TTERSON. * d to had been invited by Ghisat Epstein’s town house. There, guests far outnumbered the male you’d see at Upper East Side dinny seemed foreign and dressed a ded a cocktail party thrown by attended, which was filled, she els,” Ward wrote. “Some of the an says. had worked with Epstein, said, nore so. Money does that to you to himself-that he would never him in the media. Right now, in owing his trip with Clinton, he ” 148 CHAPTER 38 Vicky Ward: November 2002 W hat I had ‘on the girls,’” Ward explained in a Daily Beast article published after Epstein’s arrest, “were some remarkably brave first-person accounts. Three on-the-record stories from a family; a mother and her daughters who came from Phoenix. The oldest daughter, an artist whose character was vouchsafed to me by several sources, including the artist Eric Fischel, had told me, weeping as she sat in my living room, of how Epstein had attempted to seduce both her and, separately, her younger sister, then only 16.” Ward had written it all down in her notes. She had crossed the i’s, dotted the i’s. But when she called Epstein to get his response, he denied the allegations completely. “Just the mention of a 16-year-old girl,” Epstein told her, 149 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009298¶
JAMES PATTERSON “carries the wrong impression. I don’t see what it adds to the piece. And that makes me unhappy.” If some sort of criminal investigation had taken place, that would have been one thing. But, at that time, no criminal investigation into Epstein’s affairs had been launched. And in the absence of an investigation, the rumors of Epstein’s dealings with very young women seemed to be just that—rumors. Graydon Carter consulted his lawyers, his editors, and his fact-checkers. And then something odd and disturbing happened at the Condé Nast building, then in Times Square. As usual, Carter had come into the office early. He swiped his key card in the lobby, pressed the elevator button, and arrived in the hallway outside the reception area on the twenty-first floor. It would have been a perfect time to review Ward’s story. Her description of Epstein’s town house—which is said to have been the largest private residence in New York City at the time—was priceless: “Inside, amid the flurry of menservants attired in sober black suits and pristine white gloves, you feel you have stumbled into someone’s private Xanadu,” she’d written. “This is no mere rich person’s home, but a high-walled, eccentric, imperious fantasy that seems to have no boundaries. The entrance hall is decorated not with paintings but with row upon row of individually framed eyeballs; these, the owner tells people with relish, were imported from England, where they were made for injured soldiers. Next comes a marble foyer, which does have a painting, in the manner of Jean Dubuffet…but the host coyly refuses to tell visitors who painted it. In any case, 150 One of the photogra captured on video during Palm Beach Police Departm search warrant walk-thro of Epstein’s El Brillo residence (Palm Beach Pc Departm Jeffrey Epstein, Coney Isl circa 1969 (Anonym¶