Prince Andrew has been distancing himself from longtime friend and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who hanged himself in a cell last month.
Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, 59, who enjoys the title of Duke of York, has insisted he first met Epstein, who was 66, in 1999. But flight logs show that the prince’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, with whom he has remained close, and their two daughters were with Epstein in the Bahamas in April 1998.
Virginia Giuffre, who alleges Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell exploited her when she was underage, has accused the prince of forcing her to have sex with him when she was 17. “He knows exactly what he’s done,” Giuffre said last week from the steps of a Manhattan courthouse. “And I hope he comes clean about it.”
Days earlier, the prince had said he was “at a loss to be able to understand or explain” his dead friend’s “lifestyle.” The royal downplayed his closeness with Epstein, referring to their relationship as a “former association or friendship.” He claimed to be in the dark about any of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes involving underage girls, despite a friendship spanning well over a decade, repeated visits to and stays at Epstein’s various homes, and flights on Epstein’s planes.
The prince said he met Epstein in 1999 and claimed he saw Epstein infrequently, “probably no more than only once or twice a year.” It was, he added, “a mistake and an error” to visit him in 2010 after his sex conviction.
But the claims of short and infrequent visits are belied by Andrew’s lengthy stays at Epstein’s homes. Andrew spent multiple days on Epstein’s private island in February 1999, and in 2000, the two saw each other nearly a half a dozen times or more in the United Kingdom and the United States, with Andrew reportedly staying at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion multiple times, apparently followed by a New Year’s excursion to Thailand in early 2001.
While Andrew acknowledged he stayed in “a number” of Epstein’s residences, he didn’t mention he’d invited Epstein to royal residences such as Windsor Castle, Sandringham Estate, and Balmoral Castle.
Maxwell, 57, is said to have introduced Andrew and Epstein. The youngest daughter of British publisher and fraudster Robert Maxwell, she moved to New York after her father’s death in 1991 and became Epstein’s on-again off-again girlfriend and, eventually, his alleged right-hand woman in a scheme to exploit underage girls. She is alleged to have helped Epstein abuse Giuffre and numerous others over the years. As Epstein helped her move through the New York City social scene, she successfully insinuated herself with British royalty and brought Epstein along for the ride.
British newspapers reported in 2000 and 2001 that Maxwell and Andrew had become great friends and may have been romantically involved. The two met through Andrew’s ex-wife, whom flight logs show Epstein knew as early as 1998.
It’s not clear if Andrew is under investigation or if Maxwell will be charged. Attorney General William Barr has said that the investigation into Epstein’s alleged international sex trafficking conspiracy will continue and that any co-conspirators “should not rest easy.”
Timeline
April 16, 1998: Epstein was listed as the only passenger on a flight from Palm Beach, Florida, to the Bahamas, where the logs say Epstein “met Princess Sarah Ferguson and kids on the ground.” Ferguson, a controversial figure in Britain who divorced Andrew in 1996 but remained his defender through the years, has two daughters with the prince. Years later, it was reported Ferguson visited Epstein’s island with her daughters at a yet-unknown date, but Epstein declined to have her visit a second time without the kids in tow. A British paper speculated in 2000 that two had business dealings together.
February 1999: Andrew flew with Epstein for the first known time just five weeks into 1999, when the royal, Epstein, Maxwell, Maxwell’s assistant Emmy Tayler, and French decorator Alberto Pinto flew from New Jersey to St. Thomas in the Caribbean, where Epstein owned a now-well-known island. They spent four days there and flew back to Palm Beach, where Epstein had an estate, on Feb. 12, 1999, along with Russian model Anna Malova, a woman named Clare Hazel, and financial executive Gwendolyn Beck, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2014 (receiving donations from Epstein) and was a one-time girlfriend of Sen. Bob Menendez.
Summer or fall 1999: Andrew reportedly welcomed Epstein and his entourage, including young women, to Balmoral Castle in Scotland as part of a U.K. trip by Epstein that included a stay at Maxwell’s London apartment.
February 2000: Epstein, Andrew, and Maxwell attended a tennis tournament at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump announced Andrew’s presence in the crowd, and Trump and then-girlfriend Melania Knauss were photographed with him. Epstein was photographed with Maxwell and Michael Bolton. This was reportedly followed by a trip to New York to attend a fashion show.
March 2000: Andrew and Maxwell reportedly attended a fundraising dinner for the London Symphony Orchestra in New York.
April 2000: Andrew and Maxwell were spotted holding hands together at Nello’s restaurant in Manhattan, and a staff member reportedly claimed the pair had been seen there together in 1999 also. Maxwell was also spotted dining at the restaurant with Bill Clinton in 2002.
May 2000: Andrew reportedly traveled to New York and then vacationed in Florida with Maxwell and Epstein. Flight logs show they hopped a ride on Epstein’s plane on May 12, 2000, flying from Teterboro, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida, with a bodyguard, Epstein, Tayler, Pinto, an unknown woman named Alexia, and an unnamed male.
June 2000: Epstein and Maxwell were invited by Andrew to the Dance of the Decades celebration at Windsor Castle for the Queen’s party celebrating four royal birthdays.
September 2000: Maxwell was photographed with Andrew at the wedding of Aurelia Cecil, Andrew’s ex-girlfriend, near Salisbury.
October 2000: Andrew attended Heidi Klum’s Halloween Party, with a “Hookers and Pimps” theme that year, with Maxwell in New York.
December 2000: Epstein and Maxwell were invited to a £20,000 weekend celebration at the royal Sandringham House that Andrew organized in honor of Maxwell’s 39th birthday. The event included pheasant shooting, and Andrew was photographed with Maxwell and Epstein.
January 2001: Andrew vacationed in Phuket, Thailand, for the start of the New Year, where he was photographed on a yacht with topless women. Epstein and Maxwell were reportedly with him for at least part of the vacation.
2006: Epstein was arrested and charged with sex crimes after a lengthy FBI investigation.
2007-2008: Alex Acosta, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, reached an agreement with Epstein’s attorneys where their client was allowed to plead guilty to state-level prostitution solicitation charges related to a 17-year-old girl. Epstein served just 13 months in Palm Beach County Jail — which included work release — and registered as a sex offender. The secret agreement was struck before investigators finished interviewing all the alleged victims, was made without informing some victims, and included protections for some of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators.
December 2010: The friendship between Epstein and Andrew continued once Epstein finished his short jail stint. Footage recently surfaced of Andrew waving goodbye to a young woman leaving Epstein’s New York abode in late 2010. The two were pictured strolling through Central Park together around the same time, and Andrew is believed to have stayed with Epstein for numerous consecutive days.
March 2011: It was revealed in early 2011 that, at the request of Andrew, Epstein paid Ferguson’s former personal assistant Johnny O’Sullivan £15,000 to help let Ferguson’s £5 million debt be restructured. Ferguson responded by saying she’d pay the money back and expressed her “regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me” and admitted “this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf.”
July 2011: Andrew stepped down after years as the U.K.’s special representative for trade after his continued friendship with Epstein was made public.
2015 lawsuit: Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Maxwell in 2015, saying was pressured into having sex with Andrew “three times, including one orgy” when she was underage in 2001. A photo shows Andrew with his arm wrapped around her waist in Maxwell’s London home when Giuffre was 17 years old. Maxwell is smiling in the background. Giuffre claims she also met Andrew in New York in March 2001 and in the U.S. Virgin Islands in April 2001. Epstein’s flight logs show Giuffre was there, and other reporting suggests Andrew was near those locations at the same time. Other women’s allegations were included in the lawsuit too.
2015 denials: Buckingham Palace and Andrew called all these allegations “categorically untrue.”
July 2019: Epstein was arrested by authorities at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on his way home from Paris and, according to a 14-page federal indictment, he sexually exploited and abused “dozens of minor girls” at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations, between 2002 and 2005 and perhaps beyond. Epstein pleaded not guilty.
Aug. 9, 2019: Over 2,000 pages of court records connected to Giuffre’s lawsuit were unsealed and included allegations by Giuffre that Maxwell instructed her to have sex with Andrew.
Aug. 10, 2019: Epstein died in what the medical examiner ruled a suicide by hanging.
Buckingham Palace has since issued a series of denials, saying that “this relates to proceedings in the United States, to which The Duke of York is not a party” and that “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.” When the 2010 video of Andrew with Epstein emerged, the palace said that “the Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes.”
