Book excerpt recounting a woman's 1997 hotel encounter with Epstein

JAMES PATTERSON Fu: encounter with Epstein. The woman had not wanted to make a formal complaint at the time. But she had taken the cop’s card, and now he was happy to hear that she’d changed her mind. In a shaky voice, Alicia described Epstein as a tallish man— five feet eleven or six feet in height was her guess-with gray hair and brown eyes. He was the owner of a large black four-door Mercedes and was a regular at Shutters on the Beach, which was the kind of place that cost one thousand dollars a night and was frequented by actors, agents, and other Hollywood types. Alicia told the cop that she was a model and actress herself. She’d known Epstein for about a month. They had a friend in common, and she’d sent him her head shots. Then, through an assistant, Epstein had invited her to meet in his room at the hotel. Alicia said she was having reservations, the officer wrote in his report, because generally interviews are not conducted in hotel rooms. According to her, things turned frightening quickly. She was unsure she was safe because although she wanted to land the job as a ‘Victoria’s Secret’ catalog model she felt as though Epstein was attempting to get her to act in an unprofessional manner for a model. Epstein wore navy blue sweatpants and a white T-shirt, she recalled. The T-shirt had the letters USA printed on it in patriotic red, white, and blue. Epstein told her to undress and actually assisted her to do so while saying ‘let me manhandle you for a second.’ 140 Then, Alicia told the cop, her will while acting as though had stopped Epstein, and left incident. At the top of his crime Battery.” But Epstein was ne Santa Monica Police Departme allegations of improper condu no action on this 1997 comp attorney, Jack Goldberger, told “The cops said it’d be my paper. “And since he had a thought much about it since, 1 now, I want everybody to kno been. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009289¶