Yahoo News Ghislaine Maxwell: The British socialite at the centre of Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal
Ghislaine Maxwell has routinely been lauded as one of the world’s best connected socialites.
Whip smart, glamorous and charming, she spent years trading on her impeccable contacts, often photographed with politicians, entrepreneurs and royalty.
Yet those wealthy and powerful associates are now likely to be hard to find, quick to downplay their links with a woman embroiled in one of the biggest sex scandals of a generation.
Far from taking the pressure of Miss Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s death is expected to shine an ever brighter spotlight on the woman who had long been a fixture at his side.
Oxford-educated, a qualified helicopter pilot and fluent in several languages, it is easy to see why the great and the good were drawn to the daughter of disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell.
The youngest of nine siblings, Miss Maxwell is widely acknowledged to have been her father’s favourite; so much so that he named his £15million yacht after her.
It was Maxwell’s mysterious death on this vessel; the Lady Ghislaine, that would propel her to New York and into the arms of the now notorious Epstein.
The publisher’s apparent suicide off the Canaries in 1991 left the Maxwell family's reputation and finances in tatters.
As his empire unravelled with the discovery of a £460 million "black hole" in the pension fund of his Mirror Group Newspapers, Miss Ghislaine, who had just turned 30, fled to New York.
Based in Manhattan, she is variously described on Companies House documents as a director, manager and business consultant.
But primarily, she was a networker and is said to have revelled in her unrivalled connections, from the Duke of York to David Copperfield, Elon Musk to Donald Trump.
“If there was one word, it was charming,” Patrick McMullan, the society photographer was once quoted as saying.
“She had an upbringing and taste and knew how to run a house and a boat and how to entertain,” another acquaintance has said. “You can’t buy that. You can’t buy access, either.”
As a regular fixture on the New York social scene, Miss Maxwell soon came into the orbit of Epstein, almost a decade her senior, whom she briefly dated in the early Nineties.
Utterly broken by her father’s death, Epstein is said to have taken the gregarious Briton under his wing.
“He saved her,” one friend told a Vanity Fair writer. “When her father died, she was a wreck; inconsolable. And then Jeffrey took her in. She’s never forgotten that — and never will.”
The relationship soon fizzled out but the pair remained unequivocally close.
They are said to have stayed at Sandringham as the Duke of York's guests and regularly jetted all over the world in Epstein’s private jets.
Epstein once described Miss Maxwell as his “best friend” but scotched reports she was on his payroll.
Either way, many associates have described how she appeared to organise much of his life, connecting him with high profile associates and managing his multiple homes.
Yet as is now well documented, their friendship is also alleged to have had a darker side.
The exact nature of their relationship has been thrust sharply under the spotlight after a litany of allegations implicated them both in a sordid sex trafficking case that shows little sign of abating.
Court documents state that it is “an undisputed fact that multiple witnesses” have testified that Miss Maxwell, operated as Epstein’s “procurer of underage girls," - a claim she has vehemently denied.
Multiple women who have described being abused by Epstein have named Miss Maxwell as the person who drew them together.
Virginia Giuffre, a woman who claims to have been Epstein's teenage "sex slave" alleged in court documents filed in 2017 that she was recruited by Miss Maxwell to give Epstein massages while she was 15.
Ms Giuffre, formerly Roberts, also claims to have had sex with the Duke of York when she was 17 as well as several other of the financier’s famous friends.
She alleges that Miss Maxwell “had sex with underage girls virtually every day” and that her and Epstein’s “whole lives revolved around sex.
The socialite is there in the background of a now notorious photograph of the Duke standing with his arm around Ms Giuffre’s bare midriff, at her own London townhouse.
She was also pictured alongside him at model Heidi Klum's “Hookers and Pimps”-themed Halloween party in 2000 in New York
Mis Maxwell is also alleged to have recruited Johanna Sjoberg, then 21, who claims she approached her on her college campus, ostensibly to answer phones, and was later groped by the Duke of York whilst staying at Epstein’s New York mansion in 2001.
Another woman, Maria Farmer, who has claimed to have met Miss Maxwell at an art show in 1995, has alleged that months later, both she and Epstein sexually assaulted before molesting her 15-year-old sister.
The files relate to the case of Giuffre v Maxwell, in which Ms Giuffre sued Miss Maxwell for defamation.
The case was settled on the eve of the trial in May 2017 but the details were not disclosed until a successful appeal was lodged by the Miami Herald newspaper.
In stark contrast to the way in which she has led much of her adult life, Miss Maxwell, now 57, has remained largely under the radar since the lurid allegations began to surface.
Her New York townhouse is said to have been sold in 2016 and she is rumoured to have returned to London.
But neighbours of her three-storey mews house in Belgravia, as well as those at another property she owns in Salisbury, say they have not seen her for several weeks.
In the wake of Epstein’s apparent suicide in prison, the focus will inevitably turn to those closest to him, and there are few closer, or more implicated in the case, than Miss Maxwell.
Euan Rellie, an investment banker and social fixture who has known her for years, told New York magazine: “Ghislaine was funny and didn’t take herself too seriously.
“But she seemed like a woman who didn’t have any real job, didn’t have any real boyfriend, had lost her dad. A woman adrift who was clinging on to whatever she could find.”
