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Jackson, a senior journalist at Maxwell's Daily
Mirror, says he saw Ghislaine shredding
documents aboard her father's yacht shortly after
his death. The Maxwells denied this, but Jackson
has never retracted his version. Whatever her
impulses were after Maxwell died, one thing cannot
be disputed: Ghislaine was heartbroken. One friend
described her as 'catatonic' with grief. Rupert Fairfax
said: 'She worshipped him. He was not just her
father, he was her hero. Then, as well as having to
cope with losing him, she had to cope with
everything people were saying about him.'
Maxwell's death came when Ghislaine was getting
over the break-up of her four-year romance with
Count Gianfranco Cicogna, a member of the Ciga
hotels clan. The dashing and urbane Cicogna was
credited by Ghislaine's friends with helping her shake
off the frumpy image she had at Oxford. 'He told her
what to wear, where to get her hair cut — everything,'
said one.
With her father dead and Cicogna gone, Ghislaine turned up in
New York, the town she was to conquer. She rented a one-bedroom
flat on the Upper East Side and began to reinvent herself. She was far
from destitute. Her father had bought her a pretty mewshouse in South
Kensington which, in 1992, was valued at £500,000. She also had a
trust fund that provided her with £80,000 a year, at that time more
than the prime minister earned. And she was a knockout, with deadly
charm and, perhaps most importantly, a bulging Filofax. In London,
she had suffered for her father's crimes. One estimate of the money
missing from his companies was £727 million. In New York she was a
celebrity, with an address book full of the names of rich and famous
friends. Robert Maxwell was a determined soldier, ruthless and,b3i. his
own admission, an unflinching killer. His daughter, in whose dark
beauty the old tyrant can still be discerned, was not about to succumb
to guilt by association. She hit the phone. Soon, she was being seen at
all the smart parties. Men adored her. She talked dirty in a British
boarding-school accent, peppeiing.her Ral5el'aisian asides with an
occasional four-letter word. She once brought dinner-party chatter to a
standstill when she announced she was planning to remove all her body
hair. Then, about a year after her father's death, she was photographed
boarding Concorde at Heathrow, heading back to New York There
was outrage. Maxwell's retirees had just been told their pension
payments were being stopped. How could the evil crook's daughter
spend £2,000 on a plane ticket while that was happening? In fact, she
Far left, Ghislaine with
Epstein at Sandring-
ham. Left, with Prince
Andrew and 17-year-
old Virginia Roberts,
Jeffrey Epstein's
'personal masseuse', in
2001. Above, Epstein's
51,000-square-foot
townhouse in New York
didn't spend the money. Her ticket was bought by the soft-spoken
grey-haired American who, unnoticed by the photographers, boarded
the plane with her. This was Jeffrey Epstein, then a shadowy figure
whose copious supply of money baffled everyone. What did he do?
Some thought he was a bounty hunter, recovering vast sums owed to
the very rich. Others said he was a property developer. Or a financier.
The question has never been satisfactorily answered. To this day, no
one really knows where Epstein gets his money. But there is an awful
lot of it. He lives in what is believed to be Manhattan's largest private
residence, a house once owned by the Macy family, spanning more
than 50,000 square feet. He also has a 7,500-acre ranch in New
Mexico, a 70-acre island in the US Virgin Islands and a house in Palm
Beach, Florida, which is said to be worth around £3 million. He has a
helicopter and an executive jet and he either owns or has access to a
Boeing 727. He used the Boeing to fly ex-president Bill Clinton, actors
Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker and others to Africa to investigate
AIDS and poverty. When Ghislaine met Epstein, he was in his late 30s
and had just been named Cosmopolitan's bachelor of the month. Given
his money and screen-star looks, one can see why. But Epstein had
something else Ghislaine found irresistible. He is frighteningly clever.
He started out as a maths teacher at an exclusive private school and
Below, from left, Ghislaine with, from left, India Hicks, Sophie Dahl and Amy Sacco; Naomi Campbell. Donald Trump and Melanie Knauss: and Tim Jefferies
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