Note: This article was updated from a previous version that first published on Jan. 9, 2024.
The eyes of the world once again turned to Palm Beach in recent days as President Donald Trump defended an announcement from the Justice Department and FBI that there is no evidence of a “client list” that belonged to Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein had a home for years in Palm Beach, and it was here in 2005 that the Palm Beach Police Department launched an extensive investigation into the late disgraced multimillionaire financier and allegations of sexual abuse against him.
The July 7 announcement spurred calls for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who in the early days of her tenure with the Justice Department said she had the list of Epstein’s high-profile clients on her desk for review. The controversy has also created a rift among Trump’s supporters, some of whom took to social media in recent days to lambast the president as he defended Bondi and said she is doing a “fantastic job.”
Trump, his supporters, and many in far-right circles and beyond have long alleged a conspiracy to keep information about Epstein and those associated with him from the public.
Here’s a look at some of the key moments in the Epstein case and their connections to Palm Beach.
What to know about Jeffrey Epstein
Epstein was a financier who in 2008 pleaded guilty to two felony charges, of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. He received a plea deal that was criticized for being lenient.
Many of the allegations had centered around Epstein’s Palm Beach home at 358 El Brillo Way, which he bought in 1990. Underage girls from Palm Beach County told investigators they were brought to his Palm Beach mansion and were sexually abused.
In 2019, under renewed pressure to examine the case, officials charged Epstein with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy. Before he could go to trial, he killed himself on Aug. 10, 2019, while in federal custody in New York.
A 2019 Palm Beach Post investigation found that then-Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, who was the prosecutor in the first criminal case against Epstein, sunk his own prosecution before a 2006 grand jury.
The Post sued to uncover documentation from that grand jury, and an appeals court in 2023 ordered the trial court judge to review and release the grand jury’s transcripts. When released in July 2024, those transcripts prompted renewed scrutiny of prosecutors’ actions and how they handled Epstein’s underage victims.
1. Who own’s Epstein’s house now? What happened to Epstein’s mansion and how much did it sell for? Why was Epstein’s house demolished?
In November 2020, the Palm Beach Daily News confirmed that Epstein’s former home at 358 El Brillo Way was under contract, selling to developer Todd Michael Glaser for $18.5 million.
In talking with the Daily News at the time, Glaser said when he bought the house that he would demolish it — which happened within months, as a bulldozer in April 2021 gutted the home where prosecutors said Epstein sexually assaulted girls and young women.
Venture capitalist David Skok, through his 360 El Brillo Way LLC, paid nearly $26 million for the roughly three-quarter acre lot in September 2021.
The address was changed from 358 El Brillo Way to 360 El Brillo Way, and construction started in early 2023 on a new, modified Cape Dutch-style house with six bedrooms, a red tile roof and an interior courtyard for a total of 9,529 square feet of living space.
2. Those connected with Epstein have faced charges
People who worked for and were affiliated with Epstein during his time in Palm Beach have faced charges in connection with his crimes.
In 2012, Alfredo Rodriguez, who managed Epstein’s Palm Beach house, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to obstruction. Police said he hid and later tried to sell Epstein’s journal, which contained the names and phone numbers of Epstein’s victims.
The Palm Beach Daily News noted at the time that Rodriguez received the same length of sentence as Epstein, who served only 13 months of his sentence.
In 2020, federal investigators arrested longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell on charges of sex trafficking. She was found guilty in 2022 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Among the charges leveled against Maxwell: She recruited underage girls and young women for the sex-trafficking ring run by Epstein. Some of those girls were from Palm Beach County, including teens from Lake Worth Middle School and Royal Palm Beach High School.
Maxwell is serving her sentence at FCI Tallahassee, a federal prison in Florida’s capital city.
3. Palm Beach police began their investigation in 2005
Allegations against Epstein were first brought to the Palm Beach Police Department when a concerned stepmother called the law-enforcement agency in 2005 to say her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been molested by a wealthy man.
In a letter to the Palm Beach Daily News in 2021, former Palm Beach police Chief Michael Reiter, who led the department at the time, said the department “recognized the importance of stopping Jeffrey Epstein and bringing him to justice.”
The 2019 Palm Beach Post investigation found that Krischer, the state attorney who was the first to prosecute Epstein for sex crimes, approached the case as though the girls who accused Epstein were prostitutes, instead of viewing them as victims of sexual assault.
Reiter and Joseph Recarey, the detective who led the case, were frustrated by Krischer’s decisions and went to the FBI, and also urged Krischer to step down.
“The department never bent to the power and influence brought to bear against us,” Reiter wrote. “Unfortunately, of the many other agencies involved, only the FBI acted in a similar way.”
Recarey died in 2018, before Epstein was arrested on federal charges. Recarey said that during the investigation, nearly two dozen girls and young women provided nearly identical information about their encounters with Epstein, including information about how he flaunted his wealth to exploit them, The Palm Beach Post reported in a 2019 investigation.
Recarey worked to build the case against Epstein, with the detective finding what would become dozens of teens who said they had been targeted by the billionaire. As part of the investigation, Palm Beach police arranged for Epstein’s trash to be set aside by garbage collectors, so detectives could sift through it.
When local prosecutors led by Krischer tried to offer Epstein a plea deal that would not involve time behind bars, Recarey fought back.
From the 2019 Palm Beach Post investigation:
Recarey, incensed, put together an arrest warrant charging Epstein with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation. The charges were punishable by maximum 30- and 15-year sentences, respectively.
Again, his efforts were greeted with silence from Krischer’s office.
On May 1, 2006, a frustrated Police Chief Reiter asked Krischer to step down from the case.
“I must urge you to examine the unusual course that your office’s handling of this matter has taken and consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification,” he wrote.
In a later deposition, Recarey said he got the feeling that a sex crimes prosecutor who worked the Epstein case “was trying to brush this case under the carpet.”
4. What was inside Epstein’s Palm Beach home?
When Palm Beach police searched Epstein’s El Brillo Way home in 2005, they found many details that corroborated what they had been told by underage victims, including a hot pink-and-green couch in Epstein’s bathroom, The Palm Beach Post reported in 2019.
Also found in the house:
What investigators didn’t find: computer towers, which Recarey said in a deposition that he believed had been there because cables were still dangling from a wall.
There were hidden cameras in two rooms of Epstein’s house, police said.
In the mid-2000s, Epstein had three black Mercedes and a green Harley-Davidson motorcycle. His home’s staff included a private chef — Epstein was known for his preference not to eat at restaurants.
Later, demolition crews would find a trio of candles that still remained on a bathroom sink in the long-empty house.
5. Epstein rubbed elbows with the rich and powerful in Palm Beach
Some of the names included in court documents published in January of 2024 were no surprise to those who have followed the case.
Those names were found scattered throughout the documents from a 2015 civil defamation lawsuit filed against Maxwell by one of Epstein’s victims, the late Virginia Giuffre, whose family said she died by suicide in April. That lawsuit was later settled and federal judges began releasing material from the case in 2019.
Two of the highest-profile names in those documents: Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Clinton’s name has been mentioned alongside Epstein’s for years. They reportedly met as early as 1995, at a fundraising dinner for Clinton in Palm Beach. When that list was released in 2024, a representative for Clinton told People that Clinton doesn’t know anything about Epstein’s “terrible crimes.”
In 2019, a Clinton spokesman said the former president had taken four trips on Epstein’s planes in 2002 and 2003, with stops in connection with the Clinton Foundation’s work. “Staff, supporters of the Foundation, and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg of the trip,” the spokesman said.
Trump and Epstein were photographed together several times, and Epstein was a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. In a 2002 interview with New York magazine, Trump said he had known Epstein for 15 years and that Epstein was a “terrific guy.”
“He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Trump said in the New York interview. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Trump in 2019 said he “threw him (Epstein) out” of the club. “I’m not a fan of Jeffrey Epstein,” Trump told reporters at the time.
“I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump said. “People in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I had a falling out with him a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to him for 15 years. I wasn’t a fan. I was not — yeah, a long time ago. I’d say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his. That I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.”
In a letter to the Palm Beach Daily News in 2019, resident Alexander C. Ives said Epstein was not a fixture to everyone in the town. “Just as though living in a small town, some if not many Palm Beachers had and continue to have a good enough sense of character judgment to avoid Epstein’s company and his like,” Ives wrote.
Though Epstein was not known for attending many parties, he reportedly made some big-dollar donations to local organizations, including, as of a 2006 Palm Beach Post article, $100,000 to Ballet Florida.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Jeffrey Epstein in Palm Beach: What to know about his house, charges and more
Reporting by Kristina Webb, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
