In this episode, Virginia Roberts enters Epstein’s orbit, with devastating consequences for all involved. You can listen and watch as we go through her early life - accusing her father of rape, being allegedly trafficked by a man named Ron Eppinger, and meeting Jeffrey for the first time - including parts of my interview with her former longterm partner, or you can read the full transcript below.
In next week’s episode we’ll be continuing our quest for the truth by diving into the seedier side of Virginia’s life, and will be listening to my interviews with Epstein accuser Rina Oh, with Professor Alan Dershowitz, two of Virginia’s boyfriends, and the mother of one of Virginia’s victims.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Long before the sensationalist headlines, the incarcerations, and the accusations that have destroyed the reputation of a British prince, that directly contributed to the deaths of Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel, and that helped to imprison Ghislaine Maxwell, a simple, pleasant rural family home stood, just a stone’s throw away from the wild and luscious Loxahatchee River that snakes its way through the southeast coast of sun-kissed Florida.
The blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a middle-class family, Virginia Louise Roberts was afforded a comfortable and loving lifestyle along with her two brothers. Her father, Sky, hailed from the gold rush-haunted wooden sidewalks of Old Sacramento. A hardworking handyman, Mr. Roberts was known locally for being a Stetson-wearing horse-loving “cowboy”. He was also a cross-dresser, and a not-so-private cross-dresser at that. On social media, he would share photographs of himself in wigs, makeup and crop tops. Virginia’s mother, Lynn, was a well-liked bank manager and, as her sister-in-law Kimberley would later attest, “came from money”, with Virginia herself being given a lucrative trust fund by her maternal grandmother.
From the outside looking in, Virginia’s early life was one of some privilege, easy living, frequent horse rides, and being spoiled by her doting parents. “Lynn’s mother took the family on lavish holidays when Virginia was a child,” said Kimberly. “She was brought up with good morals; respect your parents, don’t talk back, don’t drink or do drugs.” Yet the idyllic Roberts’ family ranch would soon be shaken to its foundations when Virginia alleged she’d been sexually abused.
I investigated this serious allegation, but for legal reasons was unable to release my findings until after they were revealed by Virginia in her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl.
Giuffre alleged that she had been sexually abused by her father Sky from early childhood, further claiming that Sky had engaged in the vile act of, in Giuffre’s own words, “daughter swapping”. Allegedly, Mr. Roberts would visit his friend, Forest Jones, and would sexually abuse Jones’ daughter in exchange for Jones being allowed to abuse Virginia. I could find no evidence suggesting her father’s guilt, but I was able to confirm that Forest Venable Jones was indeed arrested and convicted of abusing another child in 1997, coinciding with the timeframe alleged by Virginia.
I was also able to unearth an even more sinister allegation by Giuffre, that either her father or Forest Jones got Jones’s daughter pregnant. When the scandal broke at the time, Virginia’s parents separated, Sky temporarily moved to North Carolina (to the hometown of Forest Jones), and Virginia went to live with her aunt Carol. “He [Virginia’s father] said he needed to send Virginia to live with me,” Carol told the press. “Of course, I said yes immediately. I’m a Mormon. I don’t drink, smoke or drink caffeine. Virginia needed stability.”
Yet Virginia began to run away before eventually moving back to her parent’s home and, according to Virginia herself, it was at this point that the troubled young teen rebelled even further; drinking alcohol, taking drugs, and running away to live with boyfriends and friends with whom she partied and engaged in prostitution.
“She smoked weed and didn’t spend a lot of time at school,” an old friend of Virginia recently stated. “Her elder brother Daniel took her to rehab aged just 15 or 16. Virginia was definitely troubled.” This is also verified by other accounts, including the deposition of an ex-boyfriend who, under oath, confirmed that Virginia had been visiting a rehabilitation centre, and by a former short-term fling who would attest to having wiled away his days with her there.
The facility in question, Growing Together Behavioural Center, was, in Virginia’s own words, “Like a group home that sent you away to foster parents every night. You stayed at Growing Together during the day and then at night you get sent home to the foster parents. They also offered education there.”
Virginia – who during that time and for many years after called herself “Jenna” or “Jen” – continued to rebel, often spending nights out with friends and strangers smoking drugs and swilling back liquor.
“I ran away from Growing Together quite often,” Virginia would later write in a memoir. “I did end up being abused by another older guy who I stayed with, Ronald Eppinger.” Eppinger, who was later convicted for money laundering and running Perfect 10, a modelling agency reportedly serving as a front for an international sex trafficking operation, would allegedly train Virginia to be a prostitute.
Much of my investigation into this entire case has focused on Virginia’s own words, often contradictory, yet undoubtedly valuable – none more so than her unpublished memoir, ‘The Billionaire’s Playboy Club’, written years later and officially submitted as evidence, now in the public domain.
The following is Virginia’s own written account, read by an actress, and which I have left unedited.
“It was coming up to my third night camping out at Miami Beach in the summer of 1997. I was 13 years old and hiding from a world full of hurt… Out of nowhere, it seemed, a black stretch limousine turned the corner and stopped in front of the curb where I had been hopelessly lost. The back door opened to reveal a heavy weight and balding, old man with a big cheesy smile. Neatly dressed in black trousers and a collared shirt, he was sitting next to a striking young blonde girl. Drop dead beautiful and dressed in a foxy red mini dress, she looked like a model just stepping off a runway. Their smiles greeted me warmly and he kindly asked, ‘What is such a sweet little girl like you doing sitting alone on the street looking so upset?’ Shocked from this stranger’s concern I was hesitant in telling him the truth. Reluctantly I decided to tell him that I was a runaway, not from around here, and really hungry, hoping at most I would get some money for food from him. He instantly displayed a chilling excitement and offered me to come into his car so we could talk some more.”
It was here, in Virginia’s written account of her first meeting with Ron Eppinger, that I found a serious contradiction – one of many to come. In 2022, in the run-up to a planned speaking gig for the Childproof America National Education Summit on Human Trafficking, she provides a completely different version of how she came to be associated with Ron. Instead of claiming, as per her memoir, that she had been sleeping on the beach for three nights, the organisation’s website states: “Finally, the streets caught up with Virginia after being physically and sexually assaulted by a man with a gun. He made her taste the metal by putting the gun in her mouth, it was quite scary for her. She thought at least she would get what she wanted, death. The beatings and raping were so painful. While her abuser was on a phone call and had to step outside the hotel room Virginia made her dash. Bleeding profusely from every orifice wrapped in a white sheet with blood stains, she ran as fast as she could waiting for him to pull up in his white van that she was forced to get into at gun point. Virginia went to a bus stop and was picked up by her first trafficker, Ron Eppinger.”
She has not repeated this questionable story since.
In her memoir, she continues by claiming that Eppinger took her back to his home, where she met a group of female escorts. Over the following days and weeks, she claims to have been trained to join them in escorting and regularly having sex with Eppinger.
“Needing some contact with someone of my adolescent mentality I called one of my school friends from the past, whom I won’t name out of privacy, but I’ll call him,” she continues.
It has now been made public that friend she was referring to is in fact Tony Figueroa, an ex-boyfriend of Virginia’s whom I’d later interview and garner valuable information from.
“The sound of my voice radiated a chill in him. ‘It’s you, oh my God Jenna. Are you okay?’ He was so shocked to hear from me and the sheer fact I was still alive. Nearly three months now without a single word to my family or friends, everyone doubted my return.”
Giuffre claimed that she was eventually sent by Eppinger to stay with a man named Charlie. I could find no records confirming Charlie’s existence. Regardless, Virginia claimed that police raided Charlie’s home, found her laying in his bed, and took her down to the police station.
“Over the next few hours, I sat down and told the agents how Ron’s business worked and what I part I had to play to him,” she continues in her memoir. “Ron had so many countless charges put up against him, eventually when the FBI were able to track him down they were able to have him arrested in Yugoslavia and extradited back to Miami, he was finally held accountable for being a paedophile, soliciting women for prostitution, and running many illegitimate and illegal businesses. By the time the FBI caught him he was in his mid-seventies when he died of old age serving his second year of a prison sentence.”
Eppinger was in fact 65 when he pleaded guilty to charges involving money laundering and the smuggling of immigrants into America for the purpose of prostitution. He was never charged for allegedly recruiting minors, as Virginia suggests. No evidence was presented to show that the females he trafficked between 1997 and 1999, predominantly, with the help of two Czech women, Lucie Faubert and Tereza Benesova, from Eastern Europe to work as escorts, were under the legal age of consent.
Sentenced to 21 months behind bars, he died while incarcerated two years later. Back to Virginia’s own words:
“Hours later I was still twirling myself in the same office chair when I spun around to see my father walking in my direction. I nearly fell off my seat at the sight of him… He contemplated putting his arms out to hold me but instead anger and shame took over and he just shook his head. I never saw my Dad cry until that day and I have to say it made me feel young again and sad I had disappointed my parents again. The agents now standing beside us led both of us together back into the interrogation room to retell my journey to my father who they said I had no choice to tell, or they would have to tell him for me, being I was an underaged minor and Ron violated the statutory rape law, among many others, when he took me back to his apartment and kept me as his sex slave. My Dad couldn’t believe what he was hearing and for his lack of better choice in words asked me to stop talking, he was just happy to know I was alive… The next discussion was led to where I would go to from here. Before anyone could put his or her suggestion forward, I leapt in with my two bits and made it obviously clear to my Dad that if I was sent away to another lockdown facility and if he betrayed my trust, again, he would never see me again. I would disappear for good this time and for all he would know I could be dead in no time on the streets. He looked at me and for the first time in my life he saw the many years I had grown up in the time I was gone and heard the seriousness in the tone of my voice when I made my vow to him. He put his head in his hands and told me the bad news, my mom didn’t want me to come home and she was making his life hell for even suggesting bringing me back into their lives. I for some reason threatened her lifestyle and drove her crazy… My dad said he had no choice but to put me back into the facility, but he made a sincere promise that he would not take any longer than a week to try to find a place for me to stay and to go to school.”
Virginia claimed that she went on to again run away from the facility she was returned to, on one occasion heading over to a phone box to call her father, who finally agreed to allow her to come home. There, she writes that she quickly made amends with her parents and began enjoying family time with them and her brothers, sitting around bonfires together, and adding, “I loved being with my family again.” Shockingly, it must be noted here that there is evidence to suggest that Virginia invented her entire story relating to Ron Eppinger and may have learned of the Eppinger case only when researching stories she could add into her fiction-riddled first memoir. She omitted several important events from this section of her timeline, not least of all the following, as detailed in a court filing in a defamation lawsuit between Virginia and Ghislaine Maxwell: “November 1997 – Plaintiff, then 14 years old, was observed by law enforcement officers drunk in the backyard of a home during the middle of the school day. She was not “raped,” as the Motion claims. She was observed engaging in a simulated sex act with her boyfriend who was then 17 years old. As all of the witnesses described, Plaintiff had voluntarily become intoxicated, made numerous passes at various members of their group, almost fallen into a canal, and then, when spotted by the school truancy officer, offered to have sex with him in exchange for not telling her parents she had failed to go to school that day. Both Plaintiff and her 17-year old boyfriend verified they had had sexual intercourse in the days before the report, and the boyfriend was charged with having sexual contact with a minor. Those were not the false allegations of sexual contact. Rather, on the way to the detox unit at the hospital, Plaintiff claimed she had been forcibly sexually assaulted by her friends. Plaintiff’s claim of forced sexual assault was expressly refuted by the witnesses, who also verified Plaintiff’s attempt to get out of trouble by offering to have sex with the truancy officer. While the young man was charged with statutory rape based on the admitted sexual intercourse, charges against him were ultimately dropped.”
In 1998, while she was a resident at the rehabilitation center, she would make another rape accusation. It is something that the press has largely, and strangely, overlooked too, with Virginia having told her social worker that two young men whom she had sneaked out of the facility to socialise with had raped her. The troubled 14-year-old claimed she’d been drinking and smoking marijuana in a wooded area near West Palm Beach with friends Josh, 18, and Kevin, 17, when she passed out. She said she then woke up to find both of the young men taking turns to penetrate her – an ordeal she claimed went on for up to seven hours, after which she said she went back to Josh’s house and had sex with him again.
Officers tracked down the two men the following summer. Both testified that it was a consensual threesome. A detective who spoke with Josh reported that after the three drank, the young man urged Virginia to get some sleep, stating she then said to him something to the effect of “why don’t you keep me awake”, before the two engaged in a further “consensual” sexual encounter. In the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office documents relating to the case, Virginia’s mother, Lynn, is recorded as telling a detective about her daughter’s “past drug abuse” and how “many kids in Royal Palm Beach are involved in drugs, witchcraft and animal sacrifice”. The accusations were vehemently denied.
“I wasn’t hiding anything,” Josh, who voluntarily came forward to detectives, told a local newspaper, adding that he only knew Virginia as ‘Jen’, never saw her again after that night, and that her accusation caught him by surprise. “Of course, I was concerned,” he said, “somebody tried to press serious charges against me!”
Following a months-long investigation mired by a series of contradictions in Virginia’s account, prosecutors declined to pursue the case, citing “the victim’s lack of credibility.” Michael Salnick, the defence lawyer who represented Kevin in the rape allegations, would, years later amidst the furore of Virginia making public her allegations against numerous high profile individuals, tell the Daily News that the fact prosecutors didn’t believe Roberts would be a believable victim could hamper her lawsuits, adding, “She needs to be careful that the past doesn’t come back to haunt her.”
The following year, after being reunited with her parents, she was offered another opportunity to turn her life around. By then Sky was a well-respected employee at Donald Trump’s prestigious resort in Palm Beach. And it was there, after bagging his daughter a summer job as a locker room attendant, that her life would once again take a drastic turn.
Employed by Mar-a-Lago as a $9 an hour maintenance manager on April 11, 2000, Mr, Roberts had, in under a year, already proven himself to be a valued member of staff. His stint working there would later be rewarded by a glowing reference from the establishment’s owner himself, Donald Trump, who wrote in 2003: “Sky Roberts has been a most valuable employee at the Mar-a-Lago Club since April of 2000. While employed as a maintenance crew team member, he has been responsible for maintaining the five championship red day tennis courts as well as keeping all the individual air conditioning units working and in tip-top shape. It is my understanding that Sky is relocating to Colorado. Should he ever return to Florida, he would be eligible for rehire.”
Despite initially telling the press and her lawyers that she was 15 when she worked at Mar-a-Lago, employment records, and later her own admission during one of her depositions, prove that her employment began in 2000. Mar-a-Lago closes every Mother’s Day and reopens on November 1st every year. Thus, Virginia could only have started working there sometime after November 2000, when she was already over the age of 17.
A relatively easy job, with reasonable pay for a now 17-year-old Virginia, who with a tall thin frame, long blonde hair and eyes like sapphires combined gave her the appearance of being older than she actually was, now had the opportunity to earn some honest cash while catching-up on her education. ”There was a girl who already worked there at the front desk,” she would later recall. “She helped make appointments and greeted people, and then she just told me my duties in the locker room were to make tea. Clean up after the ladies who had been in the locker room. Make sure the bathrooms were kept nice and tidy. Fold the toilet paper into a little triangle every time anyone went to the toilet. Clean up the sink area.”
It was one fateful shift at Mar-a-Lago, however, that Virginia now claims brought her into the fold of Jeffrey Epstein. And yet, it is from this single day that her accusations and varying accounts begin to wildly contradict each other in places, and in others prove to be nothing more than complete fabrications. She details the following in her memoir:
“Surrounded by lush acres of tropical landscapes, manicured gardens, and a mansion made into a beach club for the rich and famous it [Mar-a-Lago] is known as the ‘Jewel of Palm Beach’. I was in sheer awe at the gold arched ceilings and the grand ballrooms. The spa where I worked was world-class, not only oozing in style but in the way each and every client was treated with the utmost service. My focus was now set on becoming a massage therapist and working my way into a luxurious spa like the one I worked for now, only I was a locker room attendant there. I studied many books about the anatomy of the human body and how you can affect a person’s wellbeing and health for the better through a simple healing touch. It was amazing to me the way the body responded to massage. I was more than just interested. I was determined to become a therapist. It was one of those anatomy books that I had my nose buried in one afternoon on a quiet Tuesday, and it could get pretty lonely in the locker room, so if weren’t busy I’d sit outside by the spa’s reception and read my books in the warmth of the Florida sun.
“A lovely looking woman in her late 30s who spoke with a proper English accent approached me. I assumed it was a general question, like ‘where’s the lady’s room?’ or ‘was that the famous model from so-and-so?’ But she was more interested in the book I was reading. Only believing at first we were just making small talk, she was really intrigued at my choice of reading. She then asked if I did massage on the side. I stated I was only reading the book and had not yet begun to study, but one day I would love to practice massage therapy. She introduced herself as Ghislaine Maxwell. I would later find out that she was the daughter of the late prominent businessman and disgraced newspaper tycoon, Robert Maxwell. I told her my name is Jenna, pointing to my nametag on my shirt, and offered her a cold or hot beverage, as those were my instructed duties at work. She accepted a tea and went on to chat a bit about this rich guy that she worked for, and she knew off-hand that he was looking for a massage therapist. Just doing me a good deed out of her kindness of her heart, I’m sure, she offered to introduce me to him.”
Virginia claims that she was driven to Epstein’s home that evening.
“He gave me a big squeeze and wished me the best. He walked me to the front door and I rung the door chime. Moments later we were greeted by an older gentleman dressed in a casual butler uniform. I told him I was here to meet Ms. Maxwell for a massage trial and he opened the doors for my father and telling us to wait in the entry as Ms. Maxwell would be on her way any second, and she was. Down the stairs she walked with a warm smile, her short black hair seeming very proper and elegant, for now. She shook my father’s hand and thanked him for bringing me and kissed us both on the cheeks. They spoke briefly about whom she worked for and about Mar-a-Lago where we worked. She was in hurry, you could tell, to end the conversation and say goodbye to my dad, which she did so ever pleasantly. She said the boss was upstairs and waiting my arrival, so with that I said bye to my dad and began to follow Ghislaine up the stairs.
She next alleges that she was shown into Epstein’s massage room, where Epstein was already laying on the massage table, surrounded by oils and lotions. She alleges that Ghislaine then showed her how to massage his body, before the massage took an inappropriate turn, with Epstein rolling over and exposing himself.
“He wasn’t the first man to show me his penis, so I wasn’t shocked at the appearance of his manhood, but I was incredibly shocked at his complete ease to present himself with an erection. I tried to ignore it, waiting to follow the next directions off of Ghislaine, who surprisingly now stood behind me bare-breasted. Before I had a chance to even think of replying, hastily she began to slowly undress me, while Jeffrey started to stroke his manhood while watching us… Acting as my madam, she instructed me to start by licking his nipples and after I had sufficiently pleasured both of them, then prompted me to go down on Jeffery orally while she rubbed her breasts along his body tantalizingly.”
Virginia alleges that she was then instructed to have penetrative sex with Epstein before having a sauna, being paid $200, and leaving. A Maxwell family member would later tell me, “Ghislaine specifically states what she has always said, which is she has no memory of meeting Virginia at all, let alone introducing her to Jeffrey Epstein. It was also very possible that Jeffrey Epstein himself met Virginia Roberts at Mar-a-Lago as Jeffrey went for massages there by himself, so he could have easily met her and asked her to come for an interview. She [Virginia] was also sporting an engagement ring, so why on earth would anyone think she was anything but an adult?”
It is true that Virginia was indeed engaged at the time.
The fiancé in question was 18-year-old Michael Austrich. Inside the rehabilitation centre, she’d befriended a kindred spirit, a young girl of similar age whose mother had agreed to take Virginia into her home and allow her to live there while she attempted, with help, to get her life back on track. Within weeks, the girl, accompanied by Virginia, made the short journey to Broward County, to a large suburban house, to pay a visit to her stepbrother, Michael, and her father. Introducing Virginia as “Jenna”, both brother and friend immediately warmed to one another.
“We got to talking,” Michael said during his 2016 deposition. “We liked each other, and we just got to know each other…we fell in love.” Virginia and Michael’s stepsister stayed with them in Broward County for a few weeks, Virginia and Michael becoming closer with each day, swiftly blossoming into a relationship. The two moved out of Michael’s father’s house shortly thereafter, first moving into an apartment in the small suburb of Oakland Park, rented under Michael’s name due to Virginia not yet being over the age of 18. There they lived with Michael’s friend and work colleague, Mario, with the two friends, both night managers, getting Virginia a job with them at a Taco Bell fast food restaurant beside a nearby shopping mall. Over a year had passed when, on Valentine’s Day, Michael strolled along the beach with his girlfriend, got down on one knee and, looking up at her from the sand, his grandmother’s old engagement ring held outstretched in his hand, asked her to marry him.
She said yes.
Now engaged, the pair decided they needed an apartment of their own, the best way to save up the means to do so being to briefly move in with Virginia’s parents. Living there for as many months as it took to save up a deposit, they slept in a trailer in the back garden, spending their days working, socialising, and sitting around the dinner table with Virginia’s family. Eventually, having scraped some cash together (though evidence shows that it is more likely that the means were provided by her ‘employer’, Jeffrey), the pair heaved their boxed-up belongings into a van and drove to their new home, a third-floor apartment in Royal Palm Beach. Again, Michael’s was the sole name to appear on the lease contract, with Virginia still around half a year shy of her 18th birthday. During their relationship, she drifted from one random job to the next, first working at KFC, then with Michael at Taco Bell, then at a supermarket, a childcare centre, an avicultural breeding facility, and then, finally, at Mar-a-Lago, from where she would leave to work for Jeffrey Epstein.
She had been with Michael the entire time, even during much of her time with Jeffrey. She had allegedly presented herself as an adult, wearing her engagement ring and openly talking about having a fiancé. But their engagement was not to last, broken off not because of her new “job” as a “travelling masseuse”, but because of her own infidelity, not with Jeffrey, but with her old flame, Tony Figueroa.
I managed to track down Tony through social media, my interview with him (the interviewee initially reluctant to speak) taking place in the summer of 2024. What he told me conflicted slightly with Virginia’s own account and provided yet another valuable first-hand insight into Virginia’s shameful recruiting of underage girls for Jeffrey. I listened to the dial tone and waited, eventually being connected to a calm voice on the other end.
“I first met Virginia in 1998, when we were both in high school, and she was dating some other guy at first,” Tony Figueroa told me. “I just thought she was hot as hell, and I wanted to get to know her. And it turned out the feeling was mutual. She wanted to get to know me. From the time we met, we clicked instantly. It was like lightning in a bottle. We lit each other up, like there was no going back. We did everything together. From the time we started talking, it was like we were inseparable. She came and stayed with me at my house with my parents. She had run away from home to stay there, so she was staying with me for a few weeks while we were still going to school. We were basically inseparable from the time that I met her. It was unstoppable. She was definitely very sexually active, and that went back to all the stuff that she had gone through, but that’s a whole ’nother story, a whole ’nother thing with this other older guy, and it was a whole big ordeal. She had been through a lot of trauma. I don’t think she really had too many feelings involved other than just trying to have fun with it. But as far as I’m concerned, once me and her started hanging out, having sex, being together, there was nobody else.”
It’s clear that Tony still holds a torch for his ex-girlfriend.
“To this day, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of connection with anybody else,” he told me. “I’m not saying that we didn’t have our ups and downs, but, like, as far as a person goes, she was amazing. She was loving, caring. I loved everything about her, except for all the messed-up shit she had been through. But she was a fucking amazing person. Yeah, she was very sexually active with a lot of people, but I mean, so was I. We were teenagers.”
Their first relationship, however, was brief. Yet when it was later rekindled, it would not only lead to the dramatic end of her relationship to Michael, but would lead to years of criminality.
But I’ll cover that in the next episode.
Contrary to the MeToo movement’s mantra to “believe all women”, it is imperative that all evidence, including the accounts of accusations made by abuse victims, though as uncomfortable as it may be, are scrutinized and tested. In her comments to the press, Virginia originally said that she was 15 when she first met Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. This claim – though easily proven to be false when I compared her birth certificate to Mar-a-Lago employment records – was published verbatim by the world’s media, seemingly with little to no fact-checking having taken place, Sensational headlines and stories taking priority over basic journalistic ethics and integrity. When I contacted The Sun newspaper, asking its editor why, despite Virginia’s age being established as having been 17 during her time at Mar-a-Lago, they printed that she had been 15, their response was simply that they were “quoting what she said”. During a later deposition, Virginia said she only received two pay cheques from Mar-a-Lago before she met Ghislaine and went to work for Jeffrey Epstein. This means that she would have started work for Jeffrey sometime in late November, early December (she stated in her 2016 deposition that she quit Mar-a-Lago a few weeks after meeting Epstein). During the deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell, when asked about her alleged involvement in the recruitment of Virginia, she said:
“Virginia Roberts, who you are referring to, was a masseuse aged 17. I was somebody who hired a number of people to work for Mr. Epstein and hiring is one of my functions. Virginia Roberts held herself out as a masseuse and invited herself to come and give a massage. She was a masseuse and, in the form, and as my job, I was to have people who he wanted for various things including massage. She came as a masseuse.”
Other important factors are worth considering, including those which completely contradict, even destroy, Virginia’s in-depth and lurid account of that first meeting. The first that sheds doubt on her claim that Ghislaine Maxwell opened the front door of Epstein’s home and led her upstairs during her first alleged encounter with Epstein, comes in the form of Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition and the deposition of Virginia’s father, and that of her own mother, Lynn Roberts. In her memoir, Virginia claims that her father drove her to Epstein’s Florida home, going on to say:
“He walked me to the front door and I rung the door chime. Moments later we were greeted by an older gentleman dressed in a casual butler uniform.”
During cross-examination at her 2016 deposition, she essentially acknowledged that what she had claimed in ‘The Billionaire’s Playboy Club’ was untrue:
“When you got there, a butler or someone answered the door, is that what you said?” the questioner asked.
“No, Ghislaine answered the door,” Virginia replied.
Interestingly, Virginia’s claim that Ghislaine answered the door only came about after she decided to implicate Maxwell and sue her for defamation. Her father provided a different account – that he never met Maxwell, and that on an occasion when he drove Virginia to the house, he only met Epstein, and not Maxwell. Virginia was forced to accept this account during her 2019 defamation case, with her legal representation confirming: “She [Virginia Roberts] does not contest her father’s testimony that Mr. Epstein came out of the house and greeted her father and that her father never met Ms. Maxwell”. There is also ample reason to believe that her father took her to Jeffrey’s home on a different occasion, not the first, with her mother being the person who gave her a ride for her ‘interview’.
In her own deposition, Ghislaine Maxwell said:
“Her [Virginia’s] statement that she was driven by her father to Palm Beach – she was driven by her mother, as a matter of fact… I was outside speaking to her mother… You can be a professional masseuse at 17 in Florida, so as far as I am aware, a professional masseuse showed up for a massage… Her entire characterisation of her first time at the house was to me an obvious lie, given it was impossible for her entire story to take place given I was speaking to her mother the entire time she was at the house.”
The questioner then asked her, “So it was impossible that day, that first day she came and you were speaking to the mother, for Virginia Roberts to have had sex with Jeffrey Epstein during the time that you were outside with her mother?”
Maxwell replied, “Absolutely, 1,000 per cent – she did not have any type of sexual relations as described by you in your court papers that took place, because those allegedly, according to her lies, involved some aspect of me. As I was standing outside with her mother the entire time, her entire story is a lie. Therefore, to ask me what she did or didn’t do during that time, I can only testify to what she said about me, which is 1,000 per cent false.”
Another serious contradiction relating to her account of the first meeting is that, despite Virginia now claiming that once inside Epstein’s home, Ghislaine Maxwell led her upstairs into a room where Jeffrey Epstein was lying naked on a massage table before engaging in sexual activity with her, in a story she sold to the Daily Mail for $40,000 in 2011, Virginia is clearly recorded as claiming that ‘another woman’, not Ghislaine Maxwell, led her upstairs, and Maxwell is not recorded as having engaged in any form of sexual activity. The article reads: “Virginia says, ‘Ghislaine said I was to start immediately and that someone would drive me home. My father left and I was told to go upstairs.’ She was led by another woman through Epstein’s bedroom… Virginia was then told to start massaging Epstein, under the instructions of the woman who had shown her in.”
To some, such contradictions may, on first appearances, seem innocent and trivial. They are anything but. The fact is that, despite newspaper articles and Virginia’s own memoir originally stating that Ghislaine Maxwell had committed a crime by engaging a 17-year-old in sexual activity – an illegal act in the state of Florida – the evidence heavily suggests that Maxwell did not do anything of the sort. What is more likely, after analysing testimonies from Virginia, Ghislaine, Sky and Lynn, is that Virginia came to the house with her mother, that Virginia briefly went upstairs, led by another female, to meet Jeffrey Epstein, and that Virginia’s mother waited for her outside, exchanging small talk with Ghislaine before she came back out again and left. In other words, it was an interview. Yet years after clearly stating that Maxwell had not been involved in any sexual encounter during her first visit to Epstein’s Florida home, Virginia Roberts changed her story, implicating Maxwell.
Of another alleged visit a couple of days later, Virginia writes:
“Instead of driving me to work the next morning, my Dad dropped me off at Jeffrey’s mansion. He told me not to worry about calling Mar-a-Lago, he’d take care of it for me. We said our goodbyes outside in the driveway, Jeffrey even coming outside to meet with my father to shake his hands and assure him that his daughter will be more than looked after… Juan drove Jeffrey, Ghislaine and me to Palm Beaches’ Private Airport, and the luggage handlers escorted us on the tarmac where we all boarded on Jeffrey’s black jet. Larry was his main pilot; he had shiny grey hair and long, lanky legs, but a very sincere smile that instantly made you feel at ease.”
Virginia continues by writing that, during her subsequent trip to New York, where the legal age of consent is 17, she provided Jeffrey with multiple erotic massages. What Virginia says happens next fits a pattern, a modus operandi that Jeffrey seemed to have employed to ensure he maintained access to a steady flow of attractive young women to satisfy his sexual appetite. It would also, as we will later explore in depth, lead to Virginia breaking the law.
“On the day before we were to be heading back to Palm Beach, Jeffrey had a new proposition for me,” she continues in her memoir. “I could make double the money I was making if I would look for pretty girls and convince them to come back to Jeffrey’s to be further persuaded with money to engage in bisexual and sexual acts with Jeffrey. And I asked him how does one actually propose such a thing to a complete stranger? ‘Well,’ he said in a build-up to another kind of lesson, ‘if I were you I would use your charm to entice them and my money to bring them, I would tell them you work for a multi-billionaire who has a taste for young, beautiful girls, and with his contacts in the acting, modelling, or rich husband world, your boss could help them. All they have to do is come meet me first.’
Virginia now had a decision to make.
It is important to note here that, regarding that decision, she was not threatened by Epstein in any way, wasn’t warned that there would be any repercussions if she declined his offer. She had two options: Number one, she could easily return to her job at Mar-a-Lago and get on with her life. Or number two, she could take Jeffrey up on his offer and become his recruiter.
It didn’t take her long to come to a conclusion. She would, she decided, continue to make money through sex work, through selling her body and company, and, now, would earn extra commission by finding Jeffrey other women to satisfy his out-of-control sexual desires.
Many years later, during her interview with Todd Blanche, Ghislaine Maxwell would claim that it was Virginia Giuffre, or most notably Giuffre’s own aforementioned decision, that essentially helped spawn the entire Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
And it is also important to note here that at no time did Jeffrey ask Virginia to go out and find him underage girls. Instead, as with the women before Virginia, his personal preference, as all of the evidence demonstrates, was for women in their early twenties who looked even younger.
Jeffrey was one of those seedy men who straddled the border of legality and enjoyed the girls whom the sex industry advertise in their ‘barely legal’ category.
His instructions to Virginia and other young women were simple: To bring him attractive girls willing to perform sex acts for money, with one strict caveat, a caveat that police reports confirm and yet that has been completeely ignored by the media: All of the girls MUST be over the age of 18.
But Virginia had a problem. Her social circle was small. It consisted predominantly of drug dealers, drug users, and not the ‘barely legal’ types, but girls who weren’t of legal age at all.
But the proposal was too good to turn down. Thus, she decided she needed to be sly.
She would head off and recruit the underage friends, girlfriends and relatives of her boyfriends. She when lie to Jeffrey that they were over eighteen and would instruct them that they too would need to lie about their ages should Jeffrey enquire.
She would, against Jeffrey’s instructions, seek out school girls and vulnerable dropouts, writing in her memoir that she considered them as nothing more than, in her words, “easy commission”.
Again, she could have stopped.
She didn’t need to do what she did next.
But there was one thing drawing her in, motivating her to sacrifice her own morality and the safety of others.
Something that had drawn so many others to Jeffrey Epstein.
Something that this entire scandal is overwhelmingly dominated by.
She wasn’t seeing the pain she’d soon help inflict upon a string of school girls.
For now, Virginia was only seeing dollar signs.
Thanks for listening to episode six of ‘The life and Death of Jeff’!
In the next episode we’ll continue our journey through the Epstein scandal, including listening to my exclusive interviews with Tony Figueroa and Philip Guderyon, another ex-boyfriend of Virginia. We’ll also be going through Virginia’s life as a recruiter for Jeffrey Epstein, and listening to my shocking interview with the mother of one of Virginia’s underage victims.
Until then, don’t forget to click the subscribe button, catch-up on my other interviews, and, most importantly, have a wonderful week!
