Epstein was awaiting trial, expected to start sometime around June 2020. Instead, he’s dead, and his secrets gone with him — or at least some of them.

What we know now is a lot more than what we knew in late 2016, when the child abuse and underage sex trafficking scandal known as PizzaGate first broke. At the time, the scandal appeared to implicate the Clintons and their 2016 Campaign Manager, John Podesta — yet some details didn’t quite add up.

Now they do.

At the height of PizzaGate interest, researchers on the Internet combed through the disturbing Instagram posts of James Alefantis, proprietor of the infamous Comet Pizza & Ping Pong in Washington, D.C. — and a close friend of President Barack Obama’s. (White House records show that Alefantis visited the Obama-era White House at least five times.)

Our now viral 8 minute documentary video guiding viewers through some of the disturbing Alefantis Instagram posts contained some things that researchers, at the time, simply did not understand. In one photo, a friend of Alefantis’ labeled an image of a stark looking steel room with the hashtag murder, and in another photo the hashtag carisjames was used. The repeat use of #carisjames confused researchers, and many theories emerged — none of which felt valid.

We now believe carisjames may be a contraction of Caribbean Island of Little St. James, which is the formal name of the property in the US Virgin Islands owned by Jeffrey Epstein. Certainly, within the context established by researchers, this makes sense: Alefantis and his peers appear to use #carisjames to tag images of young girls and children that they feel would be suitable for a visit to the Island.

And what’s done to them, once they arrive?

Investigative reporters at The Intercept seized upon the maritime freight logs of items shipped to Epstein’s island, and they’re bizarre: dental chairs weighing 550 pounds, and more recently, industrial shredders as well as floor tile extractor equipment. Was Epstein running an unlicensed children’s dental practice from his private Caribbean island? Certainly possible, but unlikely — this rabbit hole goes deep, and gets dark fast.