A Convenient Death Read online

  Sentinel

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ISBN 9780593192238 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9780593192245 (ebook)

  Cover photograph: Davidoff Studios Photography / Contributor / Getty Images

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  To my grandfather, the brilliant writer Herbert Post (z”l). We all miss you every day.

  ALANA GOODMAN

  To my girls, who provide bright light in a very dark world: Joanna, Eve, Ruby.

  DANIEL HALPER

  When I was 15 years old, I flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane to Zorro Ranch, where I was sexual[ly] molested by him for many hours. What I remember most vividly was him explaining to me how beneficial the experience was for me and how much he was helping me to grow. I remember feeling so small and powerless, especially after he positioned me by laying me on his floor so that I was confronted by all the framed photographs on his dresser of him smiling with wealthy celebrities and politicians.

  JANE DOE #91

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  PART I

  The Death

  1.

  Final Hours

  2.

  A Corpse on 9-South

  3.

  Stonewalling

  4.

  What Happened

  5.

  Blackmail

  PART II

  An Indecent Life

  6.

  Ill-Gotten Gains

  7.

  The Accomplice

  8.

  The Victims

  9.

  The Perps

  10.

  How He Got Away the First Time

  11.

  The Prince

  12.

  The Politician

  13.

  Epstein’s Secret

  14.

  The Smart Set

  15.

  The Media

  16.

  The Arrest

  Conclusion

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  Conspiracy theories spring up when an official story is implausible, unpersuasive, or, sometimes, total bunk. These days they seem to develop on the margins of the internet and then spread to the general public—often very, very quickly. The best are not made up out of whole cloth. They are carefully considered alternative theories to understand something that does not make sense. They rely on facts, or at least kernels of truth, which are then expanded and extrapolated on to come somewhere, somehow closer to telling a more complete and (one hopes) truthful story.

  So, what happens when a conspiracy theory comes true? That is what seemed to happen on August 10, 2019, when one of the most notorious inmates ever to inhabit the Metropolitan Correctional Center was found hanging in his cell.

  Ever since Jeffrey Epstein, notorious pedophile and pal/client to the rich and famous, was arrested, people had speculated that he would be murdered. Over the years, Epstein had befriended some of the most powerful men in the world—presidents, princes, business titans—embroiling many of them in his sex scandals. As he awaited trial, many people mused that he had more secrets to share, more scandals to expose, perhaps more powerful names to implicate. What would happen if he decided to squeal? Worse, for his powerful allies, would he be so desperate to get out of jail that he would be willing to tell authorities whatever they wanted to hear just for the chance to be free? Would they risk this possibility, or would they ensure that he could not expose them?

  “If Epstein talks, there’s gonna be a lot of powerful people who could go down,” Nick Bryant, a dogged reporter who had been on the Epstein case for far longer than just about everyone else, speculated in an interview.1

  The Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown went a little further in her detailing of the “very powerful people” close to Epstein. “They’re sweating a little bit, especially today,” Brown told MSNBC the day after Epstein was arrested. “There have been a lot of names that I could see on these message pads [listing clients] on a regular basis as part of the evidence. These message pads where they would call and leave Epstein messages, such as, ‘I’m at this hotel.’ Why do you do that, unless you’re expecting him to send you a girl to visit you at your hotel? So there are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now. We’ll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names.”2

  Epstein’s sudden, unexpected death brought that to a most convenient end. It ensured those secrets were never revealed, that so many questions would never be answered. To his accomplices and abettors, his would have been the most timely and useful suicide ever committed.

  If that’s really what it was. Questions about whether the notorious sex offender had been murdered arose within minutes once the news of his death reached the public.

  Even President Donald Trump, a former friend of Epstein’s, re-tweeted a Twitter message from one of his supporters that speculated Epstein “had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.”

  “I see #TrumpBodyCount trending but we know who did this!” said the Twitter post.

  As reporters who have, between us, covered plenty of news stories and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, we have become natural skeptics. We’ve learned to take with a grain of salt wild accusations or in some cases wishful thinking, even when they come from the president of the United States. But as we began to look into the Epstein story, we started to understand the widespread skepticism. The official story of Epstein’s death had holes in it—big holes—from the beginning. Cameras that might have chronicled the scene mysteriously failed. Tapes were suddenly erased, disappearing, or someway inoperable.

  Reasonable questions multiplied. Why were the guards at that cellblock so lax, especially when dealing with such a notorious and high-profile cellmate? Why were the security cameras so error prone at this particular moment? Was this really just a jailhouse “comedy of errors” with a distinctly unfunny ending? How could a prison that housed some of the most deadly and dangerous criminals in the nation really behave so unprofessionally, so sloppily? Or was there something more going on?

  No one has done a good job answering these questions. Not the feds. Not any state government. Not New York City officials. Not the media. Not Jeffrey Epstein’s friends and associates—and there are many—who themselves are still enjoying life from their perch at the upper echelon of our political, elite class. An August 2019 public poll conducted by Emerson College found that 34 percent of Americans believed that Epstein had been murdered.3 By January 2020, 52 percent of Americans believed he was “murdered to prevent him from testifying against powerful people with whom he associated.”

  As we looked into the case for ourselves, we kept turning up more questions to answer, more suspicions to explore, more new facts that emerged to fill the gaps and challenge the official narrative. We examined the mystery of his finances and his secretive business arrangements. We interviewed those who knew Jeffrey Epstein well, either as friends, business or legal associates, or beca
use they were victimized by him.

  A Convenient Death will not help you trust media accounts of Epstein’s death. It will not restore your faith in the government or other powerful American institutions.

  What it will do is take readers inside the dark corners of the American and international power structure, revealing why any number of people could have been driven to drastic action to make sure those corners stayed in the shadows. And it will make readers uncomfortable, especially those who believe there is nothing to be learned from Epstein’s crime spree and the complete mishandling of justice.

  In part 1, “The Death,” we tell the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s final weeks, days, and hours. We examine the evidence he left behind. We lay out the problems with the official narrative, and through our exclusive interviews and never-before-revealed reporting we address the lingering questions that perplexed so many Americans. As you’ll see, the closer sources were to the story, the less they were likely to believe that Epstein had committed suicide. They believed that was not his style. Not part of his ethos. And that it would be a bit too convenient for him.

  In part 2, “An Indecent Life,” we tell the stories of some of the rich and famous who considered Epstein a friend and colleague. We also examine Epstein’s life and consider who, if anyone, might have benefited from his mysterious demise.

  We would like to include a brief note before the story begins. Both of us are investigative political reporters with wide-ranging experience breaking news on sensitive and uncomfortable political subjects. Jeffrey Epstein’s life, and death, is certainly one of those areas. Readers should be aware that the facts reported in the following pages are based exclusively on conversations with direct sources, primary court and public records documents, and published media accounts.

  We have extensively interviewed those who knew Epstein and his alleged accomplices and victims, individuals who worked at the prison where he died, and those who investigated his shocking and unexpected death.

  We came to this case with fresh eyes and open minds. In the end the story is much worse and more pernicious than even we believed. Epstein’s story isn’t just about Epstein; it’s about the horrifying misdeeds of the elite and of those who covered up their corruption. The powerful may not want you to know these stories, but it’s time Americans learned the truth.

  PART I

  The Death

  1

  Final Hours

  To the day he died, he never thought he did anything wrong.

  ALAN DERSHOWITZ

  Ten days before Jeffrey Epstein’s death, the reception area on the third floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center was buzzing with activity. Lawyers carrying legal pads shuffled in and out of the second conference room from the left, aggravating the desk guard who had to walk over every time and unlock the door.

  The conference room was barely bigger than a prison cell, with just enough space for a cheap wooden table and five chairs. The only window overlooked the reception area, where the guard kept watch from his desk. There were no laptops or cell phones allowed. Occasionally, one of the attorneys would step out and relay a message to a couple of young female lawyers camped in the waiting area. The women, a pair of attractive recent law school grads, were couriers for Jeffrey Epstein. They, for an hourly fee, also kept him company between his meetings.

  Inside the room, holding court, was Epstein. The sixty-six-year-old multimillionaire, silver-haired and well-built from daily exercise, had been in jail for nearly a month on charges of sex trafficking underage girls. Most of his days were spent in this conference room, a designated area for legal meetings. He looked good—healthy, even—in his prison-issued orange jumpsuit and matching socks. On this particular day, August 1, 2019, he seemed upbeat and focused as his lawyers circulated in and out. Today was an important day for him, a day he hoped to take his first big step toward legal victory and freedom and away from a place where he was miserable.

  Epstein, a germaphobe and lifelong teetotaler, hated the indignities of MCC—the roaches, the rodents, the drug addicts. His current cellmate was a “junkie” who “smoked crack in the cell,” he complained to friends. He was also fearful of other prisoners due to his great wealth, upwards of $500 million, including real estate. His finances were splashed all over the news—“$56 Million Upper East Side Mansion”—and he worried about getting shaken down by protection rackets.1 He had reportedly started paying off other inmates through their commissary accounts.

  In the afternoon, the prison psychologist stopped by for a ten-minute counseling session. The previous month, Epstein had been placed on twenty-four-hour suicide watch after prison guards found him unconscious in his cell. (Epstein denied that there had been a suicide attempt, but he was certainly not happy in prison.) He was removed from suicide watch after six days, on July 29, but he was still under psychological monitoring.

  After the therapy session, Epstein met with his friend and lawyer David Schoen, who he believed was his key to getting out. Epstein had known Schoen, a balding, bespectacled sixty-one-year-old Alabama civil rights attorney, for more than a decade. Both men liked to trash-talk and had a distinct contempt for authority. They had grown closer over the past year, and Epstein often reached out to Schoen for legal advice.

  Today Epstein had a bigger ask. He wanted to restructure his legal team and bring Schoen on board. It was an important step, one that he thought would help refocus his talented but disorganized camp of lawyers, putting them in a good position for the fight ahead. Moreover, he faced a curious problem: he felt let down by some of his more high-profile lawyers and betrayed because he did not believe they were fighting hard enough for him. He had seen how anyone associated with him had taken a public beating. Epstein had never been completely immune to or unaware of the public lashing he received. And yet he had no sympathy for the lawyers who would gladly cash his big checks and at the same time not sufficiently fight for him or, worse, were embarrassed to be associated with him. He needed someone who was fully on his side and asked Schoen to take the lead on trial preparation.

  Epstein’s trial date had been set for the following June, nearly a year away. His legal team believed they needed at least that much time to prepare for the complex case and review more than a million pages of discovery materials that prosecutors were expected to turn over.

  Schoen said he was willing to come on board. The two men agreed to reconvene the week of August 12 to move forward on preparing for the trial. In the meantime, Schoen, who lived in Atlanta, planned to relocate part-time to New York for the duration of the case and began setting up a team of lawyers, too.

  Schoen’s support thrilled Epstein and gave him hope. Finally he was going to elevate the lawyer who would stand tall next to him and be willing to accept the public blowback for being associated with him.

  “He was very upbeat,” recalled Schoen. “He didn’t want to be charged, but if he was, he was going to fight it all the way.”

  * * *

  —

  The Metropolitan Correctional Center, where the disgraced mogul spent his final days, is a twelve-story cinder-block building near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan. Built in 1975 by Gruzen & Partners—the same design firm that built the posh Solow Tower condo building that Epstein lived in as an investment banker in the 1980s—the prison embodies that decade’s brutalist architecture, with its poured-concrete walls and stark rectangular towers. The windows are made of thick shatterproof plastic with no obvious bars. There is no ground-level yard or security fence. From the outside, it could be mistaken for an aging government office building.

  There, Epstein awaited his federal trial at the penitentiary that previously safely housed drug lords (El Chapo), mafiosi (John Gotti), terrorists (al-Qaeda operatives), Ponzi schemers (Bernie Madoff), and fraudsters (Paul Manafort).2 Epstein was incarcerated in the Special Housing Unit, a wing known as 9-South. The section is lar
gely reserved for inmates in protective custody or who had been placed there for disciplinary purposes.

  Epstein, a self-described money manager from Coney Island who claimed to work exclusively for billionaires and had built a fortune, was facing up to forty-five years in prison on underage sex trafficking charges. According to prosecutors, Epstein had recruited and sexually abused dozens of teenage girls at his houses in Manhattan and Palm Beach between 2002 and 2005. This was his second arrest for sex crimes; he was previously convicted of soliciting and procuring underage prostitutes in 2008. But the prior case had involved state charges in Florida, and Epstein had been able to cut a deal for a lenient sentence in a work-release program. This time, he was facing federal charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

  “The victims, who were as young as 14 years of age, were told by Epstein or other individuals to partially or fully undress before beginning the ‘massage,’” according to the July 2019 federal indictment.3 “During the encounter, Epstein would escalate the nature and scope of physical contact with his victim to include, among other things, sex acts such as groping and direct or indirect contact with the victim’s genitals.

  “Epstein would typically also masturbate during these sexualized encounters, ask victims to touch him while he masturbated, and touch victims’ genitals with his hands or sex toys,” said the indictment. “Victims were typically paid hundreds of dollars in cash for each encounter.”

  Epstein’s legal issues had already caused problems for his powerful political friends. His looming high-profile trial could be an even greater liability.

  The former president Bill Clinton was being hammered in the press for taking multiple trips on Epstein’s private Boeing 727, nicknamed the Lolita Express.4 Prince Andrew’s position in the royal family was in jeopardy after photos emerged of him with his hand around the waist of one of Epstein’s alleged underage “sex slaves.” President Donald Trump was being scrutinized for his social outings with Epstein in the 1990s, and a handful of other political figures—the former senator George Mitchell, the former governor Bill Richardson, and the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak—also faced allegations for their involvement with Epstein.