MANHATTAN (CN) — Following up testimony from Jeffrey Epstein's private pilot and a young victim caught in his web, prosecutors called on a Palm Beach housekeeper Thursday to delve further into the shadowy financier's illicit sex ring.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Epstein who is charged with recruiting teenage girls for the scheme, gave a slight nod to the former housekeeper, Juan Alessi, when he identified her in the corner of the courtroom this morning, dressed in a black sweater and black pants.
Alessi said he began working for Epstein as subcontractor in 1990, after previously working for insurance mogul Robert Meister and the mother of Ohio business tycoon Les Wexner, one of Epstein's close associate. A year later, Alessi was working full-time for Epstein, with his roles gradually expanding to managing the daily goings-on at Epstein's Palm Beach mansion from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. The 71-year-old Ecuadorean moved to the U.S. in 1968, he testified.
By the end of Alessi's 12 years working for Epstein, the financier was regularly getting three massage appointments per day, he testified under direct questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey. By the housekeeper's estimate, nearly all of the massage therapists, 98%, were female.
On occasions when Epstein or Maxwell did not schedule those massages themselves, Alessi said he was tasked with calling numbers from a Rolodex to schedule a massage for Epstein and confirming with him and Maxwell that someone was coming to the Palm Beach mansion to give a massage.
Alessi also described hardbound books of contacts, referred to by Maxwell's instructions to the housekeeper as the "J.E. and G.M. telephone directories," that were required to be kept at Epstein and Maxwell's respective desks, which are likely some iteration of the so-called "little black book" of Epstein's contacts that Gawker published in redacted form in 2015.
During his testimony, Alessi recalled stern protocol directives Maxwell set at the six bedroom Palm Beach house. “You should never look at his eyes,” the British socialite allegedly instructed Alessi at one point. “Just look at another part of the room and answer him," she continued, according to Alessi's account.
Sometimes assigned with cleaning up Epstein’s multiple massage rooms after his recurring appointments, Alessi described on Thursday once finding a large dildo that “looked like a huge man’s penis with two heads.” He said he cleaned the object in a sink and returned to a basket kept in Maxwell’s bedroom closet. Alessi also recalled finding varying large electric back massages among the post-massage detritus of soiled towels and massage oils.
Asked by Comey, the daughter of former FBI chief James Comey, how many young females he remembered seeing at Epstein’s Palm Beach house, Alessi said he could recall “just two females that appeared to be underage.” The witness identified one of these individuals as the minor victim who testified earlier this week under the pseudonym Jane, and the other as Virginia Roberts, who now goes by Virginia Giuffre.
“I don’t know exactly how old she was, but she appeared to be young ... I would say 14, 15 ... strikingly beautiful girl, beautiful eyes, long hair, long brunette hair, tall, very pleasant,” Alessi recalled of Jane’s appearance at Epstein’s Palm Beach Mansion.





