It is a story that brings together billionaires, presidents, princes, private islands, and unfortunately, decades of sexual abuse of underage girls.
In this episode, we will be talking about the disgraced American financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the disgraced American financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:00:27] It is a story that brings together billionaires, presidents, princes, private islands, and unfortunately, decades of sexual abuse of underage girls.
[00:00:38] I imagine that you know a little bit about Jeffrey Epstein already, and if so, you’ll know that his story involves some pretty heinous crimes, so please take this as a warning that there will be references to sexual abuse in this episode.
[00:00:53] So if you would prefer to not listen to this, please press pause now.
[00:00:58] OK then, let’s get right into the sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:01:05] It’s often said that the best way of judging someone’s character is by seeing what other people say about them.
[00:01:14] In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, people had a lot of nice things to say about him.
[00:01:20] And these weren’t just any people; these were some of the richest and most powerful people in the world.
[00:01:28] The Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, called him “brilliant”.
[00:01:33] The former boss of the British bank Barclays referred to him as his “most cherished friend”.
[00:01:41] The former US president Bill Clinton referred to him as “a committed philanthropist”, and another former president, Donald Trump, called him “a terrific guy”, adding that “he’s a lot of fun to be with.”
[00:01:56] And in an eerie premonition, or perhaps simply referring to what was at the time an open secret, Trump added “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
[00:02:18] If there were a prize for the world’s biggest euphemism, this would be up there.
[00:02:24] “Liking beautiful women, many of whom are on the younger side, and no doubt about it, he enjoys his social life.”
[00:02:32] The man who Trump was talking about, Jeffrey Epstein, would be arrested on charges of sex trafficking, with his victims numbering in the hundreds and the youngest being only 14.
[00:02:46] He might have rubbed shoulders with the most powerful people in the world, but he was right up there with the worst sex offenders of the 21st century, and he did it all, seemingly, while hiding in plain sight.
[00:03:02] As you may know, he was never formally charged, as he was found dead on the floor of his prison cell 36 days after being arrested, while still awaiting trial.
[00:03:14] This is the story of a man who used his power and money to use and abuse vulnerable young women over multiple decades, and a man who almost certainly took some very damning secrets to the grave with him.
[00:03:30] Now, before we get into the crimes for which Epstein is best known, I want to give you some brief background, to tell you a bit about his early life and career.
[00:03:42] He was born in New York in 1953 to working class parents; his father was a groundskeeper and gardener, and his mother was a school aide, so she worked in a classroom alongside a teacher.
[00:03:57] He started off his career not as a high-flying banker, but as a maths teacher at a prestigious New York school, although he was sacked not long after for poor performance.
[00:04:11] From his teaching days, he was known as being charismatic, a good talker, kind of creepy towards female students, but overall someone who people liked to be around.
[00:04:24] And this got him noticed.
[00:04:27] One person who noticed the young Epstein was a man called Alan Greenberg, who was the boss of the big bank, Bear Stearns. And after Epstein was sacked from his teaching job, Greenberg offered Epstein a job at his bank.
[00:04:46] It was a very junior job, but Epstein quickly proved himself and worked his way up the ranks, rubbing shoulders with increasingly wealthy clients.
[00:04:58] He left the bank in 1981, and set out on his own.
[00:05:03] This would be the start of a multi-decade career that involved Epstein doing a variety of things in the world of finance. We aren’t going to go into all of them new, but as a general theme they involved managing the financial affairs of the ultra wealthy.
[00:05:22] And we aren’t talking about people with a few million dollars in the bank here; we are talking about billions of dollars, yachts, mansions all over the country, money invested all over the place.
[00:05:35] See, managing all of this stuff, all this wealth, all this money, it was a full-time job; it required knowledge and skill.
[00:05:45] It just so happened that Epstein had this in droves; he was very good at managing the private financial affairs of billionaires and his client list continued to grow.
[00:05:59] Now, he prided himself on secrecy and discretion, so who exactly kept money with Epstein is not public knowledge.
[00:06:09] The one publicly known client was a man called Leslie Wexner, who made his money through the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret.
[00:06:19] And in the case of this man, Leslie Wexner, he trusted Epstein with his life. Wexner was busy running his company, so he gave Epstein the power to do almost anything regarding his personal affairs. Epstein could buy and sell property on his behalf, he could enter into contracts for Wexner, he controlled everything.
[00:06:43] Of course, Epstein was rewarded handsomely for this, he was paid a lot, but clearly for Wexner it was a price he was willing to pay.
[00:06:53] Now, one thing that you’ll see is that how exactly Epstein made his money, and how much money he made, is something of a black hole. Nobody really knows, but it’s been widely speculated that it was a lot less than Epstein had claimed it was. It was in the hundreds of millions, not the billions.
[00:07:16] The one area in which Epstein was incredibly rich was in terms of his little black book, his contacts. He made collecting people his business, and he was soon mingling with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the US.
[00:07:34] Life was good for Epstein. The boy from a working-class district of New York, the son of a gardener and a school teacher, was partying with future presidents and tycoons of the business world.
[00:07:48] Sure, he had made some bad investments and lost a few million here and there, but he had more money than he knew what to do with.
[00:07:57] In 1998 he had even shelled out the modern equivalent of $15 million for his own private Caribbean island.
[00:08:06] He was on top of the world; there seemed to be nothing that could stop Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:08:13] But in March of 2005, the tide turned for this high-flying financier.
[00:08:20] Police in Florida had received a complaint from the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl.
[00:08:27] The girl told police that she had been brought to Epstein’s mansion by another older girl, and she had been paid to strip naked for the then 52-year-old Epstein.
[00:08:41] The police didn’t immediately bring Epstein in for questioning. Instead, they launched an undercover investigation, questioning other young girls, secretly going through his rubbish, and then searching his home.
[00:08:56] What they discovered was very disturbing.
[00:08:59] There was evidence of multiple underage girls spending time in Epstein’s mansion, with some as young as 14.
[00:09:08] When the girls were questioned, they all told a similar story. They would be brought to the mansion and instructed to give Epstein “a massage”. During the massage, he would sexually abuse them, and typically pay them a few hundred dollars afterwards.
[00:09:27] The girls that were brought to the mansion were often flown in from all over the world: Brazil, the former Soviet Union, as well as other Latin American countries. There was even an allegation of 12-year-old triplets being flown in from France.
[00:09:45] In terms of just how many there were, it’s thought that there were at least 80 young girls who were abused in this way, 80 whose identities were known, so presumably there were many more who will forever remain anonymous.
[00:10:00] Epstein was arrested in July of 2006, after the evidence was too great to ignore.
[00:10:07] This kickstarted a lengthy negotiation process between Epstein’s lawyers and the authorities, and ended with Epstein pleading guilty to state, not federal charges, in exchange for immunity from federal prosecution for him and any other co-conspirators.
[00:10:26] In other words, if there were other people, powerful people, who were also caught up in this scandal, they would not be prosecuted - this was the agreement.
[00:10:38] In 2008, Epstein ended up being sentenced to 18 months in prison, but it wasn’t really “prison” as you or I might imagine it.
[00:10:49] Just three and a half months after being sent to this prison, he was allowed to leave not just his cell but the entire prison for 12 hours a day to work. And when he was in prison, his cell door was mostly left unlocked.
[00:11:08] He was released from this pseudo-prison in 2009, after 13 months, and told to spend the rest of his sentence under house arrest. But still, he left his house all the time, even jetting off to his private island multiple times, and the authorities did nothing to stop him.
[00:11:29] He was forced to register as a sex offender, which of course he most certainly was, but other than that, it was broadly back to life as normal for Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:11:41] He went on a PR blitz, a public relations campaign to portray himself as a philanthropist and donor to scientific research, but behind closed doors, nothing changed.
[00:11:55] As it would later turn out, life as normal for Jeffrey Epstein meant rampant sex abuse of vulnerable young women.
[00:12:04] He was arrested again on July the 6th, 2019, on charges of sex trafficking. On the day of his arrest, police raided his Manhattan townhouse and uncovered a smorgasbord of incriminating evidence of his crimes. They found, according to some reports, thousands of photos of naked underage girls, and digital copies of photos of young girls which had been clearly labelled with their names.
[00:12:33] And the police had plenty of witnesses who had come forward and told police that they had been trafficked and abused by Epstein.
[00:12:42] Some had been brought to the private island and abused, others had been abused on his private jet, others in his Manhattan residence.
[00:12:51] Some even said that they had been abused in Epstein’s houses by his wealthy and powerful friends.
[00:12:59] It would be alleged that Epstein’s purpose in procuring all of these young and vulnerable women was threefold, there were three reasons for it.
[00:13:10] Firstly, for his own pleasure. Clearly, he was a vile sex abuser who would abuse multiple women a day, and who derived pleasure from his crimes.
[00:13:23] But secondly, he would allow his friends and wealthy clients access to these young women. It was a so-called “perk” of doing business with Epstein. You got to go to his private island, enjoy the Caribbean crystal clear water, sand and sun, but, if you wanted, he would also provide underage girls for you to abuse.
[00:13:46] And the third reason, or at least the third alleged reason, was related to the second. It was to capture the crimes of his wealthy clients and friends on camera and use these photos or videos either to blackmail them or as an insurance policy if anything happened to him.
[00:14:06] When the police raided Epstein’s house, they found dozens of hidden cameras. The place was bugged. When you went through the doors of his townhouse, you were on TV.
[00:14:18] The purpose of these cameras, allegedly I should say, was so that Epstein could record the abuse of young women by his rich and powerful “friends”, and use this as material to blackmail them if the time came.
[00:14:32] It should be noted that police have never found any of these recordings, but the claims of what is on them are pretty serious.
[00:14:42] In the case of one woman, Virginia Giuffre, she has said that she was trafficked by Epstein when she was 17. She was told that she was going to be Epstein’s masseuse, to give him massages, but this really involved providing sexual services to him.
[00:15:00] And not just to him; she was told to provide sexual services to Epstein’s friends, and was, and I’m quoting directly, "passed around like a platter of fruit".
[00:15:13] One of the people she alleged that she was passed around to was none other than Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles, the British king. Giuffre said she was told to “do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”, and that she was "a paedophile's top girl, being trained up for a British prince". Those are her exact words.
[00:15:40] I should add that Prince Andrew has denied having sex with her, but there is a photo of the pair together, and these allegations were enough to get the ball rolling on his blacklisting from the royal family.
[00:15:54] Now, you probably know what happened next.
[00:15:57] Epstein was arrested on July 6th, 2019, and there were all sorts of suspicions about what he might reveal under questioning. After all, he had been rubbing shoulders with some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet - Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and a multitude of less famous but in many cases even richer tycoons from the world of business.
[00:16:25] What did Epstein know, how much was he prepared to tell, and was he going to hand over a load of compromising video tapes?
[00:16:35] The first few weeks of his time in jail were filled with visits from his lawyers, he spent the days in meetings, planning his next move.
[00:16:44] Then, on July 23rd, two and a half weeks into his stint in jail, he was found on the floor of his jail cell after apparently trying to kill himself. He was revived, taken to another cell and put on suicide watch, but only for six days, then he was taken off suicide watch and returned to his previous cell.
[00:17:08] Now, it’s worth saying that the conditions in this cell, and the jail he was held in, were considerably worse than the conditions of his incarceration 10 years prior.
[00:17:19] Rats, cockroaches, most certainly locked doors, and Epstein must have known full well that his prospects of either being released or having an easier time in jail were minimal.
[00:17:33] Although it seems he never thought there was anything “wrong” with what he had done, he knew the gravity of his crimes.
[00:17:41] His lawyers would have told the then 66-year-old Epstein that he would be facing up to 45 years behind bars; he had little prospect of ever getting out of prison alive.
[00:17:54] Then, on the morning of August 10, 2019, when doing a routine check, the guards found him lying on the floor of his cell, a bedsheet hung around his neck. This time there was no saving him.
[00:18:10] Epstein was dead.
[00:18:13] The death was ruled as suicide, that Epstein had killed himself, but there were numerous question marks over this ruling. A bone in his neck called the hyoid was broken, which is relatively rare in suicide; it’s much more common in murder by strangulation.
[00:18:32] And there were plenty of question marks over how perhaps the highest profile prisoner in the country was allowed to remain in his cell unwatched.
[00:18:42] He had already tried to kill himself, or someone had already tried to kill him, so why weren’t the guards watching him like a hawk, especially given the nature of the people he was thought to have information on?
[00:18:56] What’s more, the two guards who were meant to be watching him had fallen asleep, and the CCTV cameras in front of Epstein’s cell had malfunctioned, so there was no camera footage of what happened.
[00:19:10] It is, at best, completely incompetent, and at worst, evidence of some grand plan to silence Epstein forever.
[00:19:21] Now, as you will probably know, there are multiple conspiracy theories about what Epstein knew and what he was about to reveal, too many to go into detail here, but what I will say is that it seems pretty clear that Epstein was guilty a litany of hideous abuses going back decades, and that he knew that he was not going to get off scot free.
[00:19:45] For someone who had only really known a life of luxury and Caribbean islands, and the freedom to be able to do literally whatever he wanted without ever having to face the consequences of his actions, perhaps the prospect of spending a life behind bars and sharing a prison cell with half a dozen violent criminals was enough to take his own life.
[00:20:08] But, he had secrets, most likely on very powerful people, secrets that could ruin families, fortunes and dynasties.
[00:20:18] All I’ll say on this is that I’m sure we both know that people have been killed for knowing an awful lot less.
[00:20:27] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:20:32] I know it is an uncomfortable subject, but it is one that demonstrates quite how far some people think their money and power will take them.
[00:20:41] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:20:44] How was the Epstein case covered in your country, and do you have similar stories of rich and powerful people who have been convicted of similarly terrible crimes?
[00:20:53] And of course the most obvious answer is “who killed Jeffrey Epstein?”
[00:20:58] Was it Jeffrey Epstein, or was it someone else?
[00:21:02] I would love to know your thoughts, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:05] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:13] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:18] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the disgraced American financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:00:27] It is a story that brings together billionaires, presidents, princes, private islands, and unfortunately, decades of sexual abuse of underage girls.
[00:00:38] I imagine that you know a little bit about Jeffrey Epstein already, and if so, you’ll know that his story involves some pretty heinous crimes, so please take this as a warning that there will be references to sexual abuse in this episode.
[00:00:53] So if you would prefer to not listen to this, please press pause now.
[00:00:58] OK then, let’s get right into the sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:01:05] It’s often said that the best way of judging someone’s character is by seeing what other people say about them.
[00:01:14] In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, people had a lot of nice things to say about him.
[00:01:20] And these weren’t just any people; these were some of the richest and most powerful people in the world.
[00:01:28] The Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, called him “brilliant”.
[00:01:33] The former boss of the British bank Barclays referred to him as his “most cherished friend”.
[00:01:41] The former US president Bill Clinton referred to him as “a committed philanthropist”, and another former president, Donald Trump, called him “a terrific guy”, adding that “he’s a lot of fun to be with.”
[00:01:56] And in an eerie premonition, or perhaps simply referring to what was at the time an open secret, Trump added “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
[00:02:18] If there were a prize for the world’s biggest euphemism, this would be up there.
[00:02:24] “Liking beautiful women, many of whom are on the younger side, and no doubt about it, he enjoys his social life.”
[00:02:32] The man who Trump was talking about, Jeffrey Epstein, would be arrested on charges of sex trafficking, with his victims numbering in the hundreds and the youngest being only 14.
[00:02:46] He might have rubbed shoulders with the most powerful people in the world, but he was right up there with the worst sex offenders of the 21st century, and he did it all, seemingly, while hiding in plain sight.
[00:03:02] As you may know, he was never formally charged, as he was found dead on the floor of his prison cell 36 days after being arrested, while still awaiting trial.
[00:03:14] This is the story of a man who used his power and money to use and abuse vulnerable young women over multiple decades, and a man who almost certainly took some very damning secrets to the grave with him.
[00:03:30] Now, before we get into the crimes for which Epstein is best known, I want to give you some brief background, to tell you a bit about his early life and career.
[00:03:42] He was born in New York in 1953 to working class parents; his father was a groundskeeper and gardener, and his mother was a school aide, so she worked in a classroom alongside a teacher.
[00:03:57] He started off his career not as a high-flying banker, but as a maths teacher at a prestigious New York school, although he was sacked not long after for poor performance.
[00:04:11] From his teaching days, he was known as being charismatic, a good talker, kind of creepy towards female students, but overall someone who people liked to be around.
[00:04:24] And this got him noticed.
[00:04:27] One person who noticed the young Epstein was a man called Alan Greenberg, who was the boss of the big bank, Bear Stearns. And after Epstein was sacked from his teaching job, Greenberg offered Epstein a job at his bank.
[00:04:46] It was a very junior job, but Epstein quickly proved himself and worked his way up the ranks, rubbing shoulders with increasingly wealthy clients.
[00:04:58] He left the bank in 1981, and set out on his own.
[00:05:03] This would be the start of a multi-decade career that involved Epstein doing a variety of things in the world of finance. We aren’t going to go into all of them new, but as a general theme they involved managing the financial affairs of the ultra wealthy.
[00:05:22] And we aren’t talking about people with a few million dollars in the bank here; we are talking about billions of dollars, yachts, mansions all over the country, money invested all over the place.
[00:05:35] See, managing all of this stuff, all this wealth, all this money, it was a full-time job; it required knowledge and skill.
[00:05:45] It just so happened that Epstein had this in droves; he was very good at managing the private financial affairs of billionaires and his client list continued to grow.
[00:05:59] Now, he prided himself on secrecy and discretion, so who exactly kept money with Epstein is not public knowledge.
[00:06:09] The one publicly known client was a man called Leslie Wexner, who made his money through the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret.
[00:06:19] And in the case of this man, Leslie Wexner, he trusted Epstein with his life. Wexner was busy running his company, so he gave Epstein the power to do almost anything regarding his personal affairs. Epstein could buy and sell property on his behalf, he could enter into contracts for Wexner, he controlled everything.
[00:06:43] Of course, Epstein was rewarded handsomely for this, he was paid a lot, but clearly for Wexner it was a price he was willing to pay.
[00:06:53] Now, one thing that you’ll see is that how exactly Epstein made his money, and how much money he made, is something of a black hole. Nobody really knows, but it’s been widely speculated that it was a lot less than Epstein had claimed it was. It was in the hundreds of millions, not the billions.
[00:07:16] The one area in which Epstein was incredibly rich was in terms of his little black book, his contacts. He made collecting people his business, and he was soon mingling with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the US.
[00:07:34] Life was good for Epstein. The boy from a working-class district of New York, the son of a gardener and a school teacher, was partying with future presidents and tycoons of the business world.
[00:07:48] Sure, he had made some bad investments and lost a few million here and there, but he had more money than he knew what to do with.
[00:07:57] In 1998 he had even shelled out the modern equivalent of $15 million for his own private Caribbean island.
[00:08:06] He was on top of the world; there seemed to be nothing that could stop Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:08:13] But in March of 2005, the tide turned for this high-flying financier.
[00:08:20] Police in Florida had received a complaint from the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl.
[00:08:27] The girl told police that she had been brought to Epstein’s mansion by another older girl, and she had been paid to strip naked for the then 52-year-old Epstein.
[00:08:41] The police didn’t immediately bring Epstein in for questioning. Instead, they launched an undercover investigation, questioning other young girls, secretly going through his rubbish, and then searching his home.
[00:08:56] What they discovered was very disturbing.
[00:08:59] There was evidence of multiple underage girls spending time in Epstein’s mansion, with some as young as 14.
[00:09:08] When the girls were questioned, they all told a similar story. They would be brought to the mansion and instructed to give Epstein “a massage”. During the massage, he would sexually abuse them, and typically pay them a few hundred dollars afterwards.
[00:09:27] The girls that were brought to the mansion were often flown in from all over the world: Brazil, the former Soviet Union, as well as other Latin American countries. There was even an allegation of 12-year-old triplets being flown in from France.
[00:09:45] In terms of just how many there were, it’s thought that there were at least 80 young girls who were abused in this way, 80 whose identities were known, so presumably there were many more who will forever remain anonymous.
[00:10:00] Epstein was arrested in July of 2006, after the evidence was too great to ignore.
[00:10:07] This kickstarted a lengthy negotiation process between Epstein’s lawyers and the authorities, and ended with Epstein pleading guilty to state, not federal charges, in exchange for immunity from federal prosecution for him and any other co-conspirators.
[00:10:26] In other words, if there were other people, powerful people, who were also caught up in this scandal, they would not be prosecuted - this was the agreement.
[00:10:38] In 2008, Epstein ended up being sentenced to 18 months in prison, but it wasn’t really “prison” as you or I might imagine it.
[00:10:49] Just three and a half months after being sent to this prison, he was allowed to leave not just his cell but the entire prison for 12 hours a day to work. And when he was in prison, his cell door was mostly left unlocked.
[00:11:08] He was released from this pseudo-prison in 2009, after 13 months, and told to spend the rest of his sentence under house arrest. But still, he left his house all the time, even jetting off to his private island multiple times, and the authorities did nothing to stop him.
[00:11:29] He was forced to register as a sex offender, which of course he most certainly was, but other than that, it was broadly back to life as normal for Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:11:41] He went on a PR blitz, a public relations campaign to portray himself as a philanthropist and donor to scientific research, but behind closed doors, nothing changed.
[00:11:55] As it would later turn out, life as normal for Jeffrey Epstein meant rampant sex abuse of vulnerable young women.
[00:12:04] He was arrested again on July the 6th, 2019, on charges of sex trafficking. On the day of his arrest, police raided his Manhattan townhouse and uncovered a smorgasbord of incriminating evidence of his crimes. They found, according to some reports, thousands of photos of naked underage girls, and digital copies of photos of young girls which had been clearly labelled with their names.
[00:12:33] And the police had plenty of witnesses who had come forward and told police that they had been trafficked and abused by Epstein.
[00:12:42] Some had been brought to the private island and abused, others had been abused on his private jet, others in his Manhattan residence.
[00:12:51] Some even said that they had been abused in Epstein’s houses by his wealthy and powerful friends.
[00:12:59] It would be alleged that Epstein’s purpose in procuring all of these young and vulnerable women was threefold, there were three reasons for it.
[00:13:10] Firstly, for his own pleasure. Clearly, he was a vile sex abuser who would abuse multiple women a day, and who derived pleasure from his crimes.
[00:13:23] But secondly, he would allow his friends and wealthy clients access to these young women. It was a so-called “perk” of doing business with Epstein. You got to go to his private island, enjoy the Caribbean crystal clear water, sand and sun, but, if you wanted, he would also provide underage girls for you to abuse.
[00:13:46] And the third reason, or at least the third alleged reason, was related to the second. It was to capture the crimes of his wealthy clients and friends on camera and use these photos or videos either to blackmail them or as an insurance policy if anything happened to him.
[00:14:06] When the police raided Epstein’s house, they found dozens of hidden cameras. The place was bugged. When you went through the doors of his townhouse, you were on TV.
[00:14:18] The purpose of these cameras, allegedly I should say, was so that Epstein could record the abuse of young women by his rich and powerful “friends”, and use this as material to blackmail them if the time came.
[00:14:32] It should be noted that police have never found any of these recordings, but the claims of what is on them are pretty serious.
[00:14:42] In the case of one woman, Virginia Giuffre, she has said that she was trafficked by Epstein when she was 17. She was told that she was going to be Epstein’s masseuse, to give him massages, but this really involved providing sexual services to him.
[00:15:00] And not just to him; she was told to provide sexual services to Epstein’s friends, and was, and I’m quoting directly, "passed around like a platter of fruit".
[00:15:13] One of the people she alleged that she was passed around to was none other than Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles, the British king. Giuffre said she was told to “do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”, and that she was "a paedophile's top girl, being trained up for a British prince". Those are her exact words.
[00:15:40] I should add that Prince Andrew has denied having sex with her, but there is a photo of the pair together, and these allegations were enough to get the ball rolling on his blacklisting from the royal family.
[00:15:54] Now, you probably know what happened next.
[00:15:57] Epstein was arrested on July 6th, 2019, and there were all sorts of suspicions about what he might reveal under questioning. After all, he had been rubbing shoulders with some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet - Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and a multitude of less famous but in many cases even richer tycoons from the world of business.
[00:16:25] What did Epstein know, how much was he prepared to tell, and was he going to hand over a load of compromising video tapes?
[00:16:35] The first few weeks of his time in jail were filled with visits from his lawyers, he spent the days in meetings, planning his next move.
[00:16:44] Then, on July 23rd, two and a half weeks into his stint in jail, he was found on the floor of his jail cell after apparently trying to kill himself. He was revived, taken to another cell and put on suicide watch, but only for six days, then he was taken off suicide watch and returned to his previous cell.
[00:17:08] Now, it’s worth saying that the conditions in this cell, and the jail he was held in, were considerably worse than the conditions of his incarceration 10 years prior.
[00:17:19] Rats, cockroaches, most certainly locked doors, and Epstein must have known full well that his prospects of either being released or having an easier time in jail were minimal.
[00:17:33] Although it seems he never thought there was anything “wrong” with what he had done, he knew the gravity of his crimes.
[00:17:41] His lawyers would have told the then 66-year-old Epstein that he would be facing up to 45 years behind bars; he had little prospect of ever getting out of prison alive.
[00:17:54] Then, on the morning of August 10, 2019, when doing a routine check, the guards found him lying on the floor of his cell, a bedsheet hung around his neck. This time there was no saving him.
[00:18:10] Epstein was dead.
[00:18:13] The death was ruled as suicide, that Epstein had killed himself, but there were numerous question marks over this ruling. A bone in his neck called the hyoid was broken, which is relatively rare in suicide; it’s much more common in murder by strangulation.
[00:18:32] And there were plenty of question marks over how perhaps the highest profile prisoner in the country was allowed to remain in his cell unwatched.
[00:18:42] He had already tried to kill himself, or someone had already tried to kill him, so why weren’t the guards watching him like a hawk, especially given the nature of the people he was thought to have information on?
[00:18:56] What’s more, the two guards who were meant to be watching him had fallen asleep, and the CCTV cameras in front of Epstein’s cell had malfunctioned, so there was no camera footage of what happened.
[00:19:10] It is, at best, completely incompetent, and at worst, evidence of some grand plan to silence Epstein forever.
[00:19:21] Now, as you will probably know, there are multiple conspiracy theories about what Epstein knew and what he was about to reveal, too many to go into detail here, but what I will say is that it seems pretty clear that Epstein was guilty a litany of hideous abuses going back decades, and that he knew that he was not going to get off scot free.
[00:19:45] For someone who had only really known a life of luxury and Caribbean islands, and the freedom to be able to do literally whatever he wanted without ever having to face the consequences of his actions, perhaps the prospect of spending a life behind bars and sharing a prison cell with half a dozen violent criminals was enough to take his own life.
[00:20:08] But, he had secrets, most likely on very powerful people, secrets that could ruin families, fortunes and dynasties.
[00:20:18] All I’ll say on this is that I’m sure we both know that people have been killed for knowing an awful lot less.
[00:20:27] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:20:32] I know it is an uncomfortable subject, but it is one that demonstrates quite how far some people think their money and power will take them.
[00:20:41] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:20:44] How was the Epstein case covered in your country, and do you have similar stories of rich and powerful people who have been convicted of similarly terrible crimes?
[00:20:53] And of course the most obvious answer is “who killed Jeffrey Epstein?”
[00:20:58] Was it Jeffrey Epstein, or was it someone else?
[00:21:02] I would love to know your thoughts, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:05] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:13] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:18] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the disgraced American financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:00:27] It is a story that brings together billionaires, presidents, princes, private islands, and unfortunately, decades of sexual abuse of underage girls.
[00:00:38] I imagine that you know a little bit about Jeffrey Epstein already, and if so, you’ll know that his story involves some pretty heinous crimes, so please take this as a warning that there will be references to sexual abuse in this episode.
[00:00:53] So if you would prefer to not listen to this, please press pause now.
[00:00:58] OK then, let’s get right into the sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:01:05] It’s often said that the best way of judging someone’s character is by seeing what other people say about them.
[00:01:14] In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, people had a lot of nice things to say about him.
[00:01:20] And these weren’t just any people; these were some of the richest and most powerful people in the world.
[00:01:28] The Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, called him “brilliant”.
[00:01:33] The former boss of the British bank Barclays referred to him as his “most cherished friend”.
[00:01:41] The former US president Bill Clinton referred to him as “a committed philanthropist”, and another former president, Donald Trump, called him “a terrific guy”, adding that “he’s a lot of fun to be with.”
[00:01:56] And in an eerie premonition, or perhaps simply referring to what was at the time an open secret, Trump added “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
[00:02:18] If there were a prize for the world’s biggest euphemism, this would be up there.
[00:02:24] “Liking beautiful women, many of whom are on the younger side, and no doubt about it, he enjoys his social life.”
[00:02:32] The man who Trump was talking about, Jeffrey Epstein, would be arrested on charges of sex trafficking, with his victims numbering in the hundreds and the youngest being only 14.
[00:02:46] He might have rubbed shoulders with the most powerful people in the world, but he was right up there with the worst sex offenders of the 21st century, and he did it all, seemingly, while hiding in plain sight.
[00:03:02] As you may know, he was never formally charged, as he was found dead on the floor of his prison cell 36 days after being arrested, while still awaiting trial.
[00:03:14] This is the story of a man who used his power and money to use and abuse vulnerable young women over multiple decades, and a man who almost certainly took some very damning secrets to the grave with him.
[00:03:30] Now, before we get into the crimes for which Epstein is best known, I want to give you some brief background, to tell you a bit about his early life and career.
[00:03:42] He was born in New York in 1953 to working class parents; his father was a groundskeeper and gardener, and his mother was a school aide, so she worked in a classroom alongside a teacher.
[00:03:57] He started off his career not as a high-flying banker, but as a maths teacher at a prestigious New York school, although he was sacked not long after for poor performance.
[00:04:11] From his teaching days, he was known as being charismatic, a good talker, kind of creepy towards female students, but overall someone who people liked to be around.
[00:04:24] And this got him noticed.
[00:04:27] One person who noticed the young Epstein was a man called Alan Greenberg, who was the boss of the big bank, Bear Stearns. And after Epstein was sacked from his teaching job, Greenberg offered Epstein a job at his bank.
[00:04:46] It was a very junior job, but Epstein quickly proved himself and worked his way up the ranks, rubbing shoulders with increasingly wealthy clients.
[00:04:58] He left the bank in 1981, and set out on his own.
[00:05:03] This would be the start of a multi-decade career that involved Epstein doing a variety of things in the world of finance. We aren’t going to go into all of them new, but as a general theme they involved managing the financial affairs of the ultra wealthy.
[00:05:22] And we aren’t talking about people with a few million dollars in the bank here; we are talking about billions of dollars, yachts, mansions all over the country, money invested all over the place.
[00:05:35] See, managing all of this stuff, all this wealth, all this money, it was a full-time job; it required knowledge and skill.
[00:05:45] It just so happened that Epstein had this in droves; he was very good at managing the private financial affairs of billionaires and his client list continued to grow.
[00:05:59] Now, he prided himself on secrecy and discretion, so who exactly kept money with Epstein is not public knowledge.
[00:06:09] The one publicly known client was a man called Leslie Wexner, who made his money through the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret.
[00:06:19] And in the case of this man, Leslie Wexner, he trusted Epstein with his life. Wexner was busy running his company, so he gave Epstein the power to do almost anything regarding his personal affairs. Epstein could buy and sell property on his behalf, he could enter into contracts for Wexner, he controlled everything.
[00:06:43] Of course, Epstein was rewarded handsomely for this, he was paid a lot, but clearly for Wexner it was a price he was willing to pay.
[00:06:53] Now, one thing that you’ll see is that how exactly Epstein made his money, and how much money he made, is something of a black hole. Nobody really knows, but it’s been widely speculated that it was a lot less than Epstein had claimed it was. It was in the hundreds of millions, not the billions.
[00:07:16] The one area in which Epstein was incredibly rich was in terms of his little black book, his contacts. He made collecting people his business, and he was soon mingling with the wealthiest and most powerful people in the US.
[00:07:34] Life was good for Epstein. The boy from a working-class district of New York, the son of a gardener and a school teacher, was partying with future presidents and tycoons of the business world.
[00:07:48] Sure, he had made some bad investments and lost a few million here and there, but he had more money than he knew what to do with.
[00:07:57] In 1998 he had even shelled out the modern equivalent of $15 million for his own private Caribbean island.
[00:08:06] He was on top of the world; there seemed to be nothing that could stop Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:08:13] But in March of 2005, the tide turned for this high-flying financier.
[00:08:20] Police in Florida had received a complaint from the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl.
[00:08:27] The girl told police that she had been brought to Epstein’s mansion by another older girl, and she had been paid to strip naked for the then 52-year-old Epstein.
[00:08:41] The police didn’t immediately bring Epstein in for questioning. Instead, they launched an undercover investigation, questioning other young girls, secretly going through his rubbish, and then searching his home.
[00:08:56] What they discovered was very disturbing.
[00:08:59] There was evidence of multiple underage girls spending time in Epstein’s mansion, with some as young as 14.
[00:09:08] When the girls were questioned, they all told a similar story. They would be brought to the mansion and instructed to give Epstein “a massage”. During the massage, he would sexually abuse them, and typically pay them a few hundred dollars afterwards.
[00:09:27] The girls that were brought to the mansion were often flown in from all over the world: Brazil, the former Soviet Union, as well as other Latin American countries. There was even an allegation of 12-year-old triplets being flown in from France.
[00:09:45] In terms of just how many there were, it’s thought that there were at least 80 young girls who were abused in this way, 80 whose identities were known, so presumably there were many more who will forever remain anonymous.
[00:10:00] Epstein was arrested in July of 2006, after the evidence was too great to ignore.
[00:10:07] This kickstarted a lengthy negotiation process between Epstein’s lawyers and the authorities, and ended with Epstein pleading guilty to state, not federal charges, in exchange for immunity from federal prosecution for him and any other co-conspirators.
[00:10:26] In other words, if there were other people, powerful people, who were also caught up in this scandal, they would not be prosecuted - this was the agreement.
[00:10:38] In 2008, Epstein ended up being sentenced to 18 months in prison, but it wasn’t really “prison” as you or I might imagine it.
[00:10:49] Just three and a half months after being sent to this prison, he was allowed to leave not just his cell but the entire prison for 12 hours a day to work. And when he was in prison, his cell door was mostly left unlocked.
[00:11:08] He was released from this pseudo-prison in 2009, after 13 months, and told to spend the rest of his sentence under house arrest. But still, he left his house all the time, even jetting off to his private island multiple times, and the authorities did nothing to stop him.
[00:11:29] He was forced to register as a sex offender, which of course he most certainly was, but other than that, it was broadly back to life as normal for Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:11:41] He went on a PR blitz, a public relations campaign to portray himself as a philanthropist and donor to scientific research, but behind closed doors, nothing changed.
[00:11:55] As it would later turn out, life as normal for Jeffrey Epstein meant rampant sex abuse of vulnerable young women.
[00:12:04] He was arrested again on July the 6th, 2019, on charges of sex trafficking. On the day of his arrest, police raided his Manhattan townhouse and uncovered a smorgasbord of incriminating evidence of his crimes. They found, according to some reports, thousands of photos of naked underage girls, and digital copies of photos of young girls which had been clearly labelled with their names.
[00:12:33] And the police had plenty of witnesses who had come forward and told police that they had been trafficked and abused by Epstein.
[00:12:42] Some had been brought to the private island and abused, others had been abused on his private jet, others in his Manhattan residence.
[00:12:51] Some even said that they had been abused in Epstein’s houses by his wealthy and powerful friends.
[00:12:59] It would be alleged that Epstein’s purpose in procuring all of these young and vulnerable women was threefold, there were three reasons for it.
[00:13:10] Firstly, for his own pleasure. Clearly, he was a vile sex abuser who would abuse multiple women a day, and who derived pleasure from his crimes.
[00:13:23] But secondly, he would allow his friends and wealthy clients access to these young women. It was a so-called “perk” of doing business with Epstein. You got to go to his private island, enjoy the Caribbean crystal clear water, sand and sun, but, if you wanted, he would also provide underage girls for you to abuse.
[00:13:46] And the third reason, or at least the third alleged reason, was related to the second. It was to capture the crimes of his wealthy clients and friends on camera and use these photos or videos either to blackmail them or as an insurance policy if anything happened to him.
[00:14:06] When the police raided Epstein’s house, they found dozens of hidden cameras. The place was bugged. When you went through the doors of his townhouse, you were on TV.
[00:14:18] The purpose of these cameras, allegedly I should say, was so that Epstein could record the abuse of young women by his rich and powerful “friends”, and use this as material to blackmail them if the time came.
[00:14:32] It should be noted that police have never found any of these recordings, but the claims of what is on them are pretty serious.
[00:14:42] In the case of one woman, Virginia Giuffre, she has said that she was trafficked by Epstein when she was 17. She was told that she was going to be Epstein’s masseuse, to give him massages, but this really involved providing sexual services to him.
[00:15:00] And not just to him; she was told to provide sexual services to Epstein’s friends, and was, and I’m quoting directly, "passed around like a platter of fruit".
[00:15:13] One of the people she alleged that she was passed around to was none other than Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles, the British king. Giuffre said she was told to “do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”, and that she was "a paedophile's top girl, being trained up for a British prince". Those are her exact words.
[00:15:40] I should add that Prince Andrew has denied having sex with her, but there is a photo of the pair together, and these allegations were enough to get the ball rolling on his blacklisting from the royal family.
[00:15:54] Now, you probably know what happened next.
[00:15:57] Epstein was arrested on July 6th, 2019, and there were all sorts of suspicions about what he might reveal under questioning. After all, he had been rubbing shoulders with some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet - Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and a multitude of less famous but in many cases even richer tycoons from the world of business.
[00:16:25] What did Epstein know, how much was he prepared to tell, and was he going to hand over a load of compromising video tapes?
[00:16:35] The first few weeks of his time in jail were filled with visits from his lawyers, he spent the days in meetings, planning his next move.
[00:16:44] Then, on July 23rd, two and a half weeks into his stint in jail, he was found on the floor of his jail cell after apparently trying to kill himself. He was revived, taken to another cell and put on suicide watch, but only for six days, then he was taken off suicide watch and returned to his previous cell.
[00:17:08] Now, it’s worth saying that the conditions in this cell, and the jail he was held in, were considerably worse than the conditions of his incarceration 10 years prior.
[00:17:19] Rats, cockroaches, most certainly locked doors, and Epstein must have known full well that his prospects of either being released or having an easier time in jail were minimal.
[00:17:33] Although it seems he never thought there was anything “wrong” with what he had done, he knew the gravity of his crimes.
[00:17:41] His lawyers would have told the then 66-year-old Epstein that he would be facing up to 45 years behind bars; he had little prospect of ever getting out of prison alive.
[00:17:54] Then, on the morning of August 10, 2019, when doing a routine check, the guards found him lying on the floor of his cell, a bedsheet hung around his neck. This time there was no saving him.
[00:18:10] Epstein was dead.
[00:18:13] The death was ruled as suicide, that Epstein had killed himself, but there were numerous question marks over this ruling. A bone in his neck called the hyoid was broken, which is relatively rare in suicide; it’s much more common in murder by strangulation.
[00:18:32] And there were plenty of question marks over how perhaps the highest profile prisoner in the country was allowed to remain in his cell unwatched.
[00:18:42] He had already tried to kill himself, or someone had already tried to kill him, so why weren’t the guards watching him like a hawk, especially given the nature of the people he was thought to have information on?
[00:18:56] What’s more, the two guards who were meant to be watching him had fallen asleep, and the CCTV cameras in front of Epstein’s cell had malfunctioned, so there was no camera footage of what happened.
[00:19:10] It is, at best, completely incompetent, and at worst, evidence of some grand plan to silence Epstein forever.
[00:19:21] Now, as you will probably know, there are multiple conspiracy theories about what Epstein knew and what he was about to reveal, too many to go into detail here, but what I will say is that it seems pretty clear that Epstein was guilty a litany of hideous abuses going back decades, and that he knew that he was not going to get off scot free.
[00:19:45] For someone who had only really known a life of luxury and Caribbean islands, and the freedom to be able to do literally whatever he wanted without ever having to face the consequences of his actions, perhaps the prospect of spending a life behind bars and sharing a prison cell with half a dozen violent criminals was enough to take his own life.
[00:20:08] But, he had secrets, most likely on very powerful people, secrets that could ruin families, fortunes and dynasties.
[00:20:18] All I’ll say on this is that I’m sure we both know that people have been killed for knowing an awful lot less.
[00:20:27] OK then, that is it for today's episode on Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:20:32] I know it is an uncomfortable subject, but it is one that demonstrates quite how far some people think their money and power will take them.
[00:20:41] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:20:44] How was the Epstein case covered in your country, and do you have similar stories of rich and powerful people who have been convicted of similarly terrible crimes?
[00:20:53] And of course the most obvious answer is “who killed Jeffrey Epstein?”
[00:20:58] Was it Jeffrey Epstein, or was it someone else?
[00:21:02] I would love to know your thoughts, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:05] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:13] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:18] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
