August 8, 2025 • 66 mins
In this episode we discuss Ghislaine Maxwell, exploring her privileged upbringing, her role as Jeffrey Epstein’s enabler, and the psychological factors that may have driven her actions. We look at the dynamics of power, manipulation, and class that fueled her complicity in Epstein’s sex trafficking network. We explore the broader implications of such predatory behavior and share our thoughts about how we can protect our youth from similar exploitation.
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Secret Passage Podcast is hosted by Dana Vespoli and Shannon Rogers
Producer: Tim Rogers
Editor: Mitch Silver
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This podcast may contain discussions of graphic violence, unsettling themes, supernaturalphenomena, and other topics that some listeners may find disturbing or triggering.
Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
The opinions expressed are simply those of the individual hosts and do not represent theprofession of psychology or constitute professional advice.
(00:42):
of the Secret Passage podcast.
I am your host, Dana Vespoly, and with me is the amazing Shannon Rogers, who's also myco-host.
How's it going, Shannon?
Thanks for that adjective.
Well, we were just talking about adjectives and it just plopped into my brain.
(01:06):
Ah, hello.
Hello.
Well, we're back.
we ready to talk about these two fucking weirdos?
uh
yeah.
Man, I'll never forget when the uh whole Jeffrey Epstein thing went down.
And then when Ghislaine was brought up.
(01:30):
And I'm always intrigued by women who are essentially like co-conspirators, co-just.
dependence.
Codependence and it's just, but anytime a woman, especially one who presents so well isguilty of, just, mean, can do crimes all the time.
(01:56):
They've been doing them forever, but it's just uh hurting other women, other young women.
It's weird.
But before we get going, talking about Ghislaine Maxwell, have you, did you go down anyinteresting secret passages this past week?
Well, I did.
It was last week, uh actually.
(02:17):
And I just want to say that I'm so grateful to be alive.
And I'm so glad you're alive, too, because of that tsunami warning we got on Tuesday.
The second in I've lived here for 40 years and never had a tsunami warning.
uh so last week, because of that big earthquake in Russia, all along the coast, there wasa tsunami warning.
(02:42):
Right.
And I guess in Venice, the canals actually got sucked out and were empty because of it.
But nothing.
Yeah.
um And it's funny because this is the second one in the last few months, I think, sixmonths or so.
And I met Tim for dinner that night.
And uh when I was programming my phone to come home, because we were out in this town wedon't usually go to, and I don't know where anything is anymore without my phone.
(03:11):
m And so I plugged in the coordinates to go home and it actually rerouted me because ofthe tsunami.
was like, really?
So there wasn't, nobody had one.
So I think they did in other countries, but um yeah, so grateful to be alive.
That's interesting about the canals because that usually is the precursor, right?
(03:32):
The water pulls back.
So there was a reaction to the earthquake, but it just didn't produce a tsunami.
No, and I wonder, did these just not happen before?
Or they just didn't have a warning system for them before?
It's strange to get two in this one year.
I know my parents are up on the coast of Oregon, and they're due for that gigantic onethat's going to wipe out the whole side of the country.
(04:01):
You know about that one?
I'm always afraid driving up the one that I'm going to get smashed by a tsunami.
There would be warning though.
Presumably.
No, because it's, oh, if you read this Atlantic article, it'll terrify you.
You'll never want to go.
So there's the Cascadia subduction zone that's out in the middle of the ocean.
(04:22):
And it's like about ready to just blow.
And they actually tracked the last time I think it blew, it created a tsunami in Japan.
And in Japan, they were weirded out at the time because they were like, there was noearthquake.
Why did we get a tsunami?
And it had happened on the coast of Oregon.
(04:43):
on that same subduction zone.
So one day, one day it will explode.
How about you?
Well, as far as tsunamis, I'm lucky to be on the other side of the mountains.
So that's good.
had a, so I rewatched Lake Mungo last night.
(05:05):
Just absolutely fantastic movie.
uh Technically a horror movie.
I guess it is a horror movie, but I had had a really great conversation on a Zoom chatwith.
a gentleman who uh has enjoyed my content for a while.
And we were just having a conversation about horror movies and he had asked like, know,what's like the best horror movie you've seen of late or whatever.
(05:35):
And I said, you know, the one that comes to mind most recently is Talk to Me, which is anAustralian horror movie.
Absolutely fantastic.
As far as I'm concerned, flawless.
It is fantastic.
And, you know, the Aussies have just been killing it with horror, with like the Babadookand Hounds of Love, which I think is another incredible movie.
(06:03):
And then he mentioned, hey, have you seen Lake Mungo?
And you and I had talked about it because a little over a year ago, I think we each hadwatched it.
And it's just really, it's just really well done.
I mean, you can see what
is possible with not a crazy big budget.
(06:23):
But it just got me thinking, and we talked about like, this kind of prevailing theme ofgrief that seems to be popping up in these different horror movies, know, along with,
know, the zombie movies kind of reflecting, you know, uh maybe like the opioid epidemicor.
(06:46):
oh
just group think, consumers and weirdness, like all the way we project our anxieties.
And grief is one that seems to be a regular theme, including with the same people that didtalk to me, did that movie bring her back, which also seems to explore themes of grief.
(07:08):
And then it's an oddity.
Really good.
That's really good.
Yeah, I liked it.
Yeah.
But it got me thinking about like, why is it maybe that that grief is such a strong theme?
And then I think about how with things like social media, with the internet and all ofthat, you know, this illusion of bringing us together has actually really polarized so
(07:34):
many of us.
And that I think can bring about
feelings of grief and a kind of loss for a time maybe that no longer exists, especiallypost COVID.
I don't know, lots to think about, I I was, I rewatched it last night and it's one ofthose movies you can watch again and again, really good.
(07:58):
But that uh is my secret passage.
I'm sure there are other ones, but that's the one that popped up.
the changeling.
The changeling, oh.
All right, crap.
This uh is a messy one, this episode today.
(08:19):
Well, first of all, as of late, very recently, wait, Gielin, as last I checked, she wasgetting ready to be moved to a minimum security prison.
Has she been moved or is she there now?
Yeah, she got moved to the prison and she was interviewed by the, what is it, deputyattorney general.
(08:42):
Yeah, and gave like hundreds of names, apparently.
But then again, it's like, what are the names?
What is it?
you know, were they just people they hung out with?
Were they people who actually had sex with children, you know?
Well, that is the thing, and you and I have talked about this, and that is, I don't thinkanyone's gonna be satisfied with what comes out.
(09:09):
Because if there's anything that creates a national security risk, we will not be giventhat information, for one.
And then, no matter where you land politically, people get protected, you know?
Thank
there are names that will never, you know.
(09:30):
Or maybe not, I don't know.
Who knows?
Anything that presents a possible threat, no matter what, is not going to be revealed tothe public.
Like, right?
Like, and then everyone will come up with, with, their theories as to why.
(09:50):
ah And then if, if, if Ghislaine herself feels like she's not safe, I don't know that, youknow, if she can't be protected.
Mm-hmm.
um I don't know how much she will actually divulge.
Right?
(10:12):
Yeah, and the whole question of her being an asset potentially for intelligence, you know,whether our intelligence or Israel or Russia or whatever, then there will be limits on
what she would say probably.
Right.
You know, and but uh I don't know.
(10:33):
I don't it's very hard to know.
A lot of stuff with this case is really hard to know.
Yeah.
And we could go on and on and on with theories, but let's just sort of stick to what weknow and explore reasons why.
Why she is the way she is, how something like this happens, how young girls and women canbe protected moving forward from being lured into
(11:06):
unsafe situations, whether with billionaire financiers or just a creepy guy in a nice car.
You know what saying?
Like, but let's, let's give a little quick background for those of you who are maybe notthat familiar with, with, with who Ghislaine Maxwell is and, or if you maybe need a
(11:26):
refresher.
So Ghislaine Maxwell was born in 1961 to a wealthy British family.
She grew up in luxury.
as the youngest daughter of media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
After her father's mysterious death in 1991, where he fell off of a yacht, she moved tothe United States and became closely associated with financier Jeffrey Epstein.
(11:56):
And she ended up having this kind of informal position of like an assistant.
She managed his social calendar.
and various business affairs.
In the 2010s, she faced allegations of recruiting and grooming underage girls forEpstein's sex trafficking network.
(12:17):
She was arrested in 2020, convicted in 2021 on multiple charges, including sex traffickingof minors.
And she was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
She is currently incarcerated and has appealed her conviction, maintaining her innocence.
So that's her quick background.
(12:38):
And for maybe a little more in-depth timeline, ah she was born December 25th in MaisonLafite, France to Robert Maxwell.
As I said, he's British media tycoon.
And Elizabeth Maxwell.
She is the youngest of nine children.
(13:01):
In the 70s and 80s, she grew up in Oxfordshire, England.
She attended Hettington School and Bullio College, Oxford.
She graduated in 1985.
She worked for her father's companies, including as a director at Oxford United FootballClub.
In 91, her father, Robert Maxwell, died, as I said before.
(13:23):
The circumstances are just widely considered to be suspicious.
Some think that he
that it was suicide, others think it was murder.
think even Ghislaine herself thinks he was killed.
His business empire collapsed amid fraud, revelations.
(13:43):
He essentially like bankrupted his whole family.
Ghislaine moved to New York and began her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Many people saw them as a couple.
Others found it peculiar because Epstein, uh his tastes tended
towards younger women.
She was uh older.
(14:06):
But as I understand it, it's not totally clear, but as I understand it, tell me if thistracks with you.
uh She met Epstein through her father.
Like her father had a relationship with Epstein as far as a business relationship withhim.
Yes, that's some kind of relationship.
Right.
And that's how she met him.
(14:26):
Yeah.
And she became this.
I don't know.
She might have met him after her father died, but he was a connection of her father's.
Right.
Yeah, I don't know.
in the various documentaries that you and I watched, the common thread is that Epstein wasvery similar to her father.
(14:48):
She became involved later in ocean conservation efforts.
She founded the TerraMar project in 2012, which is dissolved now.
2009, Epstein was convicted of sex offenses in Florida.
and Maxwell faced some civil lawsuits from victims alleging her involvement in therecruitment.
(15:15):
In 2015, Virginia Joufray straight up called Jelaine Maxwell out.
She had sort of managed to escape like deep scrutiny around the time that Epstein wasconvicted in Florida.
And he did everything he could to kind of protect her, keep her out of this.
(15:37):
And he was even like heard on his tape.
I don't know if it was from Florida or from later on.
in New York, but he just said, hey, let's leave her alone.
She has nothing to do with this.
Which could be perceived as altruistic, but it seems more likely that he's like, oh, Ican't have her sing like a canary.
(15:57):
Let's just not even risk that by just keeping her out of it.
But in 2015, Virginia, to phrase straight up, calls Ghislaine out, produces a picture withGhislaine in the picture in the background of uh
her own apartment or her own house.
um And in the picture, Virginia is standing next to Prince Andrew.
(16:19):
And ah that was essentially just um the beginning of the end for G.
Lane.
That case settled out of court though.
Like it was a civil suit, settled out of court.
2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
(16:41):
and then died by suicide in jail.
And around that time, Guillen goes into hiding.
No one knows where she is.
In 2020, she was arrested by the FBI on July 2nd in New Hampshire on charges includingenticement of minors and sex trafficking.
And in 2021, the trial began in November.
(17:03):
She was convicted on December 29th.
on five of six counts, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.
2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on June 28th.
And um she began serving time in Tallahassee, Florida.
And then 2023 to present, as most of us know, her appeals, she kept appealing herconviction.
(17:31):
It's still ongoing.
And uh she...
faces additional civil suits from Epstein victims and she's still incarcerated.
So that's the timeline.
The thing that I find most intriguing about Ghislaine Maxwell in all of this is how awoman who is so well put together, so charming, so highly educated, mean every description
(18:02):
of her, every superficial description of her.
is one of just being intelligent, very capable.
Again, she had on paper, she had all the credentials to kind of do anything she wanted.
She had the connections to.
(18:24):
Yet she becomes this assistant to a con man.
And twice.
and now she's in prison.
it's, I know that you can say, uh well, just because, you know, just because she is classyand educated doesn't mean, and it's like.
(18:50):
I know that, but it's...
So again, she grew up in privilege.
But she was abused.
mean, she and all her siblings were abused by her father, was a known total misogynist,total tyrant, treated people horribly, treated his own wife horribly.
(19:16):
And so one thing about him is like that struck me that was to contribute to this, I think,like this legacy ah is almost his entire family was killed in the Holocaust.
Her dad, right.
And he and he was also tied up with two different uh countries working for them as a spyearlier in his life.
(19:42):
And probably they people think definitely he was so.
So not only was he like, he has like a double life and he's a double agent.
Right.
Yeah.
Anyway, and the m other part, the other thing that struck me is that when she was born,it's like she was privileged.
(20:02):
But when she was born, right away her brother had this accident where I think he was in acoma for like seven years.
So all the family attention was going away from her.
Right.
And what do you remember this from the documentary?
She crawled into her mother's lap and said, I exist.
Yeah, just appealing appealing for attention appealing for to be seen.
(20:25):
But then, when they saw her, they started overindulging her.
Right?
And she was
spoiled.
Yeah, so like deprived at a really early age of attention, then totally overindulged andspoiled once she, right?
So, so confusing.
What superficially indulged and spoiled.
(20:46):
So it's like her emotional needs were never fucking fulfilled, but she was given all kindsof material things.
And it just seems to me, the thing that comes up a lot is that it feels as though she grewup watching her mother be treated like garbage.
She grew up with her father just reinforcing time and time again that women are kind oflike,
(21:12):
really should only ever be like eye candy, that they should never really hold any seriouspositions.
she replaced her mother.
She did, like she would attend these events and it feels very almost incestuous.
But there's nothing to say that there was any uh sex abuse that happened towards her.
(21:33):
Who knows, right?
But she did replace her mother on her father's arm at events because she was anattractive, articulate, she presented well, people liked her.
so, know, Robert Maxwell kind of exploited that.
to love is conditional.
Love is conditional.
The way you look matters.
(21:55):
It's the most important thing.
And people who love you, people who love you will also like abandon you, betray you,replace you.
You to be useful.
Your value is in how you look and how useful you are to a man.
And so that is messaging it seems she grew up with, along with probably her owninternalized misogyny towards women, which is devaluing women, which again, the way she
(22:22):
would refer to these recruits for Epstein as nothing, like literal nothing.
They're nothing.
They're nothing.
She's including herself in that as well.
You know, she's something only insofar as she's useful to a man.
And in one case it was her father.
And then, you know, when her father dies, she replaces him with Jeffrey Epstein, who isvery similar to her father and also is dismissive of her.
(22:46):
Well, yeah.
so if we go about, this is the part of the timeline that I just learned through researchthis week.
And so maybe for people who don't know, we could talk about how the play by play in termsof how they ended up here.
Because that was my question.
I'm like, how did it end up like this that they could wrangle all these women, these younggirls to go to these islands?
(23:07):
How does this happen?
Right.
So like.
She meets him, they start palling around, they have like a brief relationship, right?
And then she finds out that he's basically super horny and he needs to have three orgasmsa day and she can't keep up with him.
So how did that happen that they had a conversation, I guess, that he wanted some younggirls and then she just started going out to get them?
(23:33):
So here's my theory on that.
Because there's nothing definitive.
So this is speculation.
So Ghislaine meets, she begins having this relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
And my theory is if he slept with her at all, which he probably did, ah it was a means toan end.
(23:58):
Because what Jeffrey Epstein was, was a con man.
And what Ghislaine had was entree into a world of privilege.
She was the link to people like royalty, like little royalty, like Prince Charles.
uh She was a link to uh presidents.
(24:21):
She was a link to all of these people.
She was legitimacy.
She would help legitimize him.
So my theory is that he
started this relation, she was using her really, basically.
um then in their relationship, disclosed to her that she's not enough and that for thisrelationship to really be successful, he needs the certain type of uh woman girl.
(24:58):
And he would like her help in procuring these girls.
And then Gilen being,
pragmatic figured out uh a way to procure these girls for him.
And then so she set about doing that.
then again, created a system wherein she would train girls that were.
(25:20):
that pleased Jeffrey Epstein enough to either be like repeat girls that would come back tothen, you know, do a system where they can find other girls.
So Gailen's like, well, if you have friends, you know, they can, I can, you can make alittle extra money on top of what you get paid to do that massages and you can find
(25:41):
friends.
And so that started this network.
That's, it seems to be what happened, but.
Yeah, and probably built over time.
the pyramid came later.
But initially she was just cruising around looking for beautiful women and approachingthem and promising them money and fame and connections and all this stuff.
(26:04):
And the girls would go along with it.
It was like a bait and switch, right?
Like she would say the one woman she met in the department store and said, please deliverthe clothes that you're buying.
or that I'm buying to this hotel, and then the girl shows up, and then they're both inbathrobes.
and she have a really day.
Now, horrific.
(26:25):
So luring them in and then asking them to do weird things, like first of all, appearing inbathrobes, and then asking them.
I'm laughing.
It's not funny.
But there's something so comical about how ridiculous they are.
And it's so posh and so old-wealth.
weirdness, um they asking him to give a foot, you'll have to learn how to give Jeffrey afoot massage.
(26:51):
And the girls are like, I can just imagine the girls being like, going to touch his foot.
It's all, uh, all coming at them.
It's just so gnarly.
And also the way she did it was she went to high schools.
She found a high school girl and then the high school girl recruits her high schoolgirlfriends.
And I'm like, do these people know nothing about teens?
The word was going to get out.
(27:14):
The gossip chains and the.
It was never going to work long-term.
It was never going to work.
But it's interesting because it's funny because you can almost see Ghislaine trying justwithin her world to find women, right?
So she goes shopping at Barneys or Bloomingdale's, whatever.
(27:35):
She meets this attractive, classy looking sales girl.
And guess what happened?
It didn't work.
The girl shows up with the clothes and she's like,
This is weird, you guys.
had to go.
And she like leaves.
So that didn't work.
So then I'm imagining Yilin going, shit, this is tough.
(27:55):
This is going to take forever because within that world, you're going to get rejectionbecause these people don't, like the sales girl, she's older, right?
She's got to be in her twenties.
Yeah.
Mature, like she has a relationship.
She's like, she's not.
14.
She's not 14, she doesn't have restrictions.
(28:17):
She has an actual job.
Right, and so then Ghislaine, she goes to the place where she imagines, rightly, you'regonna find young, vulnerable girls.
And that's what she did.
But it is, like I texted you last night, just this weird image of her pulling up to a highschool.
(28:41):
And you know she wasn't pulling up to like a fence.
Yeah.
Hey, dangling $300 out the window like it's it's so gross.
It's so sad, it's so depraved.
It's really weird.
So you mentioned Carla Homolka and there's Rose and Fred, what was it Ward?
(29:05):
The ones that, the British killers who Rose would go out and or would be with him so hecould get his prey.
And like Carla Homolka would go out with Paul Bernardo and she would ensure that girlswould trust them and go with them.
Yeah.
And so it's like, I imagine her driving around and I imagine her in her monologue and I'mthinking like, does she ever say to herself, this is crazy?
(29:32):
I can't believe I'm doing this.
Well, it's, because, you know, it wasn't, she wasn't going to Spence.
She wasn't going to like these elite prep schools to find girls.
She was going to public schools.
And again, this plays into this, this class aspect that really I just, extra uncomfortablewith is she went where
(30:01):
She was most likely going to be fined willing prey.
And the willing prey tends to be not as financially stable, tends to not have maybe abackground where parents are like there to talk to or to protect them.
(30:23):
They don't have-
Yes.
Let's talk about that for a second because Tim said something really interesting lastnight.
He's like, lot of this, this is one angle to look at it from.
He's like, parents, like if a kid has a good relationship with their parents, would theysay yes to something like this?
would their parents, you know what mean?
Like a lot, some of the girls she did pick were people who had parents who were likeaddicted and not there.
(30:50):
There's a lot of financial insecurity, food scarcity, all of that kind of stuff thatplayed into the decision to move forward with seeing Epstein, right?
Yeah, I think that she, parent, one of them, from one of the documentaries said that hermom was not there, which was at like, and she was living with a friend.
But Tim was like, I can't believe this.
(31:10):
He told me this story last night and I was dying.
So during the riots in LA in 1992, he was just saying it as an example of like parentingand how, and we're going to get to this later in our episode, but how can this be
prevented?
How can we help girls be able to?
advocate for themselves in a situation like this.
(31:30):
How could we do that?
But he was like, yeah, I think a lot of it could boil down to like parent stuff.
Like if somebody asked you to go to your 14, to go to a rich guy's house and give him amassage, you'd probably check it out with your parents, right?
Or you'd at least have some reaction.
was like, yeah, he told me this story.
During the riots, his friends were like, let's go out and watch the riots.
(31:56):
His mom's like, are you going?
Yeah.
And he's like, I'm going to go watch the riots.
And she's like, oh, no, you're not.
And she locked the door and locked him in.
I think there's a way that, with the other kids at the rich prep schools, she knows thattheir parents are around and that they have.
At the very least, yeah, they have nannies, have house managers, there's drivers that cometo pick them up.
(32:21):
They're wanting for nothing.
Most of them are wanting for nothing.
And it's crazy because I think about it and I'm like, you know who would have been afucking really good victim?
This guy right here.
Latchkey kid.
Okay, I was a latchkey kid.
I was scared of that stuff.
if somebody said that to me, I'd be like, terrified.
(32:41):
And I would go tell someone.
Yeah, not me.
Yeah.
I would have been like, what's that?
You think I'm pretty?
Good.
I learned early that the way I look is all that matters.
What's that?
You're rich and important.
You can get me out of this life.
Like, I'm not saying that all of them were thinking along those lines, but it's like, thatsounds like an, know, again, it's like, you just need to give him a massage.
(33:06):
Okay.
That sounds like an easy $200, $300, you know?
Cause again, it's, it's going to be a young, young girl that's going to
fall for it, you know?
I know.
Tim was trying to convince me that I would do it.
And I was like, I would not fucking do it.
He's all, who wouldn't?
He's like,
I do it now.
Look, like I'm just, it's gotta be more than 300.
We're talking a couple thousand, but I'll.
(33:28):
I need my own I need my own casita on that island.
No, I don't like to travel.
don't, you know what I mean?
I'm like, no, but I, there are things someone could say to me to get me to go.
They could say, I'll give you, you don't have to see anyone or talk to anyone, but I'llgive you $20 million.
I would do it.
(33:48):
Again, I'm not trying to make light of this.
I'm just saying I get it.
Because I was that kid.
I was that kid.
And then there comes with it that gross, like almost forced complicity of, well, you didit.
Yeah.
You did it.
We didn't make you.
No one held a gun to your head.
You did it.
Yeah.
So why not do it again?
(34:10):
And it was normalized.
It was normalized and it was reinforced.
Well, money is super reinforcing, right?
Like I said, I would do it for 20 million.
uh
Dude, watch Squid Games.
I'm telling you, you gotta watch Squid Games.
Not if I have to fly and like go to an island.
Anyway, money.
And then their friends were recruiting them.
(34:31):
So their friends were normalizing it and being like, how was it?
Was it fun?
What did you do?
And Guilin would do it.
She would shower them with affection and approval if they were right.
Yes, and what's so especially awful and what's especially insidious is that, you've gotcreepy Jeffrey like on the massage table.
(34:54):
oh And then you, but then it's like almost as a, like a solve.
You have Ghislaine with her, you know, her proper appearance, her, you know, cool Britishaccent, her.
The way she carried herself was so, she was so disarming to other elites.
(35:16):
So imagine how disarming she is to a young girl.
She's like, because there's that idea in your head.
It would have worked for me, like being like 14, 15, 16 years old and going, well, she'shere and she seems normal.
So I must be crazy.
They're being gaslit.
(35:37):
It's like, Gilen is here and she's saying,
She's saying everything's gonna be okay.
She's kind of like the buffer, which she always played.
That was always her role.
And I do like, I'm trying to imagine like, what is going through her head?
(35:58):
And I know she grew up in this.
She grew up, like this is what you do.
This is what you do.
This is what is being asked of you.
This is what is being required of you by this man of influence, because I forgot tomention when her father died and essentially left the family destitute, she was left with
(36:18):
kind of a paltry trust, 80,000 a year, which wasn't gonna do much for her with thelifestyle that she had grown accustomed to.
And Jeffrey was financially there for her.
in the way that her father was financially there for her.
And I'm not gonna say emotionally there for her, but he was her father, she worshiped him.
(36:44):
I mean, obviously she grew up without, with very absence of oh morals and ethics, ofcourse.
And again, dehumanizing these girls, which is kind of like what we know happens withmurderers, right?
You dehumanize them, you take away any, yeah.
no humanity, their value is, you know, and I think she was incredibly classist, obviously.
(37:08):
So yeah, I just, it's just odd.
It's just.
I don't think she could stand to lose him.
I think that she had some dependent personality stuff going on where she didn't feel likeshe could make it in the world if she wasn't like a barnacle to a rich guy and could not
be without him.
So anything that threatened that.
You know, it's interesting.
Last night when I was thinking about this, I started to see the whole thing through thelens of addiction, that he was addicted to sex and she was addicted to that relationship.
(37:40):
Yeah, they were both getting their fix and she was out on the prowl like procuring thedrugs for him, but her drug was being of use to him and having her position with him
secured.
That's what it felt like to me is that, know, because those relationships really do pullon us neurologically when you have like uh an ambivalent partner or an abusive partner or
(38:05):
there's
the attachment to them becomes like a drug.
Like, you know, you feel they're far away, you could lose them, the things are on the hit,the skids.
And then the thing that makes you feel better is being back with them.
You know, so can imagine there are a lot of comings and goings with them, because I'm sureshe wasn't so super happy with this relation, their relationship, the way it was with him
(38:29):
sleeping with all the girls, him not, you know, I don't know.
I'm just imagining she was preoccupied with.
her role and anything that threatened her connection with him, she'd go to any lengths tokeep that.
And it has an addictive quality.
(38:49):
yeah.
Absolutely.
I mean, we could also make the argument that it was an addiction to wealth and privilege.
Yeah.
Because without him, what was she going to do?
You know, she tried, well, you and I were laughing about the whole Terramar Ocean project.
And it's so, I remember just cringing listening to her because she's normally so wellspoken, right?
(39:14):
In these different kinds of things she presents so well.
And she's there, she's like,
So who here loves the ocean?
The ocean!
love the ocean.
And she's like, terramar.
Okay, let's tell people about terramar.
That was just a...
(39:35):
It's got to be a CIA front.
That for me, was like, this is a thing that the CIA created for her or whateverintelligence agency she's working for.
Was it after he killed himself or was it after he went to prison?
It was after he went to prison the first time.
Think.
goes, no last time, I think.
The last time, I thought that she was trying to, no, the first time, because the last timehe went to prison, she disappeared.
(40:02):
Right.
So this was, this was after Florida.
Oh.
Really?
Because she looked a lot older.
Let me see.
Tara Mar, Ghislaine.
2012, yeah.
With a UK sister organization.
Oh, god.
It was just a website.
But you could also buy a piece of the ocean.
Just not an actual piece.
OK.
So to revamp her image, this is what she did.
(40:24):
She comes up with this, I'm suddenly this philanthropist, and I want to do good work, andI care about the climate.
But she really did it.
She couldn't even fake her way through it.
It's like, she's able to fake her way through these charming cocktail conversation, butshe's up in front of hundreds of people and she's just talking out of her ass.
(40:47):
And it just sounded so janky.
ah Terrible.
love the ocean and all the creatures in the ocean.
And you two can own a piece of, not literally.
And I'm like, I'll take this one.
I like about an acre of like that part of the Pacific between like Hawaii.
(41:14):
It's ridiculous.
So obviously a front.
And that's what I said, these fucking weirdos.
They're just weird.
You could look at it as, OK, this is just a really dysfunctional relationship.
And she's repeating the patterns of her childhood here.
And it was just dirty, addictive, whatever, and dirty rich people, eyes wide shut.
(41:41):
um But the other side is the intelligence stuff.
then I'm like, did
Did it start out that when he was compromised and he went to jail?
Because that whole thing was weird when he got that, how the case was handled and what hewas charged with ultimately was like getting prostitutes, not raping children.
(42:03):
So, and then he was let off with really easy and the way they communicated with the copsand the DA was off.
So it's like, when were these intelligence agencies involved?
whoever it was, was willing to overlook.
and also exploit the girls oh to get the goods for whoever they wanted to jam up inblackmail.
(42:25):
So it's such a weird, it's like psychedelic.
It's a weird case.
Yeah, and there's so much that that we still don't know definitively and that we willprobably never really fully know like that's Yeah, I see what you're saying because it
went from initially just him being like like addicted to these having these girls come tohim multiple times a day, which is wild like three like it's one thing to be needing sex
(42:56):
three times a day, but like meeting
these girls, like different girls three times a day.
It's just, I can't, yeah.
hedonistic and bizarre, but is enabling.
She was enabling his addiction because of her own.
I mean, that's my theory.
Yeah.
(43:17):
It seems like it went from to kind of go along with what you're saying.
So his, his, his initial vulnerability as far as, Oh, this guy has a, has a weak spot forunderage girls.
And he got the sweetheart deal.
Let's rope him in to essentially do some sort of a blackmailing operation in addition tothat, that, that, kind of is, yeah.
(43:46):
So like he kind of uh has to do it.
And then blackmail all these people.
Because like when did all those security cameras go up in his New York apartment ortownhouse or whatever it is, Brownstone, huge, huge home.
(44:07):
Right, I don't know.
I thought they were there all along.
I don't know about that part.
Yeah, because Maria Farmer, who was one of his victims, and then her sister was the onethat was in New Mexico that was like kind of held captive there almost.
but Maria worked in the house as like a receptionist almost.
(44:30):
And then she became privy to this huge security system within his house.
And I wonder, was it always there or did it...
was it installed after his prison sentence in Florida because he started working withintelligence agencies that, you
(44:50):
Right.
Or did he always, did he know her dad through that?
Because he had a shady, weird background.
Nobody knows where he got his money.
Or we do, but it was all through arms deals and stuff like some arms dealers.
Yeah, he didn't get it.
I think it was probably widely known within like the kind of big money crowd that this wasa guy who didn't give a fuck what he needed to do to get exorbitant wealth.
(45:17):
He was willing to do anything.
And I think he probably made that clear early on, very early on.
But he was clever, he was smart, he was savvy, weird.
Like it's just weird that with how sharp he was and how like,
By all accounts intelligent, dropped out of college.
(45:38):
know, he dropped out.
It was like he was just, he wanted the easy way.
He didn't want to go through all the proper channels.
He wanted the easy way.
And then he learned early that he could get away with shit.
Like he got that job at Dalton teaching math when he didn't even have a bachelor's degree,didn't even have a teaching certificate.
He was given a job because some rich, powerful people, he tutored their kid.
(46:03):
Put in a good word for him.
interesting.
You know, so he got this job at Dalton.
Everyone else is fucking busting their ass to get a teaching job at a prestigious school.
And this guy fucking rolls in.
I picture him rolling in and like flip flops and like a backwards cap.
(46:25):
Just like, just being weird, you know?
And he was inappropriate there and like all of that.
then, and then he ends up like, but it's like, he's leaving a trail of a mess everywherehe goes, yet he keeps being given.
It brings up so much for me, like the Anna Delvey shit, like uh the guy that said he wasuh Sidney Poitier's son, you know, all of that, like the grifters that come in and they
(46:53):
know the right,
people and they know the smooth talk and then they're just entrusted with millions uponmillions upon billions of dollars.
I mean it really shows the holes and it shows the kind of like the hubris that exists inthat kind of wealthy elite world.
(47:15):
That's the thing I always think about with, you know, we talk about psychopathy or we talkabout whatever it is that allows for a person to have disregard for the laws and for other
people.
And it just makes me think about like those of us who stay within the laws mostly, I mean,like I speed sometimes.
(47:36):
no, like, but the stuff that's not going to hurt anyone.
I mean, I guess you could make the argument that speeding hurts people, but you know whatI mean?
Like, yes.
Yeah.
But my speeding is not speeding.
My speeding's like 75.
So anyway, em what it takes to walk into a room as a con person and dupe a bunch ofpeople, it's just, I don't know, you have to unhook yourself from something, like your
(48:04):
humanity, or you don't have the same level of fear or risk avoidance.
Well, that's the psychopathy that we talk about, where, uh you know, not all psychopathsare murderers, right?
There is a reckless disregard for other people and for laws and rules.
And essentially, you see yourself as God.
(48:25):
You see yourself as, you know, which is why we...
when they say that, you know, find psychopaths in CEO positions, you find psychopathsdoing like brain surgery.
And it's like, that's when you kind of want a psychopath.
You want somebody that is that confident to slice into your fucking skull.
mean, yeah, I need, I need a cool, removed, very, very confident.
(48:49):
You want a confident fucking surgeon.
Jeffrey Epstein just had all the confidence and the entitlement to pull off.
walking into an interview and claiming that he has a, you know, don't know, a master'sdegree in mathematics or whatever.
Like just absolutely no remorse.
It is a disregard.
(49:10):
But that said, you know, then you've got Ghislaine who also in her own way, like fell preyto Epstein's charms and his confidence and this illusion that he cared about her.
In pictures, it's interesting.
You see the pictures of them.
She's just so holding so tight to his hand.
(49:31):
Like he's got, there's that one, he's got his arm around her and she's just gripping ontohis arm.
Like, stay with me.
You know, like her survival depends on it, you know?
And that is someone that just, it's interesting because had Epstein only ever said, hey,Ghislaine, here's the deal.
(49:52):
I'm attracted to younger women.
I like you.
I'll take care of you.
I just need you to do my bidding.
And my bidding is this.
Get me 25 year old supermodels to sleep with.
know, she'd be like, okay.
You know, it's just anything he was gonna ask her to do, she was gonna do it.
(50:15):
I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel like her depravity
would only go as far as the man that she had latched herself to.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't think that...
Her limits were his limits.
Exactly.
Which is dangerous.
You know, which is dangerous.
(50:36):
Of course.
mean, most of us live our lives.
OK, let's say, like, if we look at how we live our lives, I think that we basically areprogrammed from evolution, programmed to be afraid.
Like, there's a fundamental kind of restlessness to our experience as humans, right?
So a lot of the time, if we don't check this and we don't pay attention, we live our livescompletely under aversive control.
(51:06):
I imagine her operating from, have to do this because I'm avoiding losing him.
I'm avoiding losing my place with him because I don't think I don't have a place if Idon't have a place next to a strong man.
I can't do it on my own.
There's some of that, but then there's also like maybe there was something appetitive forher in it.
(51:27):
Like maybe she liked this power she had over the girls or maybe she liked, you know, so.
It's interesting to think about because we'll never know unless we talk to her what
And even then, and even then, even if we did speak to her, she is going to try to presentherself in the most sympathetic light as possible.
And I think there's enough evidence to show that there was, I think she did take somesadistic delight in seeing herself as above these girls, like the way that she would just
(51:59):
sort of grope them, almost like they were, I don't know, she was at a cattle auction orsomething and she's just handling them.
And the ways in which so many of these girls were very clear that she was terrible tothem.
So it wasn't even like her doing the bare minimum to appease him and then leaving theroom.
(52:19):
There's enough evidence with these girls' testimonies.
And again, a lot of these girls didn't know each other.
They're speaking from individual experience and their experiences kind of echo each otheras far as the way she was.
So again, isn't lest anyone think that like,
I'm trying to make an excuse for her.
I'm not trying to understand how someone ends up doing this.
(52:42):
And so when I say like her depravity will only go as far as her partner.
I think that she puts herself in situations where she is controlled by these men.
My theory is it's because it goes back to being controlled by your father.
But she's guilty.
She was groomed, she's guilty.
It sucks.
But some part of her, and I don't know how, if this is a...
(53:06):
you know, a nature versus nurture thing, or if she learned to take enjoyment in hurtingother people.
She certainly grew up watching her father hurt other people and watching her and hersiblings, other people.
them at the dinner table, making them stand up and talk about things.
and then whipping them if he wasn't happy, you know?
(53:27):
You know what you just made me think of?
There's this really good book.
So it's a psychoanalytic theory book.
It's called The Reproduction of Evil.
the theory in the book is uh that when victims, when people who are victims or survivors,then turn around and perpetrate, that in that act of perpetration, the theory is they're
(53:50):
wanting to be known because they've been debased in that way.
in their own lives.
And then by doing it to another person, there's something between them and the personthey're harming that actually makes them feel known.
I thought that was really interesting.
So I don't know if that was in there.
(54:10):
it would just be so interesting to hear from her.
Because we never know.
You look at people's behavior, and you can see what they're doing.
And you can make inferences, and you can speculate like we do.
But you never really know how it's functioning for them.
that when they're doing those things, right?
And it would just be, with all the people we talk about, I always think, God, it would beso great just to hear from them, like, what was going on in there?
(54:34):
Yeah, you know what comes across for me a lot, just seeing her in these differentinterviews before, you know, the trouble hit.
And then actually even that little bit of like, I think it was a jailhouse kind ofdiscussion where you kind of see her talking is it doesn't seem as though she has any kind
of real sense of self.
(54:56):
Like, she's like a Brett Easton Ellis character.
Like if you ever read, um,
like less than zero, like, which is a hard read.
everyone talks about American Psycho being a tough read and it is.
Less than zero is a fucking hard read.
Like the 80s movie has nothing on the fucking book.
(55:17):
But it's just this, there's a vampiric quality.
And it's funny because in some of Bret Easton Ellis's other books, like he, the way herepresents or he presents some of these rich.
characters is like actual like vampires and there's like this vampiric quality to her likethis vacant shell that just seeks to be filled and seeks to be filled with you know what
(55:47):
happens when you're bored with I mean you're still seeking it but you know things andstuff like money, travel, good food, apartments, hotels, fashion.
em
you know, other people's souls, their essence, you know, it's, there, is this kind ofthing, you know, viewing these girls as a means to an end.
(56:11):
But, just, just insatiable, just, just.
the insatiable thing.
It really does.
mean, you see, obviously Epstein was insatiable.
You see her being insatiable.
So disgusting.
Yeah, it's just this emptiness.
There's this vacant quality to her that is, when people describe her as creepy, like yousaid that the photographer uh in the documentary that was doing the Tara Mar photo shoot
(56:37):
and described her as like being kind of creepy.
Yeah.
Like we talked about the money stuff and how poverty, that thing you said about poverty,violence.
like I just was this whole week when we were doing this research, I'm thinking, my God,like wealth is really truly so distorting.
Yeah.
Wealth and privilege.
(56:58):
It's so distorting.
So like that coherence thing that I talk about sometimes, like how we as humans, we needcoherence.
That's why narratives and stories are so sticky, right?
It's almost like a primary kind of reinforcer, like water and air and food.
(57:19):
And that's why it's so hard to change one's mind if you're understanding that you'remaking a story and it's sticky.
And you're probably scanning the environment for more information to feed that story andto the exclusion of every other narrative.
And I just thought so much about that because it truly felt like
Like, you people say she's a narcissist, people say she's a psychopath.
(57:41):
It really just, to me, it almost doesn't even have that cold-blooded quality because youcan see her suffering.
I think you can see in her face she's sad and depressed sometimes, right?
Right.
but it had that like, in her mind, she really is better than them, these girls.
They really are nothing.
(58:02):
She said they could, you could throw them away like tissues, you know, like that was her.
true experience and belief.
Like she lives up here.
Everybody else is like, you know, cattle or something.
I don't know.
Right.
That makes me so uncomfortable thinking about these girls as being disposable.
And also just the insidious part of it.
(58:26):
It's as if it wasn't enough to manipulate them, sexually abuse them, to then essentiallytry to make them complicit in their own abuse for daring to want or need money.
and the justice system confirming.
And it clearly they're motivated by wanting, it's just, yeah, it's, yeah.
(58:51):
And then also, yeah, when they were perceived as prostitutes in the Florida sentencing ofEpstein.
But all this to say that, I mean, we can go on and on forever trying to make sense ofsomeone like Elan Maxwell, but she's not the only person out there that just seeks to
(59:13):
coerce, manipulate, trick.
these vulnerable people, we should probably finish by talking about like, man, it is soimportant to talk to young people.
And again, like uh whether you're a single parent, a guardian or whatever, whether youhave to work around the clock and you don't always have access to time, spending time with
(59:39):
your kids, it is so important to, I hate to say it, but it's true.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If somebody rolls up and says, hey, you can make a lot of money just doing this verysimple thing.
It's no, you know?
Like assertiveness training too.
(01:00:00):
Like assertiveness training, self-defense, please for the love of all things, Girls,especially all kids.
Cause we know that, boys are, are victims too.
But, but, but girls, especially man, I'm going to just, I Brazilian jujitsu.
And it's not just because my kids do Brazilian jujitsu and my partner is, is doesBrazilian jujitsu.
(01:00:26):
I've, I've done it there.
There's, I don't think that there's any better.
combat training that actually you can get yourself, regardless of your size, you canactually get out of a sticky situation with it.
But self-defense and then, you know, just, man, it's so important to have opencommunication with your kids, reminding them not to feel embarrassed or ashamed if they've
(01:00:50):
done something, if they've been lured into something, if they're questioning something,like.
Like even like, I don't want to tell my parents because it sounds weird, but it really isthis thing that I can do to make this money.
peer pressure, like how to deal with your peers who are telling you it's fine and youdon't think it's that fine and you, but you're going along with it.
(01:01:11):
And like, I definitely, if I was in that position when I was, if I had gone along and Ishowed up in some guy's room, they're like, massage this old man.
Like I would probably do it because I wouldn't know how I would either freeze, fawn.
These are all our survival responses, right?
Freeze the danger.
(01:01:33):
Flee, fight.
Right.
Play dead.
So I would probably fawn.
I would probably do it just to get out of there.
Right.
But teaching people to have pay attention in those moments and have more options, whichthey may not be able to.
I when we're under threat like that, we really kind of like don't have a lot of options.
(01:01:56):
But training kids to think when they're in a state like that.
not just to that they don't just have to comply because I bet I know that they stalkedthat one girl for like three years the one that that left the hotel room the one that
worked at the
Yeah, and that speaks to that sadistic thing because they knew they weren't going to gether.
(01:02:18):
They knew they weren't going to, so they decided to torment her and scare her.
Yeah, oof.
I guarantee, though, I know there are probably lots of girls that went in there and werelike, uh-uh, and booked it out of there.
Right.
But I mean, don't know.
And I'm not saying that people are wrong for not doing that.
I'm just saying that some stayed and did it, and some probably ran.
(01:02:39):
Yeah.
And I don't think we have that much control over that response in situations like that.
I probably would have stayed and been like, I just do this and leave and never come back.
I would have been scared.
Like, let's say I got there and then I changed my mind.
I would be scared looking at these two older adults who have made it very clear that theyhave a lot of power, that they have a lot of access to things that could hurt me or hurt
(01:03:05):
my family.
Like, of course I'm gonna probably go through with it if I feel scared, you just sort ofgo through it, you know?
I don't know, I get it, I get it.
It's also so weird that you're like, what else would they do to me?
It's also just weird.
That would be terrifying in a way.
Are they going to chop me up and throw me in a landfill?
(01:03:27):
I don't
Yeah, yeah.
Which is terrifying.
And then the ones that kind of felt like they had to do it and keep doing it becausethey're like, well, you know, they get gaslit.
You know, you've got Ghislaine going, you did great.
You did wonderful.
Jeffrey's so, so happy with you.
Here's more money.
And then you're like, okay, you know.
(01:03:49):
friends are doing it.
Yeah, but it is, it's the communication, it's letting kids know that it's not juststrangers to watch out for, but strangers that seem like they have a lot of power and
influence.
Like I told you, like, you know, it's a thing where when you're young and vulnerable andsomeone seems safe because of who they know, you know, like, well, this guy knows the
(01:04:14):
Clintons, he knows princes, he knows famous people, therefore he's safe.
You know, he must be safe.
They're in a limo.
They must be safe.
Like there's this weird illusion that that much the class, the who you know, the fact thatthey know famous people that we're familiar with means that they're safe.
(01:04:36):
There's an illusion of safety.
That's a thing to teach too.
You know, yes.
So if that makes sense, guys, so sad.
Well, we'll be watching to see what happens along with.
the rest of you, um what ends up coming to pass with Guilin Maxwell.
(01:04:57):
Yeah, we can be watching.
Let us know what you think.
What do you think?
Why do you think she is the way she is?
How does something like this happen?
And what experiences, if you had, what advice would you have for young vulnerable peoplethat may be manipulated into participating in things that are dangerous and scary?
(01:05:19):
but seem on the surface like they're safe.
Anyway, thanks for joining us.
We'll be back next week and uh please follow us on all our platforms.
Shannon, what are our platforms?
Tik Tok.
Now we're on Tik Tok.
uh Secret Passage Podcast and X Secret Pass Pod, Instagram Secret Passage Podcast, andthen we're on Patreon.
(01:05:43):
Yes, if you are interested in joining us there, that'd be great.
All right, gang, we'll see you next time.
This podcast may contain discussions of graphic violence, unsettling themes, supernaturalphenomena, and other topics that some listeners may find disturbing or triggering.
Listener discretion is advised.
This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
The opinions expressed are simply those of the individual hosts and do not represent theprofession of psychology or constitute professional advice.
(00:42):
of the Secret Passage podcast.
I am your host, Dana Vespoly, and with me is the amazing Shannon Rogers, who's also myco-host.
How's it going, Shannon?
Thanks for that adjective.
Well, we were just talking about adjectives and it just plopped into my brain.
(01:06):
Ah, hello.
Hello.
Well, we're back.
we ready to talk about these two fucking weirdos?
uh
yeah.
Man, I'll never forget when the uh whole Jeffrey Epstein thing went down.
And then when Ghislaine was brought up.
(01:30):
And I'm always intrigued by women who are essentially like co-conspirators, co-just.
dependence.
Codependence and it's just, but anytime a woman, especially one who presents so well isguilty of, just, mean, can do crimes all the time.
(01:56):
They've been doing them forever, but it's just uh hurting other women, other young women.
It's weird.
But before we get going, talking about Ghislaine Maxwell, have you, did you go down anyinteresting secret passages this past week?
Well, I did.
It was last week, uh actually.
(02:17):
And I just want to say that I'm so grateful to be alive.
And I'm so glad you're alive, too, because of that tsunami warning we got on Tuesday.
The second in I've lived here for 40 years and never had a tsunami warning.
uh so last week, because of that big earthquake in Russia, all along the coast, there wasa tsunami warning.
(02:42):
Right.
And I guess in Venice, the canals actually got sucked out and were empty because of it.
But nothing.
Yeah.
um And it's funny because this is the second one in the last few months, I think, sixmonths or so.
And I met Tim for dinner that night.
And uh when I was programming my phone to come home, because we were out in this town wedon't usually go to, and I don't know where anything is anymore without my phone.
(03:11):
m And so I plugged in the coordinates to go home and it actually rerouted me because ofthe tsunami.
was like, really?
So there wasn't, nobody had one.
So I think they did in other countries, but um yeah, so grateful to be alive.
That's interesting about the canals because that usually is the precursor, right?
(03:32):
The water pulls back.
So there was a reaction to the earthquake, but it just didn't produce a tsunami.
No, and I wonder, did these just not happen before?
Or they just didn't have a warning system for them before?
It's strange to get two in this one year.
I know my parents are up on the coast of Oregon, and they're due for that gigantic onethat's going to wipe out the whole side of the country.
(04:01):
You know about that one?
I'm always afraid driving up the one that I'm going to get smashed by a tsunami.
There would be warning though.
Presumably.
No, because it's, oh, if you read this Atlantic article, it'll terrify you.
You'll never want to go.
So there's the Cascadia subduction zone that's out in the middle of the ocean.
(04:22):
And it's like about ready to just blow.
And they actually tracked the last time I think it blew, it created a tsunami in Japan.
And in Japan, they were weirded out at the time because they were like, there was noearthquake.
Why did we get a tsunami?
And it had happened on the coast of Oregon.
(04:43):
on that same subduction zone.
So one day, one day it will explode.
How about you?
Well, as far as tsunamis, I'm lucky to be on the other side of the mountains.
So that's good.
had a, so I rewatched Lake Mungo last night.
(05:05):
Just absolutely fantastic movie.
uh Technically a horror movie.
I guess it is a horror movie, but I had had a really great conversation on a Zoom chatwith.
a gentleman who uh has enjoyed my content for a while.
And we were just having a conversation about horror movies and he had asked like, know,what's like the best horror movie you've seen of late or whatever.
(05:35):
And I said, you know, the one that comes to mind most recently is Talk to Me, which is anAustralian horror movie.
Absolutely fantastic.
As far as I'm concerned, flawless.
It is fantastic.
And, you know, the Aussies have just been killing it with horror, with like the Babadookand Hounds of Love, which I think is another incredible movie.
(06:03):
And then he mentioned, hey, have you seen Lake Mungo?
And you and I had talked about it because a little over a year ago, I think we each hadwatched it.
And it's just really, it's just really well done.
I mean, you can see what
is possible with not a crazy big budget.
(06:23):
But it just got me thinking, and we talked about like, this kind of prevailing theme ofgrief that seems to be popping up in these different horror movies, know, along with,
know, the zombie movies kind of reflecting, you know, uh maybe like the opioid epidemicor.
(06:46):
oh
just group think, consumers and weirdness, like all the way we project our anxieties.
And grief is one that seems to be a regular theme, including with the same people that didtalk to me, did that movie bring her back, which also seems to explore themes of grief.
(07:08):
And then it's an oddity.
Really good.
That's really good.
Yeah, I liked it.
Yeah.
But it got me thinking about like, why is it maybe that that grief is such a strong theme?
And then I think about how with things like social media, with the internet and all ofthat, you know, this illusion of bringing us together has actually really polarized so
(07:34):
many of us.
And that I think can bring about
feelings of grief and a kind of loss for a time maybe that no longer exists, especiallypost COVID.
I don't know, lots to think about, I I was, I rewatched it last night and it's one ofthose movies you can watch again and again, really good.
(07:58):
But that uh is my secret passage.
I'm sure there are other ones, but that's the one that popped up.
the changeling.
The changeling, oh.
All right, crap.
This uh is a messy one, this episode today.
(08:19):
Well, first of all, as of late, very recently, wait, Gielin, as last I checked, she wasgetting ready to be moved to a minimum security prison.
Has she been moved or is she there now?
Yeah, she got moved to the prison and she was interviewed by the, what is it, deputyattorney general.
(08:42):
Yeah, and gave like hundreds of names, apparently.
But then again, it's like, what are the names?
What is it?
you know, were they just people they hung out with?
Were they people who actually had sex with children, you know?
Well, that is the thing, and you and I have talked about this, and that is, I don't thinkanyone's gonna be satisfied with what comes out.
(09:09):
Because if there's anything that creates a national security risk, we will not be giventhat information, for one.
And then, no matter where you land politically, people get protected, you know?
Thank
there are names that will never, you know.
(09:30):
Or maybe not, I don't know.
Who knows?
Anything that presents a possible threat, no matter what, is not going to be revealed tothe public.
Like, right?
Like, and then everyone will come up with, with, their theories as to why.
(09:50):
ah And then if, if, if Ghislaine herself feels like she's not safe, I don't know that, youknow, if she can't be protected.
Mm-hmm.
um I don't know how much she will actually divulge.
Right?
(10:12):
Yeah, and the whole question of her being an asset potentially for intelligence, you know,whether our intelligence or Israel or Russia or whatever, then there will be limits on
what she would say probably.
Right.
You know, and but uh I don't know.
(10:33):
I don't it's very hard to know.
A lot of stuff with this case is really hard to know.
Yeah.
And we could go on and on and on with theories, but let's just sort of stick to what weknow and explore reasons why.
Why she is the way she is, how something like this happens, how young girls and women canbe protected moving forward from being lured into
(11:06):
unsafe situations, whether with billionaire financiers or just a creepy guy in a nice car.
You know what saying?
Like, but let's, let's give a little quick background for those of you who are maybe notthat familiar with, with, with who Ghislaine Maxwell is and, or if you maybe need a
(11:26):
refresher.
So Ghislaine Maxwell was born in 1961 to a wealthy British family.
She grew up in luxury.
as the youngest daughter of media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
After her father's mysterious death in 1991, where he fell off of a yacht, she moved tothe United States and became closely associated with financier Jeffrey Epstein.
(11:56):
And she ended up having this kind of informal position of like an assistant.
She managed his social calendar.
and various business affairs.
In the 2010s, she faced allegations of recruiting and grooming underage girls forEpstein's sex trafficking network.
(12:17):
She was arrested in 2020, convicted in 2021 on multiple charges, including sex traffickingof minors.
And she was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
She is currently incarcerated and has appealed her conviction, maintaining her innocence.
So that's her quick background.
(12:38):
And for maybe a little more in-depth timeline, ah she was born December 25th in MaisonLafite, France to Robert Maxwell.
As I said, he's British media tycoon.
And Elizabeth Maxwell.
She is the youngest of nine children.
(13:01):
In the 70s and 80s, she grew up in Oxfordshire, England.
She attended Hettington School and Bullio College, Oxford.
She graduated in 1985.
She worked for her father's companies, including as a director at Oxford United FootballClub.
In 91, her father, Robert Maxwell, died, as I said before.
(13:23):
The circumstances are just widely considered to be suspicious.
Some think that he
that it was suicide, others think it was murder.
think even Ghislaine herself thinks he was killed.
His business empire collapsed amid fraud, revelations.
(13:43):
He essentially like bankrupted his whole family.
Ghislaine moved to New York and began her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Many people saw them as a couple.
Others found it peculiar because Epstein, uh his tastes tended
towards younger women.
She was uh older.
(14:06):
But as I understand it, it's not totally clear, but as I understand it, tell me if thistracks with you.
uh She met Epstein through her father.
Like her father had a relationship with Epstein as far as a business relationship withhim.
Yes, that's some kind of relationship.
Right.
And that's how she met him.
(14:26):
Yeah.
And she became this.
I don't know.
She might have met him after her father died, but he was a connection of her father's.
Right.
Yeah, I don't know.
in the various documentaries that you and I watched, the common thread is that Epstein wasvery similar to her father.
(14:48):
She became involved later in ocean conservation efforts.
She founded the TerraMar project in 2012, which is dissolved now.
2009, Epstein was convicted of sex offenses in Florida.
and Maxwell faced some civil lawsuits from victims alleging her involvement in therecruitment.
(15:15):
In 2015, Virginia Joufray straight up called Jelaine Maxwell out.
She had sort of managed to escape like deep scrutiny around the time that Epstein wasconvicted in Florida.
And he did everything he could to kind of protect her, keep her out of this.
(15:37):
And he was even like heard on his tape.
I don't know if it was from Florida or from later on.
in New York, but he just said, hey, let's leave her alone.
She has nothing to do with this.
Which could be perceived as altruistic, but it seems more likely that he's like, oh, Ican't have her sing like a canary.
(15:57):
Let's just not even risk that by just keeping her out of it.
But in 2015, Virginia, to phrase straight up, calls Ghislaine out, produces a picture withGhislaine in the picture in the background of uh
her own apartment or her own house.
um And in the picture, Virginia is standing next to Prince Andrew.
(16:19):
And ah that was essentially just um the beginning of the end for G.
Lane.
That case settled out of court though.
Like it was a civil suit, settled out of court.
2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
(16:41):
and then died by suicide in jail.
And around that time, Guillen goes into hiding.
No one knows where she is.
In 2020, she was arrested by the FBI on July 2nd in New Hampshire on charges includingenticement of minors and sex trafficking.
And in 2021, the trial began in November.
(17:03):
She was convicted on December 29th.
on five of six counts, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.
2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on June 28th.
And um she began serving time in Tallahassee, Florida.
And then 2023 to present, as most of us know, her appeals, she kept appealing herconviction.
(17:31):
It's still ongoing.
And uh she...
faces additional civil suits from Epstein victims and she's still incarcerated.
So that's the timeline.
The thing that I find most intriguing about Ghislaine Maxwell in all of this is how awoman who is so well put together, so charming, so highly educated, mean every description
(18:02):
of her, every superficial description of her.
is one of just being intelligent, very capable.
Again, she had on paper, she had all the credentials to kind of do anything she wanted.
She had the connections to.
(18:24):
Yet she becomes this assistant to a con man.
And twice.
and now she's in prison.
it's, I know that you can say, uh well, just because, you know, just because she is classyand educated doesn't mean, and it's like.
(18:50):
I know that, but it's...
So again, she grew up in privilege.
But she was abused.
mean, she and all her siblings were abused by her father, was a known total misogynist,total tyrant, treated people horribly, treated his own wife horribly.
(19:16):
And so one thing about him is like that struck me that was to contribute to this, I think,like this legacy ah is almost his entire family was killed in the Holocaust.
Her dad, right.
And he and he was also tied up with two different uh countries working for them as a spyearlier in his life.
(19:42):
And probably they people think definitely he was so.
So not only was he like, he has like a double life and he's a double agent.
Right.
Yeah.
Anyway, and the m other part, the other thing that struck me is that when she was born,it's like she was privileged.
(20:02):
But when she was born, right away her brother had this accident where I think he was in acoma for like seven years.
So all the family attention was going away from her.
Right.
And what do you remember this from the documentary?
She crawled into her mother's lap and said, I exist.
Yeah, just appealing appealing for attention appealing for to be seen.
(20:25):
But then, when they saw her, they started overindulging her.
Right?
And she was
spoiled.
Yeah, so like deprived at a really early age of attention, then totally overindulged andspoiled once she, right?
So, so confusing.
What superficially indulged and spoiled.
(20:46):
So it's like her emotional needs were never fucking fulfilled, but she was given all kindsof material things.
And it just seems to me, the thing that comes up a lot is that it feels as though she grewup watching her mother be treated like garbage.
She grew up with her father just reinforcing time and time again that women are kind oflike,
(21:12):
really should only ever be like eye candy, that they should never really hold any seriouspositions.
she replaced her mother.
She did, like she would attend these events and it feels very almost incestuous.
But there's nothing to say that there was any uh sex abuse that happened towards her.
(21:33):
Who knows, right?
But she did replace her mother on her father's arm at events because she was anattractive, articulate, she presented well, people liked her.
so, know, Robert Maxwell kind of exploited that.
to love is conditional.
Love is conditional.
The way you look matters.
(21:55):
It's the most important thing.
And people who love you, people who love you will also like abandon you, betray you,replace you.
You to be useful.
Your value is in how you look and how useful you are to a man.
And so that is messaging it seems she grew up with, along with probably her owninternalized misogyny towards women, which is devaluing women, which again, the way she
(22:22):
would refer to these recruits for Epstein as nothing, like literal nothing.
They're nothing.
They're nothing.
She's including herself in that as well.
You know, she's something only insofar as she's useful to a man.
And in one case it was her father.
And then, you know, when her father dies, she replaces him with Jeffrey Epstein, who isvery similar to her father and also is dismissive of her.
(22:46):
Well, yeah.
so if we go about, this is the part of the timeline that I just learned through researchthis week.
And so maybe for people who don't know, we could talk about how the play by play in termsof how they ended up here.
Because that was my question.
I'm like, how did it end up like this that they could wrangle all these women, these younggirls to go to these islands?
(23:07):
How does this happen?
Right.
So like.
She meets him, they start palling around, they have like a brief relationship, right?
And then she finds out that he's basically super horny and he needs to have three orgasmsa day and she can't keep up with him.
So how did that happen that they had a conversation, I guess, that he wanted some younggirls and then she just started going out to get them?
(23:33):
So here's my theory on that.
Because there's nothing definitive.
So this is speculation.
So Ghislaine meets, she begins having this relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
And my theory is if he slept with her at all, which he probably did, ah it was a means toan end.
(23:58):
Because what Jeffrey Epstein was, was a con man.
And what Ghislaine had was entree into a world of privilege.
She was the link to people like royalty, like little royalty, like Prince Charles.
uh She was a link to uh presidents.
(24:21):
She was a link to all of these people.
She was legitimacy.
She would help legitimize him.
So my theory is that he
started this relation, she was using her really, basically.
um then in their relationship, disclosed to her that she's not enough and that for thisrelationship to really be successful, he needs the certain type of uh woman girl.
(24:58):
And he would like her help in procuring these girls.
And then Gilen being,
pragmatic figured out uh a way to procure these girls for him.
And then so she set about doing that.
then again, created a system wherein she would train girls that were.
(25:20):
that pleased Jeffrey Epstein enough to either be like repeat girls that would come back tothen, you know, do a system where they can find other girls.
So Gailen's like, well, if you have friends, you know, they can, I can, you can make alittle extra money on top of what you get paid to do that massages and you can find
(25:41):
friends.
And so that started this network.
That's, it seems to be what happened, but.
Yeah, and probably built over time.
the pyramid came later.
But initially she was just cruising around looking for beautiful women and approachingthem and promising them money and fame and connections and all this stuff.
(26:04):
And the girls would go along with it.
It was like a bait and switch, right?
Like she would say the one woman she met in the department store and said, please deliverthe clothes that you're buying.
or that I'm buying to this hotel, and then the girl shows up, and then they're both inbathrobes.
and she have a really day.
Now, horrific.
(26:25):
So luring them in and then asking them to do weird things, like first of all, appearing inbathrobes, and then asking them.
I'm laughing.
It's not funny.
But there's something so comical about how ridiculous they are.
And it's so posh and so old-wealth.
weirdness, um they asking him to give a foot, you'll have to learn how to give Jeffrey afoot massage.
(26:51):
And the girls are like, I can just imagine the girls being like, going to touch his foot.
It's all, uh, all coming at them.
It's just so gnarly.
And also the way she did it was she went to high schools.
She found a high school girl and then the high school girl recruits her high schoolgirlfriends.
And I'm like, do these people know nothing about teens?
The word was going to get out.
(27:14):
The gossip chains and the.
It was never going to work long-term.
It was never going to work.
But it's interesting because it's funny because you can almost see Ghislaine trying justwithin her world to find women, right?
So she goes shopping at Barneys or Bloomingdale's, whatever.
(27:35):
She meets this attractive, classy looking sales girl.
And guess what happened?
It didn't work.
The girl shows up with the clothes and she's like,
This is weird, you guys.
had to go.
And she like leaves.
So that didn't work.
So then I'm imagining Yilin going, shit, this is tough.
(27:55):
This is going to take forever because within that world, you're going to get rejectionbecause these people don't, like the sales girl, she's older, right?
She's got to be in her twenties.
Yeah.
Mature, like she has a relationship.
She's like, she's not.
14.
She's not 14, she doesn't have restrictions.
(28:17):
She has an actual job.
Right, and so then Ghislaine, she goes to the place where she imagines, rightly, you'regonna find young, vulnerable girls.
And that's what she did.
But it is, like I texted you last night, just this weird image of her pulling up to a highschool.
(28:41):
And you know she wasn't pulling up to like a fence.
Yeah.
Hey, dangling $300 out the window like it's it's so gross.
It's so sad, it's so depraved.
It's really weird.
So you mentioned Carla Homolka and there's Rose and Fred, what was it Ward?
(29:05):
The ones that, the British killers who Rose would go out and or would be with him so hecould get his prey.
And like Carla Homolka would go out with Paul Bernardo and she would ensure that girlswould trust them and go with them.
Yeah.
And so it's like, I imagine her driving around and I imagine her in her monologue and I'mthinking like, does she ever say to herself, this is crazy?
(29:32):
I can't believe I'm doing this.
Well, it's, because, you know, it wasn't, she wasn't going to Spence.
She wasn't going to like these elite prep schools to find girls.
She was going to public schools.
And again, this plays into this, this class aspect that really I just, extra uncomfortablewith is she went where
(30:01):
She was most likely going to be fined willing prey.
And the willing prey tends to be not as financially stable, tends to not have maybe abackground where parents are like there to talk to or to protect them.
(30:23):
They don't have-
Yes.
Let's talk about that for a second because Tim said something really interesting lastnight.
He's like, lot of this, this is one angle to look at it from.
He's like, parents, like if a kid has a good relationship with their parents, would theysay yes to something like this?
would their parents, you know what mean?
Like a lot, some of the girls she did pick were people who had parents who were likeaddicted and not there.
(30:50):
There's a lot of financial insecurity, food scarcity, all of that kind of stuff thatplayed into the decision to move forward with seeing Epstein, right?
Yeah, I think that she, parent, one of them, from one of the documentaries said that hermom was not there, which was at like, and she was living with a friend.
But Tim was like, I can't believe this.
(31:10):
He told me this story last night and I was dying.
So during the riots in LA in 1992, he was just saying it as an example of like parentingand how, and we're going to get to this later in our episode, but how can this be
prevented?
How can we help girls be able to?
advocate for themselves in a situation like this.
(31:30):
How could we do that?
But he was like, yeah, I think a lot of it could boil down to like parent stuff.
Like if somebody asked you to go to your 14, to go to a rich guy's house and give him amassage, you'd probably check it out with your parents, right?
Or you'd at least have some reaction.
was like, yeah, he told me this story.
During the riots, his friends were like, let's go out and watch the riots.
(31:56):
His mom's like, are you going?
Yeah.
And he's like, I'm going to go watch the riots.
And she's like, oh, no, you're not.
And she locked the door and locked him in.
I think there's a way that, with the other kids at the rich prep schools, she knows thattheir parents are around and that they have.
At the very least, yeah, they have nannies, have house managers, there's drivers that cometo pick them up.
(32:21):
They're wanting for nothing.
Most of them are wanting for nothing.
And it's crazy because I think about it and I'm like, you know who would have been afucking really good victim?
This guy right here.
Latchkey kid.
Okay, I was a latchkey kid.
I was scared of that stuff.
if somebody said that to me, I'd be like, terrified.
(32:41):
And I would go tell someone.
Yeah, not me.
Yeah.
I would have been like, what's that?
You think I'm pretty?
Good.
I learned early that the way I look is all that matters.
What's that?
You're rich and important.
You can get me out of this life.
Like, I'm not saying that all of them were thinking along those lines, but it's like, thatsounds like an, know, again, it's like, you just need to give him a massage.
(33:06):
Okay.
That sounds like an easy $200, $300, you know?
Cause again, it's, it's going to be a young, young girl that's going to
fall for it, you know?
I know.
Tim was trying to convince me that I would do it.
And I was like, I would not fucking do it.
He's all, who wouldn't?
He's like,
I do it now.
Look, like I'm just, it's gotta be more than 300.
We're talking a couple thousand, but I'll.
(33:28):
I need my own I need my own casita on that island.
No, I don't like to travel.
don't, you know what I mean?
I'm like, no, but I, there are things someone could say to me to get me to go.
They could say, I'll give you, you don't have to see anyone or talk to anyone, but I'llgive you $20 million.
I would do it.
(33:48):
Again, I'm not trying to make light of this.
I'm just saying I get it.
Because I was that kid.
I was that kid.
And then there comes with it that gross, like almost forced complicity of, well, you didit.
Yeah.
You did it.
We didn't make you.
No one held a gun to your head.
You did it.
Yeah.
So why not do it again?
(34:10):
And it was normalized.
It was normalized and it was reinforced.
Well, money is super reinforcing, right?
Like I said, I would do it for 20 million.
uh
Dude, watch Squid Games.
I'm telling you, you gotta watch Squid Games.
Not if I have to fly and like go to an island.
Anyway, money.
And then their friends were recruiting them.
(34:31):
So their friends were normalizing it and being like, how was it?
Was it fun?
What did you do?
And Guilin would do it.
She would shower them with affection and approval if they were right.
Yes, and what's so especially awful and what's especially insidious is that, you've gotcreepy Jeffrey like on the massage table.
(34:54):
oh And then you, but then it's like almost as a, like a solve.
You have Ghislaine with her, you know, her proper appearance, her, you know, cool Britishaccent, her.
The way she carried herself was so, she was so disarming to other elites.
(35:16):
So imagine how disarming she is to a young girl.
She's like, because there's that idea in your head.
It would have worked for me, like being like 14, 15, 16 years old and going, well, she'shere and she seems normal.
So I must be crazy.
They're being gaslit.
(35:37):
It's like, Gilen is here and she's saying,
She's saying everything's gonna be okay.
She's kind of like the buffer, which she always played.
That was always her role.
And I do like, I'm trying to imagine like, what is going through her head?
(35:58):
And I know she grew up in this.
She grew up, like this is what you do.
This is what you do.
This is what is being asked of you.
This is what is being required of you by this man of influence, because I forgot tomention when her father died and essentially left the family destitute, she was left with
(36:18):
kind of a paltry trust, 80,000 a year, which wasn't gonna do much for her with thelifestyle that she had grown accustomed to.
And Jeffrey was financially there for her.
in the way that her father was financially there for her.
And I'm not gonna say emotionally there for her, but he was her father, she worshiped him.
(36:44):
I mean, obviously she grew up without, with very absence of oh morals and ethics, ofcourse.
And again, dehumanizing these girls, which is kind of like what we know happens withmurderers, right?
You dehumanize them, you take away any, yeah.
no humanity, their value is, you know, and I think she was incredibly classist, obviously.
(37:08):
So yeah, I just, it's just odd.
It's just.
I don't think she could stand to lose him.
I think that she had some dependent personality stuff going on where she didn't feel likeshe could make it in the world if she wasn't like a barnacle to a rich guy and could not
be without him.
So anything that threatened that.
You know, it's interesting.
Last night when I was thinking about this, I started to see the whole thing through thelens of addiction, that he was addicted to sex and she was addicted to that relationship.
(37:40):
Yeah, they were both getting their fix and she was out on the prowl like procuring thedrugs for him, but her drug was being of use to him and having her position with him
secured.
That's what it felt like to me is that, know, because those relationships really do pullon us neurologically when you have like uh an ambivalent partner or an abusive partner or
(38:05):
there's
the attachment to them becomes like a drug.
Like, you know, you feel they're far away, you could lose them, the things are on the hit,the skids.
And then the thing that makes you feel better is being back with them.
You know, so can imagine there are a lot of comings and goings with them, because I'm sureshe wasn't so super happy with this relation, their relationship, the way it was with him
(38:29):
sleeping with all the girls, him not, you know, I don't know.
I'm just imagining she was preoccupied with.
her role and anything that threatened her connection with him, she'd go to any lengths tokeep that.
And it has an addictive quality.
(38:49):
yeah.
Absolutely.
I mean, we could also make the argument that it was an addiction to wealth and privilege.
Yeah.
Because without him, what was she going to do?
You know, she tried, well, you and I were laughing about the whole Terramar Ocean project.
And it's so, I remember just cringing listening to her because she's normally so wellspoken, right?
(39:14):
In these different kinds of things she presents so well.
And she's there, she's like,
So who here loves the ocean?
The ocean!
love the ocean.
And she's like, terramar.
Okay, let's tell people about terramar.
That was just a...
(39:35):
It's got to be a CIA front.
That for me, was like, this is a thing that the CIA created for her or whateverintelligence agency she's working for.
Was it after he killed himself or was it after he went to prison?
It was after he went to prison the first time.
Think.
goes, no last time, I think.
The last time, I thought that she was trying to, no, the first time, because the last timehe went to prison, she disappeared.
(40:02):
Right.
So this was, this was after Florida.
Oh.
Really?
Because she looked a lot older.
Let me see.
Tara Mar, Ghislaine.
2012, yeah.
With a UK sister organization.
Oh, god.
It was just a website.
But you could also buy a piece of the ocean.
Just not an actual piece.
OK.
So to revamp her image, this is what she did.
(40:24):
She comes up with this, I'm suddenly this philanthropist, and I want to do good work, andI care about the climate.
But she really did it.
She couldn't even fake her way through it.
It's like, she's able to fake her way through these charming cocktail conversation, butshe's up in front of hundreds of people and she's just talking out of her ass.
(40:47):
And it just sounded so janky.
ah Terrible.
love the ocean and all the creatures in the ocean.
And you two can own a piece of, not literally.
And I'm like, I'll take this one.
I like about an acre of like that part of the Pacific between like Hawaii.
(41:14):
It's ridiculous.
So obviously a front.
And that's what I said, these fucking weirdos.
They're just weird.
You could look at it as, OK, this is just a really dysfunctional relationship.
And she's repeating the patterns of her childhood here.
And it was just dirty, addictive, whatever, and dirty rich people, eyes wide shut.
(41:41):
um But the other side is the intelligence stuff.
then I'm like, did
Did it start out that when he was compromised and he went to jail?
Because that whole thing was weird when he got that, how the case was handled and what hewas charged with ultimately was like getting prostitutes, not raping children.
(42:03):
So, and then he was let off with really easy and the way they communicated with the copsand the DA was off.
So it's like, when were these intelligence agencies involved?
whoever it was, was willing to overlook.
and also exploit the girls oh to get the goods for whoever they wanted to jam up inblackmail.
(42:25):
So it's such a weird, it's like psychedelic.
It's a weird case.
Yeah, and there's so much that that we still don't know definitively and that we willprobably never really fully know like that's Yeah, I see what you're saying because it
went from initially just him being like like addicted to these having these girls come tohim multiple times a day, which is wild like three like it's one thing to be needing sex
(42:56):
three times a day, but like meeting
these girls, like different girls three times a day.
It's just, I can't, yeah.
hedonistic and bizarre, but is enabling.
She was enabling his addiction because of her own.
I mean, that's my theory.
Yeah.
(43:17):
It seems like it went from to kind of go along with what you're saying.
So his, his, his initial vulnerability as far as, Oh, this guy has a, has a weak spot forunderage girls.
And he got the sweetheart deal.
Let's rope him in to essentially do some sort of a blackmailing operation in addition tothat, that, that, kind of is, yeah.
(43:46):
So like he kind of uh has to do it.
And then blackmail all these people.
Because like when did all those security cameras go up in his New York apartment ortownhouse or whatever it is, Brownstone, huge, huge home.
(44:07):
Right, I don't know.
I thought they were there all along.
I don't know about that part.
Yeah, because Maria Farmer, who was one of his victims, and then her sister was the onethat was in New Mexico that was like kind of held captive there almost.
but Maria worked in the house as like a receptionist almost.
(44:30):
And then she became privy to this huge security system within his house.
And I wonder, was it always there or did it...
was it installed after his prison sentence in Florida because he started working withintelligence agencies that, you
(44:50):
Right.
Or did he always, did he know her dad through that?
Because he had a shady, weird background.
Nobody knows where he got his money.
Or we do, but it was all through arms deals and stuff like some arms dealers.
Yeah, he didn't get it.
I think it was probably widely known within like the kind of big money crowd that this wasa guy who didn't give a fuck what he needed to do to get exorbitant wealth.
(45:17):
He was willing to do anything.
And I think he probably made that clear early on, very early on.
But he was clever, he was smart, he was savvy, weird.
Like it's just weird that with how sharp he was and how like,
By all accounts intelligent, dropped out of college.
(45:38):
know, he dropped out.
It was like he was just, he wanted the easy way.
He didn't want to go through all the proper channels.
He wanted the easy way.
And then he learned early that he could get away with shit.
Like he got that job at Dalton teaching math when he didn't even have a bachelor's degree,didn't even have a teaching certificate.
He was given a job because some rich, powerful people, he tutored their kid.
(46:03):
Put in a good word for him.
interesting.
You know, so he got this job at Dalton.
Everyone else is fucking busting their ass to get a teaching job at a prestigious school.
And this guy fucking rolls in.
I picture him rolling in and like flip flops and like a backwards cap.
(46:25):
Just like, just being weird, you know?
And he was inappropriate there and like all of that.
then, and then he ends up like, but it's like, he's leaving a trail of a mess everywherehe goes, yet he keeps being given.
It brings up so much for me, like the Anna Delvey shit, like uh the guy that said he wasuh Sidney Poitier's son, you know, all of that, like the grifters that come in and they
(46:53):
know the right,
people and they know the smooth talk and then they're just entrusted with millions uponmillions upon billions of dollars.
I mean it really shows the holes and it shows the kind of like the hubris that exists inthat kind of wealthy elite world.
(47:15):
That's the thing I always think about with, you know, we talk about psychopathy or we talkabout whatever it is that allows for a person to have disregard for the laws and for other
people.
And it just makes me think about like those of us who stay within the laws mostly, I mean,like I speed sometimes.
(47:36):
no, like, but the stuff that's not going to hurt anyone.
I mean, I guess you could make the argument that speeding hurts people, but you know whatI mean?
Like, yes.
Yeah.
But my speeding is not speeding.
My speeding's like 75.
So anyway, em what it takes to walk into a room as a con person and dupe a bunch ofpeople, it's just, I don't know, you have to unhook yourself from something, like your
(48:04):
humanity, or you don't have the same level of fear or risk avoidance.
Well, that's the psychopathy that we talk about, where, uh you know, not all psychopathsare murderers, right?
There is a reckless disregard for other people and for laws and rules.
And essentially, you see yourself as God.
(48:25):
You see yourself as, you know, which is why we...
when they say that, you know, find psychopaths in CEO positions, you find psychopathsdoing like brain surgery.
And it's like, that's when you kind of want a psychopath.
You want somebody that is that confident to slice into your fucking skull.
mean, yeah, I need, I need a cool, removed, very, very confident.
(48:49):
You want a confident fucking surgeon.
Jeffrey Epstein just had all the confidence and the entitlement to pull off.
walking into an interview and claiming that he has a, you know, don't know, a master'sdegree in mathematics or whatever.
Like just absolutely no remorse.
It is a disregard.
(49:10):
But that said, you know, then you've got Ghislaine who also in her own way, like fell preyto Epstein's charms and his confidence and this illusion that he cared about her.
In pictures, it's interesting.
You see the pictures of them.
She's just so holding so tight to his hand.
(49:31):
Like he's got, there's that one, he's got his arm around her and she's just gripping ontohis arm.
Like, stay with me.
You know, like her survival depends on it, you know?
And that is someone that just, it's interesting because had Epstein only ever said, hey,Ghislaine, here's the deal.
(49:52):
I'm attracted to younger women.
I like you.
I'll take care of you.
I just need you to do my bidding.
And my bidding is this.
Get me 25 year old supermodels to sleep with.
know, she'd be like, okay.
You know, it's just anything he was gonna ask her to do, she was gonna do it.
(50:15):
I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel like her depravity
would only go as far as the man that she had latched herself to.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't think that...
Her limits were his limits.
Exactly.
Which is dangerous.
You know, which is dangerous.
(50:36):
Of course.
mean, most of us live our lives.
OK, let's say, like, if we look at how we live our lives, I think that we basically areprogrammed from evolution, programmed to be afraid.
Like, there's a fundamental kind of restlessness to our experience as humans, right?
So a lot of the time, if we don't check this and we don't pay attention, we live our livescompletely under aversive control.
(51:06):
I imagine her operating from, have to do this because I'm avoiding losing him.
I'm avoiding losing my place with him because I don't think I don't have a place if Idon't have a place next to a strong man.
I can't do it on my own.
There's some of that, but then there's also like maybe there was something appetitive forher in it.
(51:27):
Like maybe she liked this power she had over the girls or maybe she liked, you know, so.
It's interesting to think about because we'll never know unless we talk to her what
And even then, and even then, even if we did speak to her, she is going to try to presentherself in the most sympathetic light as possible.
And I think there's enough evidence to show that there was, I think she did take somesadistic delight in seeing herself as above these girls, like the way that she would just
(51:59):
sort of grope them, almost like they were, I don't know, she was at a cattle auction orsomething and she's just handling them.
And the ways in which so many of these girls were very clear that she was terrible tothem.
So it wasn't even like her doing the bare minimum to appease him and then leaving theroom.
(52:19):
There's enough evidence with these girls' testimonies.
And again, a lot of these girls didn't know each other.
They're speaking from individual experience and their experiences kind of echo each otheras far as the way she was.
So again, isn't lest anyone think that like,
I'm trying to make an excuse for her.
I'm not trying to understand how someone ends up doing this.
(52:42):
And so when I say like her depravity will only go as far as her partner.
I think that she puts herself in situations where she is controlled by these men.
My theory is it's because it goes back to being controlled by your father.
But she's guilty.
She was groomed, she's guilty.
It sucks.
But some part of her, and I don't know how, if this is a...
(53:06):
you know, a nature versus nurture thing, or if she learned to take enjoyment in hurtingother people.
She certainly grew up watching her father hurt other people and watching her and hersiblings, other people.
them at the dinner table, making them stand up and talk about things.
and then whipping them if he wasn't happy, you know?
(53:27):
You know what you just made me think of?
There's this really good book.
So it's a psychoanalytic theory book.
It's called The Reproduction of Evil.
the theory in the book is uh that when victims, when people who are victims or survivors,then turn around and perpetrate, that in that act of perpetration, the theory is they're
(53:50):
wanting to be known because they've been debased in that way.
in their own lives.
And then by doing it to another person, there's something between them and the personthey're harming that actually makes them feel known.
I thought that was really interesting.
So I don't know if that was in there.
(54:10):
it would just be so interesting to hear from her.
Because we never know.
You look at people's behavior, and you can see what they're doing.
And you can make inferences, and you can speculate like we do.
But you never really know how it's functioning for them.
that when they're doing those things, right?
And it would just be, with all the people we talk about, I always think, God, it would beso great just to hear from them, like, what was going on in there?
(54:34):
Yeah, you know what comes across for me a lot, just seeing her in these differentinterviews before, you know, the trouble hit.
And then actually even that little bit of like, I think it was a jailhouse kind ofdiscussion where you kind of see her talking is it doesn't seem as though she has any kind
of real sense of self.
(54:56):
Like, she's like a Brett Easton Ellis character.
Like if you ever read, um,
like less than zero, like, which is a hard read.
everyone talks about American Psycho being a tough read and it is.
Less than zero is a fucking hard read.
Like the 80s movie has nothing on the fucking book.
(55:17):
But it's just this, there's a vampiric quality.
And it's funny because in some of Bret Easton Ellis's other books, like he, the way herepresents or he presents some of these rich.
characters is like actual like vampires and there's like this vampiric quality to her likethis vacant shell that just seeks to be filled and seeks to be filled with you know what
(55:47):
happens when you're bored with I mean you're still seeking it but you know things andstuff like money, travel, good food, apartments, hotels, fashion.
em
you know, other people's souls, their essence, you know, it's, there, is this kind ofthing, you know, viewing these girls as a means to an end.
(56:11):
But, just, just insatiable, just, just.
the insatiable thing.
It really does.
mean, you see, obviously Epstein was insatiable.
You see her being insatiable.
So disgusting.
Yeah, it's just this emptiness.
There's this vacant quality to her that is, when people describe her as creepy, like yousaid that the photographer uh in the documentary that was doing the Tara Mar photo shoot
(56:37):
and described her as like being kind of creepy.
Yeah.
Like we talked about the money stuff and how poverty, that thing you said about poverty,violence.
like I just was this whole week when we were doing this research, I'm thinking, my God,like wealth is really truly so distorting.
Yeah.
Wealth and privilege.
(56:58):
It's so distorting.
So like that coherence thing that I talk about sometimes, like how we as humans, we needcoherence.
That's why narratives and stories are so sticky, right?
It's almost like a primary kind of reinforcer, like water and air and food.
(57:19):
And that's why it's so hard to change one's mind if you're understanding that you'remaking a story and it's sticky.
And you're probably scanning the environment for more information to feed that story andto the exclusion of every other narrative.
And I just thought so much about that because it truly felt like
Like, you people say she's a narcissist, people say she's a psychopath.
(57:41):
It really just, to me, it almost doesn't even have that cold-blooded quality because youcan see her suffering.
I think you can see in her face she's sad and depressed sometimes, right?
Right.
but it had that like, in her mind, she really is better than them, these girls.
They really are nothing.
(58:02):
She said they could, you could throw them away like tissues, you know, like that was her.
true experience and belief.
Like she lives up here.
Everybody else is like, you know, cattle or something.
I don't know.
Right.
That makes me so uncomfortable thinking about these girls as being disposable.
And also just the insidious part of it.
(58:26):
It's as if it wasn't enough to manipulate them, sexually abuse them, to then essentiallytry to make them complicit in their own abuse for daring to want or need money.
and the justice system confirming.
And it clearly they're motivated by wanting, it's just, yeah, it's, yeah.
(58:51):
And then also, yeah, when they were perceived as prostitutes in the Florida sentencing ofEpstein.
But all this to say that, I mean, we can go on and on forever trying to make sense ofsomeone like Elan Maxwell, but she's not the only person out there that just seeks to
(59:13):
coerce, manipulate, trick.
these vulnerable people, we should probably finish by talking about like, man, it is soimportant to talk to young people.
And again, like uh whether you're a single parent, a guardian or whatever, whether youhave to work around the clock and you don't always have access to time, spending time with
(59:39):
your kids, it is so important to, I hate to say it, but it's true.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If somebody rolls up and says, hey, you can make a lot of money just doing this verysimple thing.
It's no, you know?
Like assertiveness training too.
(01:00:00):
Like assertiveness training, self-defense, please for the love of all things, Girls,especially all kids.
Cause we know that, boys are, are victims too.
But, but, but girls, especially man, I'm going to just, I Brazilian jujitsu.
And it's not just because my kids do Brazilian jujitsu and my partner is, is doesBrazilian jujitsu.
(01:00:26):
I've, I've done it there.
There's, I don't think that there's any better.
combat training that actually you can get yourself, regardless of your size, you canactually get out of a sticky situation with it.
But self-defense and then, you know, just, man, it's so important to have opencommunication with your kids, reminding them not to feel embarrassed or ashamed if they've
(01:00:50):
done something, if they've been lured into something, if they're questioning something,like.
Like even like, I don't want to tell my parents because it sounds weird, but it really isthis thing that I can do to make this money.
peer pressure, like how to deal with your peers who are telling you it's fine and youdon't think it's that fine and you, but you're going along with it.
(01:01:11):
And like, I definitely, if I was in that position when I was, if I had gone along and Ishowed up in some guy's room, they're like, massage this old man.
Like I would probably do it because I wouldn't know how I would either freeze, fawn.
These are all our survival responses, right?
Freeze the danger.
(01:01:33):
Flee, fight.
Right.
Play dead.
So I would probably fawn.
I would probably do it just to get out of there.
Right.
But teaching people to have pay attention in those moments and have more options, whichthey may not be able to.
I when we're under threat like that, we really kind of like don't have a lot of options.
(01:01:56):
But training kids to think when they're in a state like that.
not just to that they don't just have to comply because I bet I know that they stalkedthat one girl for like three years the one that that left the hotel room the one that
worked at the
Yeah, and that speaks to that sadistic thing because they knew they weren't going to gether.
(01:02:18):
They knew they weren't going to, so they decided to torment her and scare her.
Yeah, oof.
I guarantee, though, I know there are probably lots of girls that went in there and werelike, uh-uh, and booked it out of there.
Right.
But I mean, don't know.
And I'm not saying that people are wrong for not doing that.
I'm just saying that some stayed and did it, and some probably ran.
(01:02:39):
Yeah.
And I don't think we have that much control over that response in situations like that.
I probably would have stayed and been like, I just do this and leave and never come back.
I would have been scared.
Like, let's say I got there and then I changed my mind.
I would be scared looking at these two older adults who have made it very clear that theyhave a lot of power, that they have a lot of access to things that could hurt me or hurt
(01:03:05):
my family.
Like, of course I'm gonna probably go through with it if I feel scared, you just sort ofgo through it, you know?
I don't know, I get it, I get it.
It's also so weird that you're like, what else would they do to me?
It's also just weird.
That would be terrifying in a way.
Are they going to chop me up and throw me in a landfill?
(01:03:27):
I don't
Yeah, yeah.
Which is terrifying.
And then the ones that kind of felt like they had to do it and keep doing it becausethey're like, well, you know, they get gaslit.
You know, you've got Ghislaine going, you did great.
You did wonderful.
Jeffrey's so, so happy with you.
Here's more money.
And then you're like, okay, you know.
(01:03:49):
friends are doing it.
Yeah, but it is, it's the communication, it's letting kids know that it's not juststrangers to watch out for, but strangers that seem like they have a lot of power and
influence.
Like I told you, like, you know, it's a thing where when you're young and vulnerable andsomeone seems safe because of who they know, you know, like, well, this guy knows the
(01:04:14):
Clintons, he knows princes, he knows famous people, therefore he's safe.
You know, he must be safe.
They're in a limo.
They must be safe.
Like there's this weird illusion that that much the class, the who you know, the fact thatthey know famous people that we're familiar with means that they're safe.
(01:04:36):
There's an illusion of safety.
That's a thing to teach too.
You know, yes.
So if that makes sense, guys, so sad.
Well, we'll be watching to see what happens along with.
the rest of you, um what ends up coming to pass with Guilin Maxwell.
(01:04:57):
Yeah, we can be watching.
Let us know what you think.
What do you think?
Why do you think she is the way she is?
How does something like this happen?
And what experiences, if you had, what advice would you have for young vulnerable peoplethat may be manipulated into participating in things that are dangerous and scary?
(01:05:19):
but seem on the surface like they're safe.
Anyway, thanks for joining us.
We'll be back next week and uh please follow us on all our platforms.
Shannon, what are our platforms?
Tik Tok.
Now we're on Tik Tok.
uh Secret Passage Podcast and X Secret Pass Pod, Instagram Secret Passage Podcast, andthen we're on Patreon.
(01:05:43):
Yes, if you are interested in joining us there, that'd be great.
All right, gang, we'll see you next time.
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