The Long, Ugly Road to Jeffrey Epstein’s Arrest
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2019
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the weekend, multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking. But back in 2003, journalist Vicky Ward had the inside scoop on Epstein: She interviewed two of his victims and wrote up the story for Vanity Fair. And then, her editor spiked the allegations from the story. This is the story of how Epstein used his connections to evade scrutiny... again and again.
Guest: Journalist Vicky Ward. Her latest book is Kushner, Inc.
Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, and Ethan Brooks.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Yesterday morning, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York held a press conference about a surprise arrest they'd made over the weekend. |
| 0:13.0 | Today, we announced the unsealing of sex trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein. |
| 0:19.3 | They were charging billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein with sex trafficking, describing a scheme |
| 0:25.1 | in which Epstein recruited dozens of girls to give him nude massages or have sex. |
| 0:31.7 | And then he groomed these girls to recruit friends. |
| 0:35.6 | The abuse happened in Palm Beach, in New York City. |
| 0:38.6 | This allowed Epstein to create an ever-expanding web of new victims. |
| 0:45.4 | This conduct, as alleged, went on for years, and it involved dozens of young girls, |
| 0:52.6 | some as young as 14 years old at the time that they were allegedly abused. |
| 0:58.1 | As they placed Epstein under arrest, the FBI raided his mansion on the Upper East Side, a building so big it used to be used as a school. |
| 1:07.7 | Agents pride open his 15-foot-high oak doors with a crowbar, and inside they found a safe, stuffed with pictures of more girls. |
| 1:19.8 | One of a few journalists to have been inside Epstein's mansion is a writer named Vicky Ward. |
| 1:26.3 | She profiled Epstein for Vanity Fair back in 2003. |
| 1:30.1 | She still remembers the entrance hall, which was lined with prosthetic eyeballs. |
| 1:34.8 | Oh, I remember those. They were so creepy. |
| 1:37.4 | I remember, you know, going to that house and the whole thing being so strange. |
| 1:48.1 | At the time, Epstein was a bit of a New York City mystery. |
| 1:51.9 | He seemed to have a lot of money. |
| 1:53.8 | No one was quite sure where it came from. |
| 1:56.1 | One acquaintance described him as like the Wizard of Oz. |
| 1:59.9 | Everything about him is creepy. |
| 2:02.5 | You got the feeling that his friends weren't real friends. |
... |
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