Media Mythmaking: 2002 Profiles

Some quick housekeeping to start this lovely Sunday:

If you’ve already pre-ordered Caro’s debut novel Yesteryear, or wish to do so now, Knopf wants to thank you. They’re sending custom, limited edition bandanas to DL Substack subscribers — all you have to do is input proof of your order in this link here, and they’ll ship you the bandana, clean and simple. (This is only for US subscribers.) Thanks so much for the support, y’all!

Jeffrey Epstein got away with it because he was richer than God. No — he got away with it because he had a rolodex filled with the most influential and powerful people on the planet. No — he got away with it because of his wiliness, and his almost preternatural ability to charm people.

All of these claims have been discussed to death in both mainstream and alternative media, and continue to serve as the prevailing theories for why this man was able to abuse young women at a terrifying scale for decades without suffering legal repercussions for it.

Today, we discuss an alternative hypothesis.

”A Young Jeffrey Epstein Made An Impression On His High School Students,” by Cat Schuknecht for NPR

“Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich,” by David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Matthew Goldstein for The New York Times

“The Talented Mr. Epstein,” a March 2003 profile by Vicky Ward for Vanity Fair

“Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” a 2002 profile by Landon Thomas Jr. for New York Magazine

Here’s one of the many, many early pieces of reporting I leaned on from The Palm Beach Post; not going to link all of them because it would fill Substack’s word count limit but highly encourage poring through their 2005/2006 archives

And here’s a pretty interesting FBI transcript of an interview with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, conducted in 2020

And here’s the deposition interview between unproblematic king Brad Edwards and World-Renowned Fucking Loser Epstein:

Highly encourage anyone and everyone to read Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl

Here is the deposition Katie and I role-played where a Very Smart Lawyer played Very Smart Gotcha with Giuffre about, checks notes, whether or not she was a bartender in 2007

Here’s where a federal judge decided that Giuffre’s testimony about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring was not relevant to a case about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring

Here is a timeline from the Miami Herald on all this gruesome shit; cc looking through their archives, too, as well as the archives for The Tampa Bay Times for any interested armchair sleuths

If you liked that timeline by reporter Julie K. Brown, consider reading her book, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story

”How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein,” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg for The New York Times

“Newly Unsealed Epstein Records Shed Light on Years of His Financial Transactions with Wall St. Figures,” by Kara Scannell for CNN

Here’s a link to the Epstein email dump, neatly organized in this little faux-inbox

Here’s the meta study elaborating on the justice gap, which highlights precisely how fucked survivors of sexual assault are in their efforts to seek justice

Read Jessica Knoll’s phenomenal book, Bright Young Women, if you want a highly entertaining and cathartic literary experience to exorcise the fury from your body

Thanks (and also sorry???) for listening!

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