July 14, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, Ryan is joined by groundbreaking journalist Vicky Ward as she delves into the intricate and controversial life of Jeffrey Epstein. From his complex relationships with powerful figures to the dark truths behind his infamous scandals, Vicky provides an in-depth analysis of Epstein's world. Discover the untold stories and the societal implications of his actions in this compelling episode. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
Check out Vicky's NEW Book 'The Idaho Four' HERE
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to a numbers game at Ryan Gradoweski. Happy Monday, everybody.
I'm excited that you're all here. So, if you're a
loyal listener of this podcast, I mostly stick to conversation
with elections or some battleground election stuff or some issue stuff.
I don't. I try hard not to chase fads because
I think that that's a losing game. I see what's
(00:22):
on social media, but I don't participate very often, and
a lot of people who do podcasts want to make
their audience comfortable. They want to regurgitate what they already believe.
I try to make my audience as informed as possible
with data. That being said, I'm going to break all
those rules on this episode because if you follow my
social media for some time, you know that I am
(00:44):
a crime junkie. I read true crime, I listen to it.
I absorb far too much of it, and sometimes I'll
catch myself at two am still up thinking, you know
what tonight's to night. I'm going to crack the job
be an Ramsey case. I'm going to do it by
wikipeding the you know the shit of this campaign out
of this case, and I'm going to figure out everything,
(01:05):
it never happens. But I know there's like a delusion,
so I'm very well aware how crazy it is. But
like most Americans, I find true crime fascinating, and I
have found the Jeffrey Epstein case fascinating. I mean, I'm
only human because not only does it deal with someone
who truly is a mystery when it comes to everything
(01:28):
but the crime. The crime is pretty simple to understand.
But the mystery is the person and why this person
was surrounded by all these very very very important people
by from everyone from princes and kings and prime ministers
and presidents, true billionaires and entrepreneurs and lawyers and scientists.
As many of you know, last week and President Trump's administration,
(01:50):
that there was no Epstein's list of people he was blackmailing,
There was no that he did in fact kill himself
in prison, and the President Trump himself said, why are
you still talking about Epstein? People were outraged by what
Trump said and still very curious. Search engines reported that
Epstein's name, along with the word Trump, increased by twelve
(02:14):
hundred percent after Trump made those comments. From the week prior,
it was the number one search thing in connection to
President Trump. More than Eli Musk, more than tariffs, more
than anything. Epstein became the topic. He had a Streisian effect.
By trying to not make it the topic, he made
of the topic. People are calling for Trump's administration to
(02:38):
release the full Epstein file, something the administration is refusing
to do. They're basically saying the case is closed. Ironically,
one of these people calling for the full release of
the file is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon, which many people
do not remember or know, is that in twenty nineteen,
before he killed himself in him before he was arrested,
(03:01):
Bannon had a he might have been arrested, but he
didn't kill himsel yet obviously, But before he died, Bannon
had a fifteen hour recorded interview with Epstein that he
has never released in all these years. He said he
was going to make a documentary about it, but he's
never released these fifteen hours of videos. And he's one
of the people sitting there and saying, you got to
release you know, you got to release the full Epstein file,
(03:23):
and he has not released these very important videos. Now
I think lost in the headlines, but the tru administrations
claimed that there was no official list. I think well,
I think what they were saying was like, there's no
excel file. There's no excel file of the people who
was blackmailing. There were clearly people that he was pure
curing young girls too, right, That's there's no question that
(03:49):
Prince Andrew seemed to be or allegedly Prince Andrew was
getting young girls to have sexual encounters with him, and
he was just one of possibly many's. But that's the
most obvious one, and it wasn't because you know Jeffrey
Epstein and Prince Andrew so much in commic that were
getting tea and then they said, hey, what are you
doing this weekend? Let's go to my island. I think
(04:11):
also lost in this conversation and lost in the confusion.
But whatever happened to so much of Epstein's stuff, Like
for the Epstein case, there was there was a case
where Epstein and we may never know this, but there
was a case when the FBI went and rated the
island and the search warrant did not include what was
(04:33):
in the safe, but they had said the FBI agent,
so they saw tapes in the case and the safe,
and when they went back there several weeks later, all
the tapes were destroyed or gone or missing, whatever, something
happened to them. What happened all his money? Webent his stuff,
I mean webent to his client stuff. There was other
things that the FBI got a hold of. There's some
things that the FBI never got a hold of that
(04:54):
somebody must have somewhere. And the fact that the trum
administration is trying to run away from this issue is
making people more curious. Comedian Andrew Schultz, who had Trump
on his podcast, He's got a huge podcast. He had
Trump on last time before the election. He went on
a TI rate. He was screaming about that. You know,
people like AOC were a real America first people. Because
Trump won't release the tapes and he's lying to us.
(05:17):
I have two major thoughts on this. First, there are
too many people in the Trump orbit who jumped on
every conspiracy about Epstein and a lot of other things
that had no proof. And I'm sorry, but cash buttell
spend a lot of time on podcasts that promoted a
lot of nonsense to people, things that were I mean,
(05:37):
he was at times he was on podcasts that were
just inches away from saying JFK Junior was alive and
would be Trump's running mate. He promote a lot of
stuff to people who have, for lack of a better term,
anti social behavioral issues where they don't trust anything, and
some of them have a right not to trust some
stuff that the government does and some stuff that well
people do. I get it, but they feed that. They
(06:00):
fed the beast, and now he is the beast and
he has to answer to it. He was extremely irresponsible
as a private citizen to build a fan base. This
happens in online culture a lot. It happens in right
wing culture. A lot bluffs does it too. They say
outrageous things, they say things that aren't true. They lie
to their audience over and over and over again to
(06:22):
get more followers to feed the worst narratives. On the
other side, I see it from both sides. It happens everywhere.
It's still wrong and it's still irresponsible. And you live
by the conspiracy theory, you die by the conspiracy theory. Right.
Not every rich person's a Satanist, not everyone's a child molester,
not everyone's everything. Secondly, and I don't think that this
(06:45):
is necessarily right to say, but I'll say this is
that Epstein was way too close to too many powerful
people and entities that to completely expose them. We're not
going to completely expose all these people that he was around.
There's just no way. We're sixty something years since the
jfk assassination and we're just finding out about the CIA's
relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald, and everyone in that case
(07:08):
is dead, Like I mean, there might be one person
in a nursing home, but everyone else is gone. And
they still won't tell us the unredacted truth about that case,
you know. So the idea that they were going to
tell you everyone about Jeffrey Epstein on all of his clients,
but everyone's still alive or most of them are still alive,
I think was a pipe dream. I think they shouldn't
have promised that when it was definitely never gonna happen.
(07:31):
Now I don't know everything about the Jeffrey Epstein case,
and I have a lot of questions, like how did
he get all of his money? Why was he around
these people? Remember, not everyone around him was suber wealthy,
Not everyone around him was a billionaire, Not everyone around
him was a child moluster, Not everyone was a scientist
or a president. They all flocked to him, though, was
it just that wealth invites more wealth and power invites
(07:54):
more power and they all had to be going to
this island. I think for some people it was probable
that they were in it to procure sexual advances from
young girls, but not all of them. Something else is involved,
in my opinion that I don't think is going to
answer be answered. And also, why is just Lane Maxwell
(08:17):
then in prison if the Epstein file didn't exist. I
think the question over what just Lane Maxwell knows and
what she doesn't know and what she's saying what she's
not saying is really the bigger question, because she is
the only living person we have who can still speak
(08:37):
the truth, and she's not speaking, and I think that
she brings all off a lot of other questions that
people should have. I don't know these answers, and I
don't want to pedal conspiracy theories to get clicks and listens.
I think that's very irresponsible and I'd probably be a
very much bigger personality if I did do that, but
I'm not going to. But with me on today's episode
is someone who knows a lot more about this than
(08:59):
I do, who spent time with Jeffrey Epstein. She's not
a household name, but her name is Vicky Ward, and
in March two thousand and three, Vicky wrote a groundbreaking
piece for Vanity Fair called The Talent of mister Epstein.
This was before the Palm Beach Police was investigating him
on the subject of the matter. Vicky was the first
journalist to really spend significant time with him and to
ask a question over his money and his connections and
(09:22):
who were these young girls. It got so bad that
the outlet that she was writing for at the time,
Vanity Fair, took out some of the most salacious comments
because Epstein was threatening to sue and Vicky had to
take up personal security for her life. I think she
was pregnant at the time because she felt threatened by Epstein.
(09:46):
She knows a lot on this matter, far more than
I do, and I want to bring on as my
next guest to talk really about Jeffrey Epstein, who he
was as the person, and some of the questions we
still think about today. Coming up next, Vicky Ward is
a groundbreaking journalist and the author of the new book
The Idaho For Vicky, thank you for being on here.
(10:06):
I want to talk about your book, but I want
to talk about Epstein. First, you were the first journalist
story this big profile back in two thousand and three
about Epstein, and you've since said in multip interviews that
the Epstein story is two stories. It's a very simple
story about the sex scandal with the underage girls and
the complicated story about his relationship with all these people.
(10:26):
One thing I found interesting about your past comments, as
you said that there's no evidence that Epstein started these
sexual encounters before his meeting with Gilaine Maxwell. She was
a very wealthy woman who became very poor. He was
a very poor man and become very wealthy. Is it
a situation of the two people meeting. Do you think
(10:48):
that created the situation that the care of the created scenario,
or was Gizlaine had a bigger role than people think
of just being like a.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Madam Brian, great question, I think I think thank you
for having me. I think it's a it's a complicated answer.
I think Gilenn Maxwell, you know, was had a very
sophisticated European upbringing, and so I think that she probably
(11:18):
came from a background that a lot of Americans, you know,
where the sexual mores would have been difficult for a
lot of Americans to swallow she, you know, so that
there is that she was also, as I have reported,
tragically desperate after her father died. I use the word
(11:42):
tragically because she you know, she was a very accomplished,
well educated woman with a massive international rolodex, who had
the abilities to go out and make something of herself.
But she believed, largely due to having had a megalomaniacal far,
that she was completely dependent.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
On a man.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
And the problem was that that man turned out to
be Jeffrey Epstein. And in order to keep his interest,
you know, this was not a man who was likely
to be monogamous. I think she pushed, you know, and
I've reported this. She kept his interest by sort of
(12:25):
pushing closer to the edge sexually, and that began a
slippery slope. I mean, we know that she was involved,
I mean in the encounters in the nineteen nineties and
early two thousands with underage women, that she went out
(12:47):
and got the women for him. It is also true
that Jeffrey Epstein, as you know, was heavily involved with scientists.
I mean, one of the reasons he was so clever
at crossing the narrative of Jeffrey Epstein that sort of
protected him for so long was that, you know, he
made all his money and then he went and courted
(13:09):
academics at Harvard and elsewhere, and he was very interested
in eugenics and cloning. And I do know from my
reporting that he believed He said this to one of
his friends who I interviewed several times.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
A guy called Stuart Pivart.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
He believed that it was it was society that was
out of step in not condoning men having sex with children,
and that you know, in that when society evolved to
catch up with him, they would they would stand corrected.
(13:56):
So you've got so you've got two things going on.
You've got a man living in a bubble who believes
the problem is with everybody else, not with him. And
you've got a woman who comes from a slightly different
background who's desperate to do anything to keep his protection,
you know, his financial protection, but to keep his interest.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So it's both things.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
What I think is very interesting about this case specifically,
is the fact that not everyone who was around him
was or seems to be, or even has been accused
of being a pedophile. Not everyone around him is incredibly rich,
Not everyone around him is a scientist. Is it that
power and influence increased his orbit. Once you have one person,
(14:42):
you'll have fifty, which you've seen in other big profile cases.
Or was he pure curing these people to be in
his orbit because they were for a greater purpose in
his world, because we don't know really what he did
to earn all this money, don't know where the money
really went afterwards, all all the other stuff. Was it
(15:05):
just the fact that he wanted to have everyone's card
like a Truman Compote type, or was it that he
was procuring them for specific purposes.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So Jeffrey Epstein understood a fundamental truth about very wealthy
people is that you know, when you're at the top
of the food chain, there always there's always something you
can't get. And his cleverness, if you want to call it,
that was very quickly sizing up, for example, what would
(15:43):
Bill Gates on the richest men in the world, What
could Jeffrey Epstein offer him that he couldn't get elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
And the answer was Jeffrey Epstein's Rolodex.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Because Bill Gates wanted to scale the Giving pledge and
he wanted to meet other billionaires.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That was the whole point of it.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And you know, Epsy understood many things about very rich people.
He understood, for example, that if they get defrauded, they
don't go to the authorities, and he used that to
his advantage. But he also understood that his rolodex was invaluable.
(16:29):
I mean, if you look at the discovery in the
Jess Daily case right where you have all these rushed
emails from Jeffrey Epstein, he seems illiterate, which I'm sure
was carefully contrived to make him look so busy when
in fact he had really probably nothing to do. But
he's telling Jess Daily, you know, I can get you
in front of Prince Andrew, and you know, think about
(16:51):
the psychology of that. Jess Daily was very, very senior
banker at JP Morgan. He probably he had plenty of money,
but what did he not have access to the British
royal family. What does Bill Gates probably not have that
Jeffrey Epstein could offer him access to Muhammed bin Salman,
to the e Mayor of Cutter You know, at a
(17:14):
certain level there are you know, you want introductions to
other very rich people. That in a way is what
makes the world go go round and Jeffrey and Epstein
really understood how sort of soft power actually works, right, So,
you know, and you asked though about the sex. You
(17:38):
know that I think you asked at the beginning of
your question. So, I mean, one of the things that
was very striking about all the testimony in the Gilen
Maxwell trial was how, in a sense, inside that Florida
home he and Gilen did create a private world into which,
(18:05):
you know, the household staff I think had a fair
idea of what was going on, but you know, and
it became very complicated, right because the girls that Gilen
went at and recruited, I mean, I'm thinking of the
late Virginia Robert Giffrey, then went out and recruited other girls, right, right,
So it became a very very tragic.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Circle when you met him. Because the only person I've
ever known to have met him was is my friend
and Calter her she and she said this publicly. She
had met him at a funeral and he invited her
house and at one point during the meeting, all the
hairs in the back of her head stood up and
she said, I have to get out of here because
thing was wrong. Was he incredibly charming?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
No? Really, there was a cult coldness to his eyes.
I mean, and he thought he was incredibly charming, which
is completely different. And you know he thought by you know,
I met him when I was pregnant and he produced
tea and he sat there and ate all the tea,
and you know, never offered me anything.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know, he was he was, He was a.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Complete show off. You know, I'm sure he left the
Marquis Dussard's book out for me. You know, it was
all deliberate and contrived.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
And then when I got.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Home, you know, he sent me this book on this
mass textbook, and he I think, and then he had
his assistant phone and tell me, you know how pretty
I was.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
And I tell you I was not feeling one.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It would have been inappropriate in any circumstances.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I was pregnant betweens now and I just was thought
the whole thing was uncomfortable and absurd.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then obviously our phone conversations took a turn for
the threatening. So I did not see the chart, but
I could see why other people right might have found
him charge.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Did he have a successor? I mean, not a child,
but did he have somebody who worked directly underneath him?
That would have been his fixer and his person besides
his lane.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Well, I think, you know, part of the tragedy of this,
right is that there were that he did have a
series of personal assistants who unfortunately were victims themselves and
then became his personal assistants. And this is why this
story is so complicated, because a lot of the names
(20:36):
that would be more public.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Are not.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
So you know, there are in the names of a
lot of people that came up in Gilenn Maxwell's trial,
a lot of women who were in the circle of recruitment,
but because they initially were Epstein were Epstein's victims themselves,
you know, they they were not sort of publicly outed
as it were.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The I want to go to the Trump administration's decision
not to release the file, which I mean they're saying
that there was no list. I think what they mean
is like, there's no excel list, because that would he
would of course, because it wouldn't be an Excel list.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
No.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I mean, if jeff Ycine can barely put it together,
get you hold it together to send an email, he's
not going to have.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
An Excel list.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So but I think a question for a lot of
people come into Jeffrey Epstein's foreign dealings. He was very
close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, he was
close to the Saudi Prince. He was close to various
African dictators, to the British royal family, to American presidents,
to leaders all around the globe. Two things that strike
(21:45):
me is one, why hasn't any country seemingly done this
investigation into his money and his other stuff. And secondly,
was is it possible that he was an agent for Israel?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Well, the other countries wouldn't have done an investigation into
his money because why would they. You know, the only
people who probably want to know where Jeffrey Epstein's money
is are the people who he defrauded. And I go
back to my earliest statement that he made to me.
Rich people don't like to admit if they've been defrauded
(22:25):
because it makes them look stupid. So you know, if
he promised people, which I'm sure he did, that he
would put.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Money their money offshore.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
For tax purposes or whatever other purposes, and now they're
missing it, you're not likely to hear about it. Remember,
Les Wexner, his biggest client, never came forward and said
that Jeffrey Epstein had taken money from him until after
Jeffrey Epstein was dead and les Wexner was in the crosshairs.
So I think it's really important, you know, important fact
(22:57):
to remember that.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And what was your oh, the agent for Israel?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Well, I mean, Robert Maxwell was unquestionably an agent for
Israel Glen's father, which is why he's buried in the
Mount of Olives. Okay, Jeffrey Epstein, as you've mentioned, had
access to Israeli's in powerful positions and he knew them well.
(23:29):
He also was very immersed in the what I would
call the Israeli establishment in America.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yes, but was he on the payroll of israel.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Think?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
You know, my reporting suggests probably not, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But there are a lot of people who act as.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Influencers, passes of information, you know, who are not typically
on a government payroll.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
He didn't need to be on a government payroll.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
He was.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Paid by the richest you know, Zionist in this country,
Leslie Wexner. So you know that again and go back
to soft power. That's kind of how soft power works.
I mean, Jeffrey Epstein was immersed in high level information
just as Robert Maxwell had been, and he probably chose
(24:35):
what to do with that. But you know, again go
back to the emails with Jess Daily. They were very,
very instructive as to how he name dropped to suit
his purposes. And you know how you know, on the
one hand, he was sort of dangling carrots in front
of Jess Daily, but at the same time Jess Daily
(24:57):
was inadvertently confiding also of information about the inner workings
of JP Morgan that they should not have been doing.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So was he so in your mind? And this is
my last question where I got to Europe? But in
your mind, was he just somebody who was, for lack
of a better term, a brilliant chess player, playing everybody
and knowing what everyone's weakness was. And there wasn't a
bigger person behind him or a group of entities who
are using him to procure information with other wealthy people,
(25:27):
like a blackmail list for the purposes of another country
or anything.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I'm not sure about the blackmail list. He definitely was
a very clever chess player, and the problem is he
was he.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Sure the blackmail list exists or that he was blackmail
anybody to begin with?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know that that is one of the great questions.
I mean, the only thing that makes me hesitate about
the blackmail list is that.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
These guys.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Other than Les Weisner and you know that stayed I
mean and actually Donald Trump stayed in his orbit. And
typically if someone's blackmailing you, you run right as far
as possible, and with a very with those two exceptions,
people didn't.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So your new book, The Idaho for is about the
murder case in Moscow, Idaho, that was four young women, sorry,
three young women and a man were brutally murdered in
an attack by a knife by by a killer in
the middle of the night. There's a lot of questions
ongoing in this case, like motive for example, that I
(26:38):
still don't understand. Can you go into the brief overline
of your book and what you've explored in this in
this book?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Sure? So.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
It is the story of the murders, it's the story
of the victims the for you know, really going into
their lives and hopefully keeping them alive and readers minds.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's the story of the murderer in a way that
I think nobody has detailed yet. And it's also the
story of the political and social tensions in the town
where this happened and in the state of Idaho. And
(27:24):
it's a story about the negative side of the Internet.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
On all sorts of levels.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
I mean, the murderer, you know, the book sort of
takes pains to show, is I think a construct of
the dark.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Corners of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
He clearly became, you know, was a frustrated what they
call inceel involuntary celibate.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Whose rage was fueled by that world.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Well, he was very overweight and he lost a lot
of weight, yes, And he was studying serial killers, was
he not, Yes, he was.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Exactly he studied serial colors.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
He's definitely was exposed to the videos, or that Elliott Roger,
who's kind of like a cult hero of this the
insul movement, who was also who was a college student
when he committed a mass murder suicide that was a
deliberate act of vengeance against all the sorority women who
had rejected him. And Elliott Roger made a series of
(28:26):
videos in the hills of Santa Barbara sitting in his
black BMW saying I'm now going to go out and
kill these women who have turned me down. And he
sent this video to his therapist. He sent it to
his mother two minutes before he went out and did
exactly that. And there are parallels with Elliott Roger, who
(28:48):
plat you know, who also left behind a manifesto which
was a sort of memoir of his life.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
There are parallels.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
The killer left a roommate alive and she passed her
and she was all identify as bushy eyebrows. Why is there?
Did he target these girls? And I mean, I think
this guy would think.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
What the what the friends, the best friends are the victims,
and what the families believe? And what makes the most
sense to me, having sort of tried to go back
and trace Brian Coburger's footsteps, is that he was targeting.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
One of them. He was targeting Maddie Mogan.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And I say that because you know, the police have
evidence that his car was in the neighborhood twelve times
that you know, And if you go to the area
of the house, there's only really one place that you
can park your car and look at it, and there's
only really one window you can see into, and it
is that of Maddie Mogan's and the room that he
(29:50):
met he went straight to the night of the murders
was Maddie Mogan. And by the way, Elliott Roger wrote
at length about he had had one friend who was
a woman called Maddie and he was very he was
furious with her for rejecting him. So that that's a
parallel that may or may not beat matter. But you know,
(30:13):
Maddie Mogan was asleep in her bed. It was complete
chance that her best friend, Katie Gonzalvez was also there.
Katie Gonzalvez had already moved out of the house, was
living at home. She had just come into town that
one day to show Maddie Mogan her new car. So
one has to believe that, you know, And what's you know,
(30:36):
there's a line in the book that now the Gonzalves
family have gone public about that. Kaylie woke up and
struggled the Brian Coberger would then have had to come
down the stairs to leave the house to the next floor,
and that, unfortunately, is where Xana Carnodle's room was. And
(30:58):
tragically she was still up and awake because she had
just ordered a door dash deliver it really, which had
just arrived at four in the morning, which is something
she did very frequently. I mean, she was known to
do that and had been a very big party day
at the University of vide Her had been a football
game day, and.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So unfortunately she was up.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
And about and the signs, you know, she was found
with very defensive wounds on her hands.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Sort of having fallen backward.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Into the room. Her boyfriend, Ethan was facing the wall
in his bed. He was a very very tall, handsome,
athletic young man. So, I mean it would appear it
would appear that, you know, Xana was up and fort
coburger and then he saw this big man, I mean,
albeit sleeping, but he was Ethan Chapin was a big,
(31:56):
big guy. And then he goes down, He goes down,
he he you know, he passes Dylan Mortensen, who's got
her door open just a crack.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Why does he ignore her and turn around and force
the issue?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
You know what, What's what somebody in law enforcement said
to me, is that given that, you know, if if
one assumes that he went in there intending to kill
one person and wound up killing for that that the physical.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
It's hot, you know, that would have been very draining.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Do you think that he intended to become a serial killer?
I mean, if that, if he had not been caught
this time. Do you think that he were kill.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Almost the perfect crime.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
His only mistake was to leave the knife sheath by
the bed of Maddie Morgan and Kayleie Gonzalvez. And you know,
I mean in the book, I take you through the
investigation and police chief of Moscow was very generous with
this time to me, and it becomes very clear that
were it not in fact that he had There was
(33:12):
a trace of DNA left on the knife sheath.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It was on like the metal button part of it.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah, and that were it not for the.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Fact that now there is this new methodology of it
what they call investigative genetic genealogy where they use you know,
websites like ancestry and me ancestry dot com. Rather they
can go back and they can construct a family tree
from the smallest piece of DNA. I mean that has
(33:42):
revolutionized called cases. But in this case, there was really
nothing else. They couldn't see the car clearly, they never
found a murder weapon. Yeah, there was nothing else until
until after about six weeks that the DNA they were
(34:05):
able to reconstruct the family tree. And then it's then
they looked at who with the last name coburger would
have been in the area and then they could run
his driver's license and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
They really didn't have anything, so he learned a lot
from the serial killers.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I guess well, you know, listen, he was doing a
PhD in criminology.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I mean what the book also, I think shows is
his descent into despair. You know, he had he had
hauled himself up from being, as you say, the very
overweight loner on the spectrum, the kid who had no friends,
who then had a heroin addiction. He had managed to
turn his life around and now here he is the
(34:46):
other you know, far away from Pennsylvania where he grew up,
doing this PhD in criminology. But it all goes wrong
because of his heinous views of women, which he's very
vocal about.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
He sort of can't keep them to himself.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And it gets him into all sorts of trouble, and
very rapidly, it's very clear he's going to lose his
funding and teaching position at Washington State Universities, that everything
he's battled for is coming down around him. And he
has this belief, you know, he tells the classmate, I
can get any woman I want which was of course
(35:21):
patently untrue. So you know, it's a horrific set of
circumstances all coming together, and it does raise questions run
about them, you know, about the First Amendment because had
this thing gone to trial, I mean, I know that
the victims' families wanted to know more about the role
(35:42):
of Washington State University where he was teaching and where
he clearly there were red flags. And you know, again
you come back to this question when is free speech
hates speech? And I think that the victims families that's
one question they won't get answers to now that he's
played guilty and there's no trial.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, the book is called The Idaho for It is
available wherever books are sold. I've read Vicki's books in
the past, so I've not read this one yet. And
she is a fabulous, fabulous writer. You wrote this one,
James Patterson, right, yes, yes, I'm sure it's.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Going to be a pace from him. It was a
great collaboration.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Well, she's a brilliant writer. Check it out if you
love true crime. I'm going to absolutely check it out.
Thank you for being on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Ryan.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Hey, we'll be right back after this and now for
the Ask Me Anything segment of this podcast. If you
want a part of the Ask Me Anything segment, please
email me Ryan at Numbers gamepodcast dot com. That's Ryan
at Numbers gamepodcast dot com. So this question comes from Brock.
He says, Hey, Ryan. First of all, I was obsessed
(36:48):
with your appearance on clam buckling up to the election.
I love geeking out with you on the numbers and everything,
and now I listen to every single in your podcasts.
Thank you so much, Rock. I can't overstate that thank you.
I heard you mentioned ADHD. In my entire fe family
has ADHD. I always tell my daughter that is a
superpower to embrace the creativity and excitement we bring to
the world with our neurodivergent brains. I've heard you mentioned
(37:10):
a couple of times autistic thus and such as ADHD,
and I'm curious if you're on the spectrum yourself and
have ADHD and those extra superpowers. Thank you so much. Okay, Brock,
I don't mean to laugh. I just this is the
first time I'm reading the email. I am not on
(37:33):
the spectrum. Wish I could claim that as an excuse
sometimes for saying what I think. But no, I'm not
on the spectrum. I've never been testing the spectrum. I
was tested in high school because I was failing basically
every subject but the subjects that I cared about. I
had over a one hundred point grade point average. And
(37:55):
so it was like extremes. And they took me as St.
Francis Prep. They took me to as a psychiatrist or
whatever to test my IQ. I guess was handicapped. I
don't know. I'm not gonna say, but they brought me
to me tested my IQ, and my IQ was I'm
not bragging, but it was high. It was one forty two.
(38:18):
And so they said, there's no way that this person is,
you know, not able to pass grades because they're slow
or because they're handicapped or whatever. There there's something going
on here. So they because I had extreme levels of
excitement and boredom and my numbers would fly off and
on the charts, they diagnosed me with ADHD. They gave
(38:38):
me medication. I took it one time and I just said,
I'm not doing this anymore. I was very you know,
I was always a pain for everybody in my whole
entire life. But but that was that was how that happened,
and I do have so I've been dying as ADHD.
I have never had it treated as far as medication goes.
I write lists every moment of every day. I write
(39:01):
lists constantly to keep myself on track. I will often
take on ten projects at the same time because I
have to take a break from one and go to
the other, which probably takes a lot more time than
it should to get ordinary things done. I have relatives
who also have ADHD, and they do things like they
could work and sit in one place for nine hours
and then they can't do the laundry because they can't operate.
(39:24):
They can't operate in certain things and they can operate
in other things. It's it is actually I know it's
a running joke and everyone has ADHD. There are times
it is a really big struggle. And I will say,
since technology is a bigger and bigger partner life, it
is a bigger and bigger struggle. It is not easy
to deal with sometimes it actually is definitely uh is
(39:44):
definitely hard. But I you know, there have been there
have been people in history who have had it way
harder than I have been, who have overcome extremely difficult odds.
So I don't count it as a you know, disability
or as anything else. I just think that it's one
part of me that makes me function, and I've learned
(40:05):
to kind of operate within it. I don't know, I
guess it's it's not like the most medically knowledgeable answer,
but I just this is how I have managed to operate.
I write lists, like you know, for everything all the
time in my sleep, morning, noon, and night. And I
know if I want to do something like read, I
have to dedicate time away from all technological things in
(40:28):
the morning because I can't really focus in the evening.
And I've also take power naps. I take twenty minute naps,
like around four o'clock or three o'clock. I will take
a twenty minute power like literally just twenty minutes. I'm
totally fine. It's like completely re energized. So that's how
I've learned to operate it. I don't take medication, and
I am i e healthy, but I don't like I
(40:49):
don't know if I've read die number two of my
system or anything like that. I just don't. I don't
have a lot of sugar, and I go to the
gym pretty regularly, despite how having fortunes would never know
that about me any I know that this is the
ADHD working right now. I'm just going to what do
I do to make myself healthier? But no, I'm not
on the spectrum. Thank you for listening, though, Brock, I
(41:10):
really appreciate it, and I appreciate to anyone else who
as ADHD is living with it and takes the time
to listen to this podcast. I appreciate you so much,
and yes, your daughter should lean in to her neurodivergent
brain and all the special things that come with it.
Thank you guys so much for listening. Please like and
subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get
(41:30):
your podcast. See you next time.
Welcome back to a numbers game at Ryan Gradoweski. Happy Monday, everybody.
I'm excited that you're all here. So, if you're a
loyal listener of this podcast, I mostly stick to conversation
with elections or some battleground election stuff or some issue stuff.
I don't. I try hard not to chase fads because
I think that that's a losing game. I see what's
(00:22):
on social media, but I don't participate very often, and
a lot of people who do podcasts want to make
their audience comfortable. They want to regurgitate what they already believe.
I try to make my audience as informed as possible
with data. That being said, I'm going to break all
those rules on this episode because if you follow my
social media for some time, you know that I am
(00:44):
a crime junkie. I read true crime, I listen to it.
I absorb far too much of it, and sometimes I'll
catch myself at two am still up thinking, you know
what tonight's to night. I'm going to crack the job
be an Ramsey case. I'm going to do it by
wikipeding the you know the shit of this campaign out
of this case, and I'm going to figure out everything,
(01:05):
it never happens. But I know there's like a delusion,
so I'm very well aware how crazy it is. But
like most Americans, I find true crime fascinating, and I
have found the Jeffrey Epstein case fascinating. I mean, I'm
only human because not only does it deal with someone
who truly is a mystery when it comes to everything
(01:28):
but the crime. The crime is pretty simple to understand.
But the mystery is the person and why this person
was surrounded by all these very very very important people
by from everyone from princes and kings and prime ministers
and presidents, true billionaires and entrepreneurs and lawyers and scientists.
As many of you know, last week and President Trump's administration,
(01:50):
that there was no Epstein's list of people he was blackmailing,
There was no that he did in fact kill himself
in prison, and the President Trump himself said, why are
you still talking about Epstein? People were outraged by what
Trump said and still very curious. Search engines reported that
Epstein's name, along with the word Trump, increased by twelve
(02:14):
hundred percent after Trump made those comments. From the week prior,
it was the number one search thing in connection to
President Trump. More than Eli Musk, more than tariffs, more
than anything. Epstein became the topic. He had a Streisian effect.
By trying to not make it the topic, he made
of the topic. People are calling for Trump's administration to
(02:38):
release the full Epstein file, something the administration is refusing
to do. They're basically saying the case is closed. Ironically,
one of these people calling for the full release of
the file is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon, which many people
do not remember or know, is that in twenty nineteen,
before he killed himself in him before he was arrested,
(03:01):
Bannon had a he might have been arrested, but he
didn't kill himsel yet obviously, But before he died, Bannon
had a fifteen hour recorded interview with Epstein that he
has never released in all these years. He said he
was going to make a documentary about it, but he's
never released these fifteen hours of videos. And he's one
of the people sitting there and saying, you got to
release you know, you got to release the full Epstein file,
(03:23):
and he has not released these very important videos. Now
I think lost in the headlines, but the tru administrations
claimed that there was no official list. I think well,
I think what they were saying was like, there's no
excel file. There's no excel file of the people who
was blackmailing. There were clearly people that he was pure
curing young girls too, right, That's there's no question that
(03:49):
Prince Andrew seemed to be or allegedly Prince Andrew was
getting young girls to have sexual encounters with him, and
he was just one of possibly many's. But that's the
most obvious one, and it wasn't because you know Jeffrey
Epstein and Prince Andrew so much in commic that were
getting tea and then they said, hey, what are you
doing this weekend? Let's go to my island. I think
(04:11):
also lost in this conversation and lost in the confusion.
But whatever happened to so much of Epstein's stuff, Like
for the Epstein case, there was there was a case
where Epstein and we may never know this, but there
was a case when the FBI went and rated the
island and the search warrant did not include what was
(04:33):
in the safe, but they had said the FBI agent,
so they saw tapes in the case and the safe,
and when they went back there several weeks later, all
the tapes were destroyed or gone or missing, whatever, something
happened to them. What happened all his money? Webent his stuff,
I mean webent to his client stuff. There was other
things that the FBI got a hold of. There's some
things that the FBI never got a hold of that
(04:54):
somebody must have somewhere. And the fact that the trum
administration is trying to run away from this issue is
making people more curious. Comedian Andrew Schultz, who had Trump
on his podcast, He's got a huge podcast. He had
Trump on last time before the election. He went on
a TI rate. He was screaming about that. You know,
people like AOC were a real America first people. Because
Trump won't release the tapes and he's lying to us.
(05:17):
I have two major thoughts on this. First, there are
too many people in the Trump orbit who jumped on
every conspiracy about Epstein and a lot of other things
that had no proof. And I'm sorry, but cash buttell
spend a lot of time on podcasts that promoted a
lot of nonsense to people, things that were I mean,
(05:37):
he was at times he was on podcasts that were
just inches away from saying JFK Junior was alive and
would be Trump's running mate. He promote a lot of
stuff to people who have, for lack of a better term,
anti social behavioral issues where they don't trust anything, and
some of them have a right not to trust some
stuff that the government does and some stuff that well
people do. I get it, but they feed that. They
(06:00):
fed the beast, and now he is the beast and
he has to answer to it. He was extremely irresponsible
as a private citizen to build a fan base. This
happens in online culture a lot. It happens in right
wing culture. A lot bluffs does it too. They say
outrageous things, they say things that aren't true. They lie
to their audience over and over and over again to
(06:22):
get more followers to feed the worst narratives. On the
other side, I see it from both sides. It happens everywhere.
It's still wrong and it's still irresponsible. And you live
by the conspiracy theory, you die by the conspiracy theory. Right.
Not every rich person's a Satanist, not everyone's a child molester,
not everyone's everything. Secondly, and I don't think that this
(06:45):
is necessarily right to say, but I'll say this is
that Epstein was way too close to too many powerful
people and entities that to completely expose them. We're not
going to completely expose all these people that he was around.
There's just no way. We're sixty something years since the
jfk assassination and we're just finding out about the CIA's
relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald, and everyone in that case
(07:08):
is dead, Like I mean, there might be one person
in a nursing home, but everyone else is gone. And
they still won't tell us the unredacted truth about that case,
you know. So the idea that they were going to
tell you everyone about Jeffrey Epstein on all of his clients,
but everyone's still alive or most of them are still alive,
I think was a pipe dream. I think they shouldn't
have promised that when it was definitely never gonna happen.
(07:31):
Now I don't know everything about the Jeffrey Epstein case,
and I have a lot of questions, like how did
he get all of his money? Why was he around
these people? Remember, not everyone around him was suber wealthy,
Not everyone around him was a billionaire, Not everyone around
him was a child moluster, Not everyone was a scientist
or a president. They all flocked to him, though, was
it just that wealth invites more wealth and power invites
(07:54):
more power and they all had to be going to
this island. I think for some people it was probable
that they were in it to procure sexual advances from
young girls, but not all of them. Something else is involved,
in my opinion that I don't think is going to
answer be answered. And also, why is just Lane Maxwell
(08:17):
then in prison if the Epstein file didn't exist. I
think the question over what just Lane Maxwell knows and
what she doesn't know and what she's saying what she's
not saying is really the bigger question, because she is
the only living person we have who can still speak
(08:37):
the truth, and she's not speaking, and I think that
she brings all off a lot of other questions that
people should have. I don't know these answers, and I
don't want to pedal conspiracy theories to get clicks and listens.
I think that's very irresponsible and I'd probably be a
very much bigger personality if I did do that, but
I'm not going to. But with me on today's episode
is someone who knows a lot more about this than
(08:59):
I do, who spent time with Jeffrey Epstein. She's not
a household name, but her name is Vicky Ward, and
in March two thousand and three, Vicky wrote a groundbreaking
piece for Vanity Fair called The Talent of mister Epstein.
This was before the Palm Beach Police was investigating him
on the subject of the matter. Vicky was the first
journalist to really spend significant time with him and to
ask a question over his money and his connections and
(09:22):
who were these young girls. It got so bad that
the outlet that she was writing for at the time,
Vanity Fair, took out some of the most salacious comments
because Epstein was threatening to sue and Vicky had to
take up personal security for her life. I think she
was pregnant at the time because she felt threatened by Epstein.
(09:46):
She knows a lot on this matter, far more than
I do, and I want to bring on as my
next guest to talk really about Jeffrey Epstein, who he
was as the person, and some of the questions we
still think about today. Coming up next, Vicky Ward is
a groundbreaking journalist and the author of the new book
The Idaho For Vicky, thank you for being on here.
(10:06):
I want to talk about your book, but I want
to talk about Epstein. First, you were the first journalist
story this big profile back in two thousand and three
about Epstein, and you've since said in multip interviews that
the Epstein story is two stories. It's a very simple
story about the sex scandal with the underage girls and
the complicated story about his relationship with all these people.
(10:26):
One thing I found interesting about your past comments, as
you said that there's no evidence that Epstein started these
sexual encounters before his meeting with Gilaine Maxwell. She was
a very wealthy woman who became very poor. He was
a very poor man and become very wealthy. Is it
a situation of the two people meeting. Do you think
(10:48):
that created the situation that the care of the created scenario,
or was Gizlaine had a bigger role than people think
of just being like a.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Madam Brian, great question, I think I think thank you
for having me. I think it's a it's a complicated answer.
I think Gilenn Maxwell, you know, was had a very
sophisticated European upbringing, and so I think that she probably
(11:18):
came from a background that a lot of Americans, you know,
where the sexual mores would have been difficult for a
lot of Americans to swallow she, you know, so that
there is that she was also, as I have reported,
tragically desperate after her father died. I use the word
(11:42):
tragically because she you know, she was a very accomplished,
well educated woman with a massive international rolodex, who had
the abilities to go out and make something of herself.
But she believed, largely due to having had a megalomaniacal far,
that she was completely dependent.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
On a man.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
And the problem was that that man turned out to
be Jeffrey Epstein. And in order to keep his interest,
you know, this was not a man who was likely
to be monogamous. I think she pushed, you know, and
I've reported this. She kept his interest by sort of
(12:25):
pushing closer to the edge sexually, and that began a
slippery slope. I mean, we know that she was involved,
I mean in the encounters in the nineteen nineties and
early two thousands with underage women, that she went out
(12:47):
and got the women for him. It is also true
that Jeffrey Epstein, as you know, was heavily involved with scientists.
I mean, one of the reasons he was so clever
at crossing the narrative of Jeffrey Epstein that sort of
protected him for so long was that, you know, he
made all his money and then he went and courted
(13:09):
academics at Harvard and elsewhere, and he was very interested
in eugenics and cloning. And I do know from my
reporting that he believed He said this to one of
his friends who I interviewed several times.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
A guy called Stuart Pivart.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
He believed that it was it was society that was
out of step in not condoning men having sex with children,
and that you know, in that when society evolved to
catch up with him, they would they would stand corrected.
(13:56):
So you've got so you've got two things going on.
You've got a man living in a bubble who believes
the problem is with everybody else, not with him. And
you've got a woman who comes from a slightly different
background who's desperate to do anything to keep his protection,
you know, his financial protection, but to keep his interest.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So it's both things.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
What I think is very interesting about this case specifically,
is the fact that not everyone who was around him
was or seems to be, or even has been accused
of being a pedophile. Not everyone around him is incredibly rich,
Not everyone around him is a scientist. Is it that
power and influence increased his orbit. Once you have one person,
(14:42):
you'll have fifty, which you've seen in other big profile cases.
Or was he pure curing these people to be in
his orbit because they were for a greater purpose in
his world, because we don't know really what he did
to earn all this money, don't know where the money
really went afterwards, all all the other stuff. Was it
(15:05):
just the fact that he wanted to have everyone's card
like a Truman Compote type, or was it that he
was procuring them for specific purposes.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So Jeffrey Epstein understood a fundamental truth about very wealthy
people is that you know, when you're at the top
of the food chain, there always there's always something you
can't get. And his cleverness, if you want to call it,
that was very quickly sizing up, for example, what would
(15:43):
Bill Gates on the richest men in the world, What
could Jeffrey Epstein offer him that he couldn't get elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
And the answer was Jeffrey Epstein's Rolodex.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Because Bill Gates wanted to scale the Giving pledge and
he wanted to meet other billionaires.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
That was the whole point of it.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And you know, Epsy understood many things about very rich people.
He understood, for example, that if they get defrauded, they
don't go to the authorities, and he used that to
his advantage. But he also understood that his rolodex was invaluable.
(16:29):
I mean, if you look at the discovery in the
Jess Daily case right where you have all these rushed
emails from Jeffrey Epstein, he seems illiterate, which I'm sure
was carefully contrived to make him look so busy when
in fact he had really probably nothing to do. But
he's telling Jess Daily, you know, I can get you
in front of Prince Andrew, and you know, think about
(16:51):
the psychology of that. Jess Daily was very, very senior
banker at JP Morgan. He probably he had plenty of money,
but what did he not have access to the British
royal family. What does Bill Gates probably not have that
Jeffrey Epstein could offer him access to Muhammed bin Salman,
to the e Mayor of Cutter You know, at a
(17:14):
certain level there are you know, you want introductions to
other very rich people. That in a way is what
makes the world go go round and Jeffrey and Epstein
really understood how sort of soft power actually works, right, So,
you know, and you asked though about the sex. You
(17:38):
know that I think you asked at the beginning of
your question. So, I mean, one of the things that
was very striking about all the testimony in the Gilen
Maxwell trial was how, in a sense, inside that Florida
home he and Gilen did create a private world into which,
(18:05):
you know, the household staff I think had a fair
idea of what was going on, but you know, and
it became very complicated, right because the girls that Gilen
went at and recruited, I mean, I'm thinking of the
late Virginia Robert Giffrey, then went out and recruited other girls, right, right,
So it became a very very tragic.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Circle when you met him. Because the only person I've
ever known to have met him was is my friend
and Calter her she and she said this publicly. She
had met him at a funeral and he invited her
house and at one point during the meeting, all the
hairs in the back of her head stood up and
she said, I have to get out of here because
thing was wrong. Was he incredibly charming?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
No? Really, there was a cult coldness to his eyes.
I mean, and he thought he was incredibly charming, which
is completely different. And you know he thought by you know,
I met him when I was pregnant and he produced
tea and he sat there and ate all the tea,
and you know, never offered me anything.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
You know, he was he was, He was a.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Complete show off. You know, I'm sure he left the
Marquis Dussard's book out for me. You know, it was
all deliberate and contrived.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
And then when I got.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Home, you know, he sent me this book on this
mass textbook, and he I think, and then he had
his assistant phone and tell me, you know how pretty
I was.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
And I tell you I was not feeling one.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It would have been inappropriate in any circumstances.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I was pregnant betweens now and I just was thought
the whole thing was uncomfortable and absurd.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then obviously our phone conversations took a turn for
the threatening. So I did not see the chart, but
I could see why other people right might have found
him charge.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Did he have a successor? I mean, not a child,
but did he have somebody who worked directly underneath him?
That would have been his fixer and his person besides
his lane.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Well, I think, you know, part of the tragedy of this,
right is that there were that he did have a
series of personal assistants who unfortunately were victims themselves and
then became his personal assistants. And this is why this
story is so complicated, because a lot of the names
(20:36):
that would be more public.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Are not.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
So you know, there are in the names of a
lot of people that came up in Gilenn Maxwell's trial,
a lot of women who were in the circle of recruitment,
but because they initially were Epstein were Epstein's victims themselves,
you know, they they were not sort of publicly outed
as it were.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The I want to go to the Trump administration's decision
not to release the file, which I mean they're saying
that there was no list. I think what they mean
is like, there's no excel list, because that would he
would of course, because it wouldn't be an Excel list.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
No.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I mean, if jeff Ycine can barely put it together,
get you hold it together to send an email, he's
not going to have.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
An Excel list.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So but I think a question for a lot of
people come into Jeffrey Epstein's foreign dealings. He was very
close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, he was
close to the Saudi Prince. He was close to various
African dictators, to the British royal family, to American presidents,
to leaders all around the globe. Two things that strike
(21:45):
me is one, why hasn't any country seemingly done this
investigation into his money and his other stuff. And secondly,
was is it possible that he was an agent for Israel?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Well, the other countries wouldn't have done an investigation into
his money because why would they. You know, the only
people who probably want to know where Jeffrey Epstein's money
is are the people who he defrauded. And I go
back to my earliest statement that he made to me.
Rich people don't like to admit if they've been defrauded
(22:25):
because it makes them look stupid. So you know, if
he promised people, which I'm sure he did, that he
would put.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Money their money offshore.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
For tax purposes or whatever other purposes, and now they're
missing it, you're not likely to hear about it. Remember,
Les Wexner, his biggest client, never came forward and said
that Jeffrey Epstein had taken money from him until after
Jeffrey Epstein was dead and les Wexner was in the crosshairs.
So I think it's really important, you know, important fact
(22:57):
to remember that.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And what was your oh, the agent for Israel?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Well, I mean, Robert Maxwell was unquestionably an agent for
Israel Glen's father, which is why he's buried in the
Mount of Olives. Okay, Jeffrey Epstein, as you've mentioned, had
access to Israeli's in powerful positions and he knew them well.
(23:29):
He also was very immersed in the what I would
call the Israeli establishment in America.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yes, but was he on the payroll of israel.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Think?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
You know, my reporting suggests probably not, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But there are a lot of people who act as.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Influencers, passes of information, you know, who are not typically
on a government payroll.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
He didn't need to be on a government payroll.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
He was.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Paid by the richest you know, Zionist in this country,
Leslie Wexner. So you know that again and go back
to soft power. That's kind of how soft power works.
I mean, Jeffrey Epstein was immersed in high level information
just as Robert Maxwell had been, and he probably chose
(24:35):
what to do with that. But you know, again go
back to the emails with Jess Daily. They were very,
very instructive as to how he name dropped to suit
his purposes. And you know how you know, on the
one hand, he was sort of dangling carrots in front
of Jess Daily, but at the same time Jess Daily
(24:57):
was inadvertently confiding also of information about the inner workings
of JP Morgan that they should not have been doing.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
So was he so in your mind? And this is
my last question where I got to Europe? But in
your mind, was he just somebody who was, for lack
of a better term, a brilliant chess player, playing everybody
and knowing what everyone's weakness was. And there wasn't a
bigger person behind him or a group of entities who
are using him to procure information with other wealthy people,
(25:27):
like a blackmail list for the purposes of another country
or anything.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I'm not sure about the blackmail list. He definitely was
a very clever chess player, and the problem is he
was he.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Sure the blackmail list exists or that he was blackmail
anybody to begin with?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know that that is one of the great questions.
I mean, the only thing that makes me hesitate about
the blackmail list is that.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
These guys.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Other than Les Weisner and you know that stayed I
mean and actually Donald Trump stayed in his orbit. And
typically if someone's blackmailing you, you run right as far
as possible, and with a very with those two exceptions,
people didn't.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So your new book, The Idaho for is about the
murder case in Moscow, Idaho, that was four young women, sorry,
three young women and a man were brutally murdered in
an attack by a knife by by a killer in
the middle of the night. There's a lot of questions
ongoing in this case, like motive for example, that I
(26:38):
still don't understand. Can you go into the brief overline
of your book and what you've explored in this in
this book?
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Sure? So.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
It is the story of the murders, it's the story
of the victims the for you know, really going into
their lives and hopefully keeping them alive and readers minds.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's the story of the murderer in a way that
I think nobody has detailed yet. And it's also the
story of the political and social tensions in the town
where this happened and in the state of Idaho. And
(27:24):
it's a story about the negative side of the Internet.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
On all sorts of levels.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
I mean, the murderer, you know, the book sort of
takes pains to show, is I think a construct of
the dark.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Corners of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
He clearly became, you know, was a frustrated what they
call inceel involuntary celibate.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Whose rage was fueled by that world.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Well, he was very overweight and he lost a lot
of weight, yes, And he was studying serial killers, was
he not, Yes, he was.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Exactly he studied serial colors.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
He's definitely was exposed to the videos, or that Elliott Roger,
who's kind of like a cult hero of this the
insul movement, who was also who was a college student
when he committed a mass murder suicide that was a
deliberate act of vengeance against all the sorority women who
had rejected him. And Elliott Roger made a series of
(28:26):
videos in the hills of Santa Barbara sitting in his
black BMW saying I'm now going to go out and
kill these women who have turned me down. And he
sent this video to his therapist. He sent it to
his mother two minutes before he went out and did
exactly that. And there are parallels with Elliott Roger, who
(28:48):
plat you know, who also left behind a manifesto which
was a sort of memoir of his life.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
There are parallels.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
The killer left a roommate alive and she passed her
and she was all identify as bushy eyebrows. Why is there?
Did he target these girls? And I mean, I think
this guy would think.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
What the what the friends, the best friends are the victims,
and what the families believe? And what makes the most
sense to me, having sort of tried to go back
and trace Brian Coburger's footsteps, is that he was targeting.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
One of them. He was targeting Maddie Mogan.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
And I say that because you know, the police have
evidence that his car was in the neighborhood twelve times
that you know, And if you go to the area
of the house, there's only really one place that you
can park your car and look at it, and there's
only really one window you can see into, and it
is that of Maddie Mogan's and the room that he
(29:50):
met he went straight to the night of the murders
was Maddie Mogan. And by the way, Elliott Roger wrote
at length about he had had one friend who was
a woman called Maddie and he was very he was
furious with her for rejecting him. So that that's a
parallel that may or may not beat matter. But you know,
(30:13):
Maddie Mogan was asleep in her bed. It was complete
chance that her best friend, Katie Gonzalvez was also there.
Katie Gonzalvez had already moved out of the house, was
living at home. She had just come into town that
one day to show Maddie Mogan her new car. So
one has to believe that, you know, And what's you know,
(30:36):
there's a line in the book that now the Gonzalves
family have gone public about that. Kaylie woke up and
struggled the Brian Coberger would then have had to come
down the stairs to leave the house to the next floor,
and that, unfortunately, is where Xana Carnodle's room was. And
(30:58):
tragically she was still up and awake because she had
just ordered a door dash deliver it really, which had
just arrived at four in the morning, which is something
she did very frequently. I mean, she was known to
do that and had been a very big party day
at the University of vide Her had been a football
game day, and.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
So unfortunately she was up.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
And about and the signs, you know, she was found
with very defensive wounds on her hands.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Sort of having fallen backward.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Into the room. Her boyfriend, Ethan was facing the wall
in his bed. He was a very very tall, handsome,
athletic young man. So, I mean it would appear it
would appear that, you know, Xana was up and fort
coburger and then he saw this big man, I mean,
albeit sleeping, but he was Ethan Chapin was a big,
(31:56):
big guy. And then he goes down, He goes down,
he he you know, he passes Dylan Mortensen, who's got
her door open just a crack.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Why does he ignore her and turn around and force
the issue?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
You know what, What's what somebody in law enforcement said
to me, is that given that, you know, if if
one assumes that he went in there intending to kill
one person and wound up killing for that that the physical.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
It's hot, you know, that would have been very draining.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Do you think that he intended to become a serial killer?
I mean, if that, if he had not been caught
this time. Do you think that he were kill.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Almost the perfect crime.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
His only mistake was to leave the knife sheath by
the bed of Maddie Morgan and Kayleie Gonzalvez. And you know,
I mean in the book, I take you through the
investigation and police chief of Moscow was very generous with
this time to me, and it becomes very clear that
were it not in fact that he had There was
(33:12):
a trace of DNA left on the knife sheath.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It was on like the metal button part of it.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah, and that were it not for the.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Fact that now there is this new methodology of it
what they call investigative genetic genealogy where they use you know,
websites like ancestry and me ancestry dot com. Rather they
can go back and they can construct a family tree
from the smallest piece of DNA. I mean that has
(33:42):
revolutionized called cases. But in this case, there was really
nothing else. They couldn't see the car clearly, they never
found a murder weapon. Yeah, there was nothing else until
until after about six weeks that the DNA they were
(34:05):
able to reconstruct the family tree. And then it's then
they looked at who with the last name coburger would
have been in the area and then they could run
his driver's license and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
They really didn't have anything, so he learned a lot
from the serial killers.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I guess well, you know, listen, he was doing a
PhD in criminology.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I mean what the book also, I think shows is
his descent into despair. You know, he had he had
hauled himself up from being, as you say, the very
overweight loner on the spectrum, the kid who had no friends,
who then had a heroin addiction. He had managed to
turn his life around and now here he is the
(34:46):
other you know, far away from Pennsylvania where he grew up,
doing this PhD in criminology. But it all goes wrong
because of his heinous views of women, which he's very
vocal about.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
He sort of can't keep them to himself.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And it gets him into all sorts of trouble, and
very rapidly, it's very clear he's going to lose his
funding and teaching position at Washington State Universities, that everything
he's battled for is coming down around him. And he
has this belief, you know, he tells the classmate, I
can get any woman I want which was of course
(35:21):
patently untrue. So you know, it's a horrific set of
circumstances all coming together, and it does raise questions run
about them, you know, about the First Amendment because had
this thing gone to trial, I mean, I know that
the victims' families wanted to know more about the role
(35:42):
of Washington State University where he was teaching and where
he clearly there were red flags. And you know, again
you come back to this question when is free speech
hates speech? And I think that the victims families that's
one question they won't get answers to now that he's
played guilty and there's no trial.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Well, the book is called The Idaho for It is
available wherever books are sold. I've read Vicki's books in
the past, so I've not read this one yet. And
she is a fabulous, fabulous writer. You wrote this one,
James Patterson, right, yes, yes, I'm sure it's.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Going to be a pace from him. It was a
great collaboration.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Well, she's a brilliant writer. Check it out if you
love true crime. I'm going to absolutely check it out.
Thank you for being on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Ryan.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Hey, we'll be right back after this and now for
the Ask Me Anything segment of this podcast. If you
want a part of the Ask Me Anything segment, please
email me Ryan at Numbers gamepodcast dot com. That's Ryan
at Numbers gamepodcast dot com. So this question comes from Brock.
He says, Hey, Ryan. First of all, I was obsessed
(36:48):
with your appearance on clam buckling up to the election.
I love geeking out with you on the numbers and everything,
and now I listen to every single in your podcasts.
Thank you so much, Rock. I can't overstate that thank you.
I heard you mentioned ADHD. In my entire fe family
has ADHD. I always tell my daughter that is a
superpower to embrace the creativity and excitement we bring to
the world with our neurodivergent brains. I've heard you mentioned
(37:10):
a couple of times autistic thus and such as ADHD,
and I'm curious if you're on the spectrum yourself and
have ADHD and those extra superpowers. Thank you so much. Okay, Brock,
I don't mean to laugh. I just this is the
first time I'm reading the email. I am not on
(37:33):
the spectrum. Wish I could claim that as an excuse
sometimes for saying what I think. But no, I'm not
on the spectrum. I've never been testing the spectrum. I
was tested in high school because I was failing basically
every subject but the subjects that I cared about. I
had over a one hundred point grade point average. And
(37:55):
so it was like extremes. And they took me as St.
Francis Prep. They took me to as a psychiatrist or
whatever to test my IQ. I guess was handicapped. I
don't know. I'm not gonna say, but they brought me
to me tested my IQ, and my IQ was I'm
not bragging, but it was high. It was one forty two.
(38:18):
And so they said, there's no way that this person is,
you know, not able to pass grades because they're slow
or because they're handicapped or whatever. There there's something going
on here. So they because I had extreme levels of
excitement and boredom and my numbers would fly off and
on the charts, they diagnosed me with ADHD. They gave
(38:38):
me medication. I took it one time and I just said,
I'm not doing this anymore. I was very you know,
I was always a pain for everybody in my whole
entire life. But but that was that was how that happened,
and I do have so I've been dying as ADHD.
I have never had it treated as far as medication goes.
I write lists every moment of every day. I write
(39:01):
lists constantly to keep myself on track. I will often
take on ten projects at the same time because I
have to take a break from one and go to
the other, which probably takes a lot more time than
it should to get ordinary things done. I have relatives
who also have ADHD, and they do things like they
could work and sit in one place for nine hours
and then they can't do the laundry because they can't operate.
(39:24):
They can't operate in certain things and they can operate
in other things. It's it is actually I know it's
a running joke and everyone has ADHD. There are times
it is a really big struggle. And I will say,
since technology is a bigger and bigger partner life, it
is a bigger and bigger struggle. It is not easy
to deal with sometimes it actually is definitely uh is
(39:44):
definitely hard. But I you know, there have been there
have been people in history who have had it way
harder than I have been, who have overcome extremely difficult odds.
So I don't count it as a you know, disability
or as anything else. I just think that it's one
part of me that makes me function, and I've learned
(40:05):
to kind of operate within it. I don't know, I
guess it's it's not like the most medically knowledgeable answer,
but I just this is how I have managed to operate.
I write lists, like you know, for everything all the
time in my sleep, morning, noon, and night. And I
know if I want to do something like read, I
have to dedicate time away from all technological things in
(40:28):
the morning because I can't really focus in the evening.
And I've also take power naps. I take twenty minute naps,
like around four o'clock or three o'clock. I will take
a twenty minute power like literally just twenty minutes. I'm
totally fine. It's like completely re energized. So that's how
I've learned to operate it. I don't take medication, and
I am i e healthy, but I don't like I
(40:49):
don't know if I've read die number two of my
system or anything like that. I just don't. I don't
have a lot of sugar, and I go to the
gym pretty regularly, despite how having fortunes would never know
that about me any I know that this is the
ADHD working right now. I'm just going to what do
I do to make myself healthier? But no, I'm not
on the spectrum. Thank you for listening, though, Brock, I
(41:10):
really appreciate it, and I appreciate to anyone else who
as ADHD is living with it and takes the time
to listen to this podcast. I appreciate you so much,
and yes, your daughter should lean in to her neurodivergent
brain and all the special things that come with it.
Thank you guys so much for listening. Please like and
subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get
(41:30):
your podcast. See you next time.
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