by Dylan Howard
Tucked away in the gym bathroom, there is a photo of an arrogant-looking man—not Epstein. Featured in our photo insert, the man has an amber, almost orange hair sculpted into a perilous combover. His hand, rather small, is raised casually in the air as his elbow rests on the arm of his chair. He wears a billowy, ill-fitting button-down and slacks, staring pompously, with his lips pursed, into the camera. Behind him, a young brunette in a white tank top stands with her hands just above his shoulders, as if she was in the midst of giving him a massage. Behind her, another young brunette returns the favor, massaging the first girl’s shoulders as well. Behind the second brunette, a blonde in the chunky black sandals popular with nineties teens grins at the camera while massaging the second girl. A four-way massage, as only Epstein could orchestrate.
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were close friends during that heady Palm Beach era.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002, placing his first connection with Epstein in 1987, two years before he would step foot on Robert Maxwell’s Lady Ghislaine yacht.
“He’s a terrific guy,” Trump continued. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” If he believed that, why didn’t he report Epstein to the police? Perhaps he didn’t think the girls were that young. Or perhaps it was because he was, in some form, Epstein’s wingman.
In the early nineties, following Trump’s divorce from Ivanka Trump, the two were constant companions.
A recently unearthed archival video from 1992, recorded by NBC News, shows the two pervy playboys whispering and laughing, surrounded by women at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago—the same place from which Virginia Roberts had been recruited. Next to them was an editor for the National Enquirer, Larry Haley, who was reported to have been assigned full-time to the Trump “beat” for the scandal sheet.
In 2000, Trump and Epstein were photographed attending an event on the same property with Prince Andrew and Trump’s wife Melania.
According to insiders, Trump had full privileges at Epstein’s Palm Beach home, as well. He’s since denied ever being close with Epstein, but attorney Spencer Kuvin, who represents one of Epstein’s victims, claims the evidence suggests otherwise.
“We knew from deposition testimony that we took in the civil cases from a few of the people that work within Mr. Epstein’s home that Donald Trump was more than just a casual acquaintance of Mr. Epstein,” he told reporter Doug Montero.
We knew that because even on one occasion, we were aware that Mr. Trump had come to the house and stopped by and just ate in Mr. Epstein’s kitchen. And just sat there, and chatted, and ate in the kitchen with him. So, this was more than just a casual acquaintance. This was somebody that he knew and that they spoke with one another, they socialize with one another.
We also knew that Epstein and Trump had gone to parties together at Mar-a-Lago that Mr. Trump had arranged. We knew that one of the victims that came forward and accused Epstein of essentially turning her into a sex slave was found at Mar-a-Lago originally, she was working there, and that’s where Epstein got her from.
So, we also know through stories that have come forward now from two young girls that were sisters that were in the New York area, that Mr. Trump had stopped by Mr. Epstein’s New York home on occasion as well. So as far as high-profile friends, we certainly knew that Mr. Trump was a close friend of Mr. Epstein during those exact years that Mr. Epstein was molesting these young girls. . . . These are two gentlemen that definitely ran in the same circles.
Later, Epstein’s flight logs would show an entry for Trump on the Lolita Express. Not only was his phone number found in Epstein’s little black book; but also, more than a dozen additional ways to contact him.
After Epstein’s crimes became public, Trump attempted to distance himself. He reportedly barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2008, and said in 2019, “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” insisting, “I was not a fan.”
Indeed, during those years Epstein was an inescapable and infamous figure in Palm Beach, one who made little effort to conceal his dark deeds from friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Although few were invited upstairs or into his more personal quarters, his home was small, and the images could easily have been discovered.
As Epstein threw raucous parties for Palm Beach’s elite, was he toeing the line, taking some small thrill from the possibility of being exposed? Or was he using the sexual images and young women throughout the property as bait?
Kuvin told Montero: “We had heard that Mr. Epstein had created videos of high-profile individuals inside of his home and kept them as insurance. And maybe he had provided women to some of these individuals, or young girls.”
Maxwell family friend Laura Goldman attended one such debaucherous party at the Palm Beach mansion, and was disturbed by what she found.
“There was a bar in Palm Beach in the nineties called Chuck & Harold’s,” Goldman explained. “It’s not there anymore. Somebody there invited me to the party. Most of the crowd at that place at the bar scene were old Palm Beach, Wall Streeters and that kind of people.”
She continued:
The reason I went to Jeffrey Epstein’s house in the first place was the rumor was that he was throwing wild parties. Nobody knew who he was, really, at that time because it was before he took Bill Clinton on his plane. I thought, “Oh, well, let me check this out!” Then I got there and I thought, “Maybe I shouldn’t check this out.”
I noticed there were some drugs around. I noticed girls. And I noticed a lot of married men that didn’t seem to be there with their wives, which is sort of why I’m not mentioning who was there . . .
In the nineties, drug use wasn’t quite as common on Wall Street as it is now, or as open. I noticed at the party that people were wandering off to private rooms and God only knows what they were doing in there: drugs, women, whatever.
So I said, “Oh, maybe this isn’t the party scene for me.”
Many of Epstein’s party guests never could have guessed that what happened during the daytime at the house on El Brillo Way was even more disturbing.
In 2005, a mother called Florida’s Palm Beach Police Department, frantic, claiming that her fourteen-year-old daughter had been enticed to Epstein’s nearby mansion. There, the woman claimed, the teenager was paid $300 to strip to her underwear and massage the fifty-two-year-old. Her secret had been discovered when school administrators found the cash on her after a playground fight.
On her word, Detective Joseph Recarey launched a year-long undercover investigation into Epstein and exactly what was happening behind the walls of his mansion. What he found was worse than even the seasoned investigators could have imagined.
Ultimately, they spoke to thirty-four victims. The girls’ stories were chilling in their similarity.
In a buried videotaped police victim interview we obtained, one skinny and skittish young woman reveals the horrible secret she’d been hiding for years.
“Every girl that meets Jeffrey starts off with giving him a massage,” she said. “The more you do with him, the more you make. Basically, if you take off your clothes, you’re going to make more. If you let him do things to you, you’re going to make more.”
“By do things, you mean touch you?” a detective asked.
“Yes, touch you in inappropriate places,” she answered. “I did it naked, but I wouldn’t let him touch me or anything like that. So after that, he says, ‘You know what, listen, I’ll pay you $200 for every girl you bring to me.”
“It was like a train,” she said. “I brought my friends, they brought their friends, and it went on and on.”
“Did Jeff know anybody’s real true age or he didn’t care?” a detective asked.
She said, “I don’t think he cared. He told me the younger, the better.”
A cache of police victim interview videos obtained by Epstein: Devil in the Darkness reveals a chilling detail. Police entere
d the videos into evidence marked with the victims’ birthdates. Recorded throughout 2005, the anonymous dates are a haunting reminder of just how young Epstein’s victims were, even years after their abuse by Epstein:
6/1/86
8/09/86
12/30/86
9/21/86
12/30/86
2/8/87
6/6/87
6/18/87
6/30/87
10/10/87
2/29/88
3/8/88
4/19/88
4/21/88
7/28/88
One young victim recruited for Epstein by a high school friend was sixteen-year-old Michelle Licata. Licata spoke to our reporter Marjorie Hernandez, describing the horror of El Brillo Way.
“Life before Jeffrey Epstein was football games, cheerleading competitions,” Licata said. “When I met Jeffrey Epstein I was, I think about sixteen years old and I had just started a job at Publix. I was a cashier. I was trying to get into a different crew of friends that I wanted to hang out with. . . . There was a girl that I went to high school with and she was part of that group.”
Licata continued:
I can’t remember what class we were in, but she was sitting right next to me. She was writing me a note. She asked if I wanted to make some extra money for Christmas. Having seven brothers and sisters, I thought that this is going to be the year that I’m going to get everybody something. That’s exactly what I wanted to do.
She was writing me a note and said, “Do you want to make some extra money?” I was like, “Yeah! I mean, how do you do that?” She said that she’s done it and that you just massage old guys. I was like, “Okay.”
I was like, “Do you have to have a license, like a massage license to do that?” She said no. Then she said, “But if you tell anybody, I will kick your ass.” I was like, “Okay.” I didn’t understand why she’d want to beat me up if I said that. Maybe she was embarrassed because she had to massage old guys, like wrinkly old men. That’s the vision that I had in my head. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t supposed to say anything. She took the note and crumpled it up and threw it away.
I was working at Publix at the time and she came picked me up. Then she started to take me down to Palm Beach. . . . When we started going down there, I was like, “Well this would make sense. It’s where rich people live. She said you can make some money. That’s where you would go.”
What I had envisioned in my mind was completely different than what was about to happen. I realized it when we pulled into someone’s driveway. I was thinking it was going to be like a building or a facility or something where there’s massage tables, but it was not like that at all.
I remember her just saying, “If somebody asks just say that you’re eighteen. I don’t think that they’re going to ask, but just say that you are.” I was like, “Okay.” Once again still thinking that it’s . . . You have to have a massage license. Maybe you had to be the age of eighteen to get that license? That’s the way that I was thinking about it.
We walked in through the back door. . . . There was a lady, I think two ladies that walked in behind us. One kept on walking past and then one was there and she was telling me, “Hi. I’m so-and-so.” I don’t remember her exact name. She had a clipboard in her hand. She looked like this model, really beautiful, tall, skinny blonde girl. . . .
She told me to write down my name and my number on the counter. . . . Then she’s like, “I just want you to come follow me.” . . .
We walked out of the kitchen and we’re going up this staircase. It was like half a spiral staircase. She was just prepping me to go into this room and she was telling me, “So the temperature’s going to be cooler, Jeffrey’s going to be in there. He’s going to be making some phone calls. There’s going to be some lotions on the counter. Just go ahead and start massaging him and just listen to what he says and what he wants you to do and just go ahead and do that.” I was like, “Okay.”
I went in there and there was . . . Like she said there was lotion set up on a vanity. There was already money sitting out.
Jeffrey Epstein came in and he introduced himself. He asked me what my name was and I told him, “Hi, I’m Michelle.” He looked like he was about to get on the phone and just go and do business, make phone calls.
When he came into the room, he had on a towel and that was it. He had it wrapped up around him and he just walked in. He still had on the towel when he was laying on his stomach and he just got onto the phone. He said there’s lotion and he set a timer. There was a timer on the table and he set that. He was asking me to . . . He got on the phone.
He was like, “Just go ahead and massage my feet.” Every once in a while, “Go ahead and massage my calves. Go ahead and massage this and that.” I was like okay, this seems to be normal. This would be a massage like any normal place. Then he got off the phone and he started talking to me.
That’s when I knew this was going to go wrong. When he started asking me very personal questions about my sex life. He was asking me how many guys I’d ever been with. Do I have a boyfriend? You look so beautiful.
You’re fighting back and forth like, “I don’t understand what’s really going on, but this old man is telling me to do things.” Then also you don’t really know who is this person, who is he? Does he have a gun? Is he going to kidnap me right now and lock me up in some kind of basement?
Then on top of it, putting his hand on my hip and spinning me, like, “Do a spin for me. Let me see what you look like.” It’s like okay, but you’re not really sure if you said no, what would happen? That’s what I was afraid of is if I say no, am I going to be killed?
What are my options for getting out of this room alive? Because so far, my mind has been wrong since pulling into a house and a driveway it has gone wrong. It just keeps getting worse and worse. We’re not at this place that I thought we’re going to be going to. There’s one person and now he is looking at me. Now he’s getting into a place into my head that is a very personal place. He is digging. He is digging in . . . That to me is worse than what he could do or touch me.
He took this really private place and he turned it into a nightmare for a really long time. It still haunts me. . . . I mean, here I am. I wrote down in my planner that I stayed on the phone until 4:00 in the morning with a boy. That’s what I thought was just so awesome. Then to have or I think I wrote, I kissed so-and-so. I mean, that’s where my mind was. That’s the level of sexuality that I was at.
At this point I was in my bra and my underwear and I remembered the bra because it was one particular bra that I ever had really that was like that. It clipped in the front. He had popped it off. He just kept telling me he liked that and to do that. It just got more just grabby and turning me and looking at me. I just kept thinking if that timer could just hurry up, I would just really love to get out here. . . .
He knew that I was uncomfortable. He continued anyways. He was really going to town on himself. He kept going and then at one point he just, I guess finished and he jumped up, wrapped his towel around him. He said, “Okay, thank you. I would really love to see you again. There’s $200 there for you. Your number and your name make sure it’s downstairs before you go. I will call you and have you come back.”
I was just thinking, “Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding. You’re out of your mind. You’re out of your mind if you think I will ever be here again in my entire life.”
I just went back downstairs. . . . I guess my friend saw the terror on my face. I was just freaked out and she said, “What happened?” I was like, “I will tell you in the car. Just get out of here right now. I want to go home.”
We got in the car and she’s like, “What?” I was like, “He was trying to finger me and stuff.” She’s like, “That’s it? That’s not a big deal. He tried to do that with my last friend.”
I was like, “What’s your last friend? How many people have you brought?” It was like this feeling of just being used as someone’s play toy. I j
ust put my sunglasses on and I looked out the window. It was like forty-five minutes’ drive back to my car.
I was just crying without her knowing the whole way home. I was just thinking about, I don’t know. How’s anybody ever going to love me?
Ashamed, Licata told only her very best friend what had happened, and tried to move on. A year later, she got a visit from the police.
“I was seventeen, and some men in some black suits showed up at my house,” she told Hernandez. “My brother answered the door and he was like, ‘Michelle there’s some men in black suits looking for you. Why?’ I was like, ‘I have no idea.’
I went out there and I was talking to them. They said, “Do you know Jeffrey Epstein?” I was like, “No.” I thought it was some kid. I thought some kid died in school.
They kept talking and I’m trying to think of like, “Was I doing something in high school?” I was still thinking, “Who did I hang out with at school that may have wanted to hurt themselves or kill themselves?” and I was like, “What’s happening?”
Then they said Palm Beach. It all just came back, rushed all through my body.
I was just like, “Oh my God. I was like, I’m in trouble. These men have found me and I’m going to go to jail.” I thought I was going to jail.
I met up with them in a parking lot, which is still really sketchy, in a parking lot right next to my work. We’re in their car and they had a recorder and they were recording me.
They didn’t explain a whole lot, just like, “Well this has happened to other girls. It’s okay you can tell us what happened.” There wasn’t any like, “Hey, let’s get together. Why don’t you come down to the station while we do this?” You would think any normal police investigation would be like fingerprints or something, or I don’t know what their goal was that day, but it didn’t make me feel safer to talk to them.
The police, when I was talking to them and in the car with them, they were just asking me what happened. They just wanted to know what I knew. What information I had. Do I remember anybody that was there? How did you end up there? They just asked me to tell my story to them as to what happened.