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Jeffrey Epstein, Billionaire Pedophile, Goes Free - The Daily Beast 
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THE DAILY 
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Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free 
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Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein became a free man Wednesday, five years after he was first 
accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast's 
reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved 
him from a long prison term. She reports: 
• Palm Beach's police chief objected to Epstein's "special treatment" and gave The Daily Beast an 
exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation. 
• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney's charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have 
landed Epstein in prison for 20 years. 
• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America. Europe. and the former 
Soviet republics. including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift. 
• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein's private jets. which would be 
evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was 
convicted of. 
• Epstein's attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered 
private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims' families: one even posed as a police officer. 
• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he "would have instructed the 
Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess." 
Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of 
privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, 
which has been even less arduous than Polanski's time at a Swiss ski chalet. 
During Epstein's term of 'house arrest: he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private 
Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor-13 months in the Palm 
Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day. Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen 
lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform "massages" at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven 
victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an 
amount that will hardly dent Epstein's $2 billion net worth. 
With that, the known victims of Epstein's sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is 
closed unless new ones come forward. According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S. and 
may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile. 
Watch Jeffrey Epstein Storm Out of a Deposition When Asked About His Penis 
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Jeffrey Epstein, Billionaire Pedophile, Goes Free - The Daily Beast 
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But the question remains: Did Epstein's wealth and social connections—former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; 
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry 
Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the 
wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting 
lawyers—Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among 
them—to escape equal justice? 
the former Palm Beach police chief, certainly thinks so. He gave The Daily Beast exclusive access to 
the transcript of his nine-hour deposition for the victims' civil suits, in which he explained how the case against Epstein 
was minimized by the State Attorney's Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice, all in an 
atmosphere of hardball legal tactics and social pressures so intense that 
became estranged from several 
colleagues. At the time, 
, who retired in 2009 and now runs his own security firm, objected both to Epstein's plea 
agreement and to the flexible terms of his incarceration in the county jail rather than state prison. Asked during the 
deposition whether he thought Epstein received special treatment, he answered "yes: 
In March 2005, 
department, acting on a complaint from the Florida parents of a 14-year-old girl, launched an 
investigation that would eventually uncover a pattern of predatory behavior stretching back years and spanning 
several continents, knowingly enabled by Epstein's associates and employees. Two or three times a day, whenever 
Epstein was in Palm Beach, a teenage girl would be brought to the mansion on El Brillo Way. ("The younger the 
better," he instructed a, 
a local teenager who was paid to bring other girls to the house, and who 
declared, on a police tape, that she was like a Heidi Reiss," the infamous California madam.) Advised that she would 
be giving a -massage: the girl was then pressured to remove her clothes, submit to fondling and a large vibrator, and 
sometimes lured into more invasive sexual contact. Each girl was paid $200 or more, depending on how far things 
went, by house manager Alfredo Rodriguez, who was instructed always to have $2,000 cash on hand. 
The Palm Beach Police Department identified 17 local girls who had contact with Epstein before the age of consent; 
the youngest was 14, and many were younger than 16. And that was just at one of Epstein's many homes around the 
world—he also owns properly in New York, Santa Fe, Paris, London, and the Caribbean. Subsequent investigation by 
the FBI, reaching as far back as 2001, indentified roughly 40 victims, not counting 
, whom Epstein 
referred to as his -Yugoslavian sex slave" because he had imported her from the Balkans at age 14. Now 24, 
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became a member of the household and is alleged to have participated in the sexual contact with 
underage girls. 
Epstein quickly got wind of the investigation. and progress on the case got messy very quickly. He hired a squad of 
lawyers and private investigators and dispatched influential friends to pressure the police into backing off. Instead, 
local detectives pressed on and brought the matter to the attention of the FBI. The detectives asked their federal 
colleagues whether the fact that some victims appeared to have traveled out of state on Epstein's planes—plus the 
use of interstate phone service to arrange assignations—might be violations of the federal 2000 Trafficking Victims 
Protection Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. (Florida enacted the federal TVPA in 2002.) 
So when State Attorney 
, who also ran Florida's Crimes Against Children Unit, proved reluctant to 
mount a vigorous prosecution of Epstein. saying the local victims were not credible witnesses, Chief 
wrote the 
attorney a letter complaining of the state's -highly unusual" conduct and asking him to remove himself from the case. 
He did not. and the evidence his office presented to a state grand jury produced only a single count of soliciting 
prostitution. (Krischer has since retired and would not comment for this article.) The day after that indictment was 
returned, 
was relieved to have the FBI step in and take over the investigation. 
The details that eventually emerged were often shocking and occasionally bizarre. For Epstein's birthday one year, 
according to allegations in a civil suit. he was presented with three 12-year-old girls from France. who were molested 
then flown back to Europe the next day. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, 
Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein's sexual pleasure. 
According to a former bookkeeper. a number of the girls worked for MC2. the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc 
Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein's. Brunel received $1 million from the billionaire around 
the time he started the agency. 
The non-prosecution agreement executed between Epstein and the Department of Justice states that Epstein and four 
members of his staff were investigated for -knowingly, in affecting interstate and foreign commerce. recruiting enticing 
and obtaining by any means a person. knowing that person has not yet obtained the age of 18 years and would be 
caused to engage in commercial sex act"—that is. child sex trafficking. Yet the agreement allowed Epstein to plead 
guilty to only two lower-level state crimes, soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor child for prostitution. 
Although the police investigation was officially closed. Chief 
tried to stay abreast of the federal case against 
Epstein. He was particularly concerned that Epstein be registered as a sex offender, which was part of the final deal. 
and that a fund be set up to compensate his victims—which was not, although Epstein agreed to bankroll their civil 
lawsuits. Attorney Dershowitz says Epstein's agreement to pay attorney fees for the victims and agree to civil damage 
claims—without admitting guilt—amounted to "extortion under threat of criminal prosecution." 
But exactly which crimes did the Department of Justice threaten to prosecute? The Daily Beast has learned that there 
were several earlier versions of the U.S Attorney's charges. including a 53-page indictment that, had he been 
convicted. could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years. Brad Edwards. attorney for seven of the victims, confirms 
the existence of an earlier draft of the non-prosecution agreement. officially under seal, in which it appears that 
Epstein "committed, at some point. to a 10-year federal sentence." But in the end Epstein's legal team refused that 
deal and threatened to proceed to trial. And that's where the question of whether the case was "winnable" before a 
jury again came into play, according to a source in the U.S Attorney's Office. which shared the state attorney's view 
that the prosecution was far from a slam dunk. 
For one, it was clear from the start that Epstein would spare no legal expense and that his team of veteran lawyers. 
whose cases ranged from O.J. Simpson to the investigation of Clinton's relationship with an intern. would play rough. 
When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective 
report. Dershowitz 
began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels. 
deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background 
checks on both the police chief and 
. Dershowitz denies all of that. According to 
. both he and 
also became aware that they were under surveillance for several months, without knowing who ordered it. 
And the Florida victims began to complain that they and family members were being followed and intimidated by 
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private investigators who were then linked to local attorneys in Epstein's employ. In one reported instance. the private 
investigator claimed to be a police officer. and 
considered filing witness-tampering charges. 
The credibility of the victims was also an issue: they had never complained of their treatment by Epstein until they 
were contacted by police, and they may have voluntarily returned to the Palm Beach mansion several times. Many of 
the girls came from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes, and they were susceptible to Epstein's cash. 
intimidation, and charm. Those who were 16 when they went to El Britlo Way would have been in their 20s by the time 
they took the stand, and Epstein's investigators had dredged up every instance of bad behavior in their pasts. 
According to an exchange in the 
deposition. a few of the victims had worked in West Palm Beach at massage 
parlors known as "jack shacks.' Each new compromising detail was immediately forwarded to the State Attorney's 
Office, where staff met frequently with Epstein's lawyers. 
The Florida statutes are clear: Any person older than 24 who engages in sexual contact with someone under the age 
of 18 commits a felony of the second degree. The victim's prior sexual conduct is not relevant: ignorance of her age is 
no defense. She needn't resist physically to cast doubt on the issue of "consent." For a child under 16, even lewd 
behavior short of touching is a felony of the second degree. But convincing a jury that a sexual encounter is a heinous 
crime is difficult if the victim can be made to appear willing and unharmed, not to mention vulgar and mercenary. It 
wasn't hard to imagine some of the victims quickly being discredited in court by Epstein's crack legal team, who 
repeatedly noted that the age of consent is lower in many other states. 
But that doesn't quite explain why the Department of Justice would forgo the child-trafficking charges, which pertain 
regardless of a girl's attitude or character. Epstein's final sentence is so out of line with the statutory guidelines for that 
crime that it appears the department may have been influenced by the existence of his many powerful friends and 
attorneys. A highly intelligent man who once taught math at the Dalton School in New York without a bachelor's 
degree, Epstein has been a serious and respected player in the highest reaches of politics and philanthropy. He has 
made substantial contributions to political candidates, served on the Council on Foreign Relations, and donated $30 
million to Harvard University. 
Moreover. many of his high-powered acquaintances availed themselves of Epstein's private jets. for which the pilot 
logs, obtained by discovery in the civil suits, sometimes showed that bold-face names were on the same flights as 
underage girls. A high-profile trial threatened to splash mud over all sorts of big players, just as both Gov. Richardson 
and Bill Clinton's wife were running for president. Also, a hedge fund prosecution in which Epstein offered to give 
evidence was heating up. Alberto Gonzales, who was U.S. attorney general throughout most of the Epstein 
investigation and resigned just before the non-prosecution agreement was signed, told The Daily Beast that he 'would 
have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.' But that may have been an 
impossible mandate. given the players involved. 
Instead. said attorney Brad Edwards, "Epstein committed crimes that should have jailed him for most of his life...he 
was jailed for only a few months." And this week he walks through his door a free man. 
has developed multimedia communication programs for Fortune 500 companies and has produced 
three current events debate television programs. The Americas Forum. From Beirut to Kabul. and a segment for The 
Oppenheimer Report. She is a contributor to The Huffington Post and is writing a book about child trafficking in 
America. 
Get a head start with the Morning Scoop email. It's your Cheat Sheet with must reads from across the Web. Get it. 
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at [email protected].
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