Unsavoury association: How Robert Maxwell's daughter 'procured young girls' for Prince Andrew's billionaire friend



Royal friend: Ghislaine Maxwell in New York

Just off Central Park, in New York’s most expensive district, there are two magnificent townhouses.



The first was built in the 1930s for the heir to the Macy’s department store fortune. It’s the largest private residence in the city, and as such virtually priceless.



Behind its 15ft-high oak front door lives one of the most talked-about men in Manhattan. It is here, in convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s house, that Prince Andrew stayed for four days before Christmas.

And it was at the other house, a Beaux Arts-style residence valued at around $16 million, that Andrew and Epstein’s mutual close friend, the ‘busy, foxy, crafty’ (as a male friend describes her) Ghislaine Maxwell — daughter of the notorious Robert Maxwell — threw a party in Andrew’s honour during the same visit.

And not just any old party either. ‘The evening was impossibly glamorous: like a slinky, sexy vodka advert on television. I thought: “This is how I always imagined New York,” ’ recalls one not-easily-impressed guest.

Another party-goer describes how he was talking to Prince Andrew when a ‘six-foot tall Brazilian actress scooped some ice for her Bourbon out of a metal bucket — at which point it was instantly replaced by flunkeys; ice touched by human hand not being good enough to cool the champagne’.

Ghislaine later told a guest that this party for Andrew, attended by wall-to-wall hedge-funders, celebrities and models, had started life as a dinner for six, but that everyone had wanted to come.

Stories of Prince Andrew’s discreditable friendship and ill-judged escapades with Jeffrey Epstein are emerging daily, from trips on his private plane to sessions with teenage masseuses in Palm Beach.

Should the fourth in line to the throne and Britain’s official trade envoy ever rue the day that he befriended the ghastly Epstein, he can blame Ghislaine, the energetic socialite-in-exile who made the introduction.

This week, she has been accused of procuring for Epstein young women who were then paid for sexual favours, and even farmed out to his friends. One of them was Virginia Roberts, an American girl who was 17 when she was flown to London, where she met Prince Andrew and spent time with him alone.



The Prince was photographed with his arm around the girl’s bare midriff — and standing next to them was Ghislaine herself.

This, then, is the woman — hostess, daredevil and favourite daughter of the late disgraced media tycoon and pension-plunderer Robert Maxwell (nicknamed Captain Bob) — who has for years been a leading socialite on New York’s Upper East Side.

The curious thing about her long-time friend Epstein is that, like Scott Fitzgerald’s eponymous hero Jay Gatsby, no one is really sure how he made his money.

One thing that is certain, however, is that from 2008 Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for child sex crimes.

Friends: Prince Andrew pictured with his arm around Virginia Roberts in London in 2001. Smiling Ghislaine is just behind them

So how did Ghislaine Maxwell become so close to such an unsavoury man?

Educated at Marlborough School and Balliol College, Oxford, she was taken under Epstein’s wing in New York after her father Robert’s death in 1991. His body was found floating in the sea after he fell from the luxury yacht named after his daughter, the Lady Ghislaine.

In Manhattan, as one friend recalls, Ghislaine set up home ‘in a one-bedroom apartment. She was young, good-looking and charming — the quintessential New York girl about town’. There, she met Epstein and was photographed as his ‘celebrity guest’ at social functions.

After her father’s death, a friend recalls, Ghislaine ‘was catatonic, and Jeffrey (Epstein) stepped in and saved her. As a result, she’d do anything for him. He took her in’.

Ghislaine, who turned 30 around the time they met, became Epstein’s girlfriend and then his Girl Friday. Their early romance petered out because he wanted to see other women. Yet still a friend described her dependence on Epstein as ‘pretty total’.

He had an office on Madison Avenue next to the Palace Hotel, and she told people that she was running his property portfolio: the New York house, a 7,500-acre ranch named ‘Zorro’ in New Mexico (which ‘makes the townhouse look like a shack’, Epstein has said), a house in Palm Beach, and Little St James, a 70-acre island in the Caribbean (which Epstein calls ‘Little St Jeff’).

But more significantly than his properties, she has arranged his social life from the start. ‘Before Ghislaine, he had the money but not the life,’ says a long-term acquaintance.

Surprise: Prince Andrew's surprise shooting party at Sandringham to celebrate the birthday of his friend Ghislaine, also included her ex-boyfriend, financier Jeffrey Epstein

‘She has unbelievable contacts, and her thing is introducing people. From a point where he knew no one of importance, she took him into circles in which the Clintons and Kennedys moved.’

Apparently she even got herself a helicopter pilot’s licence to please Epstein — ‘so she can give the likes of Bill Clinton a ride between houses,’ says the same friend.

Friends speculate that Ghislaine must have been paid handsomely. Though Epstein once denied she was on the payroll, the £80,000 annual legacy that her father left her when he died wouldn’t have supported the lifestyle of an Upper East Side townhouse — which friends say Epstein used to live in — a retinue of staff and the regular dinners she holds in her ‘enviable, red-lacquered, womb-like dining room’, as one visitor described it.

Having established herself as a leading New York socialite, she set about ingratiating Epstein with her own well-heeled friends in Britain.

By early 2000, she and Epstein were holidaying together with Prince Andrew, an old friend of hers, at Donald Trump’s Mar a Largo Club in Palm Beach.

That year, Ghislaine also took the Prince to a notorious ‘hookers and pimps’ party in New York hosted by the former lingerie model Heidi Klum, who was provocatively dressed in a black latex S&M outfit.

Clearly, Maxwell, the Prince and Epstein have been good friends ever since (though Andrew indicated yesterday he would finally cut Epstein off) — a fact which has led to serious questions about Andrew’s role as a British trade ambassador in recent days.

For years, rumours have circulated about Epstein’s sexual behaviour and Ghislaine’s role in introducing girls to him. One female acquaintance says: ‘It has been an open secret for years that Ghislaine recruited girls for Epstein and his friends. It was easy for her. She’s well-dressed and well-spoken, so everybody trusts her.’

The Duke of York and Ghislaine at a wedding near Salisbury



It was in March 2005 that the mother of a 14-year-old Florida girl went to the police with suspicions that a Palm Beach man had sexually assaulted her daughter. The girl told police she had been taken to Epstein’s mansion there by an older girl and paid $300 after stripping to her knickers and massaging the man while he performed a sex act.

When police searched the mansion, they found hidden cameras, photos of naked young girls stuck on the walls and genitalia-shaped soap in the bathroom. Since then, at least 40 girls aged 13 to 17 have come forward with similar stories, some saying Epstein had sexually assaulted them during massages.

This was the same mansion where, as the Mail revealed this week, Prince Andrew is alleged by Epstein’s former butler to have stayed for weeks, during which time he enjoyed daily $100-an-hour massages. There is no suggestion that the Prince had sex with any of the girls.

The butler, Juan Alessi, also claimed that Ghislaine Maxwell kept a stash of sex toys at the house.

Some of the girls who were brought to work as masseuses for Epstein allegedly came from South America and Europe, including three 12-year-olds brought over from France as a ‘birthday present’ courtesy of a model agency which Epstein financed.

Damningly, several of the girls alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell had procured them, and one of the girls — who has since settled her civil case out of court with Epstein — even alleged that Ghislaine had taken part in the sexual abuse herself, along with a Yugoslav-born former model whom Epstein allegedly described as his lesbian sex slave.

Court papers claimed Ghislaine ‘helped in his recruiting process by creating the impression that legitimate modelling opportunities were available’ for the girls.

In fact, Robert Maxwell’s daughter has proved herself to be every bit as slippery and devious as her disgraced father in avoiding awkward questions.

Subpoenaed last year to give evidence in a case brought by one of the girls allegedly abused by Epstein in Palm Beach, she ‘did everything she could to dodge it’, according to Brad Edwards, the girl’s lawyer.

After months of stalling, Maxwell’s lawyer eventually claimed she had flown back to Britain to be with her ‘dying’ mother and was never coming back to America.

Before Mr Edwards could take further action, the case was settled out of court. ‘Two weeks later,’ he recalled, ‘I saw she was at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in New York. I rang her lawyer and mentioned it, but he had no answer.’

Observers say that introducing young girls to rich men was part of Ghislaine’s urge to control people.

‘You must understand that Ghislaine moves in circles where it would be better to be like Martha Stewart (America’s own domestic goddess, who was jailed for share-dealing offences), go to jail and come out with money and be a somebody, than live a boring life in Brooklyn — which would be like a death sentence for her’

She says she never wanted to get married or have children — yet she has always seemed to define herself by a relationship with powerful men. First, her father; then Epstein; as well as her most recent ex-boyfriend, Ted Waitt, the billionaire founder of Gateway Computers, a divorced father-of-four from California who dumped Ghislaine a few months ago.

Although she is now approaching 50 (though, it has to be said, she looks younger), she doesn’t seem to have lost her desire to be one of America’s most prized social butterflies. And her energy is undeniable.

There she was, last weekend, the night before the Oscars, in a body-hugging cocktail dress in Los Angeles for a book launch at the home of socialite and entrepreneur Arianna Huffington (who has just sold her website, The Huffington Post, for $315 million).

The night before, Ghislaine was at an art world dinner, seated between Mick Jagger and the art dealer Larry Gagosian. The previous week was New York Fashion Week, and Ghislaine was perched on the front row at the shows, excitedly telling acquaintances that she has taken up diving so she can hunt for buried treasure.

Which brings us to the other enigma about Ghislaine, which is that if everything that is said by her and about her is true, she must be one very busy woman.

Apart from the helicopter licence, she is said to be able to ‘pilot a submarine’, to deep sea dive, to have a degree in marine biology, and be a trained paramedic (or be in training, depending who you talk to) who has accompanied Arctic missions.

She has also involved herself with the funding of various companies, including a medical company that is working on a cure for infections such as MRSA. On a list of delegates for a Bill Clinton charity conference, Ghislaine is listed as managing director of ‘The New York Strategy Group’, of which there seems to be little trace.

Despite her seedy adventures with Jeffrey Epstein, most of Ghislaine’s friends are very loyal — notably her best friend from Oxford, Ariadne Calvo-Platero, daughter of the peer Lord Beaumont.

Yet while some women are drawn to Ghislaine and find her ‘enormous fun’, others say she is intimidating.

‘Masculine and aggressive,’ said one. ‘Profoundly unsettling and rather overpowering,’ said another, who has known her on the party circuit for 20 years.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the doted-on daughter of a world-class bully, with several brothers, should seem to be more of a man’s woman.

One male acquaintance enthuses, however, that ‘she’s intelligent, highly energetic, very intriguing, funny, sexy and uninhibited. She’s mischievous. A firecracker’.

For now, Ghislaine is single again. And amid the latest scandal, the question remains: why would an attractive, dynamic woman debase herself for a man like Jeffrey Epstein, and fix him up with young girls, without a trace of compassion for them?

‘You must understand that Ghislaine moves in circles where it would be better to be like Martha Stewart [America’s own domestic goddess, who was jailed for share-dealing offences], go to jail and come out with money and be a somebody, than live a boring life in Brooklyn — which would be like a death sentence for her,’ says a New York acquaintance.

Robert Maxwell was a man with formidable personal magnetism, once described as ‘part magic, part monster’. Perhaps that’s Ghislaine, too.

As her friend says: ‘She’s never escaped her father’s shadow. And like him she’s all about money; and like him, she’ll stop at nothing to make sure she has it.’