Photo courtesy of Netflix
Queasy but engrossing, not unlike the story it tells, “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich,” documents the downfall of a billionaire sexual abuser whose career of evil makes Harvey Weinstein look only moderately deranged. Epstein knew Weinstein. More troublingly, he also palled around with Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and a cast of the rich and powerful whose names go largely unmentioned in the Netflix series.
The tabloid scandal of the prominent pedophile—finally charged by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and denied bail by a federal judge—shifted effortlessly into conspiracy theory once he was discovered dead in his cell in New York’s Metropolitan Corrections Center. The authorities called it suicide but many remain unconvinced. In differing accounts, the facility was either the world’s sloppiest jail or a postmodern Alcatraz with cameras covering all angles. Epstein either had no trouble fitting his neck into a noose or couldn’t possibly have done it. Did the guards really fall asleep? Did someone drug their coffee?
“Filthy Rich” gives more than a half dozen of his accusers the opportunity to tell their stories. With a few exceptions, Epstein preyed on lower class girls from abusive or dysfunctional families. Many of his victims were as young as 14. Epstein was especially fond of massage and hired girls to rub him into arousal. They came into his orbit for money and, sometimes, the promise of mentorship. Fear kept some from breaking free of his influence. Women exited his sphere of intimacy were surveilled and threatened. They changed addresses and phone numbers, but his minions always found them.
Epstein rose to prominence in New York during the Gordon Gekko era. A Vanity Fair reporter assigned to profile him compared Epstein to Gatsby, a mystery man with an unaccountable fortune who purchased his way into society. Fans of European pulp fiction and German cinema will recognize a different fictional model, Dr. Mabuse, the sinister, unthwartable criminal mastermind who surfaced in the films of Fritz Lang. Epstein’s wealth was inexhaustible; he was intellectually brilliant and utterly amoral, a dangerous sociopath. He organized an international sex ring with a network of procurers. It’s said that his various lairs—a New York townhouse, a New Mexico ranch, a Paris apartment, a Palm Beach mansion, a Caribbean island—were laced with hidden cameras for recording the private lives of his famous guests. He jetted between destinations in his own aircraft.
Ordinary Origins
“Filthy Rich” could have explored Epstein’s rise in richer detail. According to the documentary, he was born in lower-middle class Coney Island, excelled in high school and studied physics at the Cooper Union. He worked at Bear Sterns in “quantitative analysis” and went on to become a master of Ponzi schemes, fake assets and stock price manipulation. His partner in crime (and at Towers Finance), Steven Hoffenberg, went to prison. Epstein was unscathed. He somehow gained financial power of attorney over billionaire Les Wexner (The Limited, Victoria’s Secret) and used his ties to the lingerie industry to scout for women, offering them modeling jobs. His sexual appetite never slacked.
“Filthy Rich’s” hero is the Palm Beach police chief who doggedly pursued Epstein after hearing cries for help from underage girls. He amassed enough information on the billionaire’s solicitations of minors to put him away for life but was stymied by other officials. Epstein was tipped off about a raid on his mansion and left Florida with most of his hard drives. Police body camera footage revealed only a sprawling house filled with the sort of sex kitsch art some critics would admire if displayed in a Soho gallery. The state’s attorney refused to bring charges; the FBI opened a file but did nothing.
The first turning point was reached in 2008 when federal charges were brought in Florida. But U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta (later, briefly, Trump’s Labor Secretary), cut an unusual plea deal granting immunity for Epstein and co-conspirators—including Ghislaine Maxwell, the Oxford-educated daughter of a disgraced British media baron—in exchange for a brief prison sentence. Epstein enjoyed unusual privileges behind bars, including a daily 12-hour “work release” that allowed him to carry on with his sexual-financial endeavors.
In 2019, in the wake of #MeToo, justice caught up with Epstein, albeit several interviewees feel that he cheated responsibility once again—this time by taking his own life. Others, including a medical examiner hired by Epstein’s brother, hold that suicide was unlikely. He remains a mystery man in death.
