TERSON
FILTHY RICH
she noticed, Epstein ate all the
t for both of them. She found it
osedly brilliant man had left for
he Marquis de Sade. And then
n one of Epstein's assistants-a
ho told her, "Jeffrey wanted me
gty."
glish features and flowing blond
t then, with a bad case of morn-
, sometimes in public, and these
rt only added to her ever-present
posedly brilliant, he'd struck her.

e doesn't let the charm slip into
e steely and calculating, giving
machinery running behind them.
, after refusing to give an interite. You get the first move. It was
uan who seems to feel he can win
of the other side. His advantage is
ow him or his history completely
onsists of. He has carefully engi-
e of the few truly baffling mystered world. People know snippets,
s friends gave were glowing. "I
ll of seeing patterns," Les Wexner
in politics and financial markets,
and fashion trends. My skills are
146
not in investment strategy, and, as everyone who knows Jeffrey
knows, his are not in fashion and design. We frequently discuss
world trends as each of us sees them."
"I'm on my 20th book," said Alan Dershowitz, who'd met
Epstein in 1997. "The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey."
But Ward also talked to other sources, who had their own
questions and qualms about Jeffrey Epstein. Some were involved
in lawsuits against him. Others had served on prestigious boards
with him. One who had witnessed Epstein's aborted stint on the
board of Rockefeller University called him arrogant.
One powerful investment manager wondered about Epstein's
conspicuous absence from New York's trading floors. "The trading desks don't seem to know him," he says. "It's unusual for
animals that big to not leave any footprints in the snow."
Ward uncovered legal documents, including Epstein's interview with the SEC, given in the wake of his departure from Bear
Stearns. She visited a federal prison in Massachusetts and spoke
at length with Steven Hoffenberg, who told her that Epstein had
made a major mistake in taking Bill Clinton to Africa. "I always
told him to stay below the radar," Hoffenberg said. He made other
accusations, about Epstein's financial practices, which Epstein
denied-and Ward knew that Hoffenberg, the Ponzi-scheme
mastermind, was not to be trusted. But she did find it strange that
throughout the reporting process Epstein was much less openly
concerned with what she'd found out about his finances than
with what she'd uncovered about his dealings with women.
Time and again, he would call and ask her: "What do you
have on the girls?"
147
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JAMES PATTERSON
* * *
One young woman Ward talked to had been invited by Ghislaine Maxwell to attend a party at Epstein's town house. There,
the woman had noticed, female guests far outnumbered the male
guests. "These were not women you'd see at Upper East Side cliners," the woman had said. "Many seemed foreign and dressed a
little bizarrely."
"This same guest also attended a cocktail party thrown by
Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended, which was filled, she
says, with young Russian models," Ward wrote. "Some of the
guests were horrified,' the woman says."
Another source, one who had worked with Epstein, said,
"He's reckless, and he's gotten more so. Money does that to you.
He's breaking the oath he made to himself-that he would never
do anything that would expose him in the media. Right now, in
the wake of the publicity following his trip with Clinton, he
must be in a very difficult place."
148
Vicky Ward: November
W
hat I had 'on th
Beast article pu
some remarkab
on-the-record stories from
who came from Phoenix.
character was vouchsafed
the artist Eric Fischl, had
ing room, of how Epstein h
separately, her younger sist
Ward had written it all
the i's, dotted the i's.
But when she called Ej
the allegations completely.
Just the mention of a
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