Day Two: The First Accuser Takes the Stand

Dispatches from the Maxwell Trial

Yesterday was a roller-coaster ride down in the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse where Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, stands accused of helping deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein abuse and traffic under-age girls. She has denied all charges.

The huge, baffling question of the morning was this: Why on earth did the prosecution call Epstein’s long-time pilot, Larry Visoski as their opening witness?

Sure, Visoski—a likeable, clearly competent guy—painted a picture of Epstein’s lavish lifestyle: the Manhattan townhouse, a ranch in New Mexico, a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a mansion in Palm Beach, and his own Boeing 727 to fly privately among them. And the list of high-profile men that Epstein flew was a predictable parade of plutocratic power: Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Bill Richardson, Itzhak Perlman, John Glenn. (The only surprise to me was a question about whether Robert Kennedy, Jr., flew with Epstein, but Visoski couldn’t recall).

Jeffrey Epstein's residence at 9 East 71st Street. | Scott Heins

But, mostly, Visoski was, quite head-scratchingly, a tremendous asset for the defense. He clearly liked and trusted both Epstein, who paid for his daughters’ private education, and Maxwell, with whom he said he spent a great deal of time flying helicopters and who had taught his young daughters how to ride horses.

Further, Visoski said he never thought Epstein and Maxwell were “romantic”—he never even saw them kiss and they’d always lived separately—and that, in all his years of flying Epstein’s planes, he’d never seen any sexual activity or any evidence of sex having happened or, to his knowledge, seen any under-age women unless they were children accompanied by their parents.

I wasn’t the only journalist in the room who thought that that was something of a bombshell.

Visoski added that he met Maxwell in late 1991 (the year her father, the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, died in mysterious circumstances) and that, to his knowledge, Epstein was at that point “expanding” his business fast and that Maxwell’s job was to oversee the construction, décor, and day-to-day running of that empire. Visoski said that she decorated the jets, she bought the art—and she even bought the horses for the stables in the ranch in New Mexico.

As Visoski described Maxwell’s job, I think I understood why, in the course of my reporting over the past twenty years, according to people close to her, Maxwell objected strenuously to being described as a “socialite.” She certainly wasn’t just swanning about, going to parties and the ballet. I also began to wonder if she had been embarrassed by her job. After, all she’d gone from GM the heiress to GM, well, the General Manager. For her, that was a considerable come-down in status.

Epstein and Maxwell at an event at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005 in New York City | Patrick McMullan

But as everyone in court today was shown slide after slide of mansions, islands, and swimming pools, I also had to wonder what I’ve always wondered about Epstein—and, frustratingly, still cannot find the answer to: Where did all this money so suddenly come from? Money that is coming in so fast, you need to hire an army and a general to figure out how to spend it? The whole thing makes no sense.

At least the afternoon’s witness made more sense for the prosecution.

Accuser Number One, a successful, beautiful actor who has been given the pseudonym “Jane,” gave a composed and shocking account of how she met Epstein and Maxwell at the Interlochen summer camp for the arts and then how, starting in 1994—when she was just 14—and continuing until 1999, she was sexually abused by the financier.

In response to questions from prosecutor Alison Moe, Jane described a difficult life at home following the death of her father, a composer, in 1993. Jane said that, when she first met Epstein, she and her mother had faced issues with health insurance and been forced to live in a pool house, sharing a bedroom. But the attention that had begun as a welcome tonic soon became the antithesis.

Jane described how Epstein began to send limos once every two weeks for her in Palm Beach when she was in 7th grade there and how afternoon tea quickly turned into sexualized massages—mostly with Epstein, she said, but sometimes with Maxwell in the room, and quite frequently orgies (not necessarily including Maxwell).

The abuse, Jane said, went on for years, until she moved to L.A. and a boyfriend demanded she stop returning calls from the man she had described to him as her “godfather.”

As Jane spoke, tearful and shaking at times, Maxwell, in her regular trial uniform of a pastel sweater and slacks, looked unfazed. But when the attorneys and Judge Alison Nathan left the court to sidebar, the two women studiously avoided looking at each other.

Then the defense began the cross-examination. And it was brutal.

Maxwell defense attorney Laura Menninger launched a series of rocket-attacks in her cross-examination. In just 30 minutes—all she had until court ended—Menninger essentially accused Jane of giving false information to the FBI and prosecutors about where she had lived as a teenager. There was a noticeable gasp in my over-flow courtroom when Menninger alleged Jane had lived in a three-bedroom home in a gated community that was a three-minute drive from a country club in Palm Beach—a far cry from the picture of great financial difficulty Jane had previously painted sharing a bedroom with her mother, her family facing bankruptcy. And when asked if she could explain why her statement to the FBI on this topic appeared to be wrong, Jane said perhaps it was a typo. Oh.

Further, Jane couldn’t recall if two personal injury lawyers had accompanied her to her first meeting with the FBI, the month after Epstein’s death, where, according to Menninger, she first alleged abuse by Maxwell. Except that the two lawyers were actually there in the court room, sitting in front of her.

Remember, this trial is complicated by the fact that, although Epstein is clearly the giant mastermind sick criminal at the root of the pain described, Maxwell is charged with being the sidekick. And that’s harder to prove. This is not a re-run of the Weinstein, Kelly or Cosby trials.

The defense team apparently sees it as their job not to shy away from Epstein’s criminal conduct, but to separate Maxwell from it. If today’s questioning is any indication, they are going to do this by accusing government witnesses of lying about Maxwell in pursuit of dollars that became available after Epstein’s death.

Maxwell lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said in her opening remarks yesterday, “I ask you to keep in mind that in asking questions of witnesses that may make witnesses feel uncomfortable, there is no interest in asking those questions to shame anyone. The purpose of our job is to see whether the government has proven the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, and you do that through questioning.”

Essentially, she was saying: It’s not about victim-shaming. But this is our job. Our job is to poke holes.

So, more missiles will fly today when Menninger resumes her cross. Can Jane withstand them credibly in the eyes of the jury? Stay tuned…

All three parts of my docu-series “Chasing Ghislaine” will air back-to-back on ID starting at 8/7c Friday, December 3.