Ghislaine Maxwell believes her late lover and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was murdered rather than took his own life, her brother has claimed.
Disgraced paedophile businessman Epstein was found hanged in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting a trial for child sex charges.
Epstein’s notoriety and connections to figures including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew created numerous conspiracy theories surrounding his death.
Writers have also made claims of a series of ‘suspicious events’ surrounding Epstein’s death, including surveillance video of the incident disappearing and him being bunked with an accused quadruple murderer.
Asked about his suicide in a Spectator podcast yesterday, Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine’s older brother, said that ‘my sister does think that he was killed’.
Ghislaine Maxwell believes her late lover and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was murdered rather than took his own life, her brother Ian has claimed. Pictured: A courtroom sketch shows Ghislaine Maxwell, center, seated in court in new York
Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, currently faces six counts of trafficking women and minors for sexual purposes, which she denies.
The 65-year-old brother has been seen in New York to watch the ongoing sex trafficking trial alongside own of their other siblings, Isabel.
Giving his thoughts on the Epstein’s reported suicide, he compared swirling theories to those around the death of his own father, Robert Maxwell.
The body of the billionaire media tycoon and owner of the Daily Mirror was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean in 1991 after he apparently fell overboard from his yacht.
He had at the time been in significant debt and was set to default on million of pounds in loans, an event that would later collapse his business empire.
Ian told the podcast: ‘I don’t buy a lot of the conspiracy theories at all. It so happens that one of the conspiracy theories is about my father that he was murdered rather than committed suicide or had an accident.’
He said however, that of his father’s nine children, his sister Ghislaine was the ‘only one’ who believed he had been murdered.
‘And I would venture to believe that she may also think that Epstein was murdered… I do happen to think my sister does think that he was killed,’ he added.
Disgraced paedophile businessman Epstein was found hanged in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting a trial for child sex charges. Epstein’s notoriety and connections to figures including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew created numerous conspiracy theories surrounding his death
Epstein was found hanged in his jail cell at New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center
Ian added that he had himself only met Epstein once, in a joint 1996 meeting with Ghislaine and their brother Kevin.
The pair didn’t warm to each other however, with Ian describing the mysterious billionaire as a ‘cagey character’ who ‘took things from you rather than gave things back’.
Ian has also batted off claims that his sister has long been kept on a suicide watch regime at the Brooklyn detention centre, which has been described as ‘one of the most troubled facilities’ in the Justice Department’s prison system.
Though only able to communicate to her through her lawyers, he confirmed that the suicide watch stories were ‘a nonsense’ and that there had been ‘no evidence of any self-harm intent’.
The comments come as the prosecution yesterday rested on the tenth day of Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial.
The high-profile trial has moved more swiftly than anticipated, with the defence now set to argue the British socialite did not recruit and sexually abuse girls and pick out inconsistencies in accusers’ testimony.
Ian told the podcast: ‘I don’t buy a lot of the conspiracy theories at all. It so happens that one of the conspiracy theories is about my father that he was murdered rather than committed suicide or had an accident’
Jeffrey Epstein victim Annie Farmer was the last witness to take the stand for prosecutors yesterday and is the only accuser in the case to testify under her real name.
Farmer, whose older sister Maria was the first person to report Epstein and Maxwell’s alleged sexual abuse of underage girls in 1996,
The 42-year-old described meeting the late pedophile in New York in 1995 when she was 16, and how he brought her to his ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she met Maxwell.
She described how the two lavished her with gifts and offered to help her academic endeavors, before subjecting her to unwanted fondling of her breasts and cuddling instead.
Farmer said despite feeling ‘sick to my stomach’ she didn’t tell her sister Maria — then Epstein’s employee, who Farmer was visiting at the time — because she feared for her sibling’s job.
Months later Farmer, who was 16, was invited to travel from Arizona to New Mexico, she said.
Farmer was invited ostensibly as part of a ‘retreat’ that Epstein said would bring together some two dozen ‘academically gifted’ students,’ her mother, Janice Swain, said.
Epstein told Swain that Maxwell would ‘chaperone’ the girls.
But when she arrived Farmer found herself alone with Maxwell and Epstein.
A weekend that included shopping and movies also saw Maxwell direct Farmer to undress for a massage, according to testimony.
Maxwell then exposed Farmer’s breasts before ‘rubbing on my chest,’ she said.
‘I think this was all a pattern of them confusing my boundaries,’ Farmer told jurors. ‘With the ultimate goal of sexually abusing me.
Her testimony followed harrowing accounts from three other women who accused Epstein of sexual abuse and pinpointed Maxwell as his partner.
Previous accusers said they were as young as 14 when Maxwell allegedly began grooming them and arranging for them to give massages to Epstein that ended in sexual activity.
One woman, ‘Carolyn,’ said she visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home more than 100 times when she was between 14 and 18 years old.
Another key witness, who spoke under the pseudonym ‘Jane,’ detailed how Maxwell recruited her at summer camp and made her feel ‘special’ — before orchestrating or participating in sexualized massages and sex acts with the teenager and Epstein.
The trial is expected to resume next week on Thursday.
