Grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s first Florida case were released this week, revealing that prosecutors were aware Epstein had raped teenage girls as young as 14 before they offered him a lenient plea deal. The documents show that despite the damning testimonies, Epstein managed to secure a deal that allowed him to avoid severe federal charges.
In 2006, a detective testified before a grand jury that the investigation into Epstein began the previous year when a woman reported her high school-aged stepdaughter had received $300 for “sexual activity” with a man in Palm Beach. The detective interviewed another teenager who had brought six friends to Epstein’s house, explaining that “the more you did, the more money you made.” Another teen testified that she visited Epstein’s house hundreds of times starting at age 16, receiving $200 for nude massages and $1,000 when Epstein raped her.
Despite the evidence, State Attorney Barry Krischer chose to convene the grand jury behind closed doors, undermining the case. In 2008, Epstein struck a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to a lesser state charge and receiving a sentence of 1.5 years in jail, with the privilege of leaving six days a week on a work-release program.
The Palm Beach Post sued the government in 2019 to release the grand jury transcripts. Epstein was arrested again in 2018 on federal sex trafficking charges after media reports drew attention back to the case. He died by suicide in a New York jail at age 66, according to a Justice Department report that found jail officials failed to monitor his cell and skipped inmate check-ups. Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, was also arrested and convicted of helping run the sex trafficking ring.
The prosecutor who cut the lenient deal with Epstein in 2008 had already presented graphic, damning testimony from the girls Epstein recruited and raped at his Palm Beach mansion over several years. A judge released over 150 pages of the transcripts from the 2006 grand jury investigation, which included testimony from investigating police officers and a victim who was 14 when she was first recruited by a friend to earn quick money by heading to Epstein’s home, stripping down to her underwear, and giving him a massage. She said $200 became $300 when Epstein asked her to allow him to fondle her with a sex toy. The girl pretended to be 18, though the friend who recruited her knew her real age.
Investigators found names and phone numbers of numerous young girls in Epstein’s trash. One girl told police she was told by Epstein that he would pay her to bring him more girls. “She agreed to bring the girls to him,” Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey said in the transcripts. “And he told her, the younger, the better. She brought a 23-year-old to massage him, and he told her that she was too old.”
Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges in Palm Beach County in July 2008, admitting he hired local underage girls to provide sex and erotic massages at his home. His sentence has been referred to as a “sweetheart deal” that allowed him lenient work release while he served about 13 months of an 18-month sentence, followed by a year of house arrest.
An investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement focused on former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer’s decision not to aggressively prosecute the sex abuse allegations against Epstein, his generous work release privileges in jail, and allegations that Epstein had sex with young women while under the jail’s supervision. The investigation found Epstein received “differential treatment” in jail, but no evidence was uncovered that suggests county officials broke any laws. Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking trial. He was 66 at the time of his death and in his 50s during the time period described by the rape victims.
The judge’s release of the transcripts came as a surprise, as he had scheduled a hearing for next week on when and how to release them. Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed a bill in February allowing the release on July 1 or any time thereafter that Circuit Judge Luis Delgado ordered. “The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order. “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.” Delgado called Epstein “the most infamous pedophile in American history.”
Epstein raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion in the early 2000s, and prosecutors knew about this, according to newly released transcripts. The Florida grand jury transcripts were released by Circuit Judge Luis Delgado, containing approximately 150 pages, and showing that prosecutors who offered Epstein the lenient plea deal in 2008 knew he had raped teenagers. The transcripts are composed of the grand jury testimonies of Epstein’s teenage victims, revealing the late sex offender raped girls as young as 14 in his Palm Beach mansion when he was in his 40s. The testimonies included accounts of Epstein paying the girls so he could commit statutory rape and assault, as well as providing additional payment or renting them cars in exchange for them finding him more victims.
“The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order, following the signing of a bill by Gov. Ron DeSantis in February, enabling the release of the sealed documents. “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal,” said Delgado.
The transcripts reveal that the initial investigation began in March 2005 when a woman reported that her teenage stepdaughter received $300 in exchange for “sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach,” according to Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey’s testimony from July 2006. One of the teenage victims, whose name was redacted, testified she was 17 years old when a friend told her she could make $200 by giving a massage at Epstein’s residence. She told Epstein she was uncomfortable when he tried touching her at the house, and he said he would pay her an additional $200 if she would bring him “girls.” “The younger, the better,” Epstein told the teenager, according to Recarey. Another teenager testified that starting at the age of 16, Epstein paid her $1000 and rented her a car upon raping her. The teenager’s testimony was supported by a 2005 police search of the mansion, obtaining a statement from Epstein’s houseman who told detectives the teenage girls were “too young. Too young to be a masseuse.”
“It is so sad, the number of victims Epstein was able to abuse because the State carried water for him when they had a chance to put him away,” Brad Edwards, the attorney of many of Epstein’s victims said, criticizing the prosecution’s misleading presentation of the case.
In 2018, Epstein was indicted with federal sex trafficking crimes in New York following the public’s renewed attention to the case from the Miami Herald’s series of publications. A year later, at the age of 66, he hanged himself in a New York City jail cell. The billionaire sex trafficker, with his death, left behind a bombshell that has exposed the affiliation of many notable politicians, businessmen, and royalty with the pedophile ringmaster. These include Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Jes Staley, and others.
Florida prosecutors knew the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient and a missed opportunity to imprison him a decade earlier, according to transcripts released Monday. The 2006 grand jury investigation was the first of many by law enforcement over the past two decades into Epstein’s rape and sex trafficking of teenagers — and how his ties to the rich and the powerful seem to have allowed him to avoid prison or a serious jail term for over a decade.
The investigations uncovered Epstein’s close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, as well as his once friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump and numerous others of wealth and influence who have denied doing anything criminal or improper and not been charged. Circuit Judge Luis Delgado’s release of approximately 150 pages came as a surprise, since there was a scheduled hearing next week over unsealing the graphic testimony. Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed a bill in February allowing the release on Monday or any time thereafter that Delgado ordered. Florida grand jury transcripts are usually kept secret forever, but the bill created an exemption for cases like Epstein’s.
The transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion, often paying them so he could commit statutory rape or assault. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid cash or rented cars if they found him more girls. “The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order. “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.”
In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to 1.5 years in the Palm Beach County jail system, during which he was allowed to go to his office almost daily as part of a work-release program, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender. Criticism of the deal resulted in the 2019 resignation of Trump’s labor secretary, Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney for South Florida in 2008 and signed off on the deal. A 2020 Justice Department investigation concluded that Acosta used “poor judgment” in his handling of the Epstein prosecution, but it didn’t rise to the level of professional misconduct.
The chief prosecutor in the Epstein case, former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, did not immediately respond to an email and a voicemail seeking comment about the transcripts’ release. Current Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who was not involved in the investigation, said in a statement he is glad the records have been released. He said he has not yet read the transcripts, so could not comment on whether Krischer should have pursued a tougher prosecution of Epstein. Brad Edwards, an attorney for many of the victims, said in a statement that the transcripts show that Krischer’s office “took the case to the Grand Jury with an agenda — to return minimal, if any, criminal charges against Jeffrey Epstein.” “A fraction of the evidence was presented, in a misleading way, and the Office portrayed the victims as criminals,” he said. “It is so sad, the number of victims Epstein was able to abuse because the State carried water for him when they had a chance to put him away.”
Epstein’s estate is paying $155 million in restitution to more than 125 victims. According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the initial investigation began when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter who was in high school at the time said she received $300 in exchange for “sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach,” Recarey testified. Another teenager, whose name was redacted in the transcript, told detectives that she was 17 years old when she was approached by a friend who said she could make $200 by providing a massage at Epstein’s home. At the house, when Epstein tried touching her, she told him she was uncomfortable. He then told her that he would pay her $200 if she brought “girls” to the house. “And he told her, ‘The younger, the better,'” Recarey said. Over time she brought six friends to Epstein’s house, including a 14-year-old, and likened herself to Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss in October 2005 interviews, Recarey recounted. When she brought over a 23-year-old friend, Epstein told her that the friend was too old. “The more you did, the more money you made,” the detective said the teen told him. “She explained that there was going to be a massage or some possible touching, and you would have to provide the massage either topless or naked.”
Another teen testified she visited Epstein’s house hundreds of times in the early 2000s, starting when she was 16. She testified that Epstein paid her $200 each time she gave him a massage while naked, rented her a car and gave her $1,000 the time he raped her. A 2005 police search of Epstein’s mansion found evidence supporting the girls’ testimony. Also, Epstein’s houseman told detectives that the teenagers who came to the mansion were “very young. Too young to be a masseuse.”
Epstein in 2018 was charged with federal sex trafficking crimes in New York — where he also had a mansion that was a scene of abuse — after the Miami Herald published a series of articles that renewed public attention on the case, including interviews with some victims who had been pursuing civil lawsuits against him. Epstein was 66 when he killed himself in a New York City jail cell in August 2019, federal officials say. Delgado in his order wrote that the transcripts show why Epstein was “the most infamous pedophile in American history.” “For almost 20 years, the story of how Jeffrey Epstein victimized some of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of much anger and has at times diminished the public’s perception of the criminal justice system,” Delgado wrote.
Source: Associated Press, Palm Beach Post, Business Insider
