Original subtitles

Male reporter: Disgraced financier

Jeffrey Epstein is dead.

Narrator: It's the most twisted story of the decade.

Jeffery Epstein's a pedophile billionaire.

A billionaire who has mysterious connections to

the most powerful people in the world.

Maag: Prince Andrew, Donald Trump.

Man: Bill Gates, Bill Clinton.

This guy, he could get away with anything.

Narrator: In this three-part special,

our exclusive interviews explore crucial questions.

I am a cousin of prince Andrew.

I saw Jeffrey and Ghislaine every single day.

I am the first person who reported Jeffrey Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein had asked me to take over the defense of

his criminal case.

I suicide watched Jeffrey Epstein.

Narrator: Who helped him commit these crimes?

Ghislaine told me proudly,

"I help him out by bringing in the females."

male reporter: Epstein created a sex trafficking network

in which his employees would recruit girls.

Every co-conspirator needs to be behind bars.

Narrator: What horrors did the victims experience?

Charges allege that Epstein sexually abused young girls.

I saw a lot of children coming in, little girls.

There is sadness. There is anger.

There are scars that will never heal, ever.

The scale of what he did is almost

too much for the human mind to take in.

Narrator: How did he get away with it for decades?

The feds negotiated such a sweetheart deal.

They allowed Epstein to continue to prey on women.

Just a travesty of justice people could not imagine.

Narrator: And finally, who killed Jeffrey Epstein?

I definitely think he was murdered.

I'm convinced he killed himself, case closed for me.

I don't believe he took his own life.

One can only guess what secrets he took to the grave.

Figgins: The MCC, or the metropolitan correctional center, is on

the corner of pearl street and park row,

which is located in lower Manhattan.

It's close to the epicenter of the financial industry,

wall street.

You would never know it's a jail.

It's almost like a forgotten world.

They house some of the most notorious criminals

in the world.

Banfield: On the morning of August 10, 2019, the guards

at the MCC were starting to deliver the breakfasts to all

of the prisoners who were on the ninth floor.

And this particular unit was called "the shu,"

where they housed all of the high-profile inmates.

The shu, the special housing unit,

which is a really nasty place to be, because it's cold,

it's noisy, there were mice everywhere and big water bugs.

Banfield: The guards approach the cell housing

inmate number 76318054.

And they peer through the window,

and what they see is nothing short of terrible.

There's an inmate on his knees, motionless,

and it appears that he's got

a cloth noose tied around his neck.

The man is none other than Jeffrey Epstein,

66-year-old financier and accused serial child molester.

So they rush in, and they got him loose.

They were really

freaking out,

'cause they knew they'd... Up.

Figgins: Mr. Epstein was nonresponsive,

and at that point, there is a radio call that goes out.

An emergency alarm goes off.

There's a medical response team to Mr. Epstein's cell.

They immediately remove him from the cell

and take him directly to the hospital.

Narrator: Doctors race to save the life of the financier,

who had been arrested just a month earlier by

the new york police department and the fbi.

On the day of the arrest,

investigators serve a search warrant

on Epstein's upper east side mansion.

9 east 71st street is an extremely extravagant

town home... It's a massive place,

one of the biggest in new york,

valued at $77 million.

It overlooks the Frick collection of art.

Less than 45 seconds,

and you can be in central park.

It has some very tall, 15-feet-high oak doors,

very thick,

and the NYPD has a battering ram.

They batter open those doors so they can

effectuate a search warrant on those premises.

Inside, they come across disgusting kinda things.

They find troves of pictures of underage girls

and nude pictures and possibly pictures with prominent people

on them.

They also find diamonds.

If you're gonna escape a country where you want

to launder money, diamonds are your best friend,

and they crack open a safe, and inside the safe,

they find a passport with his picture and a different name.

It's actually an Austrian passport,

so there's a lot of evidence there.

We announce the unsealing of sex trafficking charges

against Jeffrey Epstein.

The charges allege that Epstein sexually abuse young girls by

enticing them to engage in sex acts for money.

The alleged behavior shocks the conscience.

Narrator: The bombshell news of

the billionaire's arrest reverberates across the globe.

Reporter: Prosecutors say Epstein created

a sex trafficking network in which

his employees and associates would recruit girls as young

as 14.

A billionaire once connected with some of

the most powerful figures in the world, arrested.

Big name people, famous people.

Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump,

major leaders of wall street,

prince Andrew... They all knew Jeffrey Epstein.

Kuvin: He's not socializing at the local bowling alley.

He's going to private, multi-millionaire parties

with a very select group of individuals.

You're talking about homes that have 15-to 18-foot-high

ficus hedges that you can't see behind.

He attended events at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump.

Narrator: While Epstein lacks the renown

of his famous friends,

he seems to outclass many in wealth.

Hoffenberg: His homes were magnificent,

quite striking on the size

and the presence at 71st street,

remarkable place,

and then Jeffrey Epstein acquired an estate in Florida,

in north palm beach, that was also a beautiful home.

And he acquired an apartment in Paris, France,

a ranch in new Mexico,

and two islands near st. Thomas.

The richest of the richest lifestyle one could imagine.

He was sort of like a reclusive,

apparent financial and tax consultant

to a boutique retinue of extremely wealthy families.

He says,

"I only take clients with a billion or more

in net worth."

that was part of his power was his mystique.

Epstein was very mysterious.

He was an enigma of sorts.

He was clever and smart, good with numbers.

But most of the pretty substantial

wall street investors never knew who he was.

Banfield: So there's a lot of murkiness

around where Epstein made all this money.

Nobody really knows.

Is it possible that he had something on a collection

of the super rich, and that maybe he was actually

benefiting from it, holding it over them in some way?

Narrator: The 2019 arrest is not

the first time Epstein has faced legal trouble.

More than a decade prior,

from 2005 to 2007, he is the subject of a multi-agency

sex trafficking and sexual assault

investigation in Florida.

I'm Spencer Kuvin.

I'm an attorney practicing in palm beach county.

I represented a number of victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

Back in 2007, the palm beach police department knew

of at least 40 girls that he had abused,

some as young as 14,

but it was probably in the hundreds.

They felt they had enough evidence to

charge him with multiple sex crimes against minors.

Narrator: After building their case,

palm beach police hand it over to the fbi,

believing the charges could mean a life sentence.

I'm john Connolly.

I was an investigative reporter for vanity fair magazine for

a number of years,

and in 2005, I started investigating Jeffrey Epstein.

Then, in 2016,

I co-wrote a book with James Patterson,

which hopefully exposed him a lot more than he had been,

previously.

The 2007, the fbi had a 53-page indictment,

but then he had some of the best lawyers in the country.

And then, all of a sudden, it disappears.

Jeffrey agrees to a plea deal.

Dimond: At the time, nobody really knew

the details of this plea agreement

his hot shot lawyers had cooked up... dozens of

young women and girls had been fully cooperating with police.

Yet there was Jeffrey Epstein seeming to dodge the bullet.

Connolly: They give him, I think, 18 months,

but he only had to do 13 of it.

I don't know why, but they allowed him to get away with it.

This was just a travesty of justice

like people could not imagine, hard to believe it's America,

really is.

Narrator: Now, the 2019 arrest

might finally mean justice for the victims

who are furious at the way he dodged the 2007 charges.

Banfield: So Epstein walks into a Manhattan

federal courtroom, and he pleads not guilty.

And his lawyers argue that that Florida plea

agreement is airtight, and therefore he can't be charged.

And now, all of a sudden,

all of his victims are starting to worry.

Is this guy actually gonna walk again?

Narrator: But just a month into his jail stay at MCC,

he's found with a noose around his neck,

barely clinging to life.

Sarnoff: They take him to a hospital,

the new york Presbyterian hospital downtown,

where he's being wheeled out in a gurney with his hands

cuffed and a ventilator mask across his face.

But soon after, he is pronounced dead.

He should have been safe there, but he wasn't.

He commit suicide? Was he murdered?

To be determined.

Narrator: News of Jeffrey Epstein's death

creates a media firestorm.

We begin with breaking news, a devastating turn of events

for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein...

The convicted sex offender

dead tonight after apparently taking his own life.

The death of a billionaire

in a correctional facility brings a lot of heat,

and in particular, we're talking about

a billionaire who has mysterious connections

to the current president, to the royal throne in London,

as well as to numerous strong and powerful businessmen

throughout the world.

Multiple investigations were opened to find out

how and why Mr. Epstein died.

Narrator: As Epstein's body is prepared for autopsy,

authorities investigate his final days,

beginning on July 23rd.

Figgins: Just maybe three weeks before Mr. Epstein's death,

there was a previous incident where it is alleged

that he attempted suicide, and he was put on a suicide watch.

I'm Bill Mersey.

I spent a year at MCC federal prison

for tax fraud,

and I made the money with escorts.

During that time, I had Paul Manafort as

a bunkie, and I suicide watched Jeffrey Epstein.

First meeting was I said, "Jeff,

"I'm here for tax fraud, for running an escort agency.

"And I got my own money. I don't need any of yours.

You don't have to worry about that."

you know, the fact that I'd been

in the sex business was, of course,

to his liking.

A lot of talk about how to deal with prison.

Those were the main topics.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about him

to me at all.

He was just, you know, a regular guy in my demographic,

sitting in the suicide cell,

and he didn't strike me as depressed.

Narrator: After just one week,

MCC personnel decide Epstein is not a threat to himself.

Figgins: After being evaluated by particular medical staff,

he's taking off suicide watch and placed back in the secure

housing unit with a cellmate.

He was supposed to always have a cellmate

to make sure that if he did attempt to commit suicide,

there would be someone there to ring the alarm.

But on the day before he died, the inmate that was assigned

to his cell was released,

and apparently the administration then

failed to assign him another roommate.

Dimond: As an inmate who had been on a suicide watch recently,

Jeffrey Epstein was supposed to be

visually checked by guards every 30 minutes.

But as the investigation into what happened the night

he died progressed,

it became increasingly clear that didn't happen.

Volscho: They find that the prison guards are surfing

the internet and shopping,

and they fall asleep when they're supposed to be

watching Epstein.

They don't do their around-the-clock check-ins.

Mersey: They're supposed to go around at

designated intervals, and they just didn't.

Narrator: As investigators collect more information about that night,

they discover that even more protocols had

mysteriously failed.

There were two cameras outside of Jefferey's cell,

but when the investigators went to review them,

they'd somehow malfunctioned.

How did this happen?

How on earth could this happen?

Narrator: On the night Jeffrey Epstein died,

he didn't have a cell mate,

the guards didn't check on him,

and the cameras happened to fail.

It's almost like a perfect storm

of incompetence and failed equipment.

Banfield: I mean, you put all of these things together,

and it certainly seems it was an awfully convenient time

for Jeffrey Epstein either to kill himself

or Jeffrey Epstein to be murdered.

Volscho: Everything seems to go wrong.

It's very suspicious, so Jeffrey Epstein's death

becomes fodder for conspiracy theories galore.

I'm David shown, and I'm a criminal defense lawyer.

Before he died, Jeffrey Epstein had asked me

to take over the defense of his criminal case.

I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories,

but my anecdotal information, that is my meetings with him,

the mood he was in,

he was upbeat, planning to fight the case, clear his name.

Nobody can say that

there's absolutely no basis for

these conspiracy theories and stuff.

I don't believe he took his own life.

Bloom: Maybe he committed suicide.

Maybe he was murdered.

In the case of Epstein, I'm really open to all

possibilities, because so many crazy things happened

during his life.

Narrator: Law enforcement's interest in Epstein

begins far from where he died,

in the sunny world of Florida.

Dimond: On March 15, 2005, the palm beach

police department get a frantic phone call

from a woman who says her stepdaughter

is a high school student in west palm beach.

She says they've got a problem.

Kuvin: She got into a fight at school.

Her parents were called,

and people asked questions.

And the fight broke out, because one girl

called her a prostitute.

They get taken down to the principal's office.

She dumps out their purse, asks why is there $300 coming

out of your purse, and are you dealing drugs?

Kuvin: She couldn't give a straight story until

eventually, she admitted that she had gotten the money

after going to a home on palm beach island,

where her friend had taken her.

Police bring in the 14-year-old

and have her start at the beginning.

Connolly: The way she wound up being involved,

there was one girl, a cousin of her boyfriend,

and she tells her, "you want to make some money?

"You know, you got to massage

this old guy in palm beach."

the family doesn't have money,

so she says, "okay."

on Sunday, February 6th,

the 14-year-old and her friend go over to the ritzy part

of town.

They arrive at a magnificent mansion.

Volscho: Who is this guy?

"Some wealthy guy named Jeff," she said.

Narrator: A 14-year-old girl is telling police about how she was pulled

into a terrible new world when a friend

brought her to a palm beach mansion.

Kuvin: When they got there,

they were greeted by someone who told her the routine,

which was, "we're gonna go upstairs.

"There's a massage room.

"You're gonna take off your shirt.

"You'll take off your pants. You can leave on your bra.

"You can leave on your underwear,

and Jeffrey will be in in a minute."

well, at this point, things were changing

a little bit.

She didn't realize she was gonna have to get undressed,

but she's just been taken to a place she doesn't know,

and she's stuck in this house.

So she goes into a massage room,

and Jeffrey comes out wearing nothing but

this small towel around his waist.

He lays down face up on the massage table,

and he asked her to go ahead and start the massage.

During the massage, he tells her that if she takes off

more of her clothing, that she'll get paid more

if she chooses.

She said, "no." he said, "fine."

Dimond: The girl's story gets very detailed.

She says the man, at one point,

grabbed a purple vibrator

and, without her permission, began to use it on her.

Now this is a 14-year-old girl.

She didn't know how to react.

And things turn from bad to worse to awful.

She then continued with the massage until, at some point,

he began to masturbate himself until he finally masturbated

to completion.

She was in shock.

You've got a 14-year-old girl that

didn't realize what she was getting herself into.

Kuvin: And then eventually, he said, "okay, you can go."

she grabbed her clothes, put 'em on, and left.

She was given cash by her friend after,

and she just kind of stuffed it in her purse.

It really was something she just... once she got

into it, wanted to get out of pretty quickly.

She was Jane doe one.

Sarnoff: So Jane doe number one files a complaint,

but she does not know who he is

and certainly doesn't have his last name.

Police also were not sure who he was.

Volscho: And the police are saying,

"we have enough probable cause.

We really have to start looking into this guy,"

and she had an approximate idea of the address.

They do a record search.

They figure out, oh, it's this guy, Jeffrey Epstein.

Let's look into him, and they start an investigation.

Take every precaution.

They know he's wealthy and powerful.

Narrator: As authorities dig in,

they learn about the financier's early days.

Volscho: Jeffrey Epstein grew up near coney island

in a gated community called sea gate.

It's a Jewish-Italian neighborhood,

and his parents were working class.

His dad worked as a gardener and groundskeeper for

the new york city parks department,

and his mother was a homemaker,

and then she took a job as,

like, a secretary... he has a younger brother named mark.

When he was a child growing up,

he's kind of like an aloof character,

but he was extremely gifted.

He started playing piano at the age of five,

and he was a very proficient piano player.

He skipped third grade and then later eighth grade,

and he graduated high school around the age of 16,

and then he made it into a school called cooper union.

Jeffrey Epstein studied in the school of engineering there

for two years, and he then also enrolls

as a non-matriculating student at new york university

and studies the mathematical

biology of the heart and physiology.

But never graduated from either one of them.

He never got a college degree,

but he knew how to get over on people.

Narrator: Decades later,

as palm beach police open a sex crimes case

against Epstein, the shadowy financier earns a new nemesis.

Jeffrey's problem was chief Michael Reiter...

Honest man, honest as the day is long.

Kuvin: As part of any investigation,

chief Reiter, at the time,

he does a trash pull of Jeffrey Epstein's house

to try and find some kind of corroborating evidence.

When they pull Jeffery Epstein's trash,

they bring it back to the police department

and essentially dump it out

on a table and start to catalog what they have.

They found numerous different items.

They found message pads.

They found notes.

They found sex toys.

Among the garbage,

they discover one very important piece of evidence...

A purple vibrator,

the same thing that Jane doe number one had described,

so it certainly goes a long way to corroborating

what she said.

Narrator: The trash pulls also reveal evidence

suggesting that Epstein

had help in his trafficking ring.

They find these note pads with names of young girls,

messages from jean-Luc Brunel,

some of them in code that young girls were available

if he wanted them.

Volscho: Jean-Luc Brunel is french modeling scout.

So it says something like, "I found a Russian teacher

for you, she's two times 8,"

meaning she's 16 years old.

"The lessons are free.

You can have the first one today,"

and that's basically he's got a Russian underage female that

he's allowing Epstein to bring into his domain.

And now they realize that this is

way bigger than this one 14-year-old.

Barry Krischer got involved,

who was the prosecutor for palm beach county.

Chief Reiter tells him

he's got a big case coming up, he says, "okay,

"and I'll back you all the way,

"and we'll take this, and we'll put the guy away."

and, well...

The investigation takes off,

and they interview girls all over Florida.

Narrator: But as police expand their investigation,

Epstein begins to flex his influential muscles

to try to kill it.

Somehow, Epstein learns that there's an investigation

and that this girl has been talking to them.

So one of his minions calls the 14-year-old

saying something along the lines of,

"those who keep their mouth shut will be rewarded.

Those who don't will be dealt with."

narrator: As palm beach police

expand their sex crimes investigation

into secretive financier, Jeffrey Epstein,

a seasoned detective takes over.

Connolly: Joe Recarey is tough as nails,

and he worked for a police chief who was just straight as

an arrow, and he'd conduct this investigation

in a way which anybody would be proud of.

Kuvin: So Joe Recarey begins interviewing

numerous young girls,

who then lead him to more young girls,

who then lead him to more young girls.

This is a huge pyramid of young girls under the age

of 18.

Jeffrey Epstein wasn't going after girls from wealthy areas.

He was searching for young women that $200 to $300

meant a lot.

Some of these young girls lived in trailer parks,

had broken homes.

Some of them didn't even know

where their next meals were coming from.

A predator hunts for the weakest.

Narrator: Manipulation has been Epstein's hallmark

since the early stages of his career.

Volscho: It's the 1970s, he is still living in new york.

Dalton is a private school on the upper east side

that caters to very wealthy families in new york.

William Barr's father, Donald Barr, was the headmaster

who likely hired Epstein in the spring of '74.

Banfield: He gets a job at this elite private school,

teaching math and physics,

and Epstein doesn't even have a college degree.

How weird is that?

Like, who does that?

But during his time there, he wooed and dazzled

the parents, and he made

a connection with ace Greenberg.

Sarnoff: Ace Greenberg was

the second most powerful man at bear Stearns,

which was an investment house in Manhattan.

He and Epstein took a liking for one another.

Volscho: Ace Greenberg liked hiring what he called PSDs,

poor, smart, and determined people.

He had him come to bear Stearns for an interview,

and he asked him,

"do you know what a stock and a bond is?"

and Epstein said, "no." "are you good at mathematics?"

he was like, "yeah, I'm very good at mathematics,"

and Greenberg said, "okay, I want you to come in

and start on Monday."

he worked in stock options and also advising

wealthy clients on tax strategies,

making a lot more money, and he did relatively well there

within four years, and this kind of unheard of.

In 1980, he became a limited partner, so I mean,

he dazzled people.

Dimond: But in 1981, Epstein's meteoric rise hits a snag.

The securities and exchange commission begins

an insider trading investigation of

bear Stearns employees.

There is a suggestion that Epstein is involved,

but he's never charged, and no one knows why.

Well, pretty soon he leaves the organization with

his $100,000 bonus, but after that,

Epstein's career hits a real dry spell.

Volscho: By 1986, he can't pay his rent,

and he's kind of broke,

and that's when he meets Steven Hoffenberg.

Steven Hoffenberg is kind of like the Bernie Madoff of

the late 1980s,

and he had ran a company called

towers financial corporation.

Connolly: Towers financial,

their primary business supposedly was buying debt

fairly cheap, and then trying to collect from people

who owed money, and then they would

recover the money and keep the difference.

But that didn't work too well.

Steven Hoffenberg is who I am.

I had a 9-year experience of working

and knowing Jeffrey Epstein.

That was his dream, to become super rich

and change his entire lifestyle from being poor

and humble.

Jeffrey Epstein had the ability to get

under the skin to become the best friend

of anybody that he targeted.

His dynamic personality,

his incredible gift of reading

the other person's mind in a conversation

and saying what the other person wanted to hear

was remarkable, astonishing.

Narrator: In the late 1980s, Epstein and Hoffenberg concoct

a plan that could bring them the wealth they're seeking.

Volscho: They start selling securities,

bonds, and stocks to investors and then selling them to

more investors.

And then, when the original investors

want their money back,

they raise money by selling to yet more investors.

This is known as a classic Ponzi scheme.

Epstein did a great job

selling securities

for the towers companies, fabulous job.

And so towers had some very rapid success in

selling securities,

on the sec looks at any company that becomes

a rapid growth company.

And the sec figures out it's a scam,

and they find evidence of criminal wrongdoing,

so they prosecute Hoffenberg.

Jeffrey Epstein was involved in illegal operations

at towers,

and that should have resulted in a criminal prosecution

of Epstein,

but by the time the case gets transferred to the southern

district of new york,

Epstein's name entirely vanishes from the prosecution,

and nobody can really explain why.

Hoffenberg: It's shocking what occurred.

They had all the evidence against Epstein.

He ran

the Ponzi...

Wall street side of the case.

Also, he infiltrated the company's

accounting department,

befriended them,

and stole about $17 million of towers'

financial money,

and that was all documented.

They did make me financially responsible

for $475 million,

and they sentenced me to 20 years.

They gave me Jeffrey Epstein's sentence.

The unequal justice is so crazy.

Banfield: So once again, he avoids criminal liability,

and people are wondering,

how on earth does guy manipulate himself out of every

single moment of trouble?

Narrator: Nearly a decade later, palm beach police are also

finding it difficult to bring the elusive financier

to justice.

Then, in September 2005,

their case gets a surprising jolt.

Narrator: During the palm beach

police investigation into Jeffrey Epstein,

authorities arrest an 18-year-old woman

for possession of marijuana.

Dimond: During the investigation,

she lets police know she wants to bargain.

She offers, in exchange for leniency,

information on a local pedophile.

She tells a story of having been recruited by

a high school friend and visiting Jeffery Epstein's

mansion for many years.

At first, this teenager says that she was pretty put off

by the things that Jeffrey Epstein was asking her to do.

But like any pedophile, there's a lot of grooming that goes on,

and eventually, she got kind of used to it, no matter how

perverse his requests.

Banfield: She finally consented to some sex acts,

but she made it very, very clear to him

that there was to be no intercourse with Jeffrey.

Kuvin: And one of the things she said is that

he had a particular characteristic with respect

to his genitalia.

Narrator: She and several other accusers

mention the same detail.

And the way they described it was egg-shaped.

Some of these young girls' story was very similar.

Narrator: One day, at Epstein's mansion,

the billionaire crosses the line.

That's one Jeffrey inserted his penis into her vagina,

which he was never supposed to do.

He gave her an extra thousand dollars that day.

Detectives realize she's probably right,

and they give her police protection.

Her account is very important.

Not only does it corroborate what other young girls

and women have told them,

it elevates it to a whole new level.

She is describing rape of an underage teenager

by a 50-year-old man.

Reportedly, there is only one known

on-the-record interview with Jeffrey Epstein.

It was done in 2003 with the journalist David bank.

In it, Epstein shared some revealing thoughts

about his life and work.

Kuvin: Detective Joe Recarey goes to his chief,

and they agree to execute a search warrant on the home.

When the search warrant's executed, they go into

the house and start to find

materials like message pads, phone pads,

phone books, but what they also find is that

security cameras from inside the house have been removed.

Locations where there used to be computers,

CPU units, are now gone.

So clearly, Jeffrey had someone that had told them

ahead of time that there was gonna be a search warrant.

Sarnoff: Epstein is not at home.

Epstein is actually traveling

when the search warrant was filed and executed.

What I think they came to look for, they never found.

Even though there is a lack of really good evidence,

they did spot one thing that was really, really significant,

and that was a pink and green couch in the master bathroom.

A lot of the victims had mentioned that couch.

And so that piece of evidence

went a long way to corroborating their accounts.

Narrator: Once again, it seems Epstein somehow

knew what police were doing and dodged.

Still, chief Reiter and detective Recarey

believe their case remains solid.

They wanted Epstein charged,

and they felt they had enough evidence to charge him with

multiple sex crimes against minors.

That probable cause affidavit then went to Barry Krischer,

who was in charge of the state's

attorney's office back at that time,

and it was then up to Barry Krischer to decide what charges

to ultimately file, if any, against Jeffrey Epstein.

We know now...

We didn't know then... that once Jeffrey Epstein knew he was

the subject of an investigation,

he hired multiple high-profile attorneys.

Be hired Roy black from Miami.

He hired Alan Dershowitz from Boston.

Banfield: I mean, Alan Dershowitz...

It doesn't get any more high-profile than that.

He's got a roster of some of

the most wealthy and powerful clients.

O.J. Simpson, mike Tyson, Claus Von Bulow,

Donald Trump.

Narrator: Epstein's legal team dispatches

an army of private investigators.

They hired private investigators to follow some of

the young girls, including my clients.

They would interview ex-boyfriends and ask about what

positions they had sex in,

who they did it with, and whether or not this young girl

had had an abortion.

Alan Dershowitz started searching out all of

these young girls' public profiles online,

anything that they posted, any comments they made.

They did whatever it took

to absolutely intimidate, embarrass, and try to pressure

these young girls into dropping their claims.

And then Dershowitz and his crew gave all of that

information to the state's attorney's office

in an attempt to try and discredit these young girls

and convince Barry Krischer not to file charges,

serious charges, against Epstein.

This pressure tactic back then,

sadly, it intimidated a lot of these young girls such that

they clammed up and didn't want to talk.

Chief Reiter and Joe Recarey in palm beach

were incredibly upset at how things were being handled.

They felt that the ball was being dropped.

They felt that Barry Krischer wasn't taking them seriously.

Volscho: They weren't getting their phone calls returned

and chief Reiter breaks rank and writes a letter

to the state attorney saying, "what's going on here?

"You're not taking my calls.

I think maybe you should even recuse yourself from the case."

narrator: Reportedly, Krischer never replies

to Reiter's missive

Barry Krischer, instead of filing charges,

he decided to bring it to a grand jury.

Dimond: When a prosecutor takes a case to a grand jury,

everything is secret,

and no one really knows what kind of case is being presented.

Inside the room

is the prosecutor, any witnesses he or she

wants to call, and the jury.

There's no defendant, there's no defense attorneys,

and more importantly, there's no press.

Narrator: The grand jury convenes in July 2006.

Despite the alleged intimidation tactics,

multiple victims are still willing to testify.

Yet Krischer declines to call most of them.

Krischer only called one,

and that was the 14-year-old.

He had the witnesses chief Reiter and his team

had put together who were supposed to testify.

You only call one?

No, no.

Somewhere along the line, somebody got to Krischer.

Dimond: Usually in a grand jury,

the prosecution is trying to get the jury to indict.

Not so in this case.

Krischer has instructed his underlings to question

one 14-year-old accuser,

and things get embarrassing.

She's asked about her sex life and her drinking.

These are questions a cunning defense attorney

would usually ask, but here it is,

the prosecution smearing their own witness.

This young girl gets blindsided.

She goes, and they start asking all these terrible questions.

The prosecutors were buying into the defense's story.

They were buying the sexual perpetrator's story

about these young girls.

One single misdemeanor charge is

the final outcome of the grand jury.

Narrator: The maximum sentence on that one charge?

60 days in jail.

I mean, it's just a travesty.

As far as I'm concerned, the fix was it.