A photograph from 1997 of Jeffrey Epstein (left) and Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Photo / Getty Images
Jeffrey Epstein “loved life too much” to kill himself and was confident of securing bail before he died, his butler for 18 years has told the Telegraph.
In an interview that will heap renewed pressure on the Trump administration to make the Epstein files public, one of his closest aides said he had spoken to the paedophile financier before he died and insisted he had been in good spirits.
Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein’s Paris home, told the Telegraph he could not accept the official verdict of suicide and feared that his own life was in danger.
He also said he believed that Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who accused Prince Andrew of rape and died by suicide in April, was a victim of foul play.
Cotrin also made the extraordinary claim to the Telegraph that Epstein told him he had been offered a job by Donald Trump in his first administration in 2016 – but had turned it down.
There is no evidence the allegation is true, and Trump has maintained that he stopped speaking to Epstein in 2004 after they fell out over a business deal.
But Cotrin’s recollection of a conversation with his boss will fuel a growing demand for the full Epstein files – the trove of documents from the criminal investigations into the financier that allegedly name high-profile celebrities and politicians, possibly including Trump – to be released.
In his exclusive interview with the Telegraph, Cotrin, speaking on the record for the first time, also alleged that:
Cotrin remains in possession of a number of photographs taken with friends of Epstein, including a photo of himself with Bill Clinton on the so-called Lolita Express, Epstein’s private plane that he used to traffic underage girls and women for sex.
The existence of the photo showing Clinton on board Epstein’s jet will also fuel demands for the former President to reveal his full dealings with Epstein.
Clinton was issued with a subpoena on Wednesday, demanding he give evidence to a congressional committee investigating the financier.
Cotrin also shared a photograph of himself with Epstein, taken on his private jet in January 2019, which may be one of the last taken of the financier.
Epstein looks puffy, but is smiling and relaxed, and is notably wearing an Israel Defence Forces sweatshirt. Epstein has long been accused of being an operative for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, although last month his former lawyer told the Telegraph that Epstein used to laugh off the claim.
Cotrin, who acted as Epstein’s butler, chauffeur and cook in Paris, recalled driving his boss to Le Bourget airport in Paris to catch a flight to New York, where he was arrested upon landing on July 6, 2019.
Epstein, who was 66, was charged with sex trafficking underage girls and remanded in custody. He was found hanged in his cell on August 10 that year.
But Cotrin is insistent that Epstein would never have killed himself. Epstein had told him he was planning to negotiate with the judge in the case to secure bail, having been held in custody as a possible flight risk.
“I am like his brother [Mark Epstein]. I don’t believe this was suicide. He loved life too much,” said Cotrin.
Cotrin recalled seeing Epstein for the last time. Epstein, he said, was relaxed and had been talking about making more investments in his islands – he had discreetly bought a second, which Cotrin visited – as well as spending more time in Paris.
“I drove him to Le Bourget airport. It was a Saturday, because on Monday he was supposed to appear before the judge regarding all these accusations,” he said.
“When I got home, two young women rang, his main girlfriend who had been with him officially for several years, Karyna [Shuliak] and another who worked for him. And then they told me, ‘Mr Epstein has gone to prison. He arrived in New York. The police were waiting for him’.”
Cotrin’s partner, Maria Gomes de Melo, who also knew Epstein well, recalled that in Paris, Epstein had said goodbye to her and added: “I’ll be back next week”. De Melo told him: “Sir, don’t go.”
She also questioned the official conclusion that he had killed himself. Mark Epstein has suggested the financier may have been murdered, ordering a second autopsy that tended to back up that assertion.
“On the Saturday late, we got the news that he had hanged himself, and honestly, he loved life too much to float away like that,” she said.
The Department of Justice has released nearly 11 hours of surveillance video from outside Epstein’s cell in the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Centre, but a crucial minute from 11.58.58pm to midnight was missing. That has further fuelled conspiracy theories that Epstein was murdered to silence him.
Cotrin remains fiercely loyal to Epstein and insists he never saw his boss cavorting, let alone having sex, with underage girls.
He said young women were hired to give Epstein massages and to cut his nails, adding: “The girls did that to him, but it stopped there.”
Cotrin gave an extraordinary insight into Epstein’s world, and the rich and famous who would stop by for his guidance and hospitality.
Cotrin, who has joint French and Brazilian nationalities, worked for Epstein for 18 years, managing his sumptuous eight-bedroom Paris apartment on Avenue Foch, overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. He lived in a garret flat on the sixth floor.
But he also worked dozens of times at Epstein’s properties in New York, Palm Beach, Florida and on Little St James, Epstein’s private Caribbean island – dubbed “‘paedophile island” – where he is said to have trapped and raped often underage victims.
“He trusted me completely,” said Cotrin, who has not worked since his boss’ death six years ago.
“I was his chauffeur, his cook, his housekeeper. I did everything in Paris, I was his only fulltime, paid-up employee and worked for him from 2001 until his death. If someone could have seen something, it’s Valdson, there’s no one else,” he said.
His interview with the Telegraph took place in his French home over a beer and Brazilian bread and cheese balls, which he says were a hit with Bill Gates. Upstairs, a large photo of Cotrin and Epstein taken on the “Lolita Express” hung on one wall, alongside another with the butler and Clinton.
Cotrin reeled off a list of dignitaries who came to visit Epstein over two decades, including Prince Andrew, who he cooked for and chauffeured “five or six times” in Paris and New York; Clinton, whom he met once in Epstein’s jet during a stopover in Paris; Lord Mandelson, now the UK’s ambassador to Washington DC; Woody Allen; and Israeli ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, with other Middle Eastern dignitaries.
A photograph of Lord Mandelson with Epstein and Cotrin, taken at the Paris apartment on Epstein’s birthday, has been widely circulated, causing Lord Mandelson, the former Labour Cabinet Minister, huge embarrassment.
Cotrin has refused countless requests for interviews since Epstein was found hanged in his prison cell, but told the Telegraph he was breaking his silence to “tell my truth” about Epstein, to whom he refers as “Monsieur” or “Patron”.
Cotrin and Gomes de Melo, 65, who often accompanied him to Epstein’s properties, both insist they never saw any evidence of the sexual abuse multiple young women have said they suffered.
“I want to say with all my heart from the life I lived with him, Monsieur is not the man they say he was,” insisted Cotrin.
One reason the couple had declined to talk publicly was concern for their own safety. They pointed to what they consider Epstein’s mysterious death and also the suicides of Giuffre, who had accused Prince Andrew of rape (he denied it but paid her millions of pounds to settle a civil case) and Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran a modelling agency that procured girls for Epstein.
Giuffre took her own life at her home in Australia in April, aged 41. Brunel was found dead in his prison cell in Paris in February 2022, after apparently hanging himself. He was awaiting trial on charges of raping a 17-year-old girl.
“And what about Virginia [Giuffre] Roberts?” said Cotrin, adding: “I’m scared because after what happened to them, poor Valdson, who knows?”
Cotrin never met Trump – Trump and Epstein had fallen out over the sale of a property in Palm Beach in 2004.
However, Cotrin said Epstein had boasted of being offered a job by Trump after his surprise first presidential election win in November 2016.
The claim – if true – would be dynamite, although there is no evidence to back it up. Sources inside Trump’s first administration told the Telegraph that Cotrin’s recollection appeared fanciful.
Cotrin said: “I can tell you one thing [regarding Mr Trump]. A few days after Trump’s [2016] election, Epstein arrived in Paris on Monday or Tuesday, and I went to pick him up at the airport.
“He said: ‘Valdson, you saw that Trump is the new US President?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I saw it on the news in Paris.’
“‘Well, Trump asked me to work for him in the new Government’.
“I said: ‘Congratulations. I’m happy for you,’ in my bad English. He said: ‘No, I didn’t accept.’”
Cotrin insisted Epstein was not in the habit of trumpeting false claims in such a confidential setting. He said his boss made no mention of what position that might be.
“I was surprised, because I would have thought such a position could be interesting, but I asked no more questions as it wasn’t my place,” said Cotrin. “In my job, one waits to be spoken to.
“But in my opinion, if he did turn it down, it was because he liked his freedom. I think he didn’t want to be controlled by anyone, because once you accept a position, a job of any kind in a government, the President is going to give you orders and you have to listen to him.
“That’s how it is. Just look at Elon Musk and all his financial power, and see what happened in his life today.”
Epstein would visit his Paris home “for a week roughly every two months” but periodically Cotrin was flown abroad to cook for famous friends.
“It could be a dinner with Ehud Barak, Bill Gates. Epstein hired top chefs in New York or Paris and then he asked me to show them what I did because he liked it,” he recalled.
There is no suggestion that any of the dignitaries were involved with the women hired by Epstein, and Cotrin said he saw nothing inappropriate.
But Trump’s Maga movement has long contended that “Deep State” elites continue to protect Epstein’s most powerful associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.
After the 2024 election win, the Trump administration acknowledged it was reviewing tens of thousands of documents and videos related to Epstein.
But in a memo made public last month, the Justice Department and FBI said there was no evidence the disgraced financier kept a “client list” or was blackmailing powerful figures. The memo also dismissed the claim Epstein was murdered in jail, confirming his death by suicide, and said the agencies would not be releasing any more information on the investigation.
Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
Cotrin continued to work for Epstein even after he was first convicted of sex crimes in 2008. Three years earlier, in 2005, the FBI and Florida police began an investigation into Epstein for the alleged sex trafficking of more than 30 young women, mostly minors.
He pleaded guilty in state court to just two felony charges, including soliciting a minor, as part of a plea deal that avoided far tougher federal charges. In the end, Epstein served just 13 months in prison and was obliged to register as a sex offender.
The deal, described by victims’ lawyers as “extraordinarily lenient”, protected Epstein and unnamed co-conspirators from future prosecution.
Cotrin said: “I remember the first time he went to prison. It was in Florida and I accompanied him to Palm Beach airport. The boss called me and said, ‘I’m going to jail. To prison.’
“I said, ‘Why, Monsieur?’ He said: ‘Because of these ladies.’”
Cotrin has no recollection of Epstein ever meeting Trump – either in Paris or in Florida – but did recall Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, driving to Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.
“She used to pop over there very often in her Mercedes shortly after I was taken on in the early 2000s,” he said. He added that he had no idea who she visited.
In 2021, Maxwell, the daughter of the disgraced British newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
Maxwell, 63, has been moved to a minimum security jail in Texas after giving two days of testimony in July to Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche, who is also Trump’s former personal attorney.
Maxwell was well aware of the goings-on inside Epstein’s households, and Cotrin is certain she holds the key if any other celebrities or politicians are to be dragged into the scandal.
Cotrin said: “If anyone knows things, it’s Ms Maxwell. She was the boss and the lady of the house. She was harder and more authoritarian because [she was] more bourgeois. She didn’t give massages, but she was in charge. For a long time, she ran everything in the house.”
Cotrin said that, in every home, there were notepads to jot down messages. He had a photograph of two – one with Epstein’s name on it and the other headed Lady Ghislaine.
Lady Ghislaine was the name of the luxury yacht from which her father was presumed to have fallen overboard to his death in November 1991.
“We wrote in either depending on who the message was for,” said Mr Cotrin. “I also kept the boss’s professional American Express card, which no longer works, of course, as a memento. I told myself it might bring me luck for later.”
He remembered being hired by Epstein in 2001, but said that Maxwell had been instrumental in sorting out the details, suggesting she controlled the day-to-day running of the Epstein homes.
“The first time I met him, he came out of his jet with a beautiful woman aged around 25 to 30. and he was in a tatty sweatsuit. He often looked like a tramp in cheap clothes. I had my CV. He looked at me and said: ‘How old are you?’ Forty. ‘How long have you been working for?’ I said 20 years. He said: ‘You’ve got the job.’
“Then he said: ‘Where’s Ms Maxwell?’ My English is bad and she speaks perfect French, so he handed me the phone. She said, ‘Don’t worry, he wants you to work for us, come to Avenue Foch tomorrow.’ He said, ‘Is it okay now?’ And that was it.”
Asked whether he saw Maxwell bring back girls for Epstein, he said: “I never saw Madame leave the house, go anywhere and come back with a new girl, never. It was more people who came to see her – whether they were contacts she had before or other people, I can’t tell you.
“But to say, ‘Oh yes, Ms Maxwell was here, she went to Trocadero and came back with two women I didn’t know,’ that’s not true. Never.”
Maxwell introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, and Cotrin recalled first serving the Duke of York with the late, disgraced British photographer David Hamilton at a property in Saint-Tropez in the early 2000s. The pair “came for tea”.
The presence of Hamilton is ironic given that he died by suicide in 2016 following allegations that he had abused underage models as young as 13. The accusations came after decades in which he was feted for his semi-erotic, soft-focus shots of mostly nude girls in their early teens, which he said depicted “a lost paradise”.
“It was my first year working for Monsieur, so it was 2002,” said Cotrin. “There were many girls. At that time, he was at the height of his powers, both financially and as a young man. In terms of women, it was a merry-go-round. Two arrived and two left every day.”
But there were no big parties. “Monsieur was not a socialite,” he insisted.
He said he also served the Duke in Paris when Epstein lent him his flat. He was not sure of the dates.
“I remember him coming twice to Paris. Once for two or three nights, and the second time for two nights. And when he came to Paris, he came alone with his bodyguards. Monsieur told me to look after him. I picked him up in the boss’s Mercedes. It was a V12 600, very luxurious.
“He was a very nice man, very polite. He taught me how to make a proper cup of tea. He told me: ‘Valdson, it’s not strong enough.’
“One time, I drove him to a soirée at the Eiffel Tower. I left him at the foot of a building and came back a few hours later.
“Once, a woman aged between 25-30 came to Monsieur’s flat in Avenue Foch to serve him tea. They talked together, but I never saw them touch each other. It lasted about an hour, and then she left. I also met him in New York, maybe once or twice.”
Epstein’s servant also cooked for his boss, who was not a big eater. “Monsieur didn’t eat much – he grazed. But he told me to cook for the Prince, who had an appetite. Upon Monsieur’s instructions, in New York I prepared fresh mushrooms, a nice steak fillet French-style – seared on both sides, rare in the middle – with sauce au poivre.”
The Duke clearly approved. “He asked me: ‘Who taught you to cook like that?’ I told him I taught myself,” he recalled. “He said: ‘I never had better’ and yet he had all that staff and good cooks.” Cotrin took it as a compliment, coming from a royal.
Rattling through the globally known figures he came across, the ex-butler mentioned Clinton, whom he met just once in the autumn of 2002 when the former US President passed through Paris at the end of a nine-day trip with Epstein.
Flight logs indicate Clinton was on Epstein’s private jet at least 26 times between 2001 and 2003.
“When Monsieur went on tour to Africa in 2002, when I got to Le Bourget to fetch the boss, he asked me whether I wanted to meet ‘the President’. I thought it was George W Bush, but no, it was Clinton. I was trembling as it’s not every day you meet someone of that stature,” he said.
Clinton had been travelling with Kevin Spacey, Maxwell and Epstein himself. Also present was a 21-year-old masseuse, Chauntae Davies, who later testified that she was repeatedly raped and abused by Epstein, whose “little black book” contained 14 phone numbers for Trump and 21 for Clinton.
Clinton then joined in a tour the Duke of York led around Buckingham Palace, in which Maxwell and Spacey were pictured sitting side by side in thrones reserved for the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The extraordinary photograph of Maxwell and Spacey on the thrones was first made public by the Telegraph. Another obtained by the Telegraph showed Clinton, Prince Andrew and Maxwell in Buckingham Palace.
The former US President has always denied having had any knowledge of the “terrible crimes” committed by Epstein.
However, he has come under fresh scrutiny since July, when it was reported that he praised Epstein’s “childlike curiosity” in a birthday message to the paedophile in 2003.
Cotrin remembers that Epstein often laughed in front of a painting he bought of Clinton in red high heels and a blue dress – just like the one Monica Lewinsky reportedly wore for their Oval Office encounter – that hung in his Manhattan mansion.
The butler then brandished a photo of himself alongside the Democrat ex-President, now 78, in Epstein’s luxury Boeing 727. “Monsieur said: ‘You’re not going to sell that photo, are you?’” He never did.
Cotrin had no recollection of another notorious photograph – the one taken in 2007 of himself presenting a birthday cake to Epstein, in which Lord Mandelson is also present.
Lord Mandelson has always insisted he “regretted ever meeting” Epstein or “being introduced to him by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell”.
Cotrin struggled to recall the birthday in 2007. “I saw so many important people, it’s hard,” he said. “But I remember his [Mandelson’s] face and do recall travelling with that man in Mr Epstein’s private jet with him from his island. We flew from Saint Thomas to New York.
“It was soon after I started working for Monsieur, in the early 2000s. I remember he had a trade position at the time.”
Lord Mandelson was the European Commissioner for Trade from November 2004 to October 2008.
“I have no recollection of any of their conversations, as my job was to make myself scarce,” he said. “All I can say is that I got the impression that nobody came to see Epstein to bring him something but to ask for something, whether it be money, although some like Bill Gates clearly didn’t need it – business advice or investment tips.”
He met the Microsoft billionaire a couple of times in Paris and New York, he recalled, and drove Woody Allen around at the request of his boss. Cotrin and his partner alleged that Epstein gave Allen money for a film, though they didn’t know the details. The Telegraph reached out to Allen’s representative for comment.
Allen has likened Epstein to Dracula, with “young female vampires who service the place”.
Cotrin said the Paris home, which has been sold after Epstein’s death, contained “a large gym, a massage room, a dining room, there was a nice kitchen, [eight] bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and around 820 square metres”.
“New York was much bigger. Three or four times that. So it was seven floors, also with a sauna and steam room. He had to have a massage and sauna every day – it was a need with him.”
Despite scores of testimonies by alleged victims and other evidence, Cotrin and his partner refuse to believe Epstein had sex with underage girls.
“I would like to tell the truth that I knew. It’s not the truth the world is talking about,” said the butler. He was aware that young women were coming and going from the Paris home, but was not aware of wrongdoing.
“If something abnormal that was scary and someone screamed or was abused, I would have phoned the police – but I saw nothing,” he said. “I can’t understand everything that’s being said, because I really lived almost his private life, not everything, but almost.
“I can’t rule out foul play. But you can’t live with someone for 18 years and not see the good or the bad. I did everything, I took care of the house, was his chauffeur, his cook. I even changed his sheets.
“In 18 years, how many times do you think I would have seen the signs of someone who had done sexual acts? If you ask me, he just liked to surround himself with girls without necessarily having sex with them. It was mostly for show.”
But he added: “It’s true [Epstein] wasn’t into older women. He preferred the company of younger women and liked to change those around him. But that doesn’t mean they were underage – they certainly didn’t look it to me. Some would stay for 10 minutes and leave if not comfortable, others would stay.”
Cotrin painted a picture of Epstein as anything but an unbridled hedonist. “He didn’t like food, alcohol, he wasn’t a socialite.
“And I can tell you that in 80% of cases, nothing happened with women to the extent I told some young women, ‘I’m not like him, at least I go all the way. All he does is have massages and nothing else’. I said it loud so he could hear me when he annoyed me.
“He rarely did anything with these young women. All they did was say ‘I’ll rub your back, I’ll cut your nails’. The girls did that to him, but it stopped there.”
Cotrin’s partner, Gomes de Melo, backed him up. “Never did we see anything untoward with any underage women in 20 or so years, neither in New York, nor on the island or in Paris,” she said.
“They nicknamed his plane the ‘Lolita Express’. It flew from New York to the island. I took that plane with him, my husband. But there were no young girls. There was the pilot, the co-pilot, him, an assistant, and just me. That’s it.”
She said a police search of the Paris home by French police had also yielded nothing, bar some nude photos on the walls, along with photographs on the mantelpiece of Epstein with a host of famous people, from Fidel Castro to Pope Jean-Paul II, as well as Trump, Clinton and Allen.
“There was one of I think a Sultan of Dubai and a wealthy Saudi,” recalled Cotrin. He said French police “took them all and never gave them back”.
Gomes de Melo said: “The police came in with machines. They said they were for scanning the walls and floors in case there were hidden cameras or rooms with hidden children and torture devices. They did a thorough job. They arrived at 2pm and they left at 4am. There were 16 of them. They found nothing.”
But she did say the house also contained numerous pictures of Giuffre, whose allegations against Epstein – and later Prince Andrew – effectively sparked the FBI investigation that led to Epstein’s downfall.
“There were lots of photos of Virginia, who accused Prince Andrew, in the Paris flat. And at one point, when I was there with my husband, I said to Epstein: ‘Sir, are you going to throw the photos away?’ since we knew it was she who had started all [the lawsuits]. And he said: ‘Why, Maria? She was part of my life. I have nothing to hide.’”
The photographs of Giuffre were taken away by the French police.
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing and suggested the infamous photograph of himself with Giuffre taken in Maxwell’s London home may have been a fake. Gomes de Melo agreed. “For me, it’s a photo montage. Because if you look closely at the girl’s hand, it’s not around Andrew’s arm,” she said.
After Epstein’s death, Cotrin has struggled to find work – tainted, presumably, by association with Epstein.
There was an apparent lump in his throat as he recalled driving Epstein that one last time to the airport in Paris, a month before his death.
“I often tell myself, I should have had an accident with him on the way to the airport, not a fatal one, just one that prevented him from leaving. Sometimes chance can change everything,” he said.
“We could have been hospitalised, I could have broken an arm, but the next day everything would have been different. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but that’s what I would have wanted.”
It is an astonishing wish, but an intriguing one too. For if Epstein hadn’t died in custody, perhaps the full truth of what happened in those homes in Paris and elsewhere might have come out.
“You can write this too,” said Cotrin. “The day I die, I would like to continue serving him up there – his tea, coffee, his sandwiches, his bread and cheese buns.”