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.
"Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer any question directed toward you," the booklet admonished, Alessi testified.
Some of Alessi’s tasks on the checklist from Maxwell corroborated Jane’s testimony from earlier this week. Jane for example described her first encounter with Epstein and Maxwell as occurring at the Interlochen summer camp in 1994, saying she met a woman who was “walking with a cute little Yorkie.” Alessi on Thursday described having to bathe Maxwell’s dog “Max, the little Yorkie,” before Epstein and Maxwell went on trips together because “every time there was wheels-up, the poor dog shaked like crazy because she didn’t like to be in the plane.”
Jane testified that as a 14 year old, she began regularly seeing Epstein “once every week or two,” for encounters that continued for years. During her testimony on Wednesday she affirmed that she recalled a “sweet Latin American man” who drove her for Epstein.
On Thursday, Alessi recalled picking her up from her family home, as well as once retrieving from her performing arts school in West Palm Beach.
Alessi recalled first meeting Giuffre, then going as Virginia Roberts, at Donald Trump’s exclusive Mar-A-Lago Club, where he claims Maxwell had him stop the car he was driving near the main gate so she could get out and talk to a woman wearing “a long white uniform like a nurse’s,” who returned to Epstein’s Palm Beach house that afternoon with Maxwell.
Maxwell had visited “all of the luxury spas in Palm Beach County,” the day she picked up Virginia Roberts, Alessi testified.
The housekeeper testified that Virginia, who he said looked to be around 14 or 15 at the time, subsequently returned to the house with her boyfriend a couple times, and other times Alessi picked her up from the house in Royal Palm Beach where she and the boyfriend lived.
On Tuesday, the government’s first witness identified former President Trump as one of the famous passengers who flew on Epstein’s private plane. The 2020 book “The Grifter's Club: Trump, Mar-a-Lago, and the Selling of the Presidency" relates a report that Trump would later ban Epstein from Mar-a-Lago for making advances on the teenage daughter of another member.
Prior to their falling out, Trump had described Epstein as a “terrific guy,” in a 2002 New York Magazine article, where Trump extolled of Epstein: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Earlier on Thursday, the prosecution called Dr. Lisa Rocchio, a clinical and forensic psychologist, to testify as a forensic psychology expert.
Rocchio maintained direct eye contact with the 12 jurors and five alternates, who all appeared attentive to her expertise on the stages of grooming for childhood sexual abuse and the common phenomenon of subsequent delayed disclosure of that abuse.
Rocchio elucidated five stages of grooming children for sexual abuse: selection and identification; obtaining access and isolating the victims; coercive lies and deception to build a relationship of trust and attachment; desensitization to sexualized topics and normalization of touching; and coercive control.
“The younger the victim, the more likely they are to delay disclosure of the abuse that they’ve experienced,” Rocchio explained Thursday morning.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to six criminal counts in connection with allegedly recruiting teenage girls for sexual abuse by Epstein. She faces up a maximum of 70 years in prison if convicted on all counts. Thursday was the fourth day of trial.
Follow @jruss_jruss
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Los Angeles assistant prosecutor faces felony charges April 24, 2024 -
Finger guns in court April 24, 2024