All language subtitles for Chasing.Ghislaine.S01E01.Sins.of.the.Father.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor[eztv.re]_Legendas01.ENG

[Reporter] Just a week after her
third requested bail was denied,

ghislaine Maxwell is
facing new charges.

Ghislaine Maxwell is accused of
finding and grooming underage girls

to be sexually abused by her
ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein.

[Anchor] This is on
top of six charges

Maxwell was already facing tied

to Epstein's alleged
sex trafficking network.

[Vicky] Ghislaine
Maxwell, the British socialite

and one-time lover of disgraced
child abuser, Jeffrey Epstein,

is behind bars facing trial.

The charges against her,

finding and grooming
young girls for Epstein.

According to indictment, she
was allegedly a central figure

in his massive sex
trafficking operation.

The government has laid out
the cases of four underage girls

the duo is accused
of trafficking

over a period spanning
more than a decade.

[Anchor 2] Comes here
to say not only did Maxwell

recruit young girls for Epstein,

but she actually took part in
sexually abusing the teens.

[Vicky] If you find the idea of
a privileged, educated woman

doing something like this to
other women, completely shocking,

you're not alone.

Many of ghislaine's
British friends

have told me privately
that they are stunned.

Where had the
clever, glittering,

Oxford-educated woman
they'd known gone?

My name is Vicky ward.

Vicky ward, everybody.

[Vicky] I'm a
journalist in New York,

and I've known ghislaine
casually for many years.

In a strange twist of fate,

I was also one of
the first reporters

to investigate Jeffrey Epstein.

That was back in 2002.

I spoke to him then for hours,

and I've kept the transcripts
of those conversations.

One of the very few interviews

that have ever
been done with him.

[Jeffrey] Any girls talked that
you haven't told me about?

Seems so much strange that an
article about me has no girls in it.

[Vicky] I was also
the first journalist

who was trusted by
two of Jeffrey's survivors

with on-the-record
sexual abuse allegations.

And that would make me an
inadvertent part of the story.

I now understand that the root of
Jeffrey's ability to cover up his crimes

was his extraordinary
skill at manipulation,

as well as the very powerful
figures who surrounded him.

When I re-read the
transcripts of our conversations,

I saw that Jeffrey had
left me breadcrumbs.

The key to understanding Epstein

and the power structures
that protected him

had been staring me in
the face this entire time.

With Jeffrey Epstein's death,

ghislaine Maxwell
may be the last person

who knows the secrets
of his criminal enterprise.

[Jeffrey] You know,
she's my best friend.

She has been for
a very long time.

The mysterious death of
Jeffrey Epstein in a jail cell

in the summer of 2019

has left ghislaine Maxwell
standing almost literally

in his shoes.

She's the one now in jail,
facing charges so serious

that it's possible she'll be
imprisoned for the rest of her life.

She denies it all.

Ghislaine has been
denied bail repeatedly.

Her older brother, Ian, went on
television to plead for her release.

She's lost 20 pounds,
she's losing her hair.

She can't concentrate.

She has a flashlight shone in her
cell every 15 minutes during the night,

so she has no sleep
of any real quality.

And that is torture.

[Vicky] It seems that the
government wants to find out

what ghislaine knows about
Jeffrey Epstein's operations.

Well, so do I.

I've been trying to unravel
this mystery for almost 20 years.

And when she was
arrested, I decided to try again

for a podcast and now
for this documentary.

Of course, with COVID-19, I haven't
been able to travel to interview anyone,

so I had to do it by zoom or in a
socially distanced office setting.

Keep in mind that even though
ghislaine is the focal point,

and is certainly responsible
for her own actions,

this at its core is a story
about the power of men.

As I come to realize, all
the sticky threads of this story

merge together to
create a giant web,

a web that is still intact,
even after Jeffrey's death.

Now ghislaine, under
pressure, threatens to expose it.

While you may think you
know the story of Jeffrey Epstein,

ghislaine Maxwell
is the gatekeeper

to a tale that is even
deeper and darker.

And I've come to realize that if
you want to understand ghislaine,

you have to start with
her father, Robert Maxwell.

[Interviewer] Now Mr. Maxwell,
you're frequently described in the press

as irrepressible,

are you feeling perhaps a
little more repressible tonight?

Well, I don't know what being
irrepressible or repressible means.

I get on with the job in hand.

I am a doer.

I never give up.

[Vicky] Robert Maxwell was
tall, dark and charismatic.

In middle age, he
became vastly overweight,

but this didn't dampen
his magnetism.

Women, moguls and, obviously,
his family craved his attention.

He was an extraordinary man

who Rose from being a poor
czechoslovakian immigrant

to a globally
famous media mogul.

He came from a very poor family,

Jewish family, in
czechoslovakia.

Hoch, that was his surname.

Escaped before most of his
family died in the holocaust.

He then got to britain,
he got a military cross

for storming a
German machine post.

He was part of the
rebuilding of western Germany

and began various
publishing and print companies.

He started off by buying a small
publishing outfit called pergamon press,

which published
scientific journals,

those were important because
they were useful information

for various national leaders.

And no one has any doubt that
pergamon is a sound business.

But Maxwell was a man of
huge hunger and appetite.

And I think once he saw what
pergamon could do for him

in terms of influence
around the world,

he realized that the next step

was to try to own newspapers.

He appears to have decided to
get into a battle with Rupert Murdoch,

who is the other great
press baron in this country,

partly through the daily mirror,

which he bought along with
various other acquisitions.

And it was when he had the
means to publicize himself,

the country became aware of him

as this larger-than-life figure.

He was hugely famous in england.

I mean, he and Rupert
Murdoch were figures

who loomed really large
in the public consciousness.

[Interviewer] You understand
that you're a very controversial man

- in this country?
- I'm delighted.

[Tom bower] He
was a global colossus.

He was a man who
had huge media interest,

but also, huge
political relationships

with the president of america,
Israel, Germany, Russia,

britain, France, everything.

[Vicky] Biographer Tom
bower knew him and his family.

They said about Robert Maxwell,

he treated his
servants as directors,

and his directors as servants.

[Whistles]

He was ruthless
in his relationships,

[bleep] With the people
who might have helped him.

But, at the same time, knew
as well how to seduce them,

with caviar and krug champagne.

[Man] One of his constant
phrases to the minions was,

"who pays your wages, mister?"

There were occasions
when I was on the receiving

end of that... and, "okay, it
was my turn this morning...

[stuttering] Trusting,
"this afternoon,

let's hope it's
somebody else's turn."

What you think of this meeting?

It's excellent.

Good that it hasn't started yet.

You wait to see.

[Laughter]

[Vicky] Writer Nicholas
Stafford-deitsch

went to school with
Maxwell's youngest son, Kevin.

[Nicholas] I had a
girlfriend at the time,

and we ran into Kevin somewhere,

and he kindly
invited us up to swim,

and we arrived and as we
got down for the pool area,

Robert Maxwell
was lying sunbathing,

which is quite a
substantial sight.

And he said, "who
the hell are you?"

And I explained that Kevin
had invited us to swim,

and my girlfriend,
she was very nervous,

and she pulled a packet of
cigarettes out of her pocket

and lit a cigarette.

And he turned on
her very viciously,

and he sort of said, "what the
hell do you think you're doing?

Don't you realize how
stupid you are smoking?"

And I think he
reduced her to tears,

and I at the time
was big and brave,

so I said, "you don't talk
to my girlfriend like that."

And his whole demeanor changed

and he started smirking, as if
he thought this was rather funny.

And then became quite
charming, and he said,

"oh, yes, Kevin did
mention you'd be along too.

Yes, enjoy your swim."

He was a bully, and someone who
backed down if you stood up to him.

But I think he was doing
it for his own amusement.

[Tim] His wife told me that
he had a chip on his shoulder,

because of his background,

he would have been considered
too flamboyant, too rich,

and there's a little undercurrent
of antisemitism in britain,

certainly, against
this successful Jew

who'd come from nothing.

[Vicky] Maxwell's bullying
was not confined to outsiders.

He ruled his family
with an iron fist as well.

He and his wife,
Betty, had nine children.

Ghislaine was the youngest.

[Tim] She told me that she
had always set herself goals,

her first job was for her
father at 12 years old.

He was interested in
computers very early on,

and she was learning how to
program on a wang computer.

She and two of her
brothers, Kevin and Ian,

all went to marlborough
college, in wiltshire.

And then, they went to Oxford.

Ghislaine went to
balliol college in Oxford,

which is one of the
hardest colleges to get into.

[Tim] Betty said that although
Robert had had a chip,

she felt that he had
given the children security,

and that they didn't have
this feeling of inferiority.

I don't know if that
was wishful thinking.

He said he gave them plenty
of other complexes, I think.

[Vicky] And what was her
relationship with her mother like?

[Tom] I think Betty was a
very cold, hostile woman

who had collaborated with
Robert Maxwell's brutality

towards his children,
never protested.

The thing about
the Maxwell children,

from what I could see,
there's no weakness.

They're never weak.

They prove themselves
by being stubbornly strong.

That is their survival gene.

And they were very disciplined,
they had to work hard.

[Vicky] At one point, Maxwell
even fired his son, Ian.

I taught them as youngsters,

whenever you have to
choose between duty and love,

you must opt for duty.

He chose love, had
to pay the penalty.

[Martin Dillon] The guy in
many ways was a monster.

- [Vicky] Yeah.
- He treated his children

the way he treated the
people who would work for him.

The people who'd work
for him, he'd take them,

he'd kept files on them.

He treated people appallingly.

[Vicky] Martin Dillon, coauthor
of another book on Maxwell,

says the one person who
escaped some of this treatment

was ghislaine.

[Martin] Ghislaine was his
darling, she's his younger daughter,

and she was pretty
and she was very bright.

Well-educated, was also
a linguist to some extent,

and he really had
her around his life

more than any of
his other children.

And you can see
in the photographs,

where she's at a
football match with him,

as quite apparent that he
really loves this young girl.

And he names his
yacht the lady ghislaine.

But he was warm with her,

you know, he was
very thoughtful, caring.

And he's willing to give
her what she wanted.

[Tom] She did have charm, that's
why her father liked her so much,

because she did have the charm
of a young, the youngest daughter

that knew how to twirl him round
her finger as well, to an extent.

And he was very
vulnerable to that.

I'd say she did learn how to
manipulate him to an extent.

And she knew what he wanted,
and gave him what he wanted,

which was ludicrous obedience.

There is one scene in the book,

where you describe
this groveling letter

that she had to
write to her father

because she'd
gone to this dinner

where he was getting an award

and felt she hadn't given
him a proper description.

I mean, that to me was amazing.

This is a force of Rob
Maxwell's personality,

not only his children, but
also politicians and bankers

and the rest also bowed to
his astonishing personality.

[Vicky] Ghislaine's
friends from Oxford

don't want to
speak on the record,

but they have very clear memories
of the Maxwell family home,

headington hill hall.

She would often invite
her university friends

to come home for the weekend.

And they began to
dread that invitation.

And the reason for
this was her father,

and she would say, "daddy, daddy, I
want to introduce my friends to you",

and he would say, "you know, I'm
not interested in meeting your friends,

I just want to go have
something to eat."

And one friend remembered
how ghislaine was playing chess,

and Robert Maxwell walked up and
just moved ghislaine's chess piece,

without saying a word,
without asking her,

and then he just walked away.

And the person I know
who witnessed this

was completely horrified and said it
was such a sort of aggressive power play.

It was quite deliberate, he
knew exactly what he was doing,

and ghislaine
didn't say anything.

[Nicholas] I met
ghislaine fairly soon

after I went back
to do my master's,

and she was doing
her bachelor's.

It was just some social event,

in which the conversation had suddenly
changed direction rather dramatically.

Ghislaine just sort of looked
me in the eye and said,

"will you take
me out to dinner?"

I remember being
rather impressed

and thinking ghislaine
was quite sophisticated.

I thought, why not?

Quite soon after sitting down,

ghislaine made a
remark to the effect

that she was so proud
of who her father was,

that she could always find a
story about him in a newspaper,

and on a good day, she
could find two stories.

She spoke a great deal
about her father, I mean,

I don't remember very much
else about the conversation.

I think that there was a great deal
of self-confidence on the surface,

but I'm not sure deeper down.

I think her character was very
dependent upon who her father was.

[Martin] There's something flawed
within that particular personality,

which is ghislaine Maxwell.

And I think a lot of it
comes out of that relationship

she had with both her
mother and her father,

particularly with her father.

I mean, she adored him,
and she must've known

that he was, you know, a really
disgusting man in many respects.

But I think a lot of girls,
you know, love their fathers

even though their fathers are
villains, and he was a villain.

[Reporter] Maxwell invited 1,000
admirers to his Oxford mansion

to celebrate his
65th birthday party.

[Indistinct chatter]

[Vicky] According to all the
biographies of Robert Maxwell,

the irony of all the glitz
and the trappings, you know,

the yachts and the
planes and helicopter,

was that it was all
based on a sham.

He kept this media empire afloat

by constantly
moving funds around

to appear as if he was much
richer than he really was.

[Tom] The whole nature of
Robert Maxwell's operation

was to steal money
'cause he didn't have any.

- He was bankrupt.
- Yeah.

He, throughout his whole life,

he was condemned as a crook

in one instance after another,

whether it was in 1954 in
London real publishing scam,

in 1969, that was another
fraud he got away with.

He always got away, he's
always talked his way out

and bamboozled and
bulldozed the opposition

and the authorities aside

because he was so
courageous, purposeful, ruthless,

a gambler and
all the rest of it.

[Man] Are you saying there's
a witch hunt on against you?

Well, I certainly would say
that the city establishment

are running a witch
hunt against me.

[Vicky] The publishing business
he built served a second purpose.

Access, including to places
most people never travelled.

He was using a publishing empire

to get in and out of, you
know, parts of Soviet union.

And he was going to the
leaders of countries like

in Bulgaria, to todor zhivkov,

the despot there,
and saying, you know,

"I would love to sort of have
your autobiography published,

'cause people should
really know about you."

[Vicky] He had a long-standing
relationship with mikhail gorbachev,

dating back to the
years after world war ii.

[Tom] The relationship between
Maxwell and gorbachev was close,

and there's no doubt he was
very, very involved and instrumental

in helping Russian
Jews come to Israel.

[Martin] Maxwell did
some very bad stuff,

he also did some
very good stuff.

I mean, Maxwell got thousands upon
thousands of Jews out of the Soviet union.

Maxwell did a lot of
business with the kgb,

he did a lot of business with
organized crime syndicates.

He also did business
with police intelligence

though he didn't agree
to work for them full-time.

[Vicky] Martin Dillon
believes Maxwell operated

for a third intelligence
agency as well.

[Martin] He did a lot of
business with Mossad,

particularly beginning
in the early 1980s,

until his death in 1991.

[Vicky] Maxwell denied
that while he was alive.

But three additional sources
tell me he was involved

with Israeli intelligence
in the 1980s,

including former Mossad
officer, Victor ostrovsky.

Basically, he was gathering
information, making contacts,

making connections,
using his power base

to change leaders' minds,

give access to people from
the agency to other people.

- When you say "the agency", you mean the Mossad?
- Yes, yeah.

He was a mossed
agent, Robert Maxwell?

I don't think he would ever
consider himself an agent.

I don't think he ever thought
that he's spying for Israel.

He wasn't, what he was
doing is gather information

by being who he was.

And then, giving access, making a
lot of money on the side doing that.

He also had a lot of
financial help in the beginning

from the shamir group in
order to develop his businesses.

So he would get it as a loan
and then come the pressure.

You mean the prime
minister of Israel, shamir.

Yes.

[Vicky] Would loan him money,
would loan Robert Maxwell?

[Victor] Well, not him
personally, but the...

[Vicky] Loan the businesses.

Yeah, I couldn't
give you the details,

but it could be somebody
investing in one of his companies

that is buying new newspapers.

Also, enlarging the circle
of papers that he had

brought more and
more influence to him

on public opinion
in many places,

and that is something
Israel needs quite often.

[Vicky] Would you say,
then, that Robert Maxwell

was part of an
influence campaign?

Yeah, there's a
name for that today.

Perception-makers.

[Vicky] "Perception-makers."

[Victor] Yeah, perception-maker.

Because what you say, is "okay,
if I tell you the Russians are bad,

they're responsible
for a, b, c and d"

I can create the perception
whether it's true or not.

[Vicky] Three
people I interviewed

say Maxwell did other types
of work for Israel as well.

There have been claims
that Robert Maxwell,

as well as passing information,

was a man who moved money.

Yeah, I would
say that's correct.

I'm not suggesting he
was actually moving arms,

- but...
- Arms? Well... anything.

- So, he could have been.
- [Victor] Absolutely.

[Vicky] With that information, I
asked Tom bower for his take.

Maxwell had very, very
close relations with Israel

for the last three,
four years of his life.

Not because he
was a Mossad agent,

but because he felt very,
very close with rabin to his end,

also his Jewish background,

and because he
was a very good link

between the Israelis
and the Russians.

You know, he didn't need
to be a Mossad agent,

he was a willing informant.

- [Vicky] Yes.
- [Tom] I mean, there was nothing secret about it.

The point is that Robert
Maxwell was a media tycoon.

- Yeah.
- He was not in the arms deal business.

[Vicky] But three sources
tell me that Maxwell

was involved in arms dealing,

and they say that
during the course of that,

he met a young
American, Jeffrey Epstein.

Syrian banker amer pacha
was told by an arms dealer

who knew them both that Epstein
and Maxwell first met in the '80s.

Although Jeffrey denied
to me that he ever met him.

I know that Jeffrey
was selling arms.

How do you know that, amer?

Because in 1992, '93,

I had very close ties to some
members of the Saudi royal family,

and they would always tell me,

"what do you think of this guy?"

And my understanding that he
was a very sophisticated banker,

- and...
- They would ask you what you think of Jeffrey Epstein?

[Amer] Yes.

Yes.

Jeffrey is a guy
that everybody is...

Terrified of him, but everybody
loved and wanted to be around him.

He facilitated things very well.

He was Mr. Fix-it,
whether it's a political lobby,

getting with some
country's government.

And I don't want to go
into names, as I said to you,

but he was the Mr. Fix-it.

He was discrete, sensitive
in a certain manner.

He was very careful, eloquent.

He was very intelligent,

he knows exactly if
he's going into a trap.

He always thinks that,

"I'm going to be
trapped somewhere."

So, he traps you
more you trap him.

That's his talent, he traps you.

[Vicky] When I first reported
on Jeffrey Epstein back in 2002,

I was focused on his money.

That's still crucial,
without the money,

there would have been
no alleged sex crimes,

and ghislaine Maxwell
would not be facing

the potential of
life behind bars.

In fact, how Jeffrey
acquired his money

is a question that gets to the
heart of his criminal enterprise.

Jeffrey Epstein, who
is from coney island,

he was a very good
classical pianist,

he was a very
good mathematician,

and yet he dropped
out of college,

he never finished his degree.

Despite that, he wound up in
1974 as a math teacher at Dalton,

one of the most elite
New York private schools,

and whilst he was there, he had
wound up giving private tutoring

to a child of ace Greenberg,

who was then the
chairman of bear stearns,

and ace Greenberg was so
impressed with Jeffrey Epstein

and his mathematical skills that he
asked him to come in and join the bank.

I mean, that is not a normal
route into an investment bank.

In 2002, I knew that Jeffrey
had left bear stearns in 1981

under murky circumstances.

And I spoke to him
then about his departure.

[Jeffrey] Yeah,
I don't deal well

with people who have
narrow-mindedness.

I never had a
run-in with anybody,

except people trying to
say, "you're a partner here."

I think I was the youngest
partner ever there.

[Vicky] Jeffrey wanted me
to speak to Jimmy Kane,

who was then the
ceo of bear stearns.

He wanted to tell me that
Jeffrey Epstein was brilliant,

and that he had been very upset

when Jeffrey had decided
to leave after only five years.

So, why did he leave?

Here's what I recently
had confirmed.

In 1981, there was
an investigation

of possible illegal
trading at bear stearns.

Two sources say
that Jeffrey was told

to admit his own
wrongdoing and resign.

Neither he nor anybody
else was charged in the case.

After that, Jeffrey maintained

a close relationship
with the bank

until it shut down.

Jimmy Kane wanted to tell me

just how important Jeffrey
Epstein was to the bank.

A very important client,
that message was very clear.

After leaving bear
stearns in 1981,

Jeffrey entered a new world,

one with very few people
who are willing to talk.

Someone who worked with
Epstein for several years,

Steve hoffenberg,
is one of the few.

I went to see Steve
hoffenberg in jail,

in devens, Massachusetts,
in the fall of 2002.

Hoffenberg was sentenced
to 20 years in prison

for committing the biggest
Ponzi scheme in American history

prior to Bernie madoff.

And, in the judge's
sentencing memorandum,

the fact that Steve hoffenberg had
told so many lies to the government

was a factor in giving him
such a very long sentence.

But many of the things
hoffenberg told me

about Jeffrey Epstein in
2002 have checked out,

so I do take what
he says seriously.

I decided to do a
follow-up interview with him,

but as a journalist, I've
done my best to confirm

everything that he says
with another source.

Hoffenberg tells me
about another businessman

Jeffrey was connected
to at the time.

Douglas leese.

Douglas leese was a
fascinating individual,

very much like
Robert Maxwell was.

[Vicky] Leese was a
British defense contractor

and an international Mr. Fix-it.

Sound familiar?

Jeffrey provided
marketing, presentations.

He used the Douglas
leese network

and expanded his abilities
around the world to countries

throughout the middle east
and other areas of the world,

and Epstein loved
the opportunity,

and was very successful at it.

[Vicky] Arms deals means
money moving around the world,

sometimes invisibly.

Amer pacha told me
that Epstein developed

a reputation for
money laundering.

What did you understand to be
the main source of his money?

[Amer] He was initiating very
sophisticated financial instruments

that is able to laundry
massive amount of money.

So, how does that exactly work?

What kind of money is he washing

and how does he do that?

Banks, real state, all kind of financial
instrument that he can put in place,

using many of his off-shore
holdings and off-shore accounts.

And then, he would
legitimize them

by actually real assets in real estate
in New York, or Paris, or London.

Assets that can be
turned easily into liquid.

[Vicky] Jeffrey learned how
to move money off-shore.

And that's the skillset
that he then starts to use

with very wealthy
private individuals.

[Amer] He wasn't
an art connoisseur.

But he dealt with very
high-end art pieces.

What do you mean by
that? I don't understand that.

One way to laundry money is art.

Yes.

Everybody that knew
Jeffrey knew that he bought

at auctions a lot of pieces,

but everybody knew that
Jeffrey was not... "Into" art.

[Vicky] Another service that
Jeffrey offered to private clients

was recovering
stolen monies for them,

as he told me in 2002.

[Jeffrey] Most people
who have their money,

if they're defrauded prefer
not to go to the police.

They prefer to get
their money back.

The police usually don't
get your money back,

the person goes to jail, but
you don't get your money.

The first scam that we know
about that he did on his own,

there was a big
criminal fraud case

in the southern
district of New York.

This group of Spanish
families had lost a lot of money,

Jeffrey worked
with their attorney

and actually found
quite a large chunk of it,

he flew into the Cayman Islands,

picked up a suitcase of bearer
bonds worth about $40 million.

He then flew to Switzerland, deposited
the bearer bonds in two Swiss banks.

Jeffrey then conned
the Spanish families

into giving him power of
attorney over these bearer bonds.

The Spanish families
never saw their money again.

So, that was the first
example of what I call

Jeffrey's three-pronged
strategy, charm, control, con.

You charm the people, you
then take control of their money,

and then you steal it.

Steve hoffenberg says
he knew that Jeffrey

had stolen money
from other clients,

but nonetheless, he still
hired him as a consultant

for his company
towers financial.

Jeffrey could build towers
financial substantially,

in funding, selling securities
and doing business illegally.

[Vicky] And in the
years that followed,

Jeffrey told Steve a great deal
about his business dealings.

Why do you think
Jeffrey confided in you?

I mean, was it
because he had to brag?

He had to brag to
overcome his insecurity.

And he wanted to
be important to me,

and important to
anybody in the room.

As an investment
banker, and a serious,

growing powerful
businessman on wall street.

He was crazy.

As Jeffrey is rising
in prominence

in what is a
relatively small world,

it's not unlikely that he would
have bumped into Robert Maxwell,

that is what some people say they
have direct knowledge did happen.

Now, at the time

Robert Maxwell would
have been very powerful,

Jeffrey Epstein would have
been the guy in the shadows.

But there was a use
for a guy in the shadows.

Jeffrey Epstein
advised Robert Maxwell

on how to reposition his debt

in order to get out
of the financial bind

he was stuck in at that time.

[Vicky] Hoffenberg says
both Jeffrey and Douglas leese

told him about intelligence
work they did with Maxwell.

And there's another source

who says that Maxwell
and Epstein worked together.

One of the people who claims
that there was this connection

is this man, Ari Ben-menashe.

Ben-menashe was
involved in arms dealing

in the middle east in the 1980s.

A us jury acquitted Ari
Ben-menashe around 1989,

because the jurors believed
that he was a member

of Israeli military
intelligence.

The difficulty is that he has
told certain stories to academics,

to journalists, that can't be
corroborated by anybody else,

and that have turned
out to be fantasies.

I've gone out of my way to try
to corroborate whatever he said.

Ben-menashe tells me that
Maxwell brought Jeffrey Epstein

to Israel in the 1980s
to meet with his contacts.

[Ari] Maxwell took him there.

And you have firsthand
knowledge of that?

Yes.

[Vicky] So, why
did Robert Maxwell

bring Jeffrey Epstein to Israel?

He brought him
there because he felt

that this guy could
help the Israelis.

Who did they
meet with in Israel?

Robert Maxwell was
ehud barak's friend,

who was at the time
director of military intelligence.

Do you think ehud barak, who was
obviously very busy fighting in the 1980s,

would have known Robert Maxwell?

Oh, I don't know,

almost everybody in
Israel knew Maxwell.

[Vicky] Ehud barak would later
become prime minister of Israel.

He says now that he didn't
meet Jeffrey until 2003.

These are obviously
huge allegations

that is very difficult to prove.

[Ari] Yeah, I know they
are very difficult to prove,

but there's one thing
that is clear, yes?

He was working with Israelis,

for the Israelis at
some point, yes?

- Some point.
- Yes.

And he was
introduced to the Israelis

by Robert Maxwell.

[Vicky] Ben-menashe
claims that, like Maxwell,

Epstein was brought on

to conduct influence campaigns,

but in a very different style.

When you met Jeffrey
Epstein through Robert Maxwell,

you thought he was
a thief and a con man

and didn't want to hire
him for those reasons.

Is that correct?

That's right.

But somebody did hire him.

To who was Jeffrey working for?

A military intelligence, another
group of people that hired him,

to go after people and
try to blackmail them.

How was he going
to blackmail him?

He taped people having
sex with underage girls.

He taped, he
photographed it, all that.

And underage
girls was his forte.

[Vicky] Was the
idea that Jeffrey

was blackmailing
people for Israel

one of Ben-menashe's
wild conspiracy theories?

It's not clear,

I couldn't get confirmation from
other sources of a blackmail operation.

If it's true, though,

it raises some
interesting question.

Did Jeffrey develop an
interest in underage girls

because of a blackmail campaign?

Or did he come up with the blackmail
idea because of his own interests?

And how in earth did ghislaine
allegedly become involved?

When did Jeffrey really
meet ghislaine Maxwell?

That is a topic of
peculiar confusion.

There are many
different stories,

but we have four people

who say they know that they
met in the 1980s through her father,

Robert Maxwell, who very much
wanted them to become a couple.

When as far as you know
did ghislaine and Jeffrey

actually become
romantically involved?

In the '80s.

So, long before her father died.

Oh, yeah.

[Vicky] Why did Robert Maxwell

introduce ghislaine to Jeffrey?

I think that Robert
wanted to have this guy

as a son-in-law.

Funny enough, he
really... That's what I think.

[Vicky] Maxwell
biographer, Tom bower

doesn't believe any of it.

Jeffrey Epstein
would have featured

in some of Robert
Maxwell's New York contacts,

and I've got all
those private papers,

and he wasn't listed.

Someone like Jeffrey Epstein
would have been totally irrelevant.

[Vicky] Jeffrey's social life in
the 1980s would have been

the complete
antithesis of ghislaine's.

As the daughter of one
of the most prominent,

powerful media
moguls in england,

ghislaine would have been a
very glittering figure in London.

She would have been somebody
who was very sought after

at cocktail parties and dinners.

She moved with a very,
very far set after Oxford.

Up all night, very
expensive clubs,

champagne and so on.

She certainly used to
appear in the gossip columns.

She made friends
with prince Andrew.

She was very, very skilled at
moving into the kind of social circles

and political circles.

And you could say, "well,
okay, that was because

she had a certain
amount of money", no.

She had something else, she
had learned a lot from her father.

[Vicky] Everybody I've spoken
to who was in ghislaine's circle

had a very clear idea of
who ghislaine wanted to be.

She wanted to be "somebody."

She wanted to be somebody
who mattered in the world

in her own right.

The great irony is she
wanted to be like her father.

There was talk of one
serious boyfriend at the time.

[Tim] She was liked
to gianfranco cicogna,

who was an Italian count,
part of the ciga hotel empire.

I'm told she was very
upset when that ended,

I don't know.

[Vicky laughs]

[Vicky] My friend
Christopher Mason

first met ghislaine
during this time,

when she was visiting New York.

[Christopher] One of the things
I remember about ghislaine

was that she had
short, spiky hair

that was very
kind of pixie-like.

She was that kind of fireball
of energy, a real livewire

that it felt exciting
to be in her company.

She told fantastically
funny stories.

She had quite a
raucous sense of humor,

lots of self-deprecating humor.

And her conversation
was sort of peppered

with famous names of, you know,

extraordinarily powerful people.

Did she talk about her father or
her family in any meaningful way?

She kept referring
to her father.

I mean, he was kind of the
big, swaggering publisher,

and she seemed to be, you know,

very much her, a
father's daughter.

[Vicky] As ghislaine traveled
in these glittering circles,

Jeffrey Epstein was socializing
in a very different realm.

Journalist Edward
Jay Epstein, no relation,

met him at a party
in New York in 1987.

Jeffrey would take people
to dinner at the regency,

but it wasn't the regency hotel
where the power meals were,

it was a regency delicatessen,

and he'd order
everyone a hot dog.

[Vicky] He told me he
had lived in a penthouse.

He lived in the
middle of the building,

but the roof of the building
was open to all the tenants,

so he would tell people
he lived in the penthouse,

and he would order takeout
food from the Chinese restaurant.

It was all pretty amusing.

[Vicky] I think you can see in the
1980s that Jeffrey was climbing.

He was very
gregarious, very social,

he was definitely trying to
build a network of people

who were a lot richer and
more important than he was,

but he hadn't got there yet.

You know? In the 1980s, he really
didn't have much money to speak of.

Jesse, I can't thank you
enough for doing this.

Let me ask you, is this
lighting okay for you?

[Vicky] Another journalist
I know, Jesse kornbluth,

also met Jeffrey Epstein
around the same time.

I met Jeffrey at a
corporate party in 1986,

and he was funny,
and he was compelling.

He dropped some magic
words, finance, bounty hunters.

Who did he say he
was bounty hunting for?

He said, "I get money
back for aggrieved parties

from African dictators,
and on other days,

I'm hired by African dictators
to protect their money."

So, you say to him,
"let me watch you work"

and he says "yes."

Yeah. "Come and meet
me at park Avenue south

and say 39th to 38th street."

And we go up to a law firm

and he presents
himself to the receptionist

and she doesn't let him in.

He tries to get
another way, he does it.

And I realize he's doing
process serving, right?

He's doing messenger work.

Did you ask him, "how does
this relate to bounty hunting?"

I didn't because I saw...
I made a judgement call,

that this guy was
basically full of shit

and that there was no reason
to have ever pursued him.

[Edward] This guy's business,

he ran sort of a
little charm school,

he charms someone into
giving him some money.

Not millions, more
like 50,000 or 100,000.

He was a conman, and conmen,
you know, are very charming

and they know that
there's very little risk

because what people
want when they're conned

is they want their money back.

They don't want
the embarrassment,

they don't want to get
involved in any legal processes.

[Vicky] In 1991, Jeffrey
and ghislaine's worlds

intercepted publicly when
she moved to New York.

[Tom] When Robert Maxwell
bought the New York daily news,

he was immediately a huge
personality in New York,

so his daughter was able to
exploit that remarkable passport

to the celebrities and used it.

[Christopher] I ran into
ghislaine early in 1991,

and she said that she
had just moved to New York

and her father is
buying the daily news

and she's making
introductions for him.

She seemed like the
perfect person for that role,

she was already
staggeringly well-connected.

[Vicky] Jeffrey, meanwhile, was dating
a string of young, mostly blonde women.

[Edward] Jeffrey
liked attractive women,

he liked talented women.

He liked spending time
with them, and they liked him.

You told me there was one woman,

a very beautiful woman, he
asked to go on vacation with him.

Yes. She actually had an
arrangement with Jeffrey,

where she had, there was
no physical or sexual contact,

but he told her that when he's
meeting these masters at the university,

by having a beautiful
woman with him,

they assumed he
must be important,

he thought it added
to his own stature,

where he had very little
else to add to his stature.

It seemed to have succeeded.

The women were very
impressed with him.

And he was generous
towards them.

[Vicky] I think the other sort
of really defining characteristic

of Jeffrey's love life back then

was that he was not monogamous.

He was either targeting
prominent rich women,

or he was courting models,

very attractive women who
he could mold to some degree.

[Speaking foreign language]

[Vicky] Jeffrey's longest
relationship was with Eva Anderson,

who dated him for 11 years.

Eva Anderson was a
former miss Sweden.

All the sources I've spoken to

say that as far as
Jeffrey was capable

of loving anybody
other than himself,

because it was quite apparent

that he was an
extreme narcissist,

he really loved Eva Anderson.

Jeffrey and Eva stayed
very close friends,

he introduced her to a
billionaire hedge fund owner

named Glenn dubin,
they got married

and Jeffrey was godfather
to their eldest child.

In 1991, it didn't seem that ghislaine
fit the type that Jeffrey favored.

She is the exact opposite

of the kind of women
that Jeffrey typically liked,

in that she didn't need
to be molded by him at all.

She was far more worldly,

she had a much more
extensive rolodex than he did.

But ghislaine's world
was about to change.

[Vicky] With the purchase of the
daily news in the spring of 1991,

Robert Maxwell extended his
finances beyond breaking point.

Robert Maxwell could not afford
to buy the New York daily news,

but he was locked in this
battle with Rupert Murdoch,

and buying the
New York daily news

would really cement Robert
Maxwell as a global media mogul,

not just somebody
who operated in britain.

[Tim] There were the beginnings
of rumors coming up in the press.

I think he hoped by
his force of personality

to keep his business
empire together.

[Vicky] The situation
seemed untenable,

and then, on November
5th, 1991, tragedy struck.

The millionaire newspaper
publisher, Robert Maxwell, is dead.

He disappeared overboard from
his private yacht earlier this morning

while cruising off
the Canary Islands.

I want to thank all the
many hundreds of people

who have sent
messages of support to us,

at this very, very sad time.

They recovered the body,
it was a very quick inquest,

and he was flown to Israel

and buried on the
mount of olives,

as one of the righteous.

It must be assumed that they want
to pay tribute to an extraordinary man.

[Vicky] The death
was ruled accidental,

but in britain, the
speculation went on and on.

[Reporter] The mystery
of Robert Maxwell

continues to dominate the front
pages of London newspapers.

[Anchor] He committed suicide?

He was rubbed out by assassins

from a two-man submarine.

All the evidence shows that
Maxwell suffered a heart attack.

Right.

They just didn't
find any evidence

of murder, let alone assault.

They did find evidence that
he had had a heart attack,

and before he hit the water, because
there was no seawater in his lungs.

[Vicky] Given the state
of Maxwell's business,

suicide was a
strong consideration.

And that seemed even more
likely after it was revealed

that he had tried
to pay off his debts

by stealing from his
company's pension fund.

It quickly became clear that he'd
been stealing from the pension fund,

so people who'd long had
suspicions about Robert,

which they couldn't prove,

felt that they
were now justified,

that he was a crook,
that it was appalling,

that he'd let down
all these workers.

[Vicky] The fraud
could also explain

why Maxwell would have
been a target for murder.

Books have been written
claiming that Robert Maxwell

was murdered by
Israeli intelligence,

and the claim is
that he had gone

from being an asset
in Israeli intelligence

to being a liability.

[Martin] Maxwell had
become very unhinged.

He built this massive empire

he wasn't able
to really control.

[Victor] His demise,
I guess, started,

when he started to
need more money

in order to fulfill his needs.

He used the pension funds,
he used it like a slush fund.

Then, when he
needed it to be refilled,

he was told no.

- No more.
- By the Israelis.

Right, no more, because you're
endangering the whole thing,

and there's no more.

And he started to make threats,

because he thought
he was working with,

you know, like
any other company.

He didn't understand that you
do not threaten the Mossad.

[Vicky] So, do you think Robert
Maxwell was killed by the Mossad?

[Victor] I think so, yeah.

[Vicky] Ghislaine told friends that she
thought her father had been murdered.

Other family members disagreed.

[Tom] The family were very keen

to prove that he
died of a heart attack,

because that's where they
got the insurance money.

Murder was unprovable, and suicide
will remove the chance of the payout.

[Vicky] In the end, however,

the family was officially
stripped of its money.

[Tim] When one considered
the amount he had defrauded,

I think people felt,

"why should they have anything?"

The optics of all
this were horrific.

Who is this man
and his children,

who had lived high on the hog

with all the trappings
of billionaires?

And meanwhile, you
had all these people

who'd actually toiled
all day in and day out

for Robert Maxwell who were
suddenly left with no pensions.

His two sons, Kevin and Ian,

were charged with being
their father's accomplice in this,

and they had to
then stand trial.

[Reporter] The two
Maxwell brothers

were guided out to
a waiting police Van.

[Vicky] After a
week's long trial,

the jury acquitted
both brothers.

[Tom] If anyone had
told me at the beginning

of Kevin Maxwell's trial he
was going to be acquitted,

I would have bet huge odds in favor of
the government, that they convict him.

And yet, he persuaded the jury,

twelve men and women,
that he was innocent

because he drove his lawyers
to destroy the prosecution's case.

I'm naturally very pleased
to have been cleared

of all charges against me.

[Vicky] According to one report,

Robert Maxwell hadn't been above

using his favorite
daughter ghislaine

as an unwitting courier
to further his schemes.

What was reported
in Tom bower's book

about Robert Maxwell
is that, I think it was 1990,

ghislaine had
boarded the conchord

from London to New York,

and that she had
picked up an envelope,

and flown back to London and
given her father the envelope.

According to Tom bower, inside the
envelope were shares of berlitz stock.

Robert Maxwell then
went and sold those shares.

The problem with that is he
shouldn't have been able to sell them.

Do you think she understood
what she was doing?

Was she complicit,

or was she just doing
something for her dad?

Well, she clearly knew
what she was doing

was important for the
finances of the company,

whether she knew that her father

was actually stealing
the berlitz shares

is impossible to know,
because she was never asked.

I think that ghislaine
was living with a monster,

a very brutal man, and
he was a serial crook.

She didn't know the difference
between morality and immorality,

in the way of
upbringing, in my view.

That was the only
way the maxwells knew

how to operate, was by lying.

There was anger and
speculation about ghislaine,

who, within a month
of her father dying,

had left britain,
relocated to New York

and the speculation
was that she knew

there was Maxwell money there

that the authorities
couldn't get a hold of

and was living off it.

[Vicky] Christopher Mason
visited ghislaine in New York

soon after her father's death.

[Christopher] It seemed
like a fairly modest place

for someone who's the daughter

of an astonishingly wealthy man.

And the message was
that the money was gone.

It was revealed her
father was a thief.

Did she ever talk about that?

No.

She didn't speak of
her father as dishonest.

She was quite passionate about
the innocence of her brothers.

She was fiercely loyal to them.

I remember her describing
the funeral in Jerusalem,

and it was very
ghislaine to hear her

almost sort of bragging about
the splendor of her father's funeral

because he was so powerful,
he was such a great man.

And she was telling me about how
she had spoken to various people,

and I seem to remember that
Henry kissinger was one of them

that she was
saying, "let's just see,

let's just see what's
happening in a year."

And I didn't know
what the hell that meant.

It just seemed to
be that somehow,

she was going to figure
out how to rise like a Phoenix

from these horrifying ashes.

[Vicky] Did ghislaine know
then that Jeffrey Epstein

would be the person
to help her rise again?

And did she have any idea what she
might be expected to do for him in return?