As darkness fell on a December evening in 2021, I knocked on the door of a chic family home in a leafy suburb of West Palm Beach, Florida.
The woman who answered was a 60-year-old named Dorothy: she babysat her grandchildren and her daughter Carolyn Andriano owned the property.
I really wanted to talk to Carolyn. I knew she had an explosive, shocking and poignant story to tell.
A few weeks earlier, I had heard her give a harrowing snapshot of her traumatic life on the witness stand in a Manhattan courthouse as she testified against her sexual predator, the fallen British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
Dorothy and I hit it off immediately: we both felt passionately that the American legal and political establishment had engaged in a cynical cover-up to protect powerful, influential, and often wealthy figures linked to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
One young woman who has come under scrutiny following the release of the latest Epstein documents is Adriana Ross (right), a former Polish model at the elite agency who allegedly helped arrange Epstein's (left) daily massages .
Sarah Kellen, personal assistant to Maxwell and Epstein. She was referred to as Epstein's “lieutenant” because she allegedly recruited and booked girls for his “massages.”
For three hours, the New Yorker explained what it was like to be the mother of an Epstein/Maxwell victim. Years earlier, she had thought her 14-year-old daughter would supplement her pocket money by cleaning a house for a wealthy man who lived in a Palm Beach mansion. In reality, Carolyn was paid $300 a time to give Epstein “sexualized” massages, while she was offered similar sums to find other underage girls for the same perverted purpose. The money was used to feed Carolyn's drug addiction.
This meeting with Dorothy paved the way for a world-exclusive email interview with Carolyn a week later.
Tragically, this young woman's life ended far too soon. Tormented by her childhood experiences at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell, Carolyn — a striking, larger-than-life figure standing 5 feet 7 inches tall with a mane of dyed red curls — died of an overdose in a Florida hotel room last May. She was just 36 years old and left behind five children and her husband John.
This week, memories of my meeting with Dorothy in 2021 came flooding back after the names of dozens of people connected to Epstein were released in three major releases of court documents. They included Prince Andrew, former US President Bill Clinton – who, according to Epstein, “likes them young” – and a number of other famous or infamous figures, including the late “pop pedophile” Michael Jackson, the famous magician David Copperfield and even the famous British physicist Stephen Hawking.
The sheer volume of publications – many hundreds of pages – got me thinking about a simple question.
How can it be that in such a large case involving the organized sex trafficking of numerous minors and young women, only one person – Ghislaine Maxwell – is now in prison?
In 2021, Maxwell was unanimously convicted on five of the six counts against her. Four of the guilty verdicts were supported by Carolyn's allegations. The most serious crime, sex trafficking of minors, involved Carolyn's case alone and was punishable by a maximum of 40 years in prison.
After weeks of reading through the evidence at Maxwell's trial, I had no doubt that she deserved to go to prison for a long time.
It was clear that she had lost her moral compass, the case against her was overwhelming – while her refusal to testify in court seemed to me a sign of both her cowardice and her guilt.
The third woman under suspicion is Nadia Marcinkova. According to police documents from the Palm Beach investigation into Epstein in 2005, the disgraced financier once bragged that she was his “sex slave.”
However, the justice system only works if it is fair.
And my overwhelming feeling at the end of the trial was that Maxwell should not have been the only person tried. That others got away with it. What about the drivers, pilots, domestic workers and especially young women who witnessed suspicious activities by Epstein and Maxwell or actively recruited girls for abuse?
What was found on all the computers and security videos seized from Epstein's homes? Which powerful people knew about his crimes or perhaps even participated in them? There are many unanswered questions.
Detectives are supposed to go where the evidence leads them – but it appears that after he twice allowed Epstein to cheat justice – first in a scandalous plea deal in 2008 with prosecutors and then through an apparent suicide in prison in 2019 – to the USA The authorities seem happy to have caught Maxwell.
Have they turned a blind eye to the activities of other criminals?
For example, allegations against a number of women suspected of sex trafficking for Epstein were nipped in the bud. In the wake of Maxwell's sentencing, prosecutors were asked to file charges against four women who had previously been granted immunity from prosecution.
This included Sarah Kellen, personal assistant to Maxwell and Epstein. She was referred to as Epstein's “lieutenant” because she allegedly recruited and booked girls for his “massages.” During Maxwell's trial, Kellen's name was mentioned almost as often as the defendant's.
Carolyn Andriano alleged that in the first year or two after she met Maxwell when she was 14, he called her to arrange massages for Epstein. Afterwards it was Ms. Kellen who called her.
Lesley Groff is the fourth woman who may have more questions to answer: She is said to have been Epstein's executive assistant for 20 years
In documents released this week, numerous names have been linked to pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein (pictured).
Sarah Ransome, another victim, told the New York Times: “It was Ghislaine and Sarah Kellen who showed me how to please Jeffrey.” Kellen said: “I was thought to be such a monster, but this not true. 'I was raped and abused every week.'
A second young woman who has come under scrutiny following the release of the latest Epstein documents is Adriana Ross, a former Polish model at the elite agency who allegedly helped organize the pedophile's daily massages.
She moved to the US in 2002 and worked at his villa in Palm Beach, Florida, often flying on his private jet – nicknamed the “Lolita Express” – including with Clinton.
During a civil deposition in 2010, she was asked: “To your knowledge, has Prince Andrew ever been involved with underage women?” (Have you ever met him)? Did you fly with Andrew on (Epstein's) plane? She declined to answer.
The third woman under suspicion is Nadia Marcinkova. According to police documents from the Palm Beach investigation into Epstein in 2005, the disgraced financier once bragged that she was his “sex slave” that he bought from her family in the former Yugoslavia when she was 15 years old.
Ms Marcinkova is alleged to have taken part in sexual encounters with underage girls.
She visited him in prison 67 times while he served 13 months in 2008 for having sex with children. Her lawyers insist she was a victim and not a perpetrator or recruiter. Lesley Groff is the fourth woman who may have more questions to answer: She is said to have been Epstein's executive assistant for 20 years. In 2005, she bragged about having such a close bond with her boss: “I know what he's thinking.” Epstein's victims described her as one of his “planners” in his $75 million home in New York York were based.
One such victim, Jennifer Araoz, claims she was 14 years old when Epstein began abusing and raping her, and that Ms. Groff was the main planner of her “massages.”
Two years ago, Ms. Groff, then 55, lived with her husband and children in a $2.7 million home in Connecticut. Her lawyers said prosecutors had been investigating her for the past two years but had been told she did not plan to press charges against her.
And there is a fifth woman who perhaps embodies the often complex relationship between abuser and abused.
In her exclusive interview with the Mail in 2022, for which she received no money, Carolyn claimed that Virginia Giuffre (formerly known as Roberts) told her in 2001 that she slept with Prince Andrew in London when she was 17.
While a now-infamous contemporary image shows Giuffre posing with the late queen's second son in Maxwell's home, Carolyn's report was the first time there had been an independent report on Virginia's alleged meeting with Andrew, which the Duke did not commit to can remember.
Carolyn made it clear that she blamed Virginia for delivering her into the clutches of Epstein and Maxwell. For her part, Ms. Giuffre has admitted that she actively recruited young girls for Epstein, something she now deeply regrets.
And Carolyn had scathing comments about Maxwell, now 62.
“I want all young women to know what happened to me as a teenager and how it affected my life,” she told us. “I want to be a voice for all survivors of sexual abuse so that they don’t feel afraid to come forward, even years later.”
Private educator Maxwell continues to maintain her innocence and reportedly gives etiquette lessons to fellow inmates at the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution in Florida, where she is serving a 20-year sentence for child molestation and sex trafficking.
Her pedophile ex-boyfriend took his many secrets to his grave – and not everyone believes he actually committed suicide.
A few days after Carolyn testified against Maxwell, she sent her mother a YouTube video of a song called “I Don't Feel Any More.” Dorothy played it for me and cried for the first time in our interview when she heard the lyrics: “I always felt like I didn't belong here, it's been a long year, it's been a long life.”
Tears filled Dorothy's eyes as she reflected on her daughter's state of mind. “Nobody knows how deep this goes,” she says. “I don’t know if she’ll still be alive from one day to the next.”
Now, tragically, she is gone. And with the world's attention once again focused on Epstein, the questions are sure to continue to grow for those who may have aided and abetted his dirty crimes.