Many moons ago, in the early 2000s, my friends spent a weekend in Southampton with a distinctive young blond who resembled Lady Gaga if Gaga were British. She was about 22 and said she was an interior designer, or a jewelry designer, or a motivational coach—I can’t remember which, but in any case the job sounded more aspirational than real—and she lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side that her older boyfriend had given her, at least temporarily. He collected art, and they often attended auctions. He loved vegetarian food and playing unfamiliar concertos on his grand piano. As she strolled down Southampton’s tree-lined streets, she was struck by their beauty and said she’d have to discuss getting a home there with her boyfriend. His name was Jeffrey Epstein.

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Back then, as a cocky, petite, ink-stained wretch, I wasn’t one of the young women in Manhattan whom Epstein and his friends approached for relationships, one-night stands, or abuse. But I was surrounded by a lot of them. They were always the most beautiful girls in the room, usually models or former models, with a slightly aloof Stepford Wives aura that masked a deeper vulnerability. Several names came up when they were around: Epstein, supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, film financier Steve Bing, and former president Bill Clinton, then in the prime of his postpresidential career and flying around on Epstein’s jet, dubbed the Lolita Express, or Burkle’s jet, dubbed Air Fuck One. (None of these men has been accused of wrongdoing.) The women were often blond—Epstein, in particular, liked patrician blonds with a bit of a baby face. At his home on the Upper East Side, he kept a photo of ’80s soap star Morgan Fairchild, whom he called his ideal woman, though considering they were both in their early 50s back then, she was far too old for him.

Beyond allegedly running a pedophile ring, Epstein, who hanged himself in August, epitomized the transactional nature of fin de siècle New York society, the sociopath who proved the rule. As hedge funds began to create massive fortunes and the billionaire class outpaced entail and primogeniture, women like the one in Southampton were necessary accessories, and learning how to acquire them was part of many a high-level trader’s skill set. There’s a temptation to say that the world has always worked this way—ambitious, beautiful young women have often sought to climb rungs via powerful men, and powerful men have partly craved power in order to access beautiful women—but this era in New York was unique. A rapidly increasing workforce of women in black slip dresses, knee-high black boots, and flatironed hair had come to seek the Sex and the City lifestyle, not husbands—but with most of their professions (fashion, publicity, publishing) paying far less than men’s, they were not averse to someone footing the bill.

Beautiful women also had currency in the city’s “models and bottles” scene, as the post-9/11 era of downtown nightlife was called. Manhattan’s legendary club scene of hip-hop stars, painters, and graffiti artists, where one gained entrée by virtue of one’s art rather than the size of one’s wallet, was going capitalist. A new nightclub formula had been devised: Ice buckets of Cristal and Cîroc bottles were set up at leather banquettes, alongside every kind of model—Victoria’s Secret model, runway model, supermodel, “just-off-the-boat model”—and if you were a rich older guy who wanted to take a seat, it could cost up to $10,000, though Puffy and Leo didn’t pay a thing.

Like his billionaire friends, Epstein ran a highly compartmentalized life. “He’d say he was going somewhere for work, and then I’d see pictures in a British tabloid of him on a yacht with supermodels,” says a woman who dated one of his close friends. The women of consenting age with whom Epstein became involved weren’t gold diggers, per se—they were models, or Amy Winehouse’s “Gucci bag crew” flying to Miami for free, or postcollegiate women who didn’t care about a 30-year age difference. Some wanted to open a door to the world of private planes and the global elite. In later years, he favored a different kind of Eastern European woman who was more expressly for sale. “There are almost as many people involved over 18 as under 18—it’s not 50–50, but it’s in that ballpark,” says David Boies, the attorney for some of Epstein’s accusers. He describes two different types of of-age women involved with Epstein. “There were women who were not underage, but usually in their younger 20s, who became part of what we’re calling Epstein’s sex-trafficking orbit—they’d either be trafficked or lent out, describe it as you will, to other people,” he says. “Then there were young professional women of comparable age whom Epstein sort of dated, and then he might or might not recommend them to other people.” Young women like the one I came across in Southampton were presumably part of that second set. (She did not return messages for further comment.) Epstein’s recommendations for these young women were romantic, or professional, or some uneasy mix of both; Charlie Rose, disgraced after sexual assault allegations, received suggestions for several assistants on his TV show from Epstein.

“He could feel energy very clearly.… Because he’s a sociopath, he would manipulate that for his own needs.”

The women who dated Epstein, many of whom now have high-profile careers, didn’t want to be identified in this article, some because they feel the press would mangle their relationships and describe them as prostitutes, not a reputation a professional woman can surmount. Some were getting something from Epstein—a trip on a private plane with Bill Clinton is not without value. But more often they were, to some degree, the commodities—tradable objects. That was part of the grift. Epstein traded men for acceptance, always trying to show other men how many important people he knew: politicians, billionaires, former Harvard president Larry Summers, top scientists. Women were another instrumentality. Everyone had their price.

Epstein’s ex-girlfriends say he was quiet and charming, for the most part, Jay Gatsby in a monogrammed sweatshirt. He spent most of the day on speakerphone, and he liked them to listen in, rolling calls from financiers to heads of state. He did not drink or take drugs or smoke, and he didn’t like to be around people who did. He practiced Iyengar yoga. He showered many times a day. He abhorred restaurants and ate whole grains, proteins, and leafy greens 30 years before the rest of America. He tied body to mind, physical self to mental aptitude; he believed in transhumanism and had a theory that if you had too much muscle mass, you wouldn’t be as smart as you could be. He liked to sleep in 54-degree chill because he believed you’d get the most restful sleep at that temperature. “I was like, ‘I’m fucking freezing. I’m going to die of hypothermia,’ ” says an ex-girlfriend.

He also had an instinct for what people wanted. “Jeffrey was brilliant in understanding how people felt,” says the same ex-girlfriend. “He could feel energy very clearly. But I think because he’s a sociopath, he would manipulate that for his own needs. The average human population just doesn’t operate that way, and thank God.”

By Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images.

The man who contributed to Epstein’s riches, Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret and the richest man in Ohio, for whom Epstein managed money and had some sort of deep emotional relationship, seemed as ill at ease as Epstein was forthright. Women who dined with Wexner found him awkward and without the gift of gab, which Epstein had in spades. A Sports Illustrated model says that in the 1990s, Epstein sent her, as a lark, to deliver Wexner’s prenup at his office; the rumor was she went to Wexner’s office, lay down on the table, and had him sign the prenup on her belly, but she says this isn’t true. “Jeffrey told me to wear something sexy and that it would be a great practical joke, but when I got there, it was very uncomfortable, and Les was like, ‘What are you doing here? Okay, I’ll sign, and then you should go.’ ”

The longer these women dated Epstein, the stranger he became. A former girlfriend describes him as almost agoraphobic, with a fear of groups and a dislike of shaking people’s hands; he preferred one-on-one relationships, which were more conducive to sharing secrets. Other than the trips he took on his private plane, Epstein preferred to socialize at home, where he could control the food, the conversation, the temperature. In Manhattan he lived in a $56 million town house that once housed the Birch Wathen prep school, with his initials emblazoned next to the door, and he hired a white-gloved butler to serve high tea. But underneath this pose lurked someone quite different. “He was so insecure—he had that outer-borough thing of always needing a model on his arm,” says the Sports Illustrated model. “He was emotionally infantile, stunted, without an inner world.” She describes Epstein watching her brush her hair and asking, “Do you use a Mason Pearson brush?”—the expensive brush favored by stylists in the fashion industry. She said yes, and he responded, excitedly, that he did too. “He said, ‘Oh, yes, they’re the best.’ He was like a little boy who got his cool toy. And then he’d collect people just like that hairbrush. It was so odd.”

A woman who dated Epstein says he slept with a gun in a holster on the side of the bed and was always playing “spy games.”

Epstein was always talking about how well connected he was: “He was a total starfucker,” says a woman in his orbit. In his secret life he was grotesque, but in society he was thought of as a practical joker who enjoyed messing with those he regarded as lower on the food chain. The Sports Illustrated model describes meeting Donald Trump at one of Trump’s parties in the penthouse of the Plaza hotel back then. Trump goaded Epstein for her number. “Jeffrey said he wouldn’t give it to him, and he had to get it from me,” she says. She finally gave it to him on another occasion, but he lost it. “Trump called Jeffrey, trying to get it again, saying, ‘She gave it to me! You know she gave it to me! You can give it to me now!’ but Jeffrey wouldn’t do it.” She laughs. “Donald was such a joke to all of the models back then—we all knew he was bankrupt and had no game. I remember Jeffrey once saying he was going to be late to pick me up because he had to drop off food for Donald—he was at home crying under the covers.”

Epstein always had a story to tell, even about his home. “He was obsessed with jewelry boxes and very detailed ornate designs—he told me the pope actually gave him artisans who teamed up with this one jewelry-box maker from Paris to make his dining room look like a giant version of the inside of a Parisian jewelry box,” says an ex-girlfriend. Epstein also said that his friend Lynn Forester, now married to billionaire Evelyn de Rothschild, needed his financial help during her 1990s divorce from politician Andrew Stein, and that he had graciously floated her. “One hundred percent false,” says a spokesperson for Forester. He claimed that the producers of The Apprentice had first approached him to make a show about a reclusive billionaire living an extravagant life, but he said no, and then introduced them to Trump. (A spokesperson for Mark Burnett denies this.)

Epstein liked having secrets and enjoyed the way those secrets kept people off-balance. “He always wanted to give the impression that he was an international man of mystery—‘I control everyone and everything, I collect people, I own people, I can damage people,’ ” says an ex-girlfriend. One of the most mysterious parts of his life was his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, the favorite daughter of embezzling British press baron and rumored Mossad spy Robert Maxwell, who died when he fell, or was pushed, from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. Epstein told them the raven-haired A-lister Maxwell, who opened her Rolodex for him, was a former girlfriend who had fallen on hard times, and he had taken it upon himself to maintain her position in society; young women have since alleged that she was both part of the sex-trafficking ring, bringing underage girls to Epstein, and a sexual participant. “Ghislaine floated in and out of the house with the keys, and even though Jeffrey told me they didn’t have a sexual relationship, she’d drop under her breath that she was sleeping in his bed from time to time,” says an ex-girlfriend. A friend of Maxwell’s says she used to joke about keeping herself rail-thin because Epstein liked thin girls. “She said, ‘I do it the way Nazis did it with the Jews, the Auschwitz diet. I just don’t eat.’ ”

On the weekends in the 1990s, Maxwell would have her Rollerblades FedExed to Jeffrey’s island in the Caribbean, and she said that she got her helicopter pilot’s license so she could transport anyone she liked on her rig, Air Ghislaine 2, without pilots knowing who they were. Maxwell also said the island had been wired for video; the friend thought that she and Epstein were videotaping everyone on the island as an insurance policy, as blackmail. A source close to Maxwell says she spoke glibly and confidently about getting girls to sexually service Epstein, saying this was simply what he wanted, and describing the way she’d drive around to spas in Florida to recruit them. She would claim she had a phone job for them, “and you’ll make lots of money, meet everyone, and I’ll change your life.” The source continues, “Ghislaine was in love with Jeffrey the way she was in love with her father. She always thought if she just did one more thing for him, to please him, he would marry her.” Maxwell also told this woman about the young girls in Epstein’s life: “She said, ‘They’re nothing, these girls. They are trash.’ ”

Epstein’s perversions have revealed much more than one man’s sinister nature: He had a sprawling network of friends and acquaintances who may have participated in or simply overlooked his crimes. These women, however, say he saw himself as a savior of women, including Maxwell, and initiating them into his alternative lifestyle as a path forward in their lives. “One night after we were dating for six or seven months, he sat me down and presented what he wanted for a formal relationship going forward,” says one woman. He told her he had a very high sex drive, and like many rich men, dated several women at a time—this was the way of kings and queens. “It was all about how if I was less conventional and pedestrian, I could have this relationship with him. It was a whole spiel about polyamory, and it made me really insecure—I wasn’t a girl who had high self-esteem or self-worth at that time. I didn’t think I could do an open relationship, and I also thought if I said I wouldn’t do it, he would still go out with me, but he didn’t.”

Soon she started to receive strange messages nearly every week. They had pictures of her in them, as she was going about her life. “I didn’t think that meant Jeffrey was pining for me and his life was ruined,” she says. “I just knew he had legions of people around him to do things like that.” Another woman who dated Epstein says he slept with a gun in a holster on the side of the bed and was always playing “spy games,” as she calls it. She thinks he tapped her phone after they broke up. She came home to her doorman saying he’d let a repairman in to fix her cable, even though she hadn’t requested service. “Then I had a weird sensation when I was talking to Jeffrey—he kept looking me in the eye in a creepy way and quoting something I’d said about him earlier on the phone to a girlfriend,” she says. “I threw the phone out and cut off all contact with him.”

These women weren’t as powerless as the teenagers in Palm Beach, Florida, whom Epstein was paying a couple hundred dollars for massages that turned into sex. Nor were they sex slaves. And they largely weren’t afraid of Epstein back then. But his death has freaked them out. Before he hanged himself, one of them told me, “I think Jeffrey will either get sentenced to prison for life, or if he’s in prison, with all the people who don’t want him to reveal his secrets, he’s dead anyway.”

This article incorporates materials from web posts published on July 18 and August 12.

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