipped over, and he was talking to me about, uh, the way that I looked.
He was telling me how beautiful I was.
I never thought I was the pretty girl in high school.
I had braces,
and for somebody to be pointing the spotlight at me,
it was like, "Okay, he's giving me compliments.
I never thought of myself that way."
And then he kind of was like...
grabbing my hip and kind of like maneuvering it
so that he could look at me.
He was telling me to take off my shirt and pants.
He's like, "You can get down into your underwear."
You know, you start thinking, "Okay. So...
if I try to leave or be like,
'Uh, no, we're not going to do this,' you know...
how would you leave?
Like, is there a gun hidden somewhere,
like, he was going to pull out?"
As a young girl, you just do...
Because he's an adult, you just do what someone asks you to do.
[Licata] And then he sort of grabbed my thighs, and he was...
jacking himself off at the same time.
He just tried, like, rubbing me down there.
[Recarey] Okay.
[inhales deeply] And...
[stammering] th... that was where I started freaking out completely.
I was like... [sighing] "Okay, okay...
Can we just get this over with?
This is just so unreal. This is not happening."
He just looked like a scary sicko
in my mind, like...
He just looked like... [stammers]
[stammering] I just still have the vision of his face.
[Licata] I backed away, and I said, "Well, I don't know if I should do that."
And I freaked.
I was very hesitant and so scared.
[Recarey] As I told you before and I explained to your mom,
what he did was wrong, okay?
-[Licata] Okay. -[Recarey] Um...
[Recarey] I want to reassure you on that, okay?
[Licata] When he was done,
he wrapped himself up in a towel, and he said, "There's 200 for you.
I would really like to see you again."
And I was like... [inhales deeply]
"Okay, okay." In the back of my mind, I was like,
"I am not ever coming back here ever again."
And I just went downstairs,
and I felt so used.
I felt so used, like it was... I was just like this dirty person.
Before Epstein, I was...
[exhales shakily]
[voice breaking] I was...
I was...
[sobbing] something else.
The way I saw myself... [inhales sharply]
a long time ago...
[sobbing] ...I was, like...
like this flower.
A flower that was, like, opening up.
And afterwards, it was...
[inhales sharply] ...like somebody just...
picked up that flower... [sniffles]
...plucked it from its roots, and stomped on it and smashed it.
[sniffles]
[Recarey] I know this is difficult for you,
and I know it was difficult for you to talk to me today.
Is there anything else you'd like to add to this statement?
[Licata] No.
[Recarey] Okay. Then I conclude this statement.
The time on my watch is 5:25 p.m.
[tape player clicks]
[sinister music]
[Hiaasen] Many of the girls were brought across the bridge
from the mainland, which is West Palm Beach.
And it's a whole different world when you cross the bridges.
Parts of West Palm Beach are like
a lot of other communities along the Gold Coast where it's working class.
It's not necessarily high end at all.
It's a real world.
To think what it must have been like to come from modest means,
and in some cases broken homes, troubled homes.
Palm Beach is like Oz.
[chuckling] If you live in West Palm, that's just not a world you experience.
My name is Shawna Rivera. This is the house that I grew up in.
This is where usually we would sit out here.
We had a big hammock on the patio.
This room was my room.
The time that I first met Jeff, my girlfriend came over here to, um...
to take me with her to Jeff's, right?
Like right after this street here...
there's a trailer park, there's a canal and then there's a trailer park,
and so she walked over here...
and convinced me to go with her.
I didn't have a good childhood.
I was a runaway for two years.
My mom used drugs pretty heavily most of my life.
My dad went to prison when I was three.
And when I was ten, my dad got out of prison.
At some point, my dad had a girlfriend...
who had some kids,
and the kids had clearly been abused prior to this.
And I would say it was like a week or so after my 12th birthday,
my dad and his girlfriend beat her son, her eight-year-old son, to death...
[inhales deeply] Um...
In front of me.
And so I, um...
[clears throat] ...ran away from home.
I lived in, like, shelter homes.
Finally, my grandma was able to get custody of me.
I was 14 years old when I met Jeffrey Epstein.
My girlfriend, she's like, "Shawna, I'm going to this guy's house.
I can't go by myself. I just can't do it. I just need you to come with me."
I was just like, "All right. Fine."
I didn't know what was going to happen. I just went along with it.
Once you get over the bridge into Palm Beach, you see yachts
and all these huge mansions.
This is like
not something I'm familiar with.
We walk into the back, and there's this girl.
She's young
with an accent. I don't know her.
She's familiar with my friend. "Hi. Hi. Hi."
We walk into this room,
and this dude walked in.
I remember thinking he was kind of rude.
He says, "Oh, hey. Hi."
He's, like, on the phone,
and he, like, lays down.
So then my girlfriend tells me, "We're just going to give him a massage."
And she said, "Oh, well, we have to take our clothes off."
And I'm like...
"I have to take my clothes off?"
And she says, "Yeah, we have... We both...
We both have to take our clothes off. All of them."
So you have me and my 14-year-old girlfriend
totally naked, and I'm giving this old man a massage.
But then my girlfriend says, "Well, I'm going to go."
And I'm like, "What the fuck are you doing leaving me here?" Like, "Why?"
I couldn't believe she was walking out of there.
Then this guy, he asked me how old I was...
and I remember telling him that I was 15 years old,
and I was actually 14 years old.
That didn't scare him.
[inhales deeply] It was kind of, like, "Oh, okay. You're 15. Okay."
Then he turned over... [sniffles]
...and he wanted me to rub the lotion
that we were using, like, all over his chest. [sniffles]
And he told me to just grab his nipples
and squeeze and pinch as hard as I could.
[sniffles]
And I just, like,
I just remember standing there and just being, like...
"What is going on? This is so weird."
I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I was like, "What the fuck is this?"
I'm 14 years old.
I'm a virgin.
It just went on like that for a couple of minutes,
and he finished...
and there was money sitting there.
He told me to go ahead and pick up the money.
So I just got dressed, and I walked out and left.
I was so embarrassed.
I didn't know how to say, like, "No, I don't... I don't want to do that."
I don't know how long it was after the first time I had gone over there...
but I... one day, I got a phone call at my house.
They called me a cab to take me to Jeff's.
There was no explanation. There was just, "Take the cab to Jeff's."
I assumed if I went back...
I would get more money.
I mean, I didn't have any money.
I didn't have a family like that.
I just...
didn't know how to handle it, you know.
So, I think I kind of went into this kind of like...
pilot mode kind of situation, where I just...
[inhales deeply]
...tried to, like, get through it and just go home.
I couldn't say, "This isn't right."
I couldn't say, "This isn't normal."
I couldn't say, like, "This is a sick man."
And it was probably for like three or four years
I continued to go.
[woman] I'm an educational psychologist and mental health counselor.
I've worked with many victims of sexual trauma.
And the first thought that I had when reading about the Jeffrey Epstein... case
is that he targeted girls that were so vulnerable.
Um, and this is something that most sexual predators do.
The first step in the grooming process is spotting a vulnerable victim,
someone who is financially disadvantaged
or that already have some sexual trauma in their past.
Sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein have an eye for picking out someone
who is in need of something,
and they identify that need, and then they exploit it.
When you're pairing a teenage girl
with a brilliant, narcissistic billionaire,
their adolescent brain was not equipped
to understand or react to what was happening.
[Reiter] We were frustrated that, while some people were cooperative,
most of the victims did not want to prosecute for fear of Jeffrey Epstein.
They knew that Mr. Epstein was
a powerful, influential, very wealthy person.
So they were very reluctant.
And so we decided to talk to some of his employees.
[telephone ringing]
-[Recarey] Good morning, Mr. Alessi? -Yes, speaking.
Hi. This is Detective Joe Recarey with Palm Beach Police.
I'm investigating a case against, uh, a former employer of yours,
Jeffrey Epstein.
[Alessi] This is something
that I really would not like to be involved,
-if I'm not involved with it. -[Recarey] I understand that,
but you may hold some information which would assist me in this case.
[Alessi] But I don't want to get in trouble or...
I don't want to get sued by Mr. Epstein or by his company.
[telephone ringing]
[Recarey] You are Alfredo Rodriguez, correct?
-[Rodriguez] Yes, that's me. -[Recarey] Okay.
I just wanted to touch base with a case that I'm investigating
involving Mr. Epstein.
[Rodriguez] Okay.
[Recarey] My main concern, obviously, is
the girls that come over to work for him.
[Rodriguez] Okay.
[Recarey] What can you tell me about that?
[Rodriguez] He has a lot of masseuses.
He has a list of favorite, uh... female personnel
to give him massage, you know.
So he gets massage in the morning, massage in the afternoon.
They were very private, sir, you know.
So I didn't know what went on behind closed doors.
It was my job to keep everything discreet.
So...
[Recarey] Would you say these girls were young?
[Rodriguez] Um...
Oof, you put me on the spot, sir.
[Reiter] Every part of this case was an uphill battle.
His employees didn't want to cooperate,
so we went through the trash at his home.
In one case, we found a school report card
for one of the victims.
And in another case, we learned that he sent a messenger
to the school to provide flowers to the victim
who had been part of a performance there.
[James Patterson] West Palm Beach has dozens of high schools
and middle schools.
Thousands and thousands of kids. Some private schools out there.
All these schools became a hunting ground for this predator.
[woman] I think at 16, 17, when you're in high school,
I think we're all vulnerable.
This is Royal Palm Beach High School. This is where we went to high school.
Not the happiest moment in my life.
My name is Haley Robson, and I was 16 when I met Jeffrey Epstein.
Growing up in West Palm Beach, I had a big family, lots of cousins.
I have two sisters.
My dad was a police officer. My mom worked in banking.
I love horses.
I started riding when I was 11.
Couple years later, I got competitive.
This was probably the most happy time of my life.
But I had gone through a traumatic experience
before I met Jeffrey Epstein.
The summer before I turned 16,
I was raped.
[clears throat] It was my first experience with a man.
He was 21.
I just closed up.
Um... I started using drugs. I was drinking all the time, smoking weed.
I just kind of wanted to just vanish, just disappear.
The girl that introduced me to Jeffrey Epstein
went to High School with me.
She said, "I know this guy and he would give me $200 just to give him a massage."
And my first immediate reaction or thought that came to my mind was
"This is my ticket out of West Palm. This is my way out."
We drove to Palm Beach island...
and we actually walked in... It wasn't the front door.
It was almost like this side door that led into the kitchen.
I remember we walked up a flight of stairs that kind of curved.
And the first thing that I noticed, because it was so distracting,
was the wall art.
A lot of nudity.
Naked statues, naked pictures.
It made me feel uncomfortable...
and then I saw, like, a photograph of kids.
It wasn't normal.
The massage began as a massage,
then he turned over.
He was naked on the table.
And I just remember feeling really scared.
It just brought up a lot of bad...
emotions.
[Recarey] Did he touch you?
[Haley Robson] Yeah, in inappropriate places.
[Recarey] Does he use his hands?
[Robson] He uses his hand, and I guess it's like a vibrator.
But, um...
I refused to do that.
He tried to touch me below the belt.
I declined.
Um, I told him I didn't feel comfortable. "No, it's not going to happen."
At that moment, he was offering me,
"Okay. Well, this isn't going to happen, so...
just if you have any friends,
if you bring them to me, I'll give you $200."
-[Recarey] Just to bring a girl? -[Robson] Yeah.
[Recarey] The girl that was going knew she would have to massage him.
[Robson] She knew everything.
[Recarey] How long have you been working for him?
[Robson] I probably worked for him for a year.
I probably recruited...
maybe 24 girls.
[Robson] Those girls brought other girls, too.
-[Recarey] Okay. -[Robson] So, it's like a train.
[Recarey] Who else was underage?
[Robson] Under 18?
-All of them. -[Recarey] All of them?
[Robson] All of them.
[Robson] I would recruit girls that were friends.
I would just casually bring it up.
And we would drive together to his house.
I would take them to the room. And then I would walk out.
Sometimes I would wait out by the pool.
When the girls would leave, Jeffrey would come outside to pay me.
He would say, you know, "How are you? How is everything? How's your family?"
He wanted you to think he was a friend and that he cared.
[Recarey] All right, I talked to my boss for a little bit.
-[Frick] Which is why I'm here. -[Robson] Okay.
[Frick] Um... [sniffles]
[groans]
At this point, you've clearly implicated yourself in a crime.
Okay? You've taken girls to somebody's house
for the purpose of prostitution.
More importantly, and more significantly, one of those girls was 14 at the time.
Okay? Now that's a pretty significant second-degree felony.
I remember them being really tough on me, and I think at one point I started crying.
And I remember feeling really scared.
And they treated me like I was his right-hand man.
But what about the girl that recruited me?
What happened to her? What about the girl that recruited the girl that recruited me?
I feel like I've been putting the blame on myself for so long,
bashing myself, and just being hard on myself,
but I shouldn't feel guilty about it because I was 16...
and he's the adult,
and he should not...
make me feel...
guilty.
[sobbing] I've never said... Never ever come forward like this.
It just, like, brings up, like, so many emotions.
[Dr. Kathryn Stamoulis] The girls that are recruiting the other girls
are definitely victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
They were manipulated in a unique way.
They were made to feel special,
and they were also offered opportunities
that could get them out of their life circumstances.
And the added bonus that they didn't have to do anything sexual
with this middle-aged man.
This is how Jeffrey Epstein created a sexual pyramid scheme.
[Reiter] After months of our investigation,
we realized that this was a way of life for Mr. Epstein,
and I believe he felt that he would never be caught.
And so it was very important for us to get inside of Mr. Epstein's home,
because we wanted to see if there was additional evidence
and to validate the information given to us by the victims.
But we had to be very careful.
We did not want to reveal to Mr. Epstein that he was being investigated
until we had an airtight case.
Finally, seven months into the case,
we felt as though that was the time to execute the search warrant.
[dramatic music]
[Recarey] This is a complete description of the residence desired to be searched,
including the curtilage attached thereof.
I will leave a list of what items we're taking.
[Reiter] We were extremely surprised at what we found inside Epstein's house.
[dramatic music] extremely surprised at what we found inside Epstein's house.