Financier Jeffrey Epstein had "many, many, many" guests at his Palm Beach, Florida property, and Ghislaine Maxwell looked after everything.
This is what testified Thursday, on the fourth day of the sexual abuse trial of the British socialite, a former employee of Jeffrey Epstein.
Prosecutors say Maxwell recruited and prepared underage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004, as part of a "pyramid scheme of abuse" in which she sometimes participated.
The British press mogul's 59-year-old daughter has pleaded not guilty to six counts of sex trafficking and other charges.
According to her lawyers, prosecutors have made her a scapegoat, no longer able to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in prison in August 2019.
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Juan Alessi ran the house from 1991 to 2002, under the leadership of Ghislaine Maxwell, then 30 years old. “From the day she arrived home, she immediately took matters into her own hands and told me that she was going to be the hostess,” he said. This Ecuadorian told the jurors of the Manhattan federal court how Maxwell had imposed an "incalculable" number of very strict rules enacted by the master of the place. Including that of never meeting his gaze. “Don't look him in the eye, turn your head and answer him,” he said, reading the 58-page house rules handed out when he was hired. Which contained this ukase: “NEVER reveal to anyone what Mr. Epstein or Ms. Maxwell is doing”. “I was supposed to be blind and deaf and dumb,” summed up the steward.
According to him, Epstein would arrive for the weekend at his Florida property on Thursday or Friday and usually leave on Monday.
Maxwell was there "95%" of that time.
Before their arrival, instructions were given to make the house "immaculate", as well as the cars, in which the staff were to leave $ 100 bills.
“The house had to be managed like a five-star hotel”.
"They" for Epstein and Maxwell ...
The butler said the wealthy businessman's many guests were in their twenties, but there were also two minors. One of the girls, a woman in her 40s who uses the pseudonym Jane in court, testified earlier in the week. She appeared to be 14 or 15 when she first came home with her mother in 1994, Alessi told the court. The teenager came "at least three times" with her mother and several other times on her own, himself having picked her up from the arts school where she was educated. Jane was "strikingly beautiful," Alessi said. He recounted driving her once from the house to an airport and watching her board a plane with Epstein, Maxwell, and Maxwell's dog, a little Yorkie named Max.During eight hours of often explicit testimony, Jane said she had sex with Epstein between the ages of 14 and 16 in Palm Beach and at his ranch in New Mexico.
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On a hot day, the date of which he did not specify, Alessi had driven Ghislaine Maxwell in a convertible to luxury spas and country clubs in Palm Beach County. Coming out of the parking lot at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's residence that houses a private club, spa, and golf course, Maxwell stopped the car to speak to a blonde girl in a white uniform whom he later learned of. that it was Virginia Roberts. Virginia Roberts, who filed a complaint under the name of Virginia Giuffre, accuses the couple of having abused her from 2000 to 2002, when she was 16 to 18 years old. The young girl had shown up in the afternoon and Alessi had accompanied her to Epstein's companion's office. In the months that followed, he drove her several times to Epstein's private jet, with him. We know it,the billionaire consultant owned a Boeing 727 cynically dubbed the "Lolita Express."
The butler also recounted how he said Maxwell, Epstein or one of his employees in New York instructed him to schedule a massage for Epstein when he arrived. The steward had "a Rolodex with all the massage therapists." The one they told me to call, I did, ”he said, using the plural“ they ”for Epstein and Maxwell. A Rolodex is an address book in the form of a small cylindrical binder made up of name cards.
When he started working it was once a day, but three times after a few years.
“It was a massage in the morning, a massage in the afternoon, and sometimes after dinner or a movie.
The masseuses were scheduled to come after the movies, from 10pm to 11pm ”.
He happened to find sex toys in the massage room in Palm Beach.
He must once have cleaned up a model that "looked like a huge man's penis with two heads."
He had stored it in Ghislaine Maxwell's bathroom.
"This is the place where it was kept."
