New twist in brutal slaying of Hollywood actress who kept celebrity sex diary... as chilling details of her personal life emerge
The B-list movie actress and famed party girl was stabbed 22 times with a butcher knife and attacked with a blunt object, with the sickening assault continuing even as she lay face down in her own blood.
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The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Why did Ghislaine Maxwell do what she did?
Days after Ghislaine Maxwell met with the deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, the convicted child sex trafficker and longtime Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend and procurer was moved from a women's federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a so-called 'prison camp' in Texas, a dramatically more comfortable minimum-security environment with dormitory-style housing and fewer guards, sometimes called 'Club Fed'. Maxwell's new camp primarily houses nonviolent offenders, and the inmates there are reportedly livid, and probably not a little bit frightened, to be imprisoned with one of the world's most notorious sex traffickers and alleged rapists. Maxwell, too, was not initially eligible for such a transfer, due to her sex offender status; connections at the Department of Justice had to waive a procedural requirement in order for the move to go through. The transfer appears to be a reward. As Donald Trump struggles to extract himself from the continuing fallout of the Epstein scandal, Maxwell finds herself, now, in the best position that she has been in since her one-time partner Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019. Suddenly, she has something that the president wants: the ability to say, truthfully or no, that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein's sex trafficking. The president, too, has something that Maxwell wants: the ability to issue a pardon. Maxwell has always formed the dark center of the Epstein saga, a woman who appears to have been exceptionally dedicated to arranging Epstein's life, facilitating his travel, luring new victims to his homes, and coordinating his sexual abuse over the course of decades. Alleged victims of Epstein recall being recruited by Maxwell in public places – including at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach – and through friends. They say that she inspected their bodies, brought them to Epstein's homes, talked incessantly about sex, and instructed them in Epstein's sexual preferences. They also say that Epstein and Maxwell sometimes made them available for sexual abuse by their friends. She is widely presumed to know more than she has yet been willing to tell about the extent to which Epstein's large network of powerful businessmen, politicians, and financiers knew about or participated in his rapes and trafficking of children. What is less clear, at least at first, is what motivated her to facilitate the abuse, and what kept her so loyal to Epstein over so many years. Maybe this kind of life – one spent attending to men's lesser desires – was always what Maxwell was destined for. The ninth and youngest child of a British media magnate, Maxwell was doted on by her father, the Hungarian-born Robert Maxwell, and raised in Oxford in a family as obscenely wealthy as it was darkly tragic: one of her older brothers was in a hideous car accident just days after Ghislaine's birth, and the boy lingered in a coma for years before dying before her 10th birthday. Her father financed her life as a high-class party girl – first in London, and then in New York – where she spent much of her time accompanying famous and wealthy men to the kind of rich people's social functions that have a pretext of raising money for charity. She does not seem to have had aims beyond that: despite her ample resources and encouragement, Ghislaine never showed much sign of intellectual ambition, or political interest, or business acumen, or general curiosity. (A short-lived 'ocean protection' charity that she founded accomplished little, and shut down after her arrest on sex trafficking charges.) It was not merely that Ghislaine was a product of an elite unburdened by principle, who often reduce their daughters to mere ornaments. It is that an ornament, it seems, is all that Ghislaine Maxwell ever aspired to be. It was not her charity, or her father's publishing, that were Maxwell's great passions. Her great passion appears to have been for the romantic attention of men – and specifically, her life's greatest animating goal seems to have been to achieve, and keep, the attention of Jeffrey Epstein. From those accounts we have of their relationship – and admittedly, these are not always reliable, given how intense, widespread, and prurient the attention on their activities has been – it appears that Maxwell's devotion to Epstein was intense. At her trial in 2021, prosecutors entered into evidence a photo of a cleavage-bearing Maxwell with Epstein, massaging his foot. This seems to have been her posture toward Epstein for the entire time she knew him: slavish, nearly worshipful. The pair met sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Maxwell's father, Robert, died in an apparent suicide in the ocean off the coast of the Canary Islands – aboard his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine – in late 1991. Soon thereafter, it was discovered that millions of dollars were missing from pension funds that he managed; two of Maxwell's brothers were charged for their alleged role in the fraud. (They were later acquitted.) It was during this moment of rupture and imperiled status that Maxwell was romantically involved with Epstein. Her boyfriend would have served as a meal ticket as well as a source of validation: Maxwell is alleged to have received payments from Epstein totaling more than $30m; she told one of her victims that he bought her her New York City townhouse, just a few blocks from his own. By 1994, she was recruiting and grooming teenagers for his sexual abuse. Maybe Maxwell justified what she did for Epstein as kink – a kind of sexual libertinism that shrugged off the regressive, prurient mores of the lower classes. The 90s were the peak of a kind of reductive heterosexual sex-positivity: lots of women were telling themselves, and being told, that sexual submission was a mark of sophistication – that the more liberated they were, the more of men's desires they would grant. But this is all speculation: trying to provide a rationalization for Ghislaine Maxwell's actions evades the true terror of her, which is her seemingly profound and horrifying vacancy. To such a person, obedience does not require a justification. Unequal desire in love – particularly when the suffering lover is a woman – tends to elicit a kind of pity. Feminists, too, often depict women's outsized desire for men as a form of gendered victimization. Generally, it is not seen as serious – women's limerence, romantic obsession, and striving for men's attention is broadly relegated to the realm of the adolescent and the vulgar, the embarrassing and the silly. But Maxwell's case suggests such desire can breed not just frustrated vanity but also a kind of monstrousness. Untempered by principle or self-respect, it can contain in it the seed of the grotesque. In her efforts to please Epstein, and to make herself useful to him, Maxwell became something hideous and unforgivable. In her deficient, warped soul, it seems she lacked something that every woman must have: a morality that she valued more than male approval. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
Daily Mail
26 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Brit, 16, is arrested for 'trying to rape 22-year-old UK tourist at her hotel in Tenerife'
A 16-year-old British tourist has been arrested on suspicion of trying to rape another UK holidaymaker at her hotel in Tenerife. The teenager, who had flown to the island with his family, was held at the swimming pool of his hotel in the resort of Playa de Las Americas, next to the one where he allegedly attempted to enter the 22-year-old's room and force himself on her. Detectives said today he fled after she resisted and screamed. He has been remanded to a juvenile detention centre following an appearance at a youth court and banned from leaving Spain pending an ongoing investigation. The incident happened 'busy daylight hours' on July 31 according to police, with a well-placed source saying it occurred around 3pm. A spokesman for Spain's National Police in Tenerife said today: 'Officers have arrested a minor aged 16 as the alleged author of an attempted sex attack on July 31 at a hotel in the municipality of Arona. 'The quick work of officers led to his rapid location and arrest, preventing the possibility of further attacks. 'The incident occurred at the door of one of the rooms of the hotel where the victim, aged 22, was approached by an individual who managed to sneak in behind her. 'She resisted, screaming to raise the alarm, and managing to prevent the attacker from closing the door behind him who reacted by fleeing the scene. 'The attack happened in busy daylight hours in a busy part of the hotel. 'CCTV cameras enabled the officers to reconstruct the events of that day and follow the suspect's movements so they could locate and arrest him at the pool of a nearby hotel. 'He was a guest there and on holiday with his family. 'The youngster was handed over to a youth court judge. 'Given the severity of the allegations against him, he was remanded to a youth detention centre where he will remain in custody, without being afforded the possibility of leaving the island.' A well-placed police source said: 'Both the teenage boy and the woman are British. She was holidaying alone and he was with his family.' He said the incident happened around 3pm on July 31. Another added: 'The CCTV images police obtained showed this lad appeared to be on the prowl after entering a hotel he wasn't staying at. 'He didn't know the older woman. She was a complete stranger.' The names of the hotels, which are next-door to each other on Avenida de Las Americas, have not been disclosed.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Epstein sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell banned from training service puppies at ‘Club Fed': report
Ghislaine Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker, has been banned from training service puppies at the prison camp in Texas where she was transferred last week, according to a report. Maxwell, 63, was sentenced to 20 years behind bars in 2022 for helping Epstein, her former boyfriend, groom underage girls for sex but has recently returned to the spotlight amid the furore over Donald Trump 's administration's failure to release all federal files on the late pedophile, despite intense pressure from the president's supporters to do so. The disgraced British socialite was previously being held in Tallahassee, Florida, but, shortly after sitting for two days of interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, was quietly transferred to Federal Prison Camp Bryan in southeastern Texas on Friday. While her minimum-security new home is known for its comparatively peaceful atmosphere and has been dubbed 'Club Fed,' Maxwell will not be allowed to join the institution's other inmates in helping to train puppies during her stay. Paige Mazzoni, the chief executive officer of Canine Companions, the organization that runs programs at Bryan, told NBC News that Maxwell would not be invited to participate. 'We do not allow anyone whose crime involves abuse towards minors or animals – including any crime of a sexual nature,' Mazzoni said. 'That's a hard policy we have, so she will not be able to.' She added that the restriction was in place to protect the young dogs involved, explaining: 'Those are crimes against the vulnerable, and you're putting them with a puppy who is vulnerable.' ABC News reported on Wednesday that Maxwell told Blanche during their meetings last month that she never saw President Trump do anything that would provide cause for concern during the years in which he knew Epstein socially in New York and Florida. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing over his past association with Epstein and is currently suing The Wall Street Journal for reporting that he once sent the sex offender a 'bawdy' doodle for his birthday. However, he has been under intense pressure for the last month after his Justice Department and FBI ruled that the deceased sex trafficker left behind no 'client list' and died by suicide in his New York jail cell in August 2019, a verdict that did not satisfy Trump's supporters, who continue to demand answers and suspect a 'coverup' to protect influential people. Trump has denied knowing about Maxwell's prison transfer in advance but has not definitively ruled out pardoning her in exchange for her cooperation. His administration is reportedly considering whether to release the transcript of Blanche's meetings with Maxwell, with the recording of their conversations currently in the process of being digitized. Another avenue the administration has taken in its efforts to quell the uproar over Epstein is to seek the release of grand jury testimony from Maxwell's criminal case, with Trump asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to do so but Maxwell's legal team opposing the move, warning it could adversely influence her chances of appealing her conviction before the Supreme Court. She had been due to give testimony before the House Oversight Committee about her activities with Epstein on August 11. Still, the panel's chair, Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer, moved on Friday to postpone her appearance until after the country's top court has decided whether to act on her appeal. That will not happen until the justices return from their summer recess on September 29. Comer has, however, subpoenaed former president Bill Clinton, ex-first lady Hillary Clinton, and some former attorneys general and FBI directors to appear before his committee this month to give evidence on the disgraced billionaire and the more than 20 years of investigations into his crimes.
