After Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide in a New York City jail cell, the public’s focus has shifted towards his alleged chief co-conspirator – the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of the accused child sex trafficker.
Of all the questions her involvement with Epstein has raised, one is particularly pressing for investigators: where is she?
“Right now, everything depends on Maxwell,” Ambrosio Rodriguez, a criminal defence attorney and former sex crimes prosecutor, told The Independent. “The public at large may not know her whereabouts, but I can guarantee you the FBI knows exactly where she is.”
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On Wednesday, one of Epstein’s accusers filed a lawsuit against Ms Maxwell, alleging she conspired with members of the disgraced financier’s household staff “to make possible and otherwise facilitate the sexual abuse and rape” the alleged victim said she experienced in 2002 aged 15.
And a source familiar with the criminal investigation into Epstein told The Independent that federal prosecutors were looking at names mentioned in connection to his crimes, which would include Ms Maxwell.
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But they have reportedly faced challenges in locating the 57-year-old Briton, who has been accused of procuring young girls for his sexual pleasure, something she has repeatedly and forcefully denied. Ms Maxwell has never been charged with any crimes and has previously denied all accusations of wrongdoing.
In 2016 she was sued for defamation by one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, for calling allegations against her “obvious lies”. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Ms Giuffre had said that she was groomed from the age of 15 by Ms Maxwell and forced to have sex with Epstein and several powerful men, all of whom have denied the allegations.
Ms Maxwell has virtually removed herself from the public eye since then. She was living in London two years ago with no fixed address, her lawyers told a judge in 2017. This week Vanity Fair wrote about rumours that she has been living in Florida or “living the high life in London or the Continent”, while the Daily Mail said she was staying in a sprawling oceanfront property in Massachusetts with her supposed tech CEO boyfriend Scott Borgerson. Mr Borgerson immediately denied those reports. A friend told the Daily Beast they thought she was in France.
On Thursday the New York Post published a photograph of her sitting in a burger bar which it said had been taken in Los Angeles a few days earlier. It said she told the fellow customer who took it:
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