One Christmas, a very big billionaire threw a very big party in his very big apartment. Maxwell swept in and scanned the room, her eyes falling on two young sisters.
“Oh, my God, look at those girls!” Maxwell exclaimed, according to a friend. “I didn’t realize that they’re so beautiful! Can you introduce me to them?”
“Ghislaine, why would you want to meet them?” the friend asked. “Wouldn’t you rather meet their parents?”
“I’d like to meet them because I know Jeffrey would like to meet them,” Maxwell explained.
“And that,” the friend recalls, “is when I realized something was very strange.”
For a year leading up to her arrest, the vanishing act of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime friend, lover, and alleged accomplice vexed the authorities, the press, and the women who accuse her of luring them into a web of sexual abuse.
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