More than 180 unidentified females, including teenage girls, were flown on a fleet of private jets owned by Jeffrey Epstein which was used to traffick his victims round the world.
Analysis of the flight records from 1991 to 2019 reveals unidentified women being flown to destinations including the UK, Paris, Morocco and Epstein’s homes in Palm Beach, Florida and the US Virgin Islands.
A complaint filed by the US Virgin Islands government in February 2020 alleged that Epstein had “created a network of companies and individuals who participated in and conspired with him in a pattern of criminal activity related to sex trafficking, forced labor, sexual assault, child abuse, and sexual servitude of … young women and children”.
Epstein’s estate settled the case in 2022, paying $105m as well as half the proceeds from the sale of his private island in the US Virgin Islands, Little St James.
Epstein’s fleet included a Boeing 727 which had a bedroom and cabin walls of red crushed velvet, and a Gulfstream jet. The Boeing jet with tail number N908JE, sometimes dubbed the “Lolita Express”, is now rotting in a facility for grounded aircraft in Georgia in the US.
The private fleet was used to provide secure and discreet travel for many of Epstein’s friends. Those travelling on the financier’s fleet were typically named on the flight records compiled by crew, but there were at least 188 female passengers who were unidentified. There is no suggestion or evidence that Epstein’s prominent friends who travelled on the flights knew women were at risk of being trafficked.
In December 2000 Epstein’s Boeing jet landed in London and then flew to RAF Marham in Norfolk. Records for the journey from London to the RAF base show that an unnamed female was aboard. Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are reported to have stayed at Sandringham as guests of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, but the identity of the unnamed passenger has never been revealed.
In March 2001, flight records detail how Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was flown from Tangier in Morocco to Luton airport. The financier and Maxwell accompanied Giuffre on the flight. Giuffre alleged that she met Mountbatten-Windsor during the visit to Britain and that she was paid $15,000 to have sex with him. Mountbatten-Windsor had denied meeting Giuffre, who took her life in April last year.
At the same time as the alleged trafficking, the fleet was being used to enable meetings involving Epstein’s elite group of contacts.
On an overcast day in May 2001, Epstein landed at Luton airport with Maxwell in his private Boeing 727. The next day Epstein met the then prime minister Tony Blair in Downing Street in a meeting Peter Mandelson had lobbied for.
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“He is young and vibrant,” Mandelson claimed in an email reported by the BBC in October last year. “He is safe (whatever that means) and Clinton is now doing a lot of travelling with him.”
Over the summer of 2001 the private jet transported Giuffre from New York to Florida. Other unidentified females were flown to Palm Beach.
Juliette Bryant, from Cape Town in South Africa, was an aspiring model who had been recruited by Epstein. In September 2002 she was flown from New York to Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
“I obviously assumed it was for a modelling shoot,” she told the US broadcaster CBS News last month. “As the airplane took off, he [Epstein] started touching me forcibly in between my legs, and I freaked out. I realised ‘this is not a modelling opportunity – I’ve been kidnapped.’”
Other women who were recruited by Epstein and Maxwell were often also flown in scheduled aircraft. An investigation by the Times last week revealed that booking records appear to show that Epstein may have been trafficking women through British airports as late as 2019.
Bedfordshire police has confirmed it is reviewing materials over private flights in and out of Luton airport, while Essex police is doing the same for private flights at Stansted airport. The Ministry of Defence has launched a review into whether RAF bases were used by Epstein’s fleet.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor used the private fleet on four occasions, according to the flight logs. He has denied any wrongdoing in connection to Epstein.
Photograph by US Department of Justice