Democratic members of Congress are descending on West Palm Beach this morning to hear testimony about Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse and the failures that let him walk free.
Organizers of the 10 a.m. hearing at City Hall said they chose the location for its proximity to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, where some of Epstein’s teenage victims were recruited. Records released earlier this year, however, established West Palm Beach as a hunting ground in its own right.
The documents showed city police were tipped off to suspicious dealings at Epstein’s mansion starting a quarter century ago. Those initial probes by officers from two agencies, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, yielded no charges and predated the investigations that ended with the so-called sweetheart deal for Epstein.
The wrist-slap prosecution remains a global scandal, and one that lured a select group of U.S. House Oversight Committee members to West Palm Beach today.
In 2001, three students at Palm Beach Atlantic University told West Palm Beach Police that Maxwell approached them on campus in search of “young, beautiful unmarried women” to work at Epstein’s mansion on Palm Beach.
The students said they went on several occasions and were paid $200 a day to answer phones. The calls came from men saying “when they were going to drop off particular girls.”
The students said Maxwell and Epstein were secretive about what was going on in the house. One said it was full of nude photographs, that there were “women running around the pool area topless,” and that people “were always getting massages.”
Two said Epstein touched them inappropriately. All said Maxwell asked for the names of other girls she could call to work on short notice. She told them she needed a large pool to choose from, as she did not know how many she would need at any given time.
The West Palm Beach police officer asked the girls whether they would give Maxwell the phone numbers of undercover officers. They were receptive to the idea, the officer wrote, though it’s unclear from the report whether this ever happened.
City police referred the information to the Palm Beach Police in December 2001.
A detective identified only as A. Taylor made numerous attempts to reach the girls at their dorm telephone in December 2001 and January 2002 but received no answer. The detective also ran background checks on Epstein and Maxwell, which returned no evidence of a criminal history.
Beginning in January and continuing through April 2002, Taylor said Palm Beach police officers dug through the garbage at Epstein’s mansion on El Brillo Way. They found nude photographs, directory listings for massages in New York and the United Kingdom, daily calendars, and a list titled “People that I want you to meet,” which contained female names, ages and descriptions of “what they do.”
Officers compiled a list of all of Epstein’s known associates. They conducted drive-by surveillance of his home and recorded the tag numbers of cars parked there. They sought subpoenas from the State Attorney’s Office to investigate calls to and from Epstein’s property, though, according to Taylor, these returned “nothing unusual.”
Taylor continued to call the students and received no answer. The detective then called Palm Beach Atlantic, a private Christian university, and relayed the information received by West Palm Beach police. Campus employees told Taylor two of the girls had since moved off campus, but one remained.
Security officers searched the girl’s dorm room in April 2002 and found bottles of liquor and a paper with the name of a pornographic website, as well as information “about some type of adult work that paid $2,200 weekly.”
“Nothing else was found,” Taylor wrote. “(Redacted) is handling all discipline,” which included expelling the girl from campus housing.
Taylor and Frick interviewed two girls after the search. They said they felt there was something “weird” about the people living at Epstein’s home but said they didn’t see anything illegal.
In a subsequent interview, the third girl said she didn’t recall anything illegal happening either, though she mentioned that Epstein once told her to take off her shirt.
She told the officers it made her “extremely uncomfortable” and said she had not been back to the home since.
Taylor concluded the report by writing that although it appeared unusual activity was occurring at the home, “at this time, no illegal activity has been reported or detected.”
“This information will remain as intelligence purposes only, until a crime is reported or possibly another student or young female report to us while working at the residence,” Taylor wrote.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: As West Palm braces for Epstein hearing, old files tell a new story
Reporting by Hannah Phillips, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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