Chapter Ten A Very Important Man #2
In the fall of 2000, Epstein and Maxwell announced that it was time for me to accompany them for the first time on a trip.
We were celebrating that I’d successfully completed my “massage training,” they said, as they unveiled the itinerary.
First, we’d take one of Epstein’s private planes—he owned a Gulfstream IV, a Boeing 727, and a helicopter—from Palm Beach to New York.
Then, after a few days in New York, we’d fly south to the most luxurious of Epstein’s properties: a seventy-two-acre island he owned in the US Virgin Islands, right next to Saint Thomas.
The private sanctuary was called Little Saint James, but Epstein liked to call it “Little Saint Jeff’s.
” The place sounded exotic, especially to a girl who’d never left the mainland United States, and I told Epstein and Maxwell that I looked forward to seeing it.
I remember when Dad dropped me off at El Brillo Way on the day we were to depart, Epstein came out to the driveway and introduced himself.
“We’ll take care of her,” Epstein told my father.
In the decades since, flight logs made public in various lawsuits show that during my time with Epstein, I accompanied him on his private jets, both domestically and internationally, at least thirty-two times (on twenty-three of those trips, Maxwell was there too).
But that tally represents just a tiny fraction of my travel with them.
For one thing, we often flew together (or I flew solo to meet Epstein) on commercial airlines.
Maxwell always booked those flights through the same travel agency—it was called Shoppers Travel—but those records are not public, so I have no access to them.
When it comes to our travel on Epstein’s jets, meanwhile, only one of Epstein’s pilots, David Rodgers, has turned over his records to authorities.
This first trip I took with Epstein and Maxwell was on a plane flown by another pilot, Larry Visoski Jr., who’d worked for Epstein since 1991.
Visoski and Epstein were close. In addition to maintaining Epstein’s planes, Visoski built Epstein’s home theaters in the Caribbean and in Palm Beach and advised Epstein on which boats and cars to purchase (he once said he helped Epstein with “anything that moves”).
At one point, Epstein gave a Hummer he owned to Visoski for his personal use, and when the pilot’s wife wanted to build a house in New Mexico, Epstein gifted Visoski forty acres near his ranch’s western boundary on which to do so.
So when exactly was my first trip with Epstein?
Without Visoski’s logs I can’t be sure, but I think it was in the latter part of 2000.
I’ll never forget how, on our first flight, Epstein told Visoski to let me sit in the cockpit during takeoff.
I’d been on a plane just twice before: when I flew to and from Salinas for my exile in California.
But on those trips I sat in a coach seat in the back.
Being up front, with a 180-degree view, was thrilling.
I told Visoski it felt like riding a roller coaster, and I loved roller coasters.
The rest of our flight was less exciting. When I returned to the cabin, where Maxwell and Kellen seemed to be napping in their reclined seats, I saw that Epstein was wide awake and had his socks off. He looked at me expectantly. I would spend the next two hours massaging his feet.
After landing at a private airport in Teterboro, New Jersey, we were picked up by a trim Filipino man in a sober black suit: Epstein’s New York butler, Jojo Fontanilla.
Jojo and his wife, June, took care of Epstein in Manhattan, managing a housekeeping staff that numbered in the dozens.
Always dressed in suits and pristine white gloves, these servants waited hand and foot on Epstein and his guests.
Who knows what the Fontanillas’ real first names were, since Epstein—like Maxwell—insisted upon calling servants by American-sounding names of their own choosing.
Jojo loaded our luggage into an SUV and got behind the wheel, and it wasn’t long before we arrived at Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse.
Some have said the place looked more like an embassy or a museum than a private home, and I would have to agree.
Outside the entrance—a fifteen-foot-tall double door made of solid oak and adorned with a huge brass doorknob shaped like a knotted rope—two polished brass letters were affixed to the stone facade: JE.
The sidewalk there was heated, Epstein told me, so no snow could pile up.
To enter, we passed under a stone archway topped with a gargoyle’s grimacing face, then climbed eight steps to an enormous marble foyer.
Inside, caramel-colored tiles—Epstein said they were imported French limestone—covered the first floor, which was lavishly furnished and brightened by arched windows.
Everything inside seemed bigger than necessary—the chandeliers could’ve lit up a train station; the dining-room table, surrounded by chairs upholstered in a loud leopard print, seated twenty.
The walls were lined with massive shadowy paintings and tapestries depicting violent scenes.
A staircase led up to Epstein’s office, which housed a gilded desk, a nine-foot ebony Steinway concert grand piano, and an antique Persian rug so big that, as Epstein liked to say, it must’ve been made for a mosque.
There was also more than one elevator. For a girl from Loxahatchee, such grandeur was almost impossible to process.
I felt as if I had stepped inside an architectural monument the likes of which I’d only seen in books: the Vatican, say, or the Taj Mahal.
Announcing that he was tired from the flight, Epstein led me down a hallway lined with art and antiquities.
He favored sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious statuary, including a bronze casting of the half-human, nymph-loving Greek god Pan, whose goatlike horns and haunches, Epstein told me, symbolized fertility.
I followed Epstein into a black-marbled alcove with a massage table at its center—a place so gloomy that I would nickname it “The Dungeon.” He pointed at a hutch on one wall that housed a collection of massage oils and a CD player, which he told me to load.
By this time, I was used to choosing the music before each day’s “session.” Back in Palm Beach, I had gotten good at reading Epstein’s mood to determine which of his favorite albums to play.
Sometimes he wanted opera, other times classical.
The only popular artists he favored were female vocalists such as Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.
I don’t remember what CDs I chose that day.
I only remember that when I had satisfied Epstein sexually, I was escorted to an apartment in a building owned by his brother, Mark, on East Sixty-Sixth Street.
The one night I slept there I luxuriated in having my own space, but that freedom would be short-lived.
The next day, I foolishly went out for a long walk, discovering New York City for the first time.
But because I had no cell phone, Epstein and Maxwell couldn’t reach me as I walked around for hours, filled with awe.
I remember that the skyscrapers ringing Central Park looked like toy soldiers standing at attention.
There were so many people on the sidewalks, bundled up to enjoy the chilly afternoon.
I had some money in my pocket, and I bought a disposable Instamatic camera—the first of many I’d purchase over the coming months.
I didn’t know how much longer I would be seeing the world as part of Epstein’s entourage, so I wanted photos to remember where I’d been.
When I returned to Epstein’s townhouse, however, both he and Maxwell were pacing in the entryway, frantic.
“Where have you been?” Epstein demanded angrily as Maxwell glared at me.
That was the last time I saw the Sixty-Sixth Street apartment.
From that day forward, whenever we were in New York I would occupy a fifth-floor bedroom in Epstein’s house: an enormous loftlike space, its carved moldings coated in gold paint, that was dominated by a menacing wall-hanging that gave me the creeps—it showed wild boars feeding on the carcasses of other animals as a few screaming children looked on.
There was also an intercom that Epstein used to summon me.
I quickly learned not to keep him waiting.
Today when I recall the sumptuous trappings of Epstein’s homes, I feel conflicted.
In too many media accounts, descriptions of Epstein’s over-the-top lifestyle have fueled the perception that the girls Epstein victimized were lucky to find themselves in such surroundings.
I don’t want to add to that degrading narrative.
To be sure, traveling with Epstein meant being introduced to a level of luxury I would never have experienced otherwise.
And I will not dispute that it feels nicer to sleep under sheets made of premium Egyptian cotton, not low-rent polyester.
But the comforts of Epstein’s glamorous life—while I noticed and even enjoyed them—would come at a horrible cost to me.
What made me feel most at home in this pedophile’s world?
Far more than Epstein’s riches, it was the prior abuse I’d endured on humble Rackley Road.