Breaking Up with Jeffrey Epstein

An extract from Entitled - The updated paperback is out now and is a Number One Sunday Times Bestseller! Order your copy here with 50% off!

In August 2010, Epstein finished his sentence for procuring a child for prostitution. A secret plea bargain, on the grounds of his intelligence links, had saved him from more serious charges and allowed him to serve his term in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade under a work-release programme, permitting him to go to his office each day, taken by his personal driver, and only sleep at the jail. The Sheriff’s Office received $128,000 from Epstein’s non-profit foundation to cover extra expenses. For the year to August 2010, he had been on probation, enabling him to fly to his residences in New York, the US Virgin Islands and, for the purposes of ‘exercise’, to walk around Palm Beach. Numerous young girls were abused during this period.

At the beginning of December Andrew was back in New York staying at Epstein’s townhouse. The literary agent John Brockman, also visiting, noticed ‘a British guy in a suit with suspenders, getting foot massages from two young well-dressed Russian women … I realized that the recipient of Irina’s foot massage was his Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.’

Also visiting was seventeen-year-old Caroline Kaufman, who had come for a ‘modelling interview’ and claims she was introduced to Andrew. In 2020 she would file a legal claim that she had been taken to the massage room and had been raped by Epstein. Kaufman’s lawyer Spencer Kuvin pressed Andrew to volunteer a statement. The prince refused.

On 2 December, Epstein gave a dinner party for fifteen people in honour of the prince. Guests included the journalist and presenter Katie Couric, who brought along the American comedienne and actress Chelsea Handler; the talk show host Charlie Rose; the former White House communications director George Stephanopoulos; and the film director Woody Allen with his wife Soon-Yi Previn. Tables were set up in a square in the living room, with guests eating lasagne out of shallow bowls. Couric remembers Epstein, ‘in jeans ripped at the knee, velvet loafers, and an air of studied insouciance’, nursing a drink and holding court in front of a huge fireplace.

Andrew always maintained the visit was to break off his personal and business relationship with Epstein, because ‘at the time I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do and I admit fully that my judgement was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable but that’s just the way it is’.

However, one of the duke’s former girlfriends said the real reason had been to make sure Epstein ‘didn’t have any dirt on him’. He was reassured that no recordings existed.

It transpired that on the first day Andrew was trying to obtain $200 million funding for a mysterious oil company, Aria Petroleum. Epstein forwarded the request to his private banker Jes Staley at JP Morgan, adding that Andrew wanted to represent the interests of an organisation he called ‘casanov’, thought to refer to JP Morgan Cazenove, in China.

All seemed to be going smoothly, but the greatest crisis of his life was about to break.

On 20 February 2011 the News of the World published a front-page article, ‘Prince Andy and the Paedo’, with a picture of Andrew, taken the previous December, strolling in Central Park with Jeffrey Epstein. The photographer Joe Donnelly, who had been staking out Epstein’s mansion at 9 East 71st Street with freelance reporter Annette Witheridge and various of the paper’s journalists, had finally struck lucky at lunchtime on 4 December, when Andrew and Epstein, with their protection officers, emerged through the front door to go for a walk in Central Park.

‘There was a cluster of police protection officers with Andrew and Epstein and – I assume possibly Epstein bodyguards,’ said Witheridge. ‘They formed a sort of triangle behind them as they walked.’

The question is why, knowing the press were camped outside, did Epstein expose his guest to the media. ‘We weren’t hiding; you couldn’t hide out there,’ Witheridge said. ‘So, yes, I’m sure we were used.’

Was it some sort of insurance policy by Epstein to show the world that Andrew was still under his control? What was the purpose of the visit? Andrew’s later claims that it was to end the relationship sounded hollow – that could have been done without meeting and certainly without staying several days. It appears one reason for the encounter was to persuade Epstein to pay off some of Sarah’s debts, which had been under discussion for nine months, and she admitted to receiving a first instalment of £15,000. The money was used to pay one of many debtors, her former assistant Johnny O’Sullivan, who was claiming £78,000 in unpaid wages. A mutual friend of Andrew and Epstein has, however, claimed, ‘I think that Sarah has actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ from Epstein. Ferguson denies this.

The duchess, who is known to have first visited Epstein with her daughters in 1998 and often stayed with him, admitted to a ‘gigantic error of judgement’ by accepting the money.

‘I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children … I am just so contrite I cannot say. Whenever I can, I will repay the money and will have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again.’

The updated paperback is out now and is a Number One Sunday Times Bestseller! Order your copy here with 50% off!