“Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
In a post on Twitter in December 2019, Virginia Giuffre stated that “I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape or form am I suicidal. I have made this known to my therapist and GP. If something happens to me – in the sake of my family do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.”
This statement was made long after she became the most recognisable face among the victims in Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s underage sex trafficking case. But crucially it was important to declare because on 5 October 2019 Dr. Daniel P. Greenwald, Epstein’s plastic surgeon, died of a weird plane crash; on 19 November 2019 Epstein’s private banker, Thomas Bowers, died by “an apparent suicide” before the FBI got the chance to question him; and these suspicious deaths happened after Jeffrey Epstein himself was reportedly died by suicide in jail on 10 August 2019.
But yet, 6 years later on 25 April 2025 Virginia herself was reportedly died by suicide, in her remote Australian farm, leaving behind her husband Robbie and 3 children (Alex, Tyler, Ellie). Who are these rich and powerful people that want to cover their trace?
Co-written with journalist Amy Wallace, this memoir is published posthumously and it gives Virginia the voice to speak even after she’s being silenced. It is a very difficult book to read, a sickening book, but a very important one in order to understand how diabolical sex predators work.
The book cleverly switches back and forth between her happy normal childhood, to her Epstein experience, back to her dark teenage years, and to her eventual family life in a quiet farm outside Perth, before spending the rest third of the book on the fight to bring Epstein and Maxwell to justice. It is deliberately structured as such in order to form a big picture narrative (rather than a linear narrative) of the puzzle peace of Virginia’s life before she tragically passed away.
It is a surprisingly very well written book that is gripping to read, but at the same time it is also very hard to read exactly due to the switching back and forth between her gruesome past and her wholesome family life before she died. Because as I gotten to know her more and more, with growing empathy on her wellbeing, all I can think of when reading about her quiet normal life now is that she already has a deserved happy life now, why risk it all by going after the most powerful people in the world?
Of course, the book later reveal that this was the plan after all, but just like any other things that were happening in her life, she got dragged into it and had no other choice but to fight on.
Virginia was spotted by Ghislaine Maxwell working as a 16-year-old locker room assistant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, where she was then brought by Maxwell to Jeffrey Epstein’s house to be “interviewed” as a possible masseuse. Yup, it went exactly as you imagined it to be, she was forced to have sex with Epstein that day, and both that day and in subsequent assaults Maxwell also participated in a threesome. She eventually stuck with them for a little more than 2 and a half years.
Indeed, the immediate question that comes in mind is, why stuck with them and not run away? The answer to this went beyond Epstein, in another disturbing account of Virginia’s even darker and sadder past that was started since the age of 6, when she was molested by her father, who then “swap” her to a family friend to molest (fellow child molester uncle Forrest – whom disgust me when reading that uncle Forrest later was transformed into a man of God, and then had the audacity to tell Virginia to ask forgiveness to God for what she has done with her dad and him).
The childhood story and the wildly rebellious teenage story (as a response to her painful childhood) are so disturbing that at one point it clicked on me: Epstein’s and Maxwell’s treatment of her are angelic – with wellbeing, luxury living, and world travels – compared with the rest of these scums. That’s why she sticks with them longer than the other victims.
Moreover, also hard to read is her description of her happy childhood before the age of 6. The decently functioning family (with dad, mom, little baby brother, and an older step brother), nice neighbourhood, a loving grandma, family dinner every night, liking the Simpsons, living in a ranch, having a favourite teacher Mrs. McGirt, with Virginia love to wander around at the outdoor and even got a horse that she absolutely adored named Alice.
It was hard to read, because knowing what would happen to this innocent happy little girl not long after, when her dad began to molest her (and threatened to kill her baby brother – whom she love very much – if she ever tell a soul about this assault) and her mother almost immediately transformed from a loving caring mom into a jealous cold b*tch that growingly resort to alcoholism and abuse towards her, instead of protecting her. Maybe what makes it worse is, as we later found out in the book, her uncles and aunts knew about it and also didn’t do anything about it. As Virginia explains, “Young girls (and boys, too) don’t end up being sexually trafficked in a vacuum. Serial sexual abuse doesn’t happen to them—to us—out of the blue. In many cases, we are first abandoned by those who claim to love us.”
With this kind of environment at home, no wonder that she began to turn into a disturbed teenager full of anger with self-destructing tendencies. With Virginia recalls, “At ten years old, I saw my preadolescent body as an enemy. I couldn’t control how it drew the attention of the men who caused me pain, so I began to starve it.”
It is especially hard to read the abuses that she began to suffer at pre-teenage years, because she was exactly the same age as my daughter today, whom also love animals and love listening to music like Virginia did. My fatherly instinct prompted me to want to protect Virginia like my own daughter, and feeling utterly helpless as I read on to the next pages.
The teenage years
The angry teenage years were filled with so many runaways from home, picking fights everywhere she went, and eventually culminates in being accused of being “out of control” by her mother, and was then tricked by her mother to join a tough-love treatment centre called Growing Together, that resembles more of a prison, complete with a solitary confinement (where at one point she spent 3 weeks there – “which had no toilet, no mattress, only a cold concrete floor coated in the filth previous occupants had left behind”). As Virginia recalls, “In the name of healing, Growing Together’s staff forced kids between the ages of thirteen and seventeen to stand in front of the mirror and berate themselves at the top of their lungs. “I am a whore, a slut, a druggie,” we girls would yell, staring into our own eyes. We had no choice but to comply.” She was even got raped inside the facility by 2 boys (aged 17 and 18), with the perpetrators were protected and never punished.
Virginia then further recall, ““What goes on here, stays here,” staff would often say. The longer I spent at Growing Together, the more I understood why. Rules were rigid. Boys had to keep their heads shaved nearly bald. Girls, though, weren’t allowed to shave their legs or underarms. It was as if the staff wanted to mark us, to make us look as abnormal on the outside as they told us we were on the inside. Strip searches and pepper spray were the methods they used to keep us “in line.” The squalid building, meanwhile, was overrun with cockroaches and rats.”
She then eventually managed to run away from that hellhole. As Virginia remarks, “Those girls and boys, women and men, will likely attempt to flee between three and seven times before they succeed, according to recent research. Many of them will not be offered help by a single caring stranger. In America, where only 4 percent of law-enforcement agencies have personnel dedicated to exposing human trafficking, most victims must rely on their own wits, and on luck, to survive.” And so she learned to rely on herself.
But the unlucky streak didn’t stop there, almost immediately after she ran away, she was lured by a man in a white van to offer her a lift, but he ended up raping her in a dodgy motel. When she can somehow escape from that, she then met an “old man with a limousine” – Ron Eppinger – who claimed to own a modelling agency, who showered her with gifts but eventually made her as one of his concubines and trafficked her to a friend of his.
As Virginia recalls of her interaction with Eppinger, “That’s when he reaches for me and strokes my hair. “If you want,” Eppinger says, “I can be your new daddy.”” Virginia then reasoned, “Part of me feels a familiar dread. Is it too late to get away? But another, bigger part remembers how life was in rehab and in foster care and, worst of all, on the run. Maybe this is the way all men behave? I am tired. I want to feel nothing. The old man calls me “Baby.” I am the youngest girl there, so the nickname sort of fits. I want to become someone new so badly that I accept it. “Baby” is now who I am.”
Eppinger eventually held her captive for around 6 months. And during this time he growingly became more violent during sex, which prompted Virginia to resort to the drugs that Eppinger and the other girls offered her like Xanax or oxycodone, anything to numb the pain. She even began to fantasizing about killing herself.
After half a year, Eppinger began to give her away to his friend, a man in his fifties and had connections to Fort Lauderdale’s seedy nightclub scene, who began to introduce her to everyone as his girlfriend. “Maybe someone there noticed how young I looked and reported it,” Virginia recalls, “because on a bright June morning in 1999, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local police broke down the door of the man’s apartment, where I was sleeping naked next to him.”
Afterwards, she had multiple brief encounters, including being sent back to Growing Together, before escaping again and staying at her parents’ house for few days (but they made it very clear that she wasn’t accepted there), moving to a friend’s house, ended up living together with a boy who works at Taco Bell, and as a high school dropout had several jobs that she loves like working in a pet store, before she eventually landed a job in Mar-a-Lago.
The Epstein years
It is no wonder that by the time she met Epstein she said “I had been sexualized against my will and had survived by acquiescing. I was a pleaser, even when pleasing others cost me dearly. For 10 years, men had cloaked their abuse of me in a fake mantle of ‘love.’ Epstein and Maxwell knew just how to tap into that same crooked vein.”
This is how Epstein and Maxwell lured Virginia, break down her defenses, and eventually control her: It began with Maxwell inviting Virginia to come to Epstein’s house to learn how to become a masseuse. With every doubt or shock when massaging him Maxwell will respond by downplaying it as an overreaction. As Virginia remarks, “Only later would I see how, step by practiced step, the two of them were breaking down my defenses. Every time I felt a twinge of discomfort, one glance at Maxwell told me I was overreacting. And so it went for about half an hour: a seemingly legitimate massage lesson.”
I’m not going to quote how the detailed account of the abuse went, but I will show you what Virginia was thinking afterwards: “Only after buckling my seat belt did I begin to return to myself. Having escaped from an imminent threat, my brain came back online, but all it wanted to do was scream. During the half-hour drive inland to Loxahatchee, Alessi [Epstein’s driver] and I didn’t speak. If I opened my mouth, I just knew I’d start sobbing, so I clamped my lips shut. I didn’t know then what a therapist would tell me a decade later: that when children are abused by people they love, as I had been by my father, they start to believe that love and pain, love and betrayal, love and violation all go together.”
Indeed, abuse victims often struggle to see red flags because they’ve become conditioned and familiarized to inappropriate behaviour. As Virginia further explained, “I didn’t know that a common coping mechanism during sexual abuse is to distance oneself from what is happening in the moment—to “split” into parts: the obedient body and the walled-off mind. All I knew as the black Suburban headed west was that I felt gutted, as if someone had reached down my throat and scraped out my insides with a silver spoon.”
So begins the period of her life that has since become world famous, for all the wrong reasons. In the book Virginia then reveals Epstein’s modus operandi: “So many young women, myself included, have been criticized for returning to Epstein’s lair even after we knew what he wanted from us. How can you complain about being abused, some have asked, when you could so easily have stayed away? If you didn’t like feeling dirty, you could simply have never gone back. But that stance wrongly discounts what many of us had been through before we encountered Epstein, as well as how good he was at spotting girls whose wounds made them vulnerable to him. Several of us had been molested or raped as children; many of us were poor or even homeless.”
Virginia then continues, “Before meeting Epstein, one of his victims had watched her father beat an eight-year-old boy to death; another was present when her boyfriend killed himself. We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care. At times I think he even believed he cared. A master manipulator who excelled at divining the desires of others, he threw what looked like a lifeline to girls who were drowning, girls who had nothing, girls who wished to be and do better. If they wanted to be dancers, he offered dance lessons. If they aspired to be actors, he said he’d help them get roles. If they said the only thing they yearned to do was paint, he bought them canvases and introduced them to key people in the art world. And then, he did his worst to them.”
And when it comes to Virginia personally, “For so many years, I had been sexualized against my will and had survived by acquiescing. Even as a girl on the precipice of womanhood, I was a pleaser, even when pleasing others cost me dearly. For ten years, men had cloaked their abuse of me in a fake mantle of “love.” Epstein and Maxwell knew just how to tap into that same crooked vein.”
And when this approach is wearing off, “Epstein must’ve sensed my qualms, though, because he walked around his desk, picked up a grainy photograph, and handed it to me. The image had been taken from some distance, but it was unmistakably my little brother. Skydy was walking away from the camera; I could see his backpack, and the outline of the side of his face. I felt a stab of fear. Why did Epstein have a photo of the person I loved most in the world? “We know where your brother goes to school,” Epstein said. He let that sink in for a moment, then got to the point: “You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house.” He was smiling, but his threat was clear: should I ever be tempted to betray him and go to the authorities, he would hurt Skydy. I stared at him. He stared back. “And I own the Palm Beach Police Department,” he said, “so they won’t do anything about it.””
Virginia whole ordeal lasted more than it should, during which she met numerous world famous personalities that she has saw with her own eyes, which I will categorized into two: 1. Direct predators 2. Name dropping that knew Epstein or worked together with Epstein and Maxwell but not necessarily an abuser (at least not from the stories written in this book):
- Direct predators: Prince Andrew, the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, Marvin Minsky, Bill Ricardson (the former governor of New Mexico), a well known Prime Minister who brutally rape her (whose name is not mentioned), a gubernatorial candidate who was soon to win election in a Western state (whose name she also didn’t mention), a former US senator, 3 billionaires, and many more men that she didn’t mention by name whom were “illustrious in their fields.” Note on those names that she didn’t mention, she was afraid that these rich and powerful men can go after her family or, as 1 billionaire had threatened to do, drown her in never ending court cases that it will bankrupt her.
- Name dropping: Donald and Melania Trump, Leslie Wexner, Heidi Klum (hosting a party), Ian Schrager, Bill Clinton, Al and Tipper Gore, Bill Gates, James “Jes” Staley (CEO of Barclays Bank), Leon Black (CEO and cofounder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management), Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, George Clooney, Stephen Hawking, Simpsons creator Matthew Groening (only hitched a ride with them on Epstein jet, although Epstein asked Virginia to massage Groening’s feet), Nadia Marcinkova, Chris Tucker, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell, a photograph Epstein took with the Dalai Lama and members of the British royal family.
Furthermore, Virginia also explains the dynamism of the relationship between Epstein and Maxwell: “I gathered that she’d met Epstein not long before her father passed, and I suspected that had something to do with their connection. And what was that connection like? While they usually slept in separate bedrooms, and rarely kissed or held hands, it seemed to me that Maxwell and Epstein lived in complete symbiosis. Epstein, who described Maxwell as his best friend, valued her knack for connecting him to powerful people. Maxwell, in turn, appreciated that Epstein had the resources to fund the lavish life she thought she deserved yet had trouble affording after her father’s death. In social settings, Maxwell often appeared vivacious, entertaining, the life of the party. But in Epstein’s household, she functioned more as a party planner: scheduling and organizing the endless parade of girls who she and others—particularly Sarah Kellen—recruited to have sex with him.” Virginia then concluded that “Over time, I would come to see Epstein and Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole.”
But still, in their daily routine Epstein and Maxwell behaved like actual parents to her, something that she didn’t get since the age of 6. As Virginia recalls, “The first time we ate a meal together, for example, they were appalled by my table manners. So Maxwell taught me how to hold a knife and fork, just so, and to fold my napkin in my lap, the way civilized people do. Soon, she’d be telling me how to do my makeup, how to dress, and where to get my hair cut (the celebrity stylist Frédéric Fekkai groomed many of the girls in Epstein’s world, including me). Even then, part of me knew she was having her dentists whiten my teeth, or sending me to a waxer to remove my body hair, to please Epstein.”
And they also did show genuine affections towards her: “But the role Maxwell played in my life sometimes felt like more than that. One day in the fall of 2000, we heard “Yellow,” Coldplay’s new love song, on the car radio. I loved it and couldn’t get the tune out of my head. A day later, Maxwell presented me with the CD as a gift. She also gave me my first cell phone. Of course, it served her to have me on a short tether, for her and Epstein’s use. But the gift also felt vaguely protective. I was no expert on mothers, but in those early days, I sometimes imagined Maxwell as mine.”
This view was reiterated many pages later when Virginia said, “This is complicated to explain, but that echo of past hurts was somehow bearable to me because I’d felt it—and somehow endured it—so many times before. It was like finding myself once more in a room I’d lived in for years. I hated that room, but I knew its contours—the shape of its windows, the nap of its carpet beneath my feet, the click of the door lock when it was thrown. I knew I could exist in that room because I’d existed there before. At that point, at least, this made me feel less afraid.” Moreover, “Returning from trips to service other men, I’d be greeted not only with money but with something I wanted more. “We’re proud of you,” Epstein would say, and despite my shame and embarrassment, I’d feel something I thought was contentment. That knot of contradictory feelings would take me years to untangle.”
This whole thing made Virginia realized that “Today, I can see how this, too, was an echo from my childhood. I hated the sexual duties that Epstein and Maxwell required of me, but I bargained with myself, just as I had when my father abused me: “Just get the icky part over with so the good parts of life can go on.””
Indeed, the classic technique of abuse: love bombing after the assault, that create a Stockholm Syndrome.
Only this time, it appears that Epstein also enjoyed her company: “Now he began asking me to tuck him into his pink satin sheets each night. While “tuck him in” might sound like a euphemism for sex, it didn’t always mean that to Epstein. Though my job during the day was to arouse and satisfy him sexually, at night he mostly wanted to be soothed—and then left alone. He liked me to reach under the covers to massage his feet and maybe then his scalp. Only after he fell asleep was I permitted to pull the covers up to his chin and quietly exit his room. I am the only one I know of who was asked to do this for him, and at the time he told me that signified that I was “Number One” among the many girls and servants who attended to him. That designation gave me a proud feeling.”
And this is what makes her, years later, a very important witness for the Epstein case. As Virginia remarks, “It wasn’t until we returned to Florida that I realized the bedtime rituals I’d been performing for Epstein had unlocked something in him. Suddenly he was confiding in me. One day we were in the massage room in Palm Beach when he showed me a hidden doorway next to some paintings of naked people stretching. I’d been in that room dozens of times by then but had never noticed a door there. Opening it, Epstein revealed what can only be described as a trophy closet. On the walls, from floor to ceiling, he’d tacked up hundreds of photos of young girls. All of the girls were naked, many of them quite obviously underage, and the images were raunchy, not demure. A stack of shoeboxes in the corner held the overflow. He had so many photos that he’d run out of display space. I turned to him, speechless. He didn’t speak either, but the smug look on his face said, “Look at my conquests. Look at how powerful I am.””
Also equally important, Maxwell also began to trust her and started to assign her to a new job: recruiting girls for Epstein. As Virginia recalls, “I’d already been told his criteria: recruits were preferably white, with wholesome, “girl next door” looks that made them appear between twelve and seventeen years old. No piercings, no tattoos, and definitely no call girls. But his key requirement, other than looks, was vulnerability. Recruits had to be enough “on the edge,” as Epstein and Maxwell put it, that they would submit to sex in exchange for money.”
Virginia then continues, “Maxwell, particularly, was amazing at sussing out what a particular girl might want or need, and she tailored her pitch for maximum appeal. After a girl visited Epstein for the first time, she’d be told she could make double the money if she brought a friend along next time. The incentive to lure another girl into the web was twofold: not only would the procurer make $400 (instead of the $200 she’d been paid the first time), but she’d usually avoid having to service Epstein herself, since the new girl would satisfy him.”
But what’s with his obsession with young girls? Virginia actually gave the reasoning when she explains, “Epstein liked to share with me what he insisted were “scientific” justifications for his yearnings for young girls. For example, he would only have sex with girls who had started menstruating. Why? So he could assert that—since they were biologically able to bear children—they were “of age.” I was flabbergasted when he said this stuff, but I held my tongue. No matter how young a girl looked, or how sexually inexperienced she was, if she had her period, he felt he could defend his abuse of her as part of the natural order of things.”
Moreover, “The fact that different nations and states define the age of consent differently (in Florida it’s eighteen; in New York it’s seventeen; in England it’s sixteen) only gave him ammunition. He said these inconsistencies proved these laws were arbitrary and meaningless; no one could convince him that sex with minors was wrong, because no one could agree on what a minor was!”
Was the lust of young women the only reason why Epstein and Maxwell did this? Virginia didn’t think so. As she remarks, “Once Maxwell and Epstein had started trafficking me to strange men, I often wondered what they stood to gain. One theory is that they trafficked girls to some of their powerful acquaintances in the hope of being owed future favors. My impression of many of these men is that they didn’t know how to pursue women. Awkward and socially immature, it was as if their big brains were missing the ability to interact with other people. By giving them obedient girls, Epstein eliminated their need to persuade or entice potential sexual partners, and they were grateful for it. Another theory—which is supported by the fact that Epstein’s houses were all outfitted with video cameras in every room—is that he wanted to record men in compromising positions in order to blackmail them later. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that Epstein kept a huge library of videotapes that had been recorded inside his houses. In the Manhattan townhouse, Epstein himself showed me the room in which he monitored and recorded the camera feeds.”
But still, the sexual assault, even rape, not to mention the guilty conscience of luring other young girls into the Epstein trap eventually take their toll on her, with he body started to resist the stress from them and she became very ill. Afterwards, she began to plan her escape, by agreeing to be a surrogate to Epstein and Maxwell’s baby (a long, sick, story) but only with a condition that they teach her how to be a masseurs properly. To her surprise, Epstein and Maxwell then send her to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to learn about Thai massage. And that’s where she met Robert Giuffre.
As Virginia recalls, “Then, just after my nineteenth birthday, I met someone who seemed to give a damn about me. I took a chance, and in 2002 I escaped.”
Life after Epstein
Robert Giuffre is a breath of fresh air in a damp and dark place of Virginia’s past, as they instantly hit it off and even got married in less than 2 weeks since they met.
As Virginia recalls, “Robbie asked more questions about Epstein and Maxwell. How often did they check in on me? How soon was I expected to return to the United States? I remember I was crying as I told him I wasn’t sure how I could ever break free from Epstein and Maxwell’s web. But Robbie shook his head. “You don’t have to live that way,” he said, taking my hand. “Come back to Australia with me.” A week into knowing each other, he dropped down onto one knee and proposed. “You won’t be rich,” Robbie told me, “but I will work hard to support you. I’ll never hurt you. Never betray you. I’ll be here for you and always love you. I’ll have your back until we die.” I’d never thought I’d hear those words from anyone, and as I told him yes, happy tears ran down my cheeks. “I love you, too,” I said.”
It is so nice to read how Robbie is treating her for a change, and how his family also embraced and love her fully, everything that she never had since 6 years old.
Like the story how Robbie’s dad took care of her when she was ill: “A few days after our return, I fell terribly ill with some sort of flu. When I spiked a fever, Robbie was at work—he’d gotten a construction job. I felt awful: clammy and hot. I didn’t want to be a pain in anyone’s ass, and—especially since I’d just learned the Aussie phrase “having a whinge” (complaining for no reason)—I was determined to be stoic. But when Robbie’s dad discovered how sick I was, he swung into action, whipping up his special zuppa di lenticchie, or lentil soup. I was too weak to get out of bed, but Frank propped me up on my pillows and then sat beside me, feeding me spoonfuls until I was full. Later, as I passed in and out of a sweaty, delirious sleep, he returned every few minutes to cool my forehead with a damp cloth. When my fever broke, Frank brought me coffee that was creamy from the raw egg he’d stirred into it. After I’d recovered, Frank sat with me and showed me how to peel a prickly pear, teaching me to avoid the nettles, which will embed themselves like fiberglass in your fingers if you aren’t careful. He didn’t say much, just as Robbie had warned that he wouldn’t, but in those first weeks that I was in Sydney, Frank gave me more nurturing than I ever got from my own father.”
Or how Robbie’s mum and aunties accept her: “The women of the Giuffre clan were more skeptical of me. Robbie’s mom, especially, is blunt and quick to call out wrongdoing, and at first she was suspicious of this skinny American who’d crash-landed on her doorstep. Then, just before Christmas, Nina took me to the home of some of Robbie’s aunties, or zias. It was cannoli-making day, and I was being drafted to help. I knew nothing about making cannoli, of course, but I quickly figured out the assembly line: pounding out the dough, then rolling it thin and wrapping it around bamboo poles that we dipped into a fryer, taking care not to burn them. Then we stuffed the crispy shells with three kinds of fillings: ricotta, vanilla cream, and chocolate. We must’ve made three hundred cannoli that day, and when I returned home, I had ricotta in my hair. But I’d passed some sort of test. The zias were proud of me.”
But of course it was never going to be easy, with past traumas often reappear in a form of dream and paranoia. That is, until one afternoon in 2007, 5 years since she escaped in Thailand, when her 1st child was sleeping and she was 8 months pregnant, the phone rang and she picked it up only to hear Maxwell’s sound at the other end of the line. And few days later Epstein himself called Virginia.
The Epstein case
2 years prior to this phone call, on 14 March 2005 a stepmother of a 14 year-old girl contacted the Palm Beach Police Department and reported that her child had been molested by a wealthy Palm Beach resident. “The concerned woman told police she’d learned about the incident from another mother who overheard the girl tell a friend that a forty-five-year-old man had paid her to have sex with him.” As Virginia recalls, years later when reading the police report she identified all of the similar modus operandi implemented by Epstein and Maxwell.
And thus the police initiated an investigation and surveillance on Epstein, where over the next 13 months they managed to track down more than 30 victims and interviewed them. This led to 20 October 2005, when the police execute a search warrant on Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, but the police noted that “it appeared Epstein knew they were coming – it seemed computers had been removed from desks.” But still, the police managed to seize the photographs of naked young girls, as well as incriminating message pad, and many other evidence from lubricants to hidden cameras.
But then the investigation met by an intimidation campaign and interference, with Epstein eventually being charged in July 2006 on only 2 state felony charges: procuring a minor for prostitution, and solicitation of prostitute. And then he was allowed to post a $3000 bond and go home. Meanwhile, “the state attorney, Barry Krischer, finally convened a Palm Beach County grand jury, but presented evidence from just two victims”, with the grand jury charged him with a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution, where Epstein then pleaded not guilty in August 2006.
This would be the major theme of the next decade or so of Virginia’s life, where she juggle between family life and trying to bring down the most powerful people on Earth, where they (meaning Virginia and her lawyers) often met with corrupt judges, defamatory, backstabbing, media framing (which only embolden my judgement that the Daily Mail is an utterly trashy media), injustices where Epstein and Maxwell can get away with court date or slapped only with light sentences with small bail money, etc.
The long saga also took its toll on the family, where several times they were surveilled, followed by paparazzi, had pictures of her children taken, and even approached by mysterious men snooping at their house or monitoring from a distance (which prompted them to move houses a few times, from several places in Australia, to several places in the US, and back to Australia again), having difficulties to seek employments (because “no one wants to hire a sex slaves”), even growingly distant to her husband and children due to the demand of the law suits. That were the real human costs that often brushed away from the reporting in the media.
But then, on 6 July 2019, 14 years later, Jeffrey Epstein was finally arrested on federal charges related to sex trafficking. He was apprehended after his private jet touched down at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, while at the same time his New York town house was raided and the police found an “extraordinary volume” of nude photographs of young-looking women. They also found a safe containing $70,000 in cash, 48 loose diamonds, and 3 passports belonging to Epstein: United States, Israel (an important subject for another time), and an expired passport from Austria that included a fake name and listed a home address in Saudi Arabia (a getaway plan).
Ghislaine Maxwell was not off the hook. On 9 August 2019 a judge made public for the first time of what would be several batches of previously sealed documents in Virginia’s defamation case against Maxwell. But before anything happened on Maxwell, the day after on 10 August 2019, Epstein reportedly committed suicide.
And it was indeed fishy. As Virginia remarks, “As the details came out, nearly everything about Epstein’s death seemed fishy. Even Attorney General William Barr would acknowledge he initially had suspicions that Epstein had been murdered. Instead, he concluded otherwise: that Epstein’s death was a result of “a perfect storm of screw-ups.” There was the fact that Epstein had tried to harm himself before but then been taken off suicide watch. While he’d had a cellmate at some point, on the night of his death, he did not have one. Two prison guards who sat at a desk just fifteen feet from Epstein’s cell were supposed to check on him every half hour from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. Instead, they’d napped and browsed the internet, then falsified the logs to say they’d completed their rounds. Security cameras that could have captured Epstein’s self-harming behavior—or, if conspiracy theorists are to be believed, the actions of whoever murdered him—were not functioning. Other cameras that were working showed that no one had entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died—so that seemed to rule out the possibility of an assassin sneaking in. But then his brother hired a forensic pathologist to examine the official autopsy report. That expert concluded that the broken bones and cartilage in Epstein’s neck “point[ed] to homicide.””
So, was he killed or did he really commit a suicide? “I’ll tell you one thing, though”, Virginia remarks, “while I’ve read that Epstein was buried in an unmarked grave not far from his parents, in Palm Beach, Florida, I don’t believe that at all. Epstein had repeatedly told me exactly what would happen when he died: his body would be placed in some sort of cryogenic chamber to be preserved until technology advanced far enough to bring him back to life. That’s what he’d always bragged to me, with that satisfied smirk on his face. I know it sounds far-fetched, but I wouldn’t bet against the notion that he somehow got his way on this.”
Furthermore, “Investigators would soon discover that on August 8, two days before his death, Epstein had placed his entire fortune into a trust—“The 1953 Trust,” apparently named for his birth year—in the Virgin Islands. This legal maneuver would be widely interpreted as Epstein’s final thumbing of his nose at those who’d survived his predation, because it made it much more difficult for his victims to get restitution. Even after death, Epstein seemed to be asserting control.”
This got me thinking, was he really dead? Because look at the timeline: on 8 August Epstein moved his entire fortune to a trust. 10 August he committed suicide. And if you recall earlier on 5 October Epstein’s plastic surgeon had a plane crash (with details suggest a murder). And on 19 November his private banker committed suicide. Should we be looking for him in Austria, with a different face?
For the time being, it doesn’t matter. Because 3 days after Epstein’s death, on 13 August 2019 the New York Post published a photograph of Naomi Campbell’s 31st birthday party in a yacht in St Tropez, where Epstein attended. And most importantly in the photo there was Virginia and a glimpse of Maxwell’s hair, with the caption “Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Sex Slave’ seen at Naomi Campbell’s birthday party in 2001.” And that’s how they eventually get Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2022.
And later, after unsuccessful previous attempts to bring Prince Andrew to court, on 12 January 2022 Virginia’s case against Prince Andrew finally got a green light, during the wave of the #MeToo movement. And Prince Andrew’s lawyers moved quickly to settle. As Virginia recalls, “On February 15, the settlement was announced. We issued a joint statement that made clear Prince Andrew would pay me money, though the amount was kept confidential (later it was reported that his mother, the queen of England, had footed the bill). The statement said he would also make a “substantial donation” in support of victims’ rights to my nascent nonprofit organization.”
And equally important for Virginia, Prince Andrew agreed to release an apology (well, sort of): ““Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character,” the statement read in part, “and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks.” Yes, indeed, including attacks from the prince’s own camp! “It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years,” the statement continued, acknowledging vastly more about Epstein’s predatory behavior than the prince himself had in his fateful BBC interview. “Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.””
Nobody’s girl
If you think this story has a happy ending, sadly you are mistaken.
First, Virginia began to have a health problem, which innocently enough started during a family break when she got infected with a meningitis. As she recalls, “Butterfly Valley lived up to its name: we must’ve seen thousands of Cairns birdwings in all shapes, sizes, and colors. But when I returned home, I spiked a temperature and my head hurt like hell. When I became delirious, Robbie took me to the doctor, who did some tests and concluded I must’ve been bitten by a mosquito, because I had meningitis. I couldn’t believe it: during the trip, I’d been the only one in our group slathering myself with bug spray.”
And then things got worse, “I was admitted to the hospital, where things got so much worse. Not realizing how delirious I’d become, at one point I got out of bed to go to the toilet and lost my footing. When I fell to the floor, I heard a cracking sound. I’d broken my neck.” Moreover, “In August 2020, I had what’s called an anterior cervical discectomy; doctors at Sunnybank Private Hospital in Brisbane went in through the front of my throat and removed a shattered disk, then attached metal swivels in my neck to allow me to continue to have some mobility.”
But things just spiraling down afterwards, as Virginia recalls, “In February 2021, my health worsened. First, I developed a high fever, then a place on my thigh where I’d received a steroid injection became inflamed. My doctors speculated that maybe I was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotic I’d been taking after my neck surgery, but mostly they seemed stumped. Soon my inflamed thigh turned into a staph infection that refused to heal. Then, I got another case of pneumonia. It was as if my immune system was overloaded. I couldn’t catch a break.”
And again, “I’d been in the hospital again, having laparoscopic surgery to remove cysts from my ovaries and polyps from my uterus. For weeks leading up to that operation, I’d been bleeding nonstop. Doctors wondered whether my string of health problems were somehow related to the staph infection on my thigh, which was still not fully healed. No one was quite sure of anything, it seemed, except that my body seemed to be staging a revolt.”
If you notice the timeline (2020-2021) she’s having the health problems at the same time the legal battles took place. All of this court hearings, and all the media scrutiny, not to mention many harassments, on top of the health problems, were beginning to take its toll on Virginia. In particular, the constant focus on her deeply painful past, which she has to relive over and over again, eventually got to her and triggered a PTSD.
As Virginia recalls, “So when my trauma tricked my brain into telling me lies, I listened: “It would be better for everyone if you weren’t here,” my brain said. “You bring nothing but stress and worry into your husband and children’s lives. Why should they suffer because Jeffrey and Ghislaine caused you pain? You have let your family down. They deserve better. They will be happier without you.” My trauma took aim at my very existence: “Aren’t you exhausted? Unconsciousness would be a relief. Robbie and the kids are safe at home, so none of them will find you. It won’t hurt a bit. The pills are on the bedside table. It will be easy. You can just quietly slip away.” I believed my brain, so I reached for the painkillers that I had smuggled into the hospital and I swallowed as many as I could—later they’d estimate 240 pills—before I passed out. I’m told that I was revived with Narcan, the opioid overdose treatment. My fragile self-worth had imploded. All that remained were the shards of me.”
Luckily she survived, but just days later, “after I got out of the hospital, I would try to kill myself again, with more pills. It was only because our son Alex came to check on me that I did not succeed. For a second time, I woke up in the hospital, revived once more by Narcan. After that, it would be a long time before my thoughts of self-annihilation would truly begin to subside. Only then could I promise my husband and kids that I would try with all my might to believe that I mattered.”
Virginia later reasoned, “That is the price of serious trauma: it lays you low, and sometimes makes you your own worst enemy. My goal now is to prevent the emotional time bomb that lives inside me—my toxic memories and devastating visualizations of myself being hurt—from ever detonating again.”
But sadly, she eventually lost that battle.
Which makes me think, her eventual death from a reported suicide was perhaps legitimate after all? Because she reportedly passed away due to suicide – when she was alone in her ranch outside Perth – one month after she was involved in a car accident with a school bus that led to another period of hospitalization after she had a kidney failure.
And at the time of her death on 25 April 2025 Virginia was shockingly in the middle of divorce proceeding with Robbie, after splitting in 2023-2024, and after also becoming estranged with their 3 children, even got a restraining order in which Virginia expressed on Instagram that her children have been “poisoned with lies.” What happened here? An allegation of domestic abuse by Robbie was also reported by few media, where he said to become increasingly controlling and violent, although judging from the way Virginia portray him in this book, how could he? Nothing about this makes sense, after reading how their family was like.
But then again, we’ll never know what actually happened. Was she still being targeted by rich and powerful people in this ongoing battle to release the Epstein Files and to hold these names accountable, or were all of this just genuinely too much to handle in the end for Virginia?
THE CHAOS THEORY 