December 22, 2025 • 25 mins
We’re bringing you the best episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid-January.
Today, we return to an episode recorded in October with senior columnist Jacqueline Maley, when more torrid tales emerged of the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and his connection to sex offender and disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
When this was recorded, the royal had just been stripped of his Duke of York and Prince title. British MPs have since announced a parliamentary inquiry into the Crown Estate, after revelations the former prince had not paid rent on his mansion for more than 20 years.
Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here. And I'm the host
of the Morning Edition. We're bringing you the best episodes
of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid January.
Today we return to an episode recorded in October with
senior columnist Jacqueline Maley, when more torrid tales emerged of
the former Prince Andrew Manhattan Windsor and his connection to
(00:22):
sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. When this was recorded,
the royal had just been stripped of his Duke of
York and Prince titles. British MPs have since announced a
parliamentary inquiry into the Crown Estate, after revelations that the
former prince had not paid rent on his mansion for
more than 20 years. Jack, welcome to the Morning Edition.
(00:46):
I'm so excited to have you here. I'm obsessed with
with me. Oh, I am, you know, I'm obsessed with you.
I can let listeners know about that. I'll tell you
that in the hallways, but in particular about Prince Andrew. Yeah,
it's such an interesting story.
S2 (01:00):
It's such an interesting story and it spans so many
different areas of public life and so many different areas
of our culture. And it brings up so many questions about,
you know, the structures of the royalty, the monarchy, society,
you know, the enabling of abuse. It is a really,
actually really fascinating story.
S1 (01:16):
It is and it's global. So I guess let's get
into it. Well, let's start at the beginning. Why are
we even talking about Prince Andrew? He's dominated the news
cycle over the last couple of weeks. So why? Yeah.
Why has this scandal, the one that just, you know.
S2 (01:29):
It's fascinating how these things come about, because news can
be quite random in a way. Um, but the timing,
you know, we've known about the association between Jeffrey Epstein,
the notorious pedophile and sex trafficker, and Prince Andrew, you know,
the king's brother for a long time. You know, since
I think it was it first came to light in
sort of like 20, 20, ten, 2011, when that photograph,
(01:52):
that notorious photograph was made public by one of his
alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre. So the reason we're talking about
it now is that Virginia Giuffre, who tragically died of
suicide earlier this year in West Australia, where she'd come
to sort of build a quiet family life. There's a
memoir that she wrote that has been published posthumously.
S3 (02:11):
One of the most prominent Jeffrey Epstein accusers telling her
story in her own words months after her death.
S4 (02:18):
It's been described as Prince Andrew's endgame. Virginia Giuffre's posthumous memoir,
revealing more shocking details about their alleged sexual encounters.
S2 (02:28):
The royal and on top of that, a few months ago,
there was a very richly researched and very, very detailed
biography of Prince Andrew that was published by a guy
called Andrew Lownie. He spoke to in his account 300
people for his biography, and it paints the picture of
(02:49):
a pompous, nasty, you know, overprivileged kind of bully. One
review I read of this biography in the New Statesman
was likening the biographer to an undertaker basically saying never.
Will you read something like this of a person who's
still alive? Like it's that damning. But I think the
(03:11):
Virgin Jufré book, which is called Nobody's Girl and is
a best seller around the world, is a tragic, tragic,
tragic tale from from you know, this entire woman's life
has been marred by abuse and in particular by the
association that she had with Jeffrey Epstein and all of his,
I guess, alleged co-conspirators. So she has detail in there.
(03:34):
So she talks about the three times that she was
she alleged she was abused by Prince Andrew when she
was an underage girl, including in London, in Belgravia, which
is the sort of most notorious incident or alleged incident
that he spoke about to the BBC. But other times
as well, for example, on sort of the private Caribbean
island that Jeffrey Epstein owned.
S1 (03:55):
Because I know that the publication of Virginia Giuffre's book,
I've heard it sort of described as like the last
step in a very slow walk of shame that Prince
Andrew has been on since. There's been revelations about the
connection between these two men over the years. Do you
think one of the most revealing details of this book
is the allegation from Virginia Giuffre, that in one of
(04:18):
the incidences in which she alleges that she was abused
by Prince Andrew, she says that it was with Prince Andrew,
Jeffrey Epstein and eight other girls who she says in
the book that she thinks were younger than herself. And
she says they didn't seem to speak English. Do you
think that's one of the revelations that's really caused it
to be so in the spotlight now, because there's this
(04:39):
feeling of, well, what is he guilty of? And there
could be more to come.
S2 (04:43):
I think it's that and I also think there's been
a slow drip of leaks of emails so that show
Prince Andrew to be a liar. So he's on record
as having basically lied about how much contact he had
with Jeffrey Epstein. After a certain point, he said that
he he told sort of the BBC in the famous
interview that he did that he cut off contact in
(05:04):
December 2010.
S5 (05:05):
And I took the judgement call that because this was
serious and I felt that doing it over the telephone
was the chicken's way of doing it. I had to
go and see him and talk to him.
S2 (05:21):
When he went to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, which he said,
you know, he stayed there for several days. He'd stayed
there many, many times before. He was obviously very familiar
with the house, but he went over there, he told
Emily Maitlis of the BBC, to break up with Jeffrey
Epstein essentially, and say, look, I can't associate myself with
you anymore because Jeffrey Epstein by then was a convicted
(05:42):
sex trafficker of underage girls.
S5 (05:46):
Which was when I said to him, I said, look,
because of what has happened, I don't think it is
appropriate that we should remain in contact. And by mutual
agreement during that walk in the park, we decided that
we would part company and I left. I think it
was the next day. And to this day, I never
(06:06):
had any contact with him from that day forward.
S2 (06:10):
So the emails that have been leaked effectively show that
to be a lie. So there's an email that's leaked
from the following year. So from 2011, where Prince Andrew
has written to Jeffrey Epstein and said, we're all in
this together. You know, I'm sorry that, you know, basically
a solidarity email because by this stage, the photograph of
Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre had been widely publicised. And
(06:33):
he said he he signed it off notably. I hope
we can play some more again soon. And as Emily
Maitlis of the journalist from the BBC sort of said,
and I'm paraphrasing, but to write that that form of
words to a convicted paedophile is quite extraordinary. And he's
also sounded off with all of his royal titles.
S1 (06:51):
That's right. I'm just going to I'm just going to
I got this in the Atlantic that he signed it
off as HRH The Duke of York, KG, and as
Helen Lewis wrote in The Atlantic IC who signs off
a cheery solidarity email to a convicted sex offender by
listing his aristocratic titles. Only someone who values those titles
extremely highly.
S2 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, what I find, what I
always want to point out about these titles as well,
is that, you know, okay, he's a prince. But like
this sort of order of the garter thing, these kind
of like strange little, um, royal honours that he's gotten.
You know, they were given to him by his mum,
you know, like they're sort of like, oh, they're royal
(07:29):
honours at the gift of the monarch they bestowed upon
him by the monarch. It's your mum who's giving you
these special fancy fictional titles. That's right. Um, like, it's
sort of when you dig down into it. And I
think this is why this whole story is so, so
dangerous and so risky for the monarchy. It's like you
start to realize how absurd the entire construct is. Like,
(07:51):
here he is puffing himself up with all these titles.
It's literally something your mum's given you just because you're
her favourite son.
S1 (07:58):
That's right. I mean, we give our kids, like, living
on a paper bag because that's all we have at
our disposal. But they get like HRH and Royal Garter
and stuff from the 14th century.
S2 (08:06):
And I mean, my mum calls me lots of sweet
little names too. Should I also be signing myself off
by them? My mum says I'm the best listener. The
best that.
S1 (08:14):
Um, I'm going to alert the listeners from now on.
All my professional emails will be signed. Peanut. Because that was. Yeah, yeah,
that's what I got. We'll be right back.
S6 (08:27):
Hello to crime nuts and nuts. Just generally we're back
with series seven of Naked City. I'd like to say
the delay was technical, but it's basically on bone lazy,
forced now to do it. It's pretty good. We talk
about cold cases, hot cases and cases that were never solved.
Notorious crooks. Brilliant detectives and Baggies reporters. Naked city out soon.
S1 (08:57):
So what do we know? What is the history between
these two men? I mean, how deep or not deep
was their friendship or relationship?
S2 (09:04):
Yeah. I mean, we don't know because I suppose neither
of the the players involved have have said. But there's
stuff that's pieced together. There's a lot of stuff about
it entitled in the in the Andrew Lownie biography of Andrew.
But they seem to it seems to go back to
the kind of early 2000. So Ghislaine Maxwell, who Prince
(09:24):
Andrew knew from, I suppose, British circles, he was introduced
to Epstein through Ghislaine Maxwell, who of course was, you know,
is now in jail as being basically Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator
and sort of chief enabler of his sexual abuse of
lots of girls. So Ghislaine Maxwell introduced the two of them,
(09:45):
and it seems to have been a mutually beneficial relationship
and in quite and quite a warm friendship. So, for example,
there's photographs of Jeffrey Epstein at Royal Lodge, which is
sort of one of the British residences at the at
the 18th birthday party of one of Prince Andrew's daughters.
I think it was Princess Beatrice, her 18th birthday party.
And guess who else was there? Harvey Weinstein. So, you know,
(10:06):
he's obviously enough of a close friend of the family
to be invited to the 18th birthday party of the daughter.
I think there's another photograph of them, of Ghislaine Maxwell
and Jeffrey Epstein at one of the Queen's private residences,
maybe in Balmoral, like a hunting lodge or something. So
there seems to have been a close association over quite
a few years during the 2000 until they, you know,
(10:27):
severed contact around 2011 or. Andrew says that he severed
contact and there was a lot of trips to, to
New York. So until I think about 2011, when all
of this stuff came out and Prince Andrew was forced
to resign as the trade envoy for the United Kingdom,
which was sort of this funny job that he was given, um,
where he worked with the Foreign Office and tried to
(10:48):
drum up trade for the United Kingdom. So he would
travel a lot, you know, generally. But he travelled to
New York. He would often stay at the Manhattan townhouse
of Jeffrey Epstein, which is where some of these some
of the most notorious sort of, um, activity of of
the sexual trafficking. Trafficking and the sexual abuse is alleged
to have taken place or known to have taken place.
S1 (11:07):
So this brings us to to I think the question
that a lot of people are asking, which is, I guess,
how much might Prince Andrew have known about Jeffrey Epstein's
abuse of girls and women? I'm pretty sure that Prince
Andrew says he knew nothing. I heard someone say in
an interview recently that Andrew says that, you know, he
definitely would have noticed because he was the patron of
a child abuse charity, which I believe is no longer
(11:28):
there's no longer an affiliation there. So do you think
that's credible, that he would have known nothing? Because, I mean,
I think that, yeah.
S2 (11:34):
Absolutely not. I mean, I, I, I feel so strongly
about this kind of stuff. It does become quite emotional
when you think when you read the detail of, you know,
the scores of girls who are abused and trafficked, the
goings on of these big parties with these rich men
who apparently were just given girls, and it was made
(11:57):
known to them that being given girls as a gift.
So they would go over to the house and they
would say, and they would literally say, go and have
a massage with, you know, Virginia and Virginia would privately
be told, do for him what you do for Epstein. Yeah.
And some of the girls who were trafficked, and this
is when the Palm Beach authorities in Florida, I mean,
(12:17):
the sort of the failure of justice, you know.
S1 (12:20):
Goes back a long way goes to 2008, I think.
S2 (12:22):
Yeah. Because Jeffrey Epstein, when all of this was first
came out and was investigated by the by the cops
at Palm Beach, Florida, um, was given this sweet, sweet
plea deal, which was absolutely outrageous for the victims. And
also it was outrageous to the cops. The reason it
came out was because there were 14 year old girls
in classrooms in Florida who were being approached by their
friends to say, you know, come and work for this
(12:43):
rich guy, Jeffrey Epstein. He'll pay. He'll pay you to massage.
And his M.O. was to bring girls in as masseuses
and then to sexually assault them in the room. So
this is all you know? This is this is the
operation that was being run, right? And plane loads of
girls are going to this private island where, you know,
we know from eyewitness accounts from security personnel and drivers
(13:04):
and things like that, that there were sort of mass
orgies happening. These were not consenting adults that we're talking about.
So the look, I think the the best spin you
could put on it if you were being as generous
in the world as you possibly wanted to be to
Prince Andrew, would be that he, like many in Epstein's
circle and many famous people who were being named and
(13:26):
are scared of being named, I think in these Epstein files,
whatever they are, he showed a great incuriosity about all
of these young girls who were just hanging around and
all by all accounts, the Manhattan townhouse itself was sort
of infused with sex. So there was like some sort
of like, naked woman type sculpture slash sex doll hanging
(13:46):
in the hallway. I mean, I don't know if you've
read if you've read. One of the things that has
been released is The Birthday Book of Jeffrey Epstein. So
of course I read it because it's all available online.
And it's this is his sort of 50th birthday celebrations
because he was such a big deal and he had
so many famous rich friends, they were prevailed upon by
Ghislaine Maxwell to write notes, to contribute.
S1 (14:08):
And this, of course, is the famous book that we
think Donald Trump wrote this birthday note, which he denies.
S2 (14:14):
He's denied it. But like Donald Trump's alleged note, which
he denies, having written every single reference from every single
person who's written him a note talks about his love
of girls, his love of young women. Like much, much
more vulgar stuff than I would say on this podcast.
Like every single note has a sexual has a ha ha.
(14:34):
Doesn't Jeffrey love sex with girls? With young girls reference
to it? So everyone knew. So I mean, I guess
I just apart from the lies that Andrew's actually been
caught out in, apart from the fact that there is
literally a photograph that exists that, as far as we
can tell, is entirely credible. And there has been various
proofs of of its credibility over the years. Yeah. I
(14:57):
guess you could say that he was really incurious about
where these girls come from and why were they were
all hanging around and what they did.
S1 (15:02):
And I think it's a good point. It's probably worthwhile
just pausing just for a moment to speak about so
much of what's forgotten in this is, of course, the
victims and the alleged victims, and I think that's something.
S2 (15:12):
They were girls. I mean, we've both got girls like
they were vulnerable, vulnerable girls, and they were treated as
though they were nothing. They were treated as though they
were sort of dollies or, you know, they were passed
around like they were lamingtons on a plate and they
were treated with a total lack of humanity. And we
know this. And it was a it was it was
a big enough operation. And he was a well connected
(15:35):
enough guy that a lot of people saw it, knew
about it, whatever their level of knowledge was. And they
certainly couldn't have denied the knowledge. After he was convicted
and took a plea deal as a convicted sex trafficker
of underage girls.
S1 (15:48):
Which I guess brings us all to the present, which
is the parliament now getting involved. Because now there's all
this talk of, well, I'm no longer going to use
the Duke of York, and I'm no longer going to
use these honorifics. So tell us, why has British Prime
Minister Keir Starmer been embroiled in all of this? And
what's the pressure now there in Britain?
S2 (16:05):
So it's actually a bit of a sort of constitutional
conundrum because there is so much public outrage about it. Right?
So there's politicians who are like, um, you know, maybe
for good purposes, maybe they're just pushing a political barrier, but, um,
they're basically making as many moves as they can within
the parliamentary setting to have him stripped of his titles,
because it's not entirely clear how you can do that.
It's happened before, historically, um, through an act of Parliament.
(16:29):
So the king himself doesn't actually have sort of the
capacity to take the legal capacity. If you like to
take away titles. He can say to his brother, look,
I'd really prefer it if you don't use it, but
the only people who can take away the titles are
the British Parliament. But it's tricky because the King can't
say to the British Parliament famously, yeah, absolutely. They do
(16:52):
have the separation of powers. So. So he can't say
the British Parliament. Look, I'd really appreciate if you legislate
to get rid of my brother's titles. So there's been
not not by the sort of Labour government itself, but
by an Ex-labour MP who's now a sort of independent,
and the Lib Dem Democrats who are like a smaller
minor party within the British Parliament to either, you know,
(17:12):
there's a parliamentary committee that's trying to push for further
oversight and inquiry into the finances and into this sweetheart
deal with, um, with the House.
S1 (17:21):
Oh, the sweetheart deal over how little he pays to
stay in this 30 room mansion.
S2 (17:26):
This is turning into. Why do we why do the
royals have all these houses that they can just give
away to people?
S1 (17:32):
Yep.
S2 (17:33):
Why is this guy allowed to live in this enormous
house when he's not even a working royal anymore? Oh,
and why do we know so little about how the
royal family's, uh, household finances work? You know, they have
enormous amounts of private wealth, but we're not exactly sure why.
Why doesn't Prince Andrew get his own house? Where's his money?
All gone. You know. That's right. Like, what did the
(17:54):
Queen give him in her will? Like, it just becomes
really diffuse and kind of, um, you know, outrage making
on a really large scale, and it's sort of never ending. So, yeah,
I think they need to find a solution to this.
And I think King Charles is probably very, very aware
of that.
S1 (18:10):
Yeah. And a huge part of that, of course, is
I imagine there'd be a lot of British taxpayers going, well,
what are we? How much of our money is going
towards payoffs to save Virginia Giuffre in the settlement that
Prince Andrew made with her in 2022? You know, that
money famously came from the Queen, his mother, his mummy. Sorry, mummy.
Mummy stepped in, you know, like, who's footing the bill
for all this? Which brings me to my next question,
(18:31):
which I think is really the crux of this, which is,
is this an existential crisis for the British monarchy?
S2 (18:36):
Well, it's interesting because, I mean, there was I think
it was Ian Wilson who is a very, very noted
historian and a very conservative historian, you might say. So
he's written a lot of books about British history, one
in particular called The Victorians, which is an absolute masterpiece,
but I digress. Um, so he was on a podcast
at the the The Times newspaper podcast, I think, last week.
(18:59):
And he did say, this is, this is revolution making stuff.
And this is the greatest crisis that the monarchy's faced
since the abdication.
S1 (19:07):
Um, I mean, that's saying a lot from a family
that has had I mean, I'm old enough that I
remember a lot of scandals. Like, I remember King Charles from,
you know, the toe sucking and the tampons. And, I mean,
that's nothing. I mean, this is.
S2 (19:18):
This this is and, you know, there was sort of no,
there were no winners in any of those scandals, but
there were no sort of terrible victims either. So this
is of a higher order, I think, of of outrage and, um, and,
you know, the public disapprobation is really strong. Um, also.
S1 (19:34):
No anecdotes of the nastiness that you revealed in your
piece about Prince Andrew. I'm just going to sort of
cut you off, but this one is so outrageous and
my jaw almost literally dropped. I mean, usually that's hyperbole,
but you you reference here in that book entitled that
you mentioned by Andrew Lownie was just published in August.
And there's this anecdote about him enticing a woman at
(19:55):
a dinner party to sniff a plate of pate to
see if it smelled off to her. And when she Obliged.
He pushed it into her face just for a lark.
S2 (20:03):
Yeah, that was one of the anecdotes in that book.
I mean, it's sort of this it's strung through with
these anecdotes of someone who just comes across as very,
very psychologically immature. And you might also you might sort
of say like socially kind of stunted. And I think
the best. Yeah. As I say in that piece, like
the best complexion you could probably put on his character
(20:24):
is that he's deeply insecure. And because he's had such
a weird upbringing, um, and no one's ever treated him
sort of like normal people are treated, even just in
a relational sense, like he would never have had an
equal relationship really, with anyone. That's right. Which is a
strange thing when you think about it, how much that
must stunt your personality. Like not even his own siblings,
because there's an order of succession there. So, yeah, I
(20:48):
think you just come across as someone who's maybe, maybe
the best thing you can say about him is he's
deeply insecure and he sort of doesn't know how to
behave around people in a way that's kind of socially acceptable,
but that that appears to have to come out in
sort of these. Yeah, moments of petty bullying and sort
of petty cruelty like that. Like that anecdote.
S1 (21:07):
Well, I'm going to quote one royal biographer, Tessa Dunlop.
She was recently interviewed about this whole situation, and she
said of Prince Andrew, He's a rotten apple, but he's
a product of the system. So I guess one of
my questions is, does this entire affair. Does it really
bring the entire system into question? Do you think in
a way that we previously haven't seen?
S2 (21:26):
I think I think it probably does. And which is
not to overstate it, and to say that Britain's about
to become the United Kingdom, Kingdom is about to become
a republic, or, you know that we're about to become
a republic. But, you know, I think there are some
really interesting statistics that I looked into for that piece
about public polling, about support for the monarchy and just
(21:47):
enthusiasm for the monarchy of the British public over the
last few decades. So it's quite long and it's really,
really sunk. So the enthusiasm is just not there. And
I think what's so threatening about something like this is
it's like, you know, I guess in an ideal world,
the royal family would like to believe that it's one
bad apple. And, you know, every family's got one. And,
(22:09):
you know, there's always a brother who's a bit of
a shit or whatever.
S1 (22:12):
Which is true.
S2 (22:12):
But.
S1 (22:13):
Yeah.
S2 (22:13):
But, um. Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I, I would
not claim anyone similar in my family, but, um. Yeah,
I think they would like they would like us to
they would like us to believe that. But the more
the more this becomes sort of like, you know, the
fallout just kind of reaches further and further the more
you do start thinking, well, why do these people live,
(22:36):
live in these fancy houses? Why are they giving these
silly titles that really are fictional and made up? Um,
why do they have enormous amounts of personal property, you know,
enormous amounts of personal wealth beyond the imaginings of the
ordinary person in Britain. And yet they get to stay
in these fancy houses that are owned by the taxpayer
while I'm living in a council flat, you know. So
(22:57):
I think it's threatening. It's deeply threatening to the monarchy
for us to be asking these questions and, um, examining
or um, yeah, reflecting on the actual basis for the
enormous privilege that that that they, um.
S1 (23:13):
It's given by God. Jack.
S2 (23:15):
Isn't that the think anyone believes that? No. Maybe King
Charles does on some on some level, but yeah, I
don't think anyone believes that anymore. So you can't sort
of use that as a blanket excuse that you might
once have been able to know.
S1 (23:28):
Well, I just feel so lucky that you just wrote
about this. Your takes are always nuanced and intelligent and
tell me something I didn't know. So thank you so much.
S2 (23:35):
Thank you for letting me rant about, um, all of this, but, um, yeah,
I actually do think it's a really, really important topic.
It's not it's not important just because it's, um, Prince Andrew,
but it's about structures, I suppose, and systems that enable abuse.
And yeah, I think that that is it's really important
to expose.
S1 (24:12):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom
McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our
episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition
on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our
newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism,
(24:34):
visit the page or smh.com.au. Subscribe. And to stay up
to date, sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to
receive a summary of the day's most important news in
your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here. And I'm the host
of the Morning Edition. We're bringing you the best episodes
of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid January.
Today we return to an episode recorded in October with
senior columnist Jacqueline Maley, when more torrid tales emerged of
the former Prince Andrew Manhattan Windsor and his connection to
(00:22):
sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. When this was recorded,
the royal had just been stripped of his Duke of
York and Prince titles. British MPs have since announced a
parliamentary inquiry into the Crown Estate, after revelations that the
former prince had not paid rent on his mansion for
more than 20 years. Jack, welcome to the Morning Edition.
(00:46):
I'm so excited to have you here. I'm obsessed with
with me. Oh, I am, you know, I'm obsessed with you.
I can let listeners know about that. I'll tell you
that in the hallways, but in particular about Prince Andrew. Yeah,
it's such an interesting story.
S2 (01:00):
It's such an interesting story and it spans so many
different areas of public life and so many different areas
of our culture. And it brings up so many questions about,
you know, the structures of the royalty, the monarchy, society,
you know, the enabling of abuse. It is a really,
actually really fascinating story.
S1 (01:16):
It is and it's global. So I guess let's get
into it. Well, let's start at the beginning. Why are
we even talking about Prince Andrew? He's dominated the news
cycle over the last couple of weeks. So why? Yeah.
Why has this scandal, the one that just, you know.
S2 (01:29):
It's fascinating how these things come about, because news can
be quite random in a way. Um, but the timing,
you know, we've known about the association between Jeffrey Epstein,
the notorious pedophile and sex trafficker, and Prince Andrew, you know,
the king's brother for a long time. You know, since
I think it was it first came to light in
sort of like 20, 20, ten, 2011, when that photograph,
(01:52):
that notorious photograph was made public by one of his
alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre. So the reason we're talking about
it now is that Virginia Giuffre, who tragically died of
suicide earlier this year in West Australia, where she'd come
to sort of build a quiet family life. There's a
memoir that she wrote that has been published posthumously.
S3 (02:11):
One of the most prominent Jeffrey Epstein accusers telling her
story in her own words months after her death.
S4 (02:18):
It's been described as Prince Andrew's endgame. Virginia Giuffre's posthumous memoir,
revealing more shocking details about their alleged sexual encounters.
S2 (02:28):
The royal and on top of that, a few months ago,
there was a very richly researched and very, very detailed
biography of Prince Andrew that was published by a guy
called Andrew Lownie. He spoke to in his account 300
people for his biography, and it paints the picture of
(02:49):
a pompous, nasty, you know, overprivileged kind of bully. One
review I read of this biography in the New Statesman
was likening the biographer to an undertaker basically saying never.
Will you read something like this of a person who's
still alive? Like it's that damning. But I think the
(03:11):
Virgin Jufré book, which is called Nobody's Girl and is
a best seller around the world, is a tragic, tragic,
tragic tale from from you know, this entire woman's life
has been marred by abuse and in particular by the
association that she had with Jeffrey Epstein and all of his,
I guess, alleged co-conspirators. So she has detail in there.
(03:34):
So she talks about the three times that she was
she alleged she was abused by Prince Andrew when she
was an underage girl, including in London, in Belgravia, which
is the sort of most notorious incident or alleged incident
that he spoke about to the BBC. But other times
as well, for example, on sort of the private Caribbean
island that Jeffrey Epstein owned.
S1 (03:55):
Because I know that the publication of Virginia Giuffre's book,
I've heard it sort of described as like the last
step in a very slow walk of shame that Prince
Andrew has been on since. There's been revelations about the
connection between these two men over the years. Do you
think one of the most revealing details of this book
is the allegation from Virginia Giuffre, that in one of
(04:18):
the incidences in which she alleges that she was abused
by Prince Andrew, she says that it was with Prince Andrew,
Jeffrey Epstein and eight other girls who she says in
the book that she thinks were younger than herself. And
she says they didn't seem to speak English. Do you
think that's one of the revelations that's really caused it
to be so in the spotlight now, because there's this
(04:39):
feeling of, well, what is he guilty of? And there
could be more to come.
S2 (04:43):
I think it's that and I also think there's been
a slow drip of leaks of emails so that show
Prince Andrew to be a liar. So he's on record
as having basically lied about how much contact he had
with Jeffrey Epstein. After a certain point, he said that
he he told sort of the BBC in the famous
interview that he did that he cut off contact in
(05:04):
December 2010.
S5 (05:05):
And I took the judgement call that because this was
serious and I felt that doing it over the telephone
was the chicken's way of doing it. I had to
go and see him and talk to him.
S2 (05:21):
When he went to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, which he said,
you know, he stayed there for several days. He'd stayed
there many, many times before. He was obviously very familiar
with the house, but he went over there, he told
Emily Maitlis of the BBC, to break up with Jeffrey
Epstein essentially, and say, look, I can't associate myself with
you anymore because Jeffrey Epstein by then was a convicted
(05:42):
sex trafficker of underage girls.
S5 (05:46):
Which was when I said to him, I said, look,
because of what has happened, I don't think it is
appropriate that we should remain in contact. And by mutual
agreement during that walk in the park, we decided that
we would part company and I left. I think it
was the next day. And to this day, I never
(06:06):
had any contact with him from that day forward.
S2 (06:10):
So the emails that have been leaked effectively show that
to be a lie. So there's an email that's leaked
from the following year. So from 2011, where Prince Andrew
has written to Jeffrey Epstein and said, we're all in
this together. You know, I'm sorry that, you know, basically
a solidarity email because by this stage, the photograph of
Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre had been widely publicised. And
(06:33):
he said he he signed it off notably. I hope
we can play some more again soon. And as Emily
Maitlis of the journalist from the BBC sort of said,
and I'm paraphrasing, but to write that that form of
words to a convicted paedophile is quite extraordinary. And he's
also sounded off with all of his royal titles.
S1 (06:51):
That's right. I'm just going to I'm just going to
I got this in the Atlantic that he signed it
off as HRH The Duke of York, KG, and as
Helen Lewis wrote in The Atlantic IC who signs off
a cheery solidarity email to a convicted sex offender by
listing his aristocratic titles. Only someone who values those titles
extremely highly.
S2 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, what I find, what I
always want to point out about these titles as well,
is that, you know, okay, he's a prince. But like
this sort of order of the garter thing, these kind
of like strange little, um, royal honours that he's gotten.
You know, they were given to him by his mum,
you know, like they're sort of like, oh, they're royal
(07:29):
honours at the gift of the monarch they bestowed upon
him by the monarch. It's your mum who's giving you
these special fancy fictional titles. That's right. Um, like, it's
sort of when you dig down into it. And I
think this is why this whole story is so, so
dangerous and so risky for the monarchy. It's like you
start to realize how absurd the entire construct is. Like,
(07:51):
here he is puffing himself up with all these titles.
It's literally something your mum's given you just because you're
her favourite son.
S1 (07:58):
That's right. I mean, we give our kids, like, living
on a paper bag because that's all we have at
our disposal. But they get like HRH and Royal Garter
and stuff from the 14th century.
S2 (08:06):
And I mean, my mum calls me lots of sweet
little names too. Should I also be signing myself off
by them? My mum says I'm the best listener. The
best that.
S1 (08:14):
Um, I'm going to alert the listeners from now on.
All my professional emails will be signed. Peanut. Because that was. Yeah, yeah,
that's what I got. We'll be right back.
S6 (08:27):
Hello to crime nuts and nuts. Just generally we're back
with series seven of Naked City. I'd like to say
the delay was technical, but it's basically on bone lazy,
forced now to do it. It's pretty good. We talk
about cold cases, hot cases and cases that were never solved.
Notorious crooks. Brilliant detectives and Baggies reporters. Naked city out soon.
S1 (08:57):
So what do we know? What is the history between
these two men? I mean, how deep or not deep
was their friendship or relationship?
S2 (09:04):
Yeah. I mean, we don't know because I suppose neither
of the the players involved have have said. But there's
stuff that's pieced together. There's a lot of stuff about
it entitled in the in the Andrew Lownie biography of Andrew.
But they seem to it seems to go back to
the kind of early 2000. So Ghislaine Maxwell, who Prince
(09:24):
Andrew knew from, I suppose, British circles, he was introduced
to Epstein through Ghislaine Maxwell, who of course was, you know,
is now in jail as being basically Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator
and sort of chief enabler of his sexual abuse of
lots of girls. So Ghislaine Maxwell introduced the two of them,
(09:45):
and it seems to have been a mutually beneficial relationship
and in quite and quite a warm friendship. So, for example,
there's photographs of Jeffrey Epstein at Royal Lodge, which is
sort of one of the British residences at the at
the 18th birthday party of one of Prince Andrew's daughters.
I think it was Princess Beatrice, her 18th birthday party.
And guess who else was there? Harvey Weinstein. So, you know,
(10:06):
he's obviously enough of a close friend of the family
to be invited to the 18th birthday party of the daughter.
I think there's another photograph of them, of Ghislaine Maxwell
and Jeffrey Epstein at one of the Queen's private residences,
maybe in Balmoral, like a hunting lodge or something. So
there seems to have been a close association over quite
a few years during the 2000 until they, you know,
(10:27):
severed contact around 2011 or. Andrew says that he severed
contact and there was a lot of trips to, to
New York. So until I think about 2011, when all
of this stuff came out and Prince Andrew was forced
to resign as the trade envoy for the United Kingdom,
which was sort of this funny job that he was given, um,
where he worked with the Foreign Office and tried to
(10:48):
drum up trade for the United Kingdom. So he would
travel a lot, you know, generally. But he travelled to
New York. He would often stay at the Manhattan townhouse
of Jeffrey Epstein, which is where some of these some
of the most notorious sort of, um, activity of of
the sexual trafficking. Trafficking and the sexual abuse is alleged
to have taken place or known to have taken place.
S1 (11:07):
So this brings us to to I think the question
that a lot of people are asking, which is, I guess,
how much might Prince Andrew have known about Jeffrey Epstein's
abuse of girls and women? I'm pretty sure that Prince
Andrew says he knew nothing. I heard someone say in
an interview recently that Andrew says that, you know, he
definitely would have noticed because he was the patron of
a child abuse charity, which I believe is no longer
(11:28):
there's no longer an affiliation there. So do you think
that's credible, that he would have known nothing? Because, I mean,
I think that, yeah.
S2 (11:34):
Absolutely not. I mean, I, I, I feel so strongly
about this kind of stuff. It does become quite emotional
when you think when you read the detail of, you know,
the scores of girls who are abused and trafficked, the
goings on of these big parties with these rich men
who apparently were just given girls, and it was made
(11:57):
known to them that being given girls as a gift.
So they would go over to the house and they
would say, and they would literally say, go and have
a massage with, you know, Virginia and Virginia would privately
be told, do for him what you do for Epstein. Yeah.
And some of the girls who were trafficked, and this
is when the Palm Beach authorities in Florida, I mean,
(12:17):
the sort of the failure of justice, you know.
S1 (12:20):
Goes back a long way goes to 2008, I think.
S2 (12:22):
Yeah. Because Jeffrey Epstein, when all of this was first
came out and was investigated by the by the cops
at Palm Beach, Florida, um, was given this sweet, sweet
plea deal, which was absolutely outrageous for the victims. And
also it was outrageous to the cops. The reason it
came out was because there were 14 year old girls
in classrooms in Florida who were being approached by their
friends to say, you know, come and work for this
(12:43):
rich guy, Jeffrey Epstein. He'll pay. He'll pay you to massage.
And his M.O. was to bring girls in as masseuses
and then to sexually assault them in the room. So
this is all you know? This is this is the
operation that was being run, right? And plane loads of
girls are going to this private island where, you know,
we know from eyewitness accounts from security personnel and drivers
(13:04):
and things like that, that there were sort of mass
orgies happening. These were not consenting adults that we're talking about.
So the look, I think the the best spin you
could put on it if you were being as generous
in the world as you possibly wanted to be to
Prince Andrew, would be that he, like many in Epstein's
circle and many famous people who were being named and
(13:26):
are scared of being named, I think in these Epstein files,
whatever they are, he showed a great incuriosity about all
of these young girls who were just hanging around and
all by all accounts, the Manhattan townhouse itself was sort
of infused with sex. So there was like some sort
of like, naked woman type sculpture slash sex doll hanging
(13:46):
in the hallway. I mean, I don't know if you've
read if you've read. One of the things that has
been released is The Birthday Book of Jeffrey Epstein. So
of course I read it because it's all available online.
And it's this is his sort of 50th birthday celebrations
because he was such a big deal and he had
so many famous rich friends, they were prevailed upon by
Ghislaine Maxwell to write notes, to contribute.
S1 (14:08):
And this, of course, is the famous book that we
think Donald Trump wrote this birthday note, which he denies.
S2 (14:14):
He's denied it. But like Donald Trump's alleged note, which
he denies, having written every single reference from every single
person who's written him a note talks about his love
of girls, his love of young women. Like much, much
more vulgar stuff than I would say on this podcast.
Like every single note has a sexual has a ha ha.
(14:34):
Doesn't Jeffrey love sex with girls? With young girls reference
to it? So everyone knew. So I mean, I guess
I just apart from the lies that Andrew's actually been
caught out in, apart from the fact that there is
literally a photograph that exists that, as far as we
can tell, is entirely credible. And there has been various
proofs of of its credibility over the years. Yeah. I
(14:57):
guess you could say that he was really incurious about
where these girls come from and why were they were
all hanging around and what they did.
S1 (15:02):
And I think it's a good point. It's probably worthwhile
just pausing just for a moment to speak about so
much of what's forgotten in this is, of course, the
victims and the alleged victims, and I think that's something.
S2 (15:12):
They were girls. I mean, we've both got girls like
they were vulnerable, vulnerable girls, and they were treated as
though they were nothing. They were treated as though they
were sort of dollies or, you know, they were passed
around like they were lamingtons on a plate and they
were treated with a total lack of humanity. And we
know this. And it was a it was it was
a big enough operation. And he was a well connected
(15:35):
enough guy that a lot of people saw it, knew
about it, whatever their level of knowledge was. And they
certainly couldn't have denied the knowledge. After he was convicted
and took a plea deal as a convicted sex trafficker
of underage girls.
S1 (15:48):
Which I guess brings us all to the present, which
is the parliament now getting involved. Because now there's all
this talk of, well, I'm no longer going to use
the Duke of York, and I'm no longer going to
use these honorifics. So tell us, why has British Prime
Minister Keir Starmer been embroiled in all of this? And
what's the pressure now there in Britain?
S2 (16:05):
So it's actually a bit of a sort of constitutional
conundrum because there is so much public outrage about it. Right?
So there's politicians who are like, um, you know, maybe
for good purposes, maybe they're just pushing a political barrier, but, um,
they're basically making as many moves as they can within
the parliamentary setting to have him stripped of his titles,
because it's not entirely clear how you can do that.
It's happened before, historically, um, through an act of Parliament.
(16:29):
So the king himself doesn't actually have sort of the
capacity to take the legal capacity. If you like to
take away titles. He can say to his brother, look,
I'd really prefer it if you don't use it, but
the only people who can take away the titles are
the British Parliament. But it's tricky because the King can't
say to the British Parliament famously, yeah, absolutely. They do
(16:52):
have the separation of powers. So. So he can't say
the British Parliament. Look, I'd really appreciate if you legislate
to get rid of my brother's titles. So there's been
not not by the sort of Labour government itself, but
by an Ex-labour MP who's now a sort of independent,
and the Lib Dem Democrats who are like a smaller
minor party within the British Parliament to either, you know,
(17:12):
there's a parliamentary committee that's trying to push for further
oversight and inquiry into the finances and into this sweetheart
deal with, um, with the House.
S1 (17:21):
Oh, the sweetheart deal over how little he pays to
stay in this 30 room mansion.
S2 (17:26):
This is turning into. Why do we why do the
royals have all these houses that they can just give
away to people?
S1 (17:32):
Yep.
S2 (17:33):
Why is this guy allowed to live in this enormous
house when he's not even a working royal anymore? Oh,
and why do we know so little about how the
royal family's, uh, household finances work? You know, they have
enormous amounts of private wealth, but we're not exactly sure why.
Why doesn't Prince Andrew get his own house? Where's his money?
All gone. You know. That's right. Like, what did the
(17:54):
Queen give him in her will? Like, it just becomes
really diffuse and kind of, um, you know, outrage making
on a really large scale, and it's sort of never ending. So, yeah,
I think they need to find a solution to this.
And I think King Charles is probably very, very aware
of that.
S1 (18:10):
Yeah. And a huge part of that, of course, is
I imagine there'd be a lot of British taxpayers going, well,
what are we? How much of our money is going
towards payoffs to save Virginia Giuffre in the settlement that
Prince Andrew made with her in 2022? You know, that
money famously came from the Queen, his mother, his mummy. Sorry, mummy.
Mummy stepped in, you know, like, who's footing the bill
for all this? Which brings me to my next question,
(18:31):
which I think is really the crux of this, which is,
is this an existential crisis for the British monarchy?
S2 (18:36):
Well, it's interesting because, I mean, there was I think
it was Ian Wilson who is a very, very noted
historian and a very conservative historian, you might say. So
he's written a lot of books about British history, one
in particular called The Victorians, which is an absolute masterpiece,
but I digress. Um, so he was on a podcast
at the the The Times newspaper podcast, I think, last week.
(18:59):
And he did say, this is, this is revolution making stuff.
And this is the greatest crisis that the monarchy's faced
since the abdication.
S1 (19:07):
Um, I mean, that's saying a lot from a family
that has had I mean, I'm old enough that I
remember a lot of scandals. Like, I remember King Charles from,
you know, the toe sucking and the tampons. And, I mean,
that's nothing. I mean, this is.
S2 (19:18):
This this is and, you know, there was sort of no,
there were no winners in any of those scandals, but
there were no sort of terrible victims either. So this
is of a higher order, I think, of of outrage and, um, and,
you know, the public disapprobation is really strong. Um, also.
S1 (19:34):
No anecdotes of the nastiness that you revealed in your
piece about Prince Andrew. I'm just going to sort of
cut you off, but this one is so outrageous and
my jaw almost literally dropped. I mean, usually that's hyperbole,
but you you reference here in that book entitled that
you mentioned by Andrew Lownie was just published in August.
And there's this anecdote about him enticing a woman at
(19:55):
a dinner party to sniff a plate of pate to
see if it smelled off to her. And when she Obliged.
He pushed it into her face just for a lark.
S2 (20:03):
Yeah, that was one of the anecdotes in that book.
I mean, it's sort of this it's strung through with
these anecdotes of someone who just comes across as very,
very psychologically immature. And you might also you might sort
of say like socially kind of stunted. And I think
the best. Yeah. As I say in that piece, like
the best complexion you could probably put on his character
(20:24):
is that he's deeply insecure. And because he's had such
a weird upbringing, um, and no one's ever treated him
sort of like normal people are treated, even just in
a relational sense, like he would never have had an
equal relationship really, with anyone. That's right. Which is a
strange thing when you think about it, how much that
must stunt your personality. Like not even his own siblings,
because there's an order of succession there. So, yeah, I
(20:48):
think you just come across as someone who's maybe, maybe
the best thing you can say about him is he's
deeply insecure and he sort of doesn't know how to
behave around people in a way that's kind of socially acceptable,
but that that appears to have to come out in
sort of these. Yeah, moments of petty bullying and sort
of petty cruelty like that. Like that anecdote.
S1 (21:07):
Well, I'm going to quote one royal biographer, Tessa Dunlop.
She was recently interviewed about this whole situation, and she
said of Prince Andrew, He's a rotten apple, but he's
a product of the system. So I guess one of
my questions is, does this entire affair. Does it really
bring the entire system into question? Do you think in
a way that we previously haven't seen?
S2 (21:26):
I think I think it probably does. And which is
not to overstate it, and to say that Britain's about
to become the United Kingdom, Kingdom is about to become
a republic, or, you know that we're about to become
a republic. But, you know, I think there are some
really interesting statistics that I looked into for that piece
about public polling, about support for the monarchy and just
(21:47):
enthusiasm for the monarchy of the British public over the
last few decades. So it's quite long and it's really,
really sunk. So the enthusiasm is just not there. And
I think what's so threatening about something like this is
it's like, you know, I guess in an ideal world,
the royal family would like to believe that it's one
bad apple. And, you know, every family's got one. And,
(22:09):
you know, there's always a brother who's a bit of
a shit or whatever.
S1 (22:12):
Which is true.
S2 (22:12):
But.
S1 (22:13):
Yeah.
S2 (22:13):
But, um. Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I, I would
not claim anyone similar in my family, but, um. Yeah,
I think they would like they would like us to
they would like us to believe that. But the more
the more this becomes sort of like, you know, the
fallout just kind of reaches further and further the more
you do start thinking, well, why do these people live,
(22:36):
live in these fancy houses? Why are they giving these
silly titles that really are fictional and made up? Um,
why do they have enormous amounts of personal property, you know,
enormous amounts of personal wealth beyond the imaginings of the
ordinary person in Britain. And yet they get to stay
in these fancy houses that are owned by the taxpayer
while I'm living in a council flat, you know. So
(22:57):
I think it's threatening. It's deeply threatening to the monarchy
for us to be asking these questions and, um, examining
or um, yeah, reflecting on the actual basis for the
enormous privilege that that that they, um.
S1 (23:13):
It's given by God. Jack.
S2 (23:15):
Isn't that the think anyone believes that? No. Maybe King
Charles does on some on some level, but yeah, I
don't think anyone believes that anymore. So you can't sort
of use that as a blanket excuse that you might
once have been able to know.
S1 (23:28):
Well, I just feel so lucky that you just wrote
about this. Your takes are always nuanced and intelligent and
tell me something I didn't know. So thank you so much.
S2 (23:35):
Thank you for letting me rant about, um, all of this, but, um, yeah,
I actually do think it's a really, really important topic.
It's not it's not important just because it's, um, Prince Andrew,
but it's about structures, I suppose, and systems that enable abuse.
And yeah, I think that that is it's really important
to expose.
S1 (24:12):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom
McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our
episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition
on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our
newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism,
(24:34):
visit the page or smh.com.au. Subscribe. And to stay up
to date, sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to
receive a summary of the day's most important news in
your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.