ALTHOUGH I HAD NOT TOLD him that Virginia was in the country, Stan kept in touch, and expressed that he and David wanted to meet her. We set up a date in July 2014 for her and me to fly from Florida to New York for a meeting.
The entire plane ride up, I was picking Virginia’s brain about the time she spent with her “dysfunctional family” from 2000 to 2002. She was confident that Epstein’s New York butler Jojo Fontanilla would not only remember her but also cooperate with her against Epstein. She told me of a time before her eighteenth birthday when she was in Epstein’s New York house in extraordinary pain. Jojo drove her, with Epstein and Maxwell, to a nearby hospital, where a medical team attended to her immediately. Jojo had been there for her then and always would be.
We spent three hours shuffling through hundreds of pages of evidence from the Epstein investigation. Before we landed, I asked her how she felt about tracking Jojo down to see what help he would give. She said she would do whatever it took to move the case forward. Our flight arrived at LaGuardia at noon. We had four hours to kill before our meeting with David and Stan.
We took a cab from JFK straight to East Seventy-First Street. As we walked toward Central Park, Virginia looked to the right and instantly reacquainted herself with the mansion that sprawled across nearly an entire city block. It was obvious that she had been there many times: she recognized every square inch of the place from the outside in.
The plan was for her to knock on the front door and ask for Jojo. Her fantasy was that he would come down the stairs and give her a big hug before saying he’d cooperate with her and thank her for coming and saving him from his indentured servitude. She believed he was a good person who would choose the right side over money.
As we walked down the sidewalk, coming closer to the door, she described the inside of the various portions of the house that we were passing. We approached the front door and saw video cameras outside. She described a video room where all the live images were monitored and recorded and stored for a certain period of time.
I told her to look down to avoid her facial capture by the cameras. As we walked under the main security bulb, she looked up, against my advice, and extended both of her middle fingers, hoping that Epstein would eventually see the footage. It was a double f*** you, impulsive and straight from her heart. But when I looked at her, she had tears streaming down her face and I knew we couldn’t stop at the front door. We walked to the end of the block.
Virginia told me it was better for her to go to the door alone, and I agreed. I handed her the USB recording device and she put it in her top shirt pocket. I waited across the street and watched as she walked up to the giant front door and started knocking. I was standing behind a car in front of the public library, close enough to see her but far enough to not be seen.
A woman opened the front door. Virginia talked to her but did not enter. The interaction lasted about three minutes. The door eventually closed, and Virginia called me on my cell phone, unsure where I had gone.
She was still shaking when I met her at the end of the block. It had been more than a decade, and yet this building was so ingrained in Virginia’s memory it caused her to have a physiological response when she came near it. Her reentry into the perimeters of Epstein’s world had brought back the memories that had caused her to flee the country more than a decade earlier. But there was also another emotion at play. She told me that the woman said she’d inform Jojo that Virginia was there to see him. The woman had closed the door and then, after a few moments, opened it again and told Virginia that Jojo did not want to see her. The only person in the Epstein household she thought had a heart big enough and kind enough to come to the door had refused to see her.
Virginia understood that his doing so would have gotten him in trouble with his boss, but that did not matter, not now, not here. Right or wrong, she was genuinely surprised and disappointed by his snub. She was also relearning a lesson she’d learned many years before but, in the excitement of high expectations, had forgotten: in Epstein’s world, money trumped friendships. While this was disappointing to Virginia, it was an important gesture for me to see. She was willing to go into the lion’s den. It convinced me further of her credibility and determination.
Without my prompting, she asked, “How close are we to 301 East Sixty-Sixth Street?” This was the address of the apartments, which Maritza Vasquez had explained were where Epstein stashed his girls. I asked Virginia what she was planning to do once she got there. She said the girls would talk to her because they were going through everything that Virginia had gone through.
I told her that the only girl who I knew still lived there was Nadia Marcinkova. So, she went to the building and asked the doorman for Nadia. He was well trained when it came to the privacy of the residents of the 301 building. He said he could not confirm whether Nadia was there and that he would need to inform her of Virginia’s credentials. He took the information, made a phone call, and then told Virginia that he could not help her.
With more time available before going to the Boies Schiller Flexner office, Virginia took me to other places in the city she had frequented, including the Victoria’s Secret store where Epstein often took Virginia and other young girls to purchase lingerie. After this field trip, it was time for the meeting. We checked in at the front desk, but without Stan as an escort, access wasn’t so easy. After taking our identification, which for Virginia was an Australian passport, security allowed us access to the elevators. It was still somewhat unnerving that this was the building where Darren Indyke, Epstein’s personal lawyer, had his office.
We got off the elevator at the seventh floor and told the Boies Schiller Flexner receptionist that we were there. A few minutes later Stan and David both entered through the glass doors behind us. Virginia and I stood up. She had a way of not being impressed by anyone, and this was no different.
David led us into his large conference room. He was at the head of the table, but he had not sat for more than a second before Virginia started her spiel, thanking him for his help and telling him that she had stayed silent for too long. She told him that she was here to stop Epstein once and for all.
David, relaxed but methodical, listened to her patiently. He already had some background on Virginia, from Stan, and wanted to hear directly from her what she had experienced with Epstein and what her intentions were going forward. Knowing Boies’s time was limited, Virginia kept her summary brief, not expanding much beyond what she had alleged in her original Jane Doe 102 complaint. That was enough to get David’s attention. In essence, she was recruited as a teenager by Ghislaine Maxwell to be trafficked by Epstein. Now she wanted to be a part of undoing Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement. I then chimed in about the mechanics of making that happen.
“It appears obvious Brad has everything well under control. Where do you see me fitting in?” David inquired.
I responded: “Epstein should be in jail. My goal is to put him there. He will do anything to stop me. He has a powerful team behind him and unlimited resources to go after me, and Virginia, and anyone who stands up to him. I’m going after him, but when he and his team fire, we’re going to need a heavyweight legal team to counter their attacks. There will be plenty of room for you.”
David reacted quickly. “Okay, then I’m in.”