NOTE posing residence had a stone ont door that wouldn’t have istle. And, like our neighbor’s ram: raised brass letters that , the two women belonged to ul man who was also a regisste for underage women. n-year-olds. But younger girls used dozens of young women, ttled potential lawsuits with ison time for his crimes. A bit in the world again. ing women. ries about Jeffrey Epstein for a ld not have been more differoth live, is small and tightly ne people. dlines in papers all over the d a scandal that continues to smell. ase in the media and talked I wondered why it had taken o catch up with Epstein. And, so little jail time. tions, but there were others: ey, possibly billions? No one AUTHOR’S NOTE seemed to know. And while the news media had some details about the underage girls, reporters seemed only to know what had happened at the moment of his arrest. Epstein definitely liked his massages. He got them from two, even three, young women a day, right in his mansion on the island. He’d been operating on an almost industrial scale. But who were these girls? Where had they come from? How did they find their way to his home on a secluded street in Palm Beach? Epstein had powerful friends. He’d flown Bill Clinton around in his private jet and rubbed shoulders with heads of state, Nobel Prize winners, any number of billionaires. Prince Andrew, the man sixth in line to the British throne, had been a close friend. Were any of these connections the reason that Epstein was now a free man? I wanted to know. After all, our homes were a half mile apart, and Epstein’s actions had had an undeniable impact on the town where I lived. Stirred by that sighting of Epstein up in New York, Tim Malloy and I began to investigate. We partnered with John Connolly, a tough, no-nonsense journalist who had once been a cop with the NYPD and had been following the Epstein story for close to ten years. Working together, we interviewed Epstein’s friends, going all the way back to his childhood; we met with Epstein’s acquaintances, employees, neighbors, and business associates, and finally with the families of his victims. We interviewed law enforcement officers who’d worked on the investigation in Palm Beach and lawyers on all sides of the resulting court cases, some of which are still working their way through the court system. Combining our interview material with evidence obtained from court filings and other investigations, such as the one ix HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009055¶
AUTHOR’S NOTE conducted by Connolly’s Vanity Fair colleague Vicky Ward, we began to put the pieces together. In a few instances, we have re-created brief scenes and snatches of dialogue. These are based on interviews, police investigation documents, and court filings. We changed the names and identities of the girls, hoping to protect them from more embarrassment and harm. There never was any doubt that Jeffrey Epstein was guilty. He admitted as much in the non-prosecution agreement he agreed to sign in 2007. The question is, what exactly was he guilty of? This book attempts to answer that question and many others about this strange and mysterious man. These days people all around the world are angry about and suspicious of the super rich and powerful. The story of Jeffrey Epstein is an object lesson about why we ought to be. To put it simply, some people think they can operate outside the law. And that’s what they do. -James Patterson, Palm Beach, February 20, 2016 X HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009056¶