All language subtitles for 8_English_S01E02

[female on police radio]
3991 on the suspect.

[indistinct talk on police radio]

[male on police radio] Morning.

This is a complete description
of the residence desired to be searched

including the curtilage attached thereof.

Being the premises occupied
or under the control of Jeffrey Epstein,

white male, date of birth 1/20/53.

This is your copy.

When we are concluded,

I will leave a list
of what items we're taking.

[dramatic music]

Seven months into the case,
detectives executed the search warrant

at Mr. Epstein's residence.

[Tim Malloy] They opened the doors
and went up the winding staircase

into his ornate and bizarre world.

Pictures of young kids half-naked.

Nudes everywhere.

One of the police officers who saw it
said that it was just really weird.

Detectives also discovered

a very bizarre steam room
and massage room setup.

They actually found some computers
and equipment that remain in the house,

but police suspected
most of Epstein's computer hard drives,

and surveillance cameras, and videos
had already been taken out of the house.

[Michael Reiter] There was space on a desk
where wires were hanging,

but there was no computer.

At that point, it was fairly clear to us

that Mr. Epstein knew
that he was under investigation.

Epstein had been tipped off.

[sinister music]

[Reiter] After the search warrant,

it was disappointing to realize
that Epstein's house had been cleaned up.

There were a lot of things
that had been removed.

But there was still plenty of evidence
that was left.

I think the most useful thing
that we learned

was that the victims' accounts,

detailed descriptions
of Mr. Epstein's home,

where rooms were located,
the configuration of the home,

validated what they had told us.

There were memo pads of phone calls
that we seized

that included contact information

for some of the victims
and for some of the adult females

that had been used to identify
and recruit the victims,

so that was productive for us as well.

[woman] The message pads that were taken

from the investigation that
the Palm Beach Police Department did,

they're very revealing.

Individuals who were being called
or calling back in

to come over for these sexual massages.

For example, one has a redaction on it,

meaning it was a minor
who was calling in, and it says,

"She is wondering if 2:30 is okay.
She needs to stay in school."

I think I took this case
much more seriously than other matters

that I've handled,
in the sense that it was very personal.

I do have a daughter. I have children.
I met with these victims.

It was very personal,
the abuse that they suffered.

I won't stop

until the people who victimized
these individuals are held accountable.

The age of consent in Florida is 18.
It does vary state to state,

and in New York, for example, it's 17,

but this really isn't a case
about consent.

The point of these cases is
that there was no consent here.

[Reiter] Seven months
into the investigation,

we were all extremely frustrated
at the difficulty of this case.

We applied whatever resources
were necessary to do the best job,

to quickly be able to reach the point
that we could apply for arrest warrants.

[man] Detectives that I talked to
said that they were tiptoeing,

they were acting a little cautiously
because they knew there would be blowback.

But also they were running into resistance
even among their own, among colleagues.

Uh, they knew that there were people
who would protect

any number of the residents on the island.

And so, to go into a case like this,
you had to walk gingerly,

you had to make sure
that you held your information closely,

and you had to be absolutely sure
that you were right.

[Reiter] We found
that the victims ran the entire gamut

from those that were thankful
that we contacted them,

others who said that they were
in love with Jeffrey Epstein,

and they were going to get married
to Jeffrey Epstein.

Some victims that we contacted
had gone on to college

who slammed the door
in the face of detectives.

We were very surprised to learn

these criminal activities had gone on
for a fairly long period of time,

many years prior to the investigation.

My name is Virginia Giuffre.

When I was 16, I got a summer job
at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago

in Palm Beach.

Uh, I was working there

as a locker room attendant
in the spa area.

At the time, I really wanted to become
a massage therapist.

And not very long into working
at Mar-a-Lago,

did an English lady come up to me.

She introduced herself
as Ghislaine Maxwell.

She was beautiful. She looked educated.
She was nice.

She said, "Oh, that's interesting.

You're reading a book
about massage therapy."

And she said, "You know,

I actually know this guy
who's looking for a traveling masseuse.

You know, if you want,
you can come by this afternoon after work,

and you can come meet him."

I'd finished work around 5:00,

and I pull up at this huge house,
this big mansion...

and Ghislaine answers the door.

I walk through the door,
and she's leading me up the staircase,

and I'm looking around, you know.

There's photographs everywhere
of important people.

I could tell that, you know, like,
this guy has some friends in high places.

And then we go into the massage room,

and there's this massage bed

with a naked man laying on top of it,

face down.

To me this is, I guess,

walking into a world I didn't understand,
but I guess I'm gonna learn.

Ghislaine shows me like,
"Put your lotion here on your hands."

And then we did his feet,

his calves...

his back.

While the massage was going on,

they asked me questions about my life.
"So, who are you?"

"What school do you go to?"
Um... "Tell me about yourself."

You know, and that's when I felt like
I should open up and tell them, like,

how much this opportunity means to me.

My home life started out very hard
from a very young age.

I'd been a runaway
and lived on the streets.

I've been abused.

I felt like it was okay to tell them
about my past.

And then he turned over.

[sinister music]

[Virginia Giuffre] They asked me...
to please take off my clothes.

Ghislaine started taking off her clothes.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what was gonna happen
if I said no, if I screamed.

I just... I did what they said.

Ghislaine was behind and touching me.

It went from oral sex to get on top.

Still to this day, I don't know
how it went from something real

to something perverted like that
so quickly.

Afterwards,

they said, "The interview went great.
You're going to come back tomorrow."

And I did.

I was abused plenty of times
before Epstein had done what he did to me.

I had no self-esteem. I was scared
that my life was going to be worthless.

I was the perfect victim for them.

One thing that Epstein loved me for

was that I never really asked
too many questions.

I escalated up the ladder very quickly
with Epstein.

I did whatever he needed,

you know, put his socks on
for him before bed, uh...

make sure
what he needed sexually happened.

I had to serve him all the time.

They told me,

"You're going to do so well.
You're going to travel the world.

You're gonna meet people
that you'd never think you'd meet.

We're gonna put you in circles
that you would never even understand."

Jeffrey Epstein
and Ghislaine Maxwell had a great way

of normalizing the abuse
that was going on.

They kind of made it feel like
we were in this really deranged family.

You know, we would sit back,
and we would watch movies together.

We would go diving together.
We would go hiking together.

We would go on 4Runners together.

We would do so many cool activities
like that together.

They kept saying,
"We will get you educated.

You will become
a real massage therapist one day."

But under the premise
that afterwards you're back to the abuse.

And, unfortunately...

I didn't see my life getting any better.

So I stayed.

It was like
I am now a slave to these people.

And then I was trafficked.

I was lent out to all of their friends.

They were politicians.
They were businessmen.

They were powerful people.

It made me think that
if I had run and caused a ruckus,

the police wouldn't have believed me,
they wouldn't have done anything about it,

and Jeffrey and Ghislaine
could have hurt me really bad then.

He did say like, "People owe me favors.

I can get away with this.
I will never get caught.

I own the Palm Beach Police Department."

[James Patterson] Jeffrey Epstein
fits into that pattern

of thinking that he's above the law,

that he can do what he feels like doing.

But the life of privilege and power
that Epstein lead

is a far, far cry from the way
he was brought up.

[children shouting, screaming]

-[waves crashing]
-[seagulls squawking]

[Patterson] Epstein was born
and raised in Coney Island, New York,

which is very middle class,
lower middle class.

Epstein was a very good student
in high school. He was a bright guy.

He skipped a couple of grades
in high school, graduated in 1969.

[lawyer] What college did you attend?

Cooper Union.

[lawyer] Did you get a degree
from Cooper Union?

No, sir.

[lawyer]
How many years were you in college?

[tuts] I believe two.

[lawyer] What'd you study?

Physics.

[lawyer] But isn't it true
that you were a teacher

at the Dalton School in New York

after college?

[Patterson] The first mystery is

how could Epstein get a job teaching
at Dalton without a college degree?

This was probably the start
of Epstein's lifelong pattern

of getting away with things
that most people can't.

[man] In 1976,
Ace Greenberg was running Bear Stearns.

One day, I was sitting in my office,

and Ace Greenberg called me to say
that a trustee of the Dalton School

had a young professor,

Jeff Epstein,
who wanted to come to Wall Street,

and Ace asked if I would interview him.

Epstein was well-known as a good teacher
and somewhat of a ladies man,

which didn't resonate at the time.

After grilling Jeffrey a few times,

I hired him to develop and market
our quantitative analyses for options.

He was terrific at it.

Epstein was very quick-witted.

When, uh, something arose that
he might not have been able to predict,

he dealt with it in an impressive fashion.

That's a trait
of an effective salesperson.

I was favorably impressed
that he could do the work.

But this, I think, was one of my...

important mistakes in my career.

Epstein had been working for me
perhaps two months.

The head of personnel called me.
He said, "Are you sitting down?

Jeffrey Epstein lied on his résumé
about his education.

None of his colleges
have ever heard of him."

I was stunned.

I hired a liar.

Even worse, he was dating Ace's daughter.

I went to Ace Greenberg.

I wasn't sure
how he would want me to proceed,

and Ace said,
"Treat him like anybody else."

I was prepared to fire him.

And this is where
his sales skills really resonated.

When I told him he'd lied,

he admitted it immediately.

He just said,

"I knew I couldn't get a job teaching
at a high-quality school

if I didn't have
good educational credentials,

so I wanted to get a chance."

I said,
"Why didn't you tell us the truth?"

He said, "Well, I was afraid
the Dalton School would hear about it

and there would be problems."

He said, "I wanted to."

And he did it in a way
that was very convincing.

He disarmed me.

And I thought, "Do I want to play God
and throw him in the street,

maybe destroy his potential?"

Today, I wish I had.

He had done well enough
that they made him a limited partner.

But then a few years after that,
I heard he'd been fired

for breaking some rules.

I deeply regret giving Epstein
a second chance.

That was my tragedy.

Most of the victims did not want
to prosecute when we first contacted them.

So once we had four or five victims
who were cooperative,

we presented applications
for arrest warrants

to the state attorney's office.

From the time I first became police chief,

I had an excellent relationship
with the state attorney,

Barry Krischer.

The first time that I talked
about the case against Epstein with him,

I explained that we had about
40-some victims who were in their teens,

early teens in some cases,

who had sex with an adult male in his 50s.

He said he didn't know Jeffrey Epstein
and he remarked,

"We'll put him away for the rest
of his life. It's an easy case."

[sinister music]

[Marc Fisher] Jeffrey Epstein, both
through his money and his connections,

was able to assemble

an extraordinary dream team
of at least eight defense lawyers

who were known throughout the country
and throughout their industry

as the absolute best.

From Clinton impeachment lawyer,
Kenneth Starr,

the top defense lawyers of South Florida,
people like Roy Black,

New Yorkers like Jay Lefkowitz
and Gerald Lefcourt

to Harvard Law School Professor
Alan Dershowitz.

[Alan Dershowitz] I was born to be
a criminal defense lawyer.

If you want to be a defense attorney,

you can't be concerned
about what people think of you.

So, I did represent Claus von Bülow,

O.J. Simpson, and Mike Tyson,
and Leona Helmsley, and Patricia Hearst,

and so many other people.

My relationship
with Jeffrey Epstein was academic

and lawyer-client...

but it was a close academic friendship.
For example, when I would write books,

I would only send them
to a handful of people.

He was one of them

because he would seriously read
every word I wrote,

and he would have comments
and criticisms.

Jeffrey Epstein called me, I think,
the day he got the first indications,

and the first indications were merely

that one or two of the women
may have been 17,

and may have lied about their age,
had given him false documentation.

He asked me if I would help represent him.
I said I couldn't represent him myself,

I'm not a member of the Florida bar,

but that I would help him
put together a legal team, and I did.

[Fisher] Detectives quickly learned

that Epstein was on to them
and that he was organizing a defense.

And, in fact,
he was organizing an offense.

Jeffrey Epstein's attorneys were looking
into what the detectives were doing,

who they were, what their pasts were,

whether there were any peccadilloes
that would make them vulnerable to attack.

[Reiter] There was surveillance of me
for months,

round-the-clock surveillance
of Detective Recarey,

around-the clock picking up of his trash
at his home and my trash.

And the reason that it happened
to the degree that it did

is because Mr. Epstein had
the resources to do that.

In fact, we found private investigators
going through the trash

at the police station.

So we stopped putting the reports
in the computer

and actually had them kept separately.

[Malloy] A few months
after Chief Michael Reiter hands over

the evidence to his close friend
Barry Krischer,

Reiter notes an alarming difference
in Krischer's attitude towards Epstein.

Krischer had all but said to his friend
Chief Michael Reiter,

"We're gonna string him up.
You had a really solid case."

And then suddenly,

the teeth seems to go out
of the investigation,

at least on the side of the state attorney
who was supposed to be prosecuting this.

[Reiter] I had been speaking
with Mr. Krischer along the way,

and the state attorney's office
started saying,

"Look, these victims will not make
good witnesses.

Yes, these victims, most of them,

received financial compensation for, uh,
the sexual contact with Mr. Epstein,

but no child can consent to have sex
with an adult."

But we were never able
to really convince the prosecutors

that that didn't matter.

[Malloy] In a release,

a high-powered local attorney
Jack Goldberger, Epstein's attorney,

emphasized the grand jury in this
questioned the credibility of the girls

and therefore limited their charges
simply to solicitation of prostitution.

Epstein is out on bond,
and he is not talking.

[woman] I've been a reporter
at The Palm Beach Post for about 16 years.

I think nobody knew anything
until 2006, and then it just...

[makes explosion sound] It exploded.

Epstein's attorneys went
after the victims viciously.

I mean, their depositions
that I've read were just, I mean, hideous.

I remember one
where he asked one of the young girls,

"Is it true you've had three abortions?"

And then they asked the girl,
"Well, what's worse,

having three abortions or giving
sexual massages to Jeffrey Epstein?"

It was just brutal
what they did to these women.

[Dershowitz] You must bring out
all the negatives.

You have to present the full picture.

Their credibility may be subject
to question because of their backgrounds,

but it has nothing to do
with blaming them.

It's the role of the defense attorney

to raise questions
about the credibility of any witnesses.

We don't look at what's good for victims.
We don't look at anything

except what's good for our client,
ethically and legally.

[woman] I've been
with the TV station in Palm Beach County

for almost 23 years now.

The Jeffrey Epstein story is
as big as it gets.

So when the story broke,

we started realizing
the gravity of a Palm Beach billionaire

and the accusations
that we were starting to hear,

we were quickly on the air
with this story,

but Epstein's team wanted this to go away.

There were weekly phone calls to reporters

with threats to make the story go away.

"You don't want to do this.
You shouldn't be looking into this."

And it was mystifying
to the Palm Beach Police Department

because they had all this evidence.

[reporter] Palm Beach Police think
prostitution charges brought against

billionaire socialite Jeffrey Epstein
don't go far enough.

Investigators think prosecutors
should have gone after Epstein

on charges of unlawful sex with a minor.

So why didn't they?

[Reiter] We were all extremely frustrated.

Once we knew

that the one charge was going to be
the extent of the state's prosecution,

I wrote the parents of all the victims
and told them that

I did not feel
that justice was sufficiently served,

and that I was referring the case
to the FBI.

[Jane Musgrave]
It's highly unusual for a police chief

to sidestep the state attorney's office,

and go directly to the feds,
and demand an investigation.

I don't know
that I have ever heard of that,

and I think that's one of the many,
many odd things about this case.

[Shannon Cake]
Any investigator or investigation,

the first thing you're going to do is
look back in time and see:

Has this happened before?

Are there other claims?
Are there other victims?

The FBI actually found two women

who had accused Epstein
a decade earlier, in 1996.

Maria Farmer, an artist,

and her younger sister, Annie.

[Maria Farmer] In 1996,
following the assault

by Jeffrey and Ghislaine,

I came back to New York...

and then I found out that they knew
that I'd reported them to the FBI.

Ghislaine called and said
she was going to burn all my art,

and burn my career and destroy it,

she was entirely socially connected,
and that I was screwed.

She told me I needed to watch my back,

that, "I know you like to go running
on the West Side Highway,

and that's not going to be
a safe place for you anymore,

because there are a lot of ways to die
on the West Side Highway."

From that point on, over many years,
I would move, I would relocate,

and a couple of months would go by,
and I would be moving in,

and Ghislaine... Ghislaine would call me.

She would say she knew where I lived.

She would say
that same kinds of veiled threats like...

"You're not safe where you are.

You might want to check
over your shoulder."

Finally, in 2006, I was living
in the mountains of North Carolina.

I was hiding.

I had changed my name.
I had an alias...

and I get a knock on the door,
and it's this man and this woman,

and they show me their badge, they're FBI,

and this woman said,

"This is about your 1996 FBI report,

and we're following up
because we're going to get him.

We're going to get them."

[Annie Farmer] The FBI came,

and they interviewed me,
and they interviewed my sister,

and we told them our stories.

And so we just thought,
"Oh, my gosh! They're really...

You know, they're doing a thorough job.
They're looking at people in other places.

They're recognizing that this is
a more systemic issue,

and they are... You know,
he's gonna be held accountable."

[Shawna Rivera] I talked to the FBI,
and they're like,

"We're here to save you."

And they assured me

that they were going to protect me,

and that they needed me to tell them
everything that happened.

And they would help
as many victims as they can.

[Sigrid McCawley]
I think a lot of the families,

when they came to learn
what had happened to their daughters,

reached out to attorneys to try
to help them navigate this circumstance,

because obviously
there was a criminal aspect to it,

there was a civil aspect to it,

and they were also facing somebody
who is incredibly powerful,

incredibly wealthy,
incredibly intimidating,

so they needed lawyers to help them
through that process.

[man] The first time I heard
Jeffrey Epstein's name

was when I had my own law firm

dedicated to representing crime victims
in civil cases.

A friend of mine from Jacksonville,
who was also a lawyer,

he called me and said
that he had received a call from a girl.

And that was Courtney Wild.

Courtney came to my office.

Then she told me
how she went into his house

and told me what happened there.

[woman] I was 14
when I was introduced to Jeffrey Epstein.

It was eighth grade summer,
going from eighth grade to high school.

From sixth, seventh and eighth grade,
I was a straight-A student.

I never even got a B.

I played the trumpet.
I was captain of the cheerleading squad...

but then from eighth grade to ninth grade,
things fell apart for me and my family.

Just from, um... my mom's addiction.

She was sick, battling her own demons,
wasn't really able to care for me,

and I was basically homeless

and living at friends' houses
and stuff like that.

When I first went to Jeffrey's,

I really was expecting
I was going to make easy money

giving this guy a massage.

And that situation escalated
to him molesting me.

It happened so quick where it's like,
"What just happened?"

But being vulnerable at 14 years old,

and trying to handle life on my own,
it was just overwhelming, so...

um, I did continue
to go back to Jeffrey's.

He made me feel like,

you know, basically, I was lucky to be
in his presence.

It was just a glorified manipulation thing
he had going on and that worked.

It was maybe the second time
I went to him or the third.

He asked me, do I have any friends,

can I bring anybody?

And he would give me $200
and the person $200.

In my time frame of going
for three to four years,

I at least brought him
about 40 to 60 girls.

I know that this is wrong, this is crazy,

but I just became okay with that
because of what he offered me.

He offered me cash. He offered me a way

so I could eat and pay my bills,

and he offered me something
that nobody else did.

I felt like he was my lifeline.

[Courtney Wild] So, in the beginning
of the investigation

when the police were reaching out to me,

I was confused.

I felt like I had this painting of Jeffrey
that he was this awesome man,

that he actually saved my life
in a sense,

that I was very lucky
to ever be introduced to him.

But then I see the police reports of girls
that I had brought to Jeffrey's,

close friends,

and that made me have the change of heart.

The emotions come over

of, like, guilt, and shame, and disgust.

It was traumatic.

That's when I started saying,

"Okay, this isn't right.
Something needs to happen about this."

So I find Brad Edwards, my attorney.

[Brad Edwards] I told her, "You don't
really have much to worry about.

This is somebody
who is not ever going to be free again."

She said, "But I don't think
you understand the level of power he has."

It's just unheard of.

It's just an unbelievable scheme
to have kept going

for that long of a period of time.

I've never heard anything like this

where somebody was able to set up
basically a pyramid scheme,

a molestation pyramid scheme.

Hey, do you have the victim chart?

-The chart that we created?
-Yeah.

Well, this is when we were first...

trying to map out the case.

We had to prove

that this pyramid of underage girls
in Palm Beach...

was true.

It didn't start from just a random
underage girl walking into the house.

Ghislaine Maxwell was
one of the recruiters

of the underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.

The other recruiters that were identified

were Sarah Kellen,

Nadia Marcinkova,

Adriana Mucinska,

and we just started tracking

if this person, which name is
not identified right now,

was an underage girl.

"Who did you bring?"

And then from that person
we would bridge down,

"How many did you bring?"

And she would name
the other five or six people.

This was something
that we assembled in about 30 days

and realized that this chart could go off
like a spider web

for, you know,
five times as big as this chart.

[McCawley] So at the top of
the pyramid scheme was Ghislaine Maxwell,

who was really Epstein's right-hand person

with helping to recruit
these individuals for sexual abuse.

[Vicky Ward] Jeffrey and Ghislaine
met in New York.

Jeffrey Epstein's really an introvert.

Ghislaine is a much more charming person
than Jeffrey is.

She's an extrovert.

I think he revels in being
this man of mystery,

who almost can't be bothered
to dress properly.

He can't be bothered to go to restaurants,

and he likes the sort of intrigue
that that creates about him.

Ghislaine is a very engaging person.

She's extremely charismatic and bubbly.

Her father, Robert Maxwell, had been
an incredibly big figure in England.

He was a big newspaper publisher.

In fact, he'd been something of a con man
and a fraudster,

but he'd lived a huge life.

When Ghislaine came to New York,

her whole world had fallen apart.

Her father,
who she was incredibly attached to...

had died in very murky circumstances,

and also his entire reputation
had been shattered.

Jeffrey, in a way, felt like a safe haven
for her. Here was...

another very rich man
to sort of replace her father.

[sinister music]

[man] I've been covering Wall Street
since at least 1991.

You know, Jeffrey Epstein was
always someone whose name popped up,

but I couldn't really nail it down.

He was a cipher.

People I know on Wall Street leave trails.

His trail was elusive.

So it was just sort of odd
that here was this guy

that people talked about a lot,

that didn't have much of a footprint
in the investment world.

That's the mystery of Jeffrey Epstein.
You know, how did he make money?

[man] I deeply regret

that I met Jeffrey Epstein,

who is somebody that has haunted me
for over 30 years.

Without me, he wouldn't be
the billionaire he is today,

and these poor girls would not be raped.

And I'm here for redemption
and to tell the story to the public.

[car horn beeping]

[Steven Hoffenberg]
I met Jeff Epstein in the '80s

after he was thrown out of Bear Stearns.

I was the CEO
of Towers Financial Corporation.

[Ward] Steve Hoffenberg
and Jeffrey were both self-made guys.

But when Jeffrey met him,
Hoffenberg was the sort of... the mogul.

He was the one flying around
in private planes.

He was the one with the wealth.

[Hoffenberg]
The CEO of a very large company

who had employed Jeffrey Epstein in Europe

called me and said,
"This is a brilliant man

that we'd like you to interview
for North America

because he has credentials on Wall Street,
and he's loaded with energy,

but his moral compass is upside down."

Jeffrey Epstein had cheated
and stolen money on his expense account.

He definitely appealed to us,

because we were running a Ponzi scheme.
[chuckles]

And he understood Wall Street,

and he could deliver substantial results
in this criminal enterprise.

So I interviewed Jeffrey Epstein,
and he took control of the interview.

He's got a gift that's extraordinary,

where he controls the people he meets

and manipulates them totally
with his charisma.

[Hoffenberg] Jeffrey Epstein became
my partner in crime,

backing me up, leading the advance,

doing the crimes alongside me daily.

He took over the securities side,

the fake assets side.

He was manipulating stock price

and trading stock illegally.

[Ward] People involved
certainly remembered Jeffrey

as being incredibly important in coming up

with how the scheme would work.

Then the law caught up
to this massive scam.

[Hoffenberg] I stood up, plead guilty,
and accepted the responsibility.

My sentence was
for 20 years in federal prison...

and I didn't turn evidence against him

because Jeffrey Epstein
told me he was a cooperating witness

for the United States
Department of Justice in the past

and he had traction with them.

I believe that Jeffrey Epstein
would have been able to discredit me

and say he was the White Knight
and he was immaculate,

and I knew that was his plan.

You can't grasp the magnitude
of this man's controlling effect.

Jeffrey Epstein was able to control
and manipulate people

in an extreme method.

That was typical Jeffrey Epstein.

It's very clear that
that is Jeffrey's MO,

is to hold things over people,
hold their secrets over people, I suspect.

Um, you know, there's a pattern here.

[Hoffenberg] Jeffrey Epstein's methods
started with Leslie Wexner

when Jeffrey Epstein sold
his soul to Leslie Wexner

for several billion dollars of investment.

[man] Jeff Epstein met Les Wexner
somewhere around 1986.

This is Mr. Wexner's gate house,

and beyond that gate house is
a massive compound

and the most expensive house
in central Ohio.

Les Wexner started out in 1963

opening the women's fashion
apparel shop, The Limited.

Les bought various other brands,

Abercrombie & Fitch
and Victoria's Secret.

Through all of that,
became a multi-billionaire.

At some point,
Les Wexner provided a power of attorney

to Jeffrey Epstein
over his financial affairs.

I was astonished
because Les Wexner is not the kind of guy

who gives up control over anything.

Epstein was this Svengali figure

that seems to have
some unexplainable grip,

uh, over this titan of industry.

There are people in the late '80s,
early '90s

that referred to Epstein
as "the boyfriend."

[Hoffenberg] Jeffrey Epstein was working
with both of us at the same time.

He was going to Ohio regularly on a jet

that was provided to Jeffrey
by Leslie Wexner.

Epstein explained to me personally

that he could control the emotions
of Leslie Wexner easily

because Leslie Wexner was fascinated

and Wexner totally adored Epstein.

[Edwards]
Do you consider yourself to be bisexual?

-No.
-[Edwards] Okay.

In any even, you did develop
a sexual relationship

with Leslie Wexner at some point in time,
is that true?

No.

[Hoffenberg] Epstein told me
how he planned to manipulate and control

Leslie Wexner's fortune
of billions of dollars

so that Jeffrey Epstein could invest

and make substantial income.

In 2019, Les Wexner revealed

that he had cut ties with Epstein
back in 2007.

He said he discovered Epstein had stolen
more than 46 million dollars from him.

He didn't explain
why he didn't press charges.

[Les Wexner] Being taken advantage of

by someone who was, uh, so sick,

so cunning, uh, so depraved...

uhm...

is something that I'm embarrassed
that I was even close to.

[sinister music]

[woman] I was, uh, a model and actress.

[man] Alicia! What's up?

[Alicia Arden] When my friend said,

"This guy can get you
in the Victoria's Secret catalog,"

I jumped.

Jeffrey Epstein was staying at Shutters
hotel in Santa Monica, California.

So I met him at his hotel room.

He said he knows
the owner of Victoria's Secret.

So he started opening
my portfolio of pictures...

and then he said,

"Let me see you in your bra
and underwear."

Then he started putting his hands on me
and my hips and my butt.

I really felt at the time
that I was going to be raped or attacked.

I ran out of the room crying.

I drove to the Santa Monica
Police Department to file a police report.

I don't remember him
ever being investigated.

No one called me.

He didn't get in trouble over it.

It was like nothing really ever happened.

[man] I've been a private
investigator now for about ten years,

but I'd say 80% of my job is...

on the street finding information.

When I started working on this case
for Brad Edwards,

he told me that the FBI is doing
a parallel case,

but they really don't have much.

It was just really going along slow.

I'm a fan of the FBI.
I work very closely with them.

So I said, "Well, okay.
Maybe I can speed it up for them."

I had one daughter at the time
when I started working the case

who was 21,

and one daughter was 15.

It didn't only make me think
about my own daughters,

it made me think about all the years
I spent in law enforcement

that I had to interview abused girls
or girls that were victims of a pedophile

and how broken these girls became.

These are the girls that I have been able
to identify myself that were victims,

thirteen, and 14, and 15 years old.

As you can see,
there's a volume of them.

I started going to the depressed areas
of West Palm Beach,

to these neighborhoods,

and I would meet someone,

or one of the girls that Brad
was representing would know someone,

give me a lead,

and that's how I started finding girl
after girl after girl.

I think I must have found
like 46 other girls that were assaulted.

Some of the victims were very reluctant
to talk to me,

but I was at least able
to get their names,

who they were and where they lived,
which I later gave to the FBI.

[sinister music]

Everybody feared him,

and fear was his greatest asset.

I mean,
that's what gave him his power.

So I took it upon myself
as civil prosecutor,

and I served Jeffrey Epstein
for a deposition

and tried to achieve justice
for the victims.

[Edwards] Mr. Epstein,
how long have you been

sexually attracted
to underage minor females?

[lawyer] Objection.
Harassing, argumentative.

Are you kidding?

[Edwards] No, I mean, I don't feel like
I'm divulging any secrets here, right?

[lawyer] Move to strike.

I was starting to really get
on Jeffrey Epstein's nerves for sure.

There's no doubt. Was I trying to?

I guess so.

[Edwards] Mr. Epstein?

Yeah.

[Edwards]
Were you sexually abused as a minor?

Wait, say that again?

[Edwards]
Were you sexually abused as a minor?

[sighs] You know, I'd like to...
Again, I'd like to respond to all your...

If any questions seem to be relevant,

but I would like to respond
to any relevant question at this time.

However, my attorneys have counseled me
that I cannot provide answers

to the questions relevant
to this lawsuit today.

I must accept their advice
or risk losing my Sixth Amendment right

to effective representation.

Accordingly then, I assert my Fifth,
Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights

in the United States Constitution.

[Mike Fisten] Pretty soon,

Epstein's investigators started
conducting surveillance on Brad.

They were trying to find out

if they can catch Brad doing
anything wrong after hours,

during hours, then try to blackmail him.

But then,

it became intimidation because
they started surveilling Brad's house,

where his wife and kids live.

[Edwards] When my wife noticed that
somebody was following her, I thought,

"Okay, it's just getting out of hand.
Now that's my family."

He tried to intimidate me
into just abandoning my clients,

which I was never going to do.
That was never going to happen.

[Reiter] They were investigating
the victims as well.

We had several victims report to us that

people posing as law enforcement officers
were contacting the victims and...

in some cases, intimidating them.

[sinister music]

[Rivera] I started noticing

there were cars
that would sit at the end of my street.

I had these people constantly watching me.

So I called my attorney,
and I told him what was going on.

Brad figured out

that most of these vehicles
were actually private investigators

that were following and watching me.

While she was sleeping in her bed,

Jeffrey Epstein's investigators
set their car up

across the street from her house,

and just shined their bright lights
through her window all night.

[Rivera] So Brad sent Mike Fisten over.

They had this private investigator war,

cameras against one another,
recording each other.

[Fisten] When I showed up,
he was still here.

I took pictures of his car,

and then I took pictures of him
in his car.

With me there looking at him,

he's still videotaping.

It was really... It was kind of scary.

Mike puts me in his car and he says,
"We're going to get out of here."

[Fisten] Don't follow her.

[Rivera] And he drove me like hours
down south and like put me in a hotel,

where I hid
and was basically just told like,

"Your family's going to be safer
if you're not home

because they're not gonna...
harass you now."

Why do I have to make my family...

safe from somebody
who should be sitting in jail?

[insects buzzing and chirping]

[birds chirping]

[Reiter]
This was a cooperative investigation

between the FBI
and the US attorney's office.

Although we were not
an official partner to the investigation,

they kept us informed.

We cooperated, we introduced them
to the victims that we knew of,

we gave them
all of the background information,

and what's written between the lines
that doesn't appear in a report.

[Fisten] The agent on the case,
Kuyrkendall, is a great agent.

And she put together this case
against this pedophile

that was going to put him in prison
the rest of his life

if he just gets convicted of one count.

The government had a plethora
of information at their fingertips.

They had 35 to 40 different victims
that were willing to give testimony.

They had information showing victims
being transported across state lines,

whether it be in private planes
or on commercial flights.

So, they had
a 53-page indictment prepared

because they had
just an immense amount of information

that they could charge Epstein with.

[Reiter] I asked
for an appointment with Alex Acosta.

Alex Acosta at the time
was the US attorney.

I met with him and his team
in Mr. Acosta's office.

I told them that I would like to know
from them

that they were going
to prosecute this case,

and follow through with it,
and, uh, get justice for the victims.

I left my meeting
with Alex Acosta thinking

that Jeffrey Epstein would go to jail
for the rest of his life.

[sinister music]

The case had been turned over
to the federal government

for more than two years,

but I hadn't heard anything.

I just want to know what's going on,
so I call and speak with Marie Villafaña

of the US attorney's office,

and she confirmed
that this is a massive case.

I started asking when she thought
a trial was actually going to happen,

and I remember her telling me that,

"There's just a lot that I want
to tell you,

and I know that your heart's
in the right place, and mine is too.

There's a lot that I want to tell you,
Brad, that I can't tell you."

And that's when I started thinking
something was going on.

[Reiter] Suddenly,
when we'd call the FBI agents,

they would tell us
they were forbidden to talk

with any representative of Palm Beach
Police Department about the case.

It's the only time that ever happened
in my 30 years

as a law enforcement officer.

[male reporter]
Epstein's personal 727 aircraft

arrived at PBIA from Newark at 5:00 p.m.

The investor,
traveling with a small entourage,

was met at the private Galaxy Aviation
by a black Escalade and a driver.

Sources tell News Channel 5
that Kenneth Starr,

now a top lawyer in Los Angeles,
will arrive here tomorrow morning.

[Fisten] The US attorney Acosta
met with Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers.

The next thing,
not only was the indictment gone,

the FBI case was stopped.

So the FBI agents were shook up...

very upset,
and started voicing their opposition...

to what had occurred.

[Maria Farmer] The FBI agent,
Nesbitt Kuyrkendall,

I was so impressed by her.

She was very dedicated
to the women in Florida.

She called me really upset one day,
and she said,

"Maria, I know you're hesitant
about testifying because you're afraid,

and I just want you to know
I don't know if it'll even matter

'cause things are really falling apart."

I contacted Kuyrkendall myself,
and she was in tears.

She was actually crying on the phone,
in tears, that this happened.

She felt so bad for these victims

because she told these victims
she's going to put this guy away.

Nobody knows why US Attorney Acosta
shut this case down.

To me, that's bullshit.