Questions Remain After Release of Epstein Records

For nearly two decades, journalists, police detectives, FBI agents, lawyers, and amateur sleuths have pried into the depraved world of Jeffrey Epstein. Yet even after the release of thousands of pages of court records in recent days, questions about the millionaire pedophile remain unanswered. The documents shed little new light on the financier's habitual sexual abuse of underage girls. Another batch is expected Monday, though there is little indication they will yield more information than the nearly 3,000 pages of deposition transcripts, legal memos, emails, and other records made public since Wednesday. Here's a look by the AP at what is known so far about Epstein and his crimes:

• 'Moneyman of mystery': Epstein began receiving media attention in 2002 after a trip to Africa by former President Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey, and comedian Chris Tucker. The five-day tour of Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, and South Africa was intended to draw attention to the fight against AIDS. After the visit, New York magazine ran a profile of the man who provided the private jet for the trip: Jeffrey Epstein. The story portrayed him as an "international moneyman of mystery" who cultivated relationships with Nobel Prize-winning scientists and diplomats but puzzled Wall Street insiders who couldn't figure out how a college dropout got so rich. "Terrific guy," Epstein's neighbor in both Florida and New York, Donald Trump, said in the story. "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."

• Arrested: Those celebrity contacts made it big news when Epstein was arrested in 2006 over allegations that he had hired multiple teenage girls to give him sexualized massages at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. Two years later, prosecutors allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a charge involving a single victim. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program, then started rebuilding his network of influential friends with the help of his socialite former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. After a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea bargain that deprived Epstein's victims of justice, federal prosecutors in New York revived the investigation and charged Epstein in 2019 with sex trafficking. When Epstein killed himself in jail, prosecutors charged Maxwell with facilitating his illicit sexual encounters and participating in some of the abuse. She is serving a 20-year prison term.

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• Was anyone else involved?: In 2009, Virginia Giuffre filed a lawsuit saying Epstein had flown her around the world for sexual encounters with famous people. Legal filings started providing names: Britain's Prince Andrew, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former US Sen. George Mitchell, French modeling scout Jean Luc Brunel, billionaire Glenn Dubin, and law professor Alan Dershowitz, who had represented Epstein. Some of Giuffre's allegations have changed over time. In 2022, for instance, she withdrew her accusations against Dershowitz, saying she "may have made a mistake." Giuffre's allegations have been investigated by the FBI, but no charges have been brought based on her claims. Andrew settled a lawsuit by Giuffre without admitting to any abuse. Many of the released documents involve Maxwell's efforts to discredit Giuffre and Giuffre's lawyers' efforts to prove her accounts. The documents contain scant evidence of wrongdoing by famous figures, but testimony from multiple witnesses confirmed Giuffre's accounts of Epstein's sexual misconduct.

(More Jeffrey Epstein stories.)