In 2017, the master of mass-market thrillers, James Patterson, focused his attention on his Palm Beach neighbor Jeffrey Epstein for the true-crime book Filthy Rich. With the help of John Connolly, an investigative reporter and former cop, and Tim Malloy, a former Palm Beach news anchor, Patterson takes readers through the investigation and legal maneuvering that ended with Epstein pleading guilty to two charges of solicitation (one with a minor) in 2008.
Many strange and disturbing Epstein facts have been rehashed this week, following the new federal charges filed against him in New York, but somehow there’s still more. Here, the weirdest and most interesting details reported in Patterson’s book.
Epstein’s Palm Beach home was an odd place
Bland on the outside and bizarre on the inside, Epstein’s Palm Beach home was full of pictures of naked women and girls, including some of the alleged victims of his crimes. When police executed their first search warrant in 2005, they found nude photos of some of Epstein’s accusers. The photos lined the walls. They also found soaps shaped like penises and vaginas, along with UFC videos and a copy of the 2001 Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star.
Patterson says Esptein had a hidden camera in a clock that he used to surreptitiously snap pictures of his victims. Police found those photos on his computer, but the presence of the camera wasn’t a surprise. The police had put it there for Epstein years prior when investigating a theft from his home.
His body was weird too
His penis in particular. One of his accusers is quoted in the book describing it as “very tiny.” Another told police that he “has some sort of birth defect — on his thing.” She went on: “It’s like a teardrop. Like a drop of water. It’s really fat at the bottom and skinny at the top.” Another called it “egg-shaped.”
Epstein was very generous to the Palm Beach PD
In 2004, Epstein gave the Palm Beach Police Department a donation of $90,000. It was “generous, even by the generous standards of Palm Beach,” Patterson writes, and earmarked for a firearms simulator. Several months after the start of the department’s investigation, Epstein called the police chief and asked if he’d bought the simulator yet. The chief hadn’t and Epstein offered more money to make it happen. At that point, the police figured Epstein knew they were investigating him.
Sometimes, he paid girls just to hang out
One of Epstein’s alleged victims told police that she would sometimes get paid just to sit around his house watching TV or reading books. Of course, she had to be naked. “Sometimes he’d just invite me over for breakfast, for dinner, or just to use the swimming pool, and I’d get paid for that too,” she told police.
Epstein would turn away some girls
One of his accusers, who said she recruited new girls, told police that she brought a 23-year-old to Epstein and he said she was too old. Another said her friend was rejected for being “a little overweight.”
Epstein once had flowers delivered to a girl at her high school
A man who worked for Epstein was dispatched to deliver a dozen roses to his alleged victim following her high-school drama performance.
Why Trump banned him from Mar-a-Lago
As Patterson tells it, Epstein was banned from Trump’s Palm Beach club, where he was never an official member, after he invited a young woman he met there back to his house. She went, and Epstein tried to get her to undress. The girl refused and told her father, who went to Trump.
Epstein was accused of sexual assault in the ’90s
In 1997, a young actress went to the LAPD with accusations of sexual assault, but it didn’t result in any charges. In 2010, she told a newspaper, “The cops said it’d be my word against his. And since he had a lot of money, I let it go.”
Alan Dershowitz used Myspace pages to discredit Epstein’s victims
From Filthy Rich:
Some insight into Epstein’s fortune
One of the most vexing mysteries about Epstein is how he made his fortune. Patterson sheds a bit of light on this question by describing Epstein’s main hustle in the mid-’80s. Epstein would work for fabulously wealthy people, devising “creative new ways” for them to avoid paying taxes, Patterson writes. Epstein would charge a flat fee for his services.
Epstein argued that he was only guilty of loving massages
Patterson writes:
Epstein can’t use Tinder
As a condition of the deal he struck with prosecutors, Epstein can’t look at porn online or “use social networking for sexual purposes,” Patterson reports.
