A secret storage locker rented by Jeffrey Epstein contained computers, video tapes and sex-slave manuals. Photo / Getty Images
A secret storage locker rented by Jeffrey Epstein contained computers, video tapes, sex-slave manuals and photographs of naked women.
Earlier this week, The Daily Telegraph revealed that Epstein paid private detectives to remove items from his Florida property in an apparent attempt to hide them from investigators before a police raid in 2005.
These were kept at a nearby storage facility in Palm Beach for several years while police investigated the paedophile.
The unit was rented on Epstein’s behalf by the Riley Kiraly detective agency and was one of at least six storage lockers leased by the late financier over a 16-year period.
An inventory of the secret Palm Beach lock-up, obtained by the Telegraph, showed that the stashed items included three computers, 29 address books and a three-page list of masseuses in Florida.
The hidden storage unit also contained nude photographs, believed to be of Epstein’s victims, as well as dozens of pornographic magazines, VHS tapes and DVDs eroticising teenagers.
An 8mm video cassette tape was also locked away in the storage unit, apparently containing footage of someone in the shower and a woman in lingerie, as well as a 2005 calendar, greeting cards, letters and laboratory results.
Although copies of two of the computer hard drives were recovered by the FBI years later, it is not known whether any of the material in the lockup was ever found.
The Palm Beach unit was just one of at least six such lockers known to have been used by Epstein to store files, computers and other items from his properties.
Search warrants reviewed by the Telegraph suggest that US authorities never raided these lockers, raising the possibility that they contained unseen evidence relating to Epstein and his associates.
US authorities have long suspected that Epstein was tipped off about the police raid on his Palm Beach mansion in October 2005 – the first major search of any of his properties.
Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, later said “the place had been cleaned up”.
Certain computer material appeared to be missing, including equipment that would have linked to surveillance cameras. That fuelled speculation that Epstein might have been recording explicit covert material without people’s knowledge, either for his own sexual gratification or for blackmail purposes.
At the time, Epstein was in a high-flying Florida social set that included figures such as Donald Trump.
Separately from the discovery of the locker inventory, French police have released unseen pictures of the billionaire’s apartment in Paris, including a dimly lit room which had a massage table and pictures of naked women hanging on the wall.
At least three women claim that they were abused by Epstein on French soil, and investigators hope other potential victims may now come forward.
The storage locker inventory reveals, for the first time, the items that Epstein did not want to be found by police as they investigated him on child sex offences.
It includes items that Florida detectives found receipts for when they raided his house but that they could not find in his property, such as two training manuals for sex slaves.
Epstein also paid private detectives to hide sex toys, body massagers and women’s lingerie, more than US$2000 ($3333) in cash, a concealed weapon permit and a Harvard ID card.
The inventory was emailed to Epstein and his lawyers in August 2009, a month after he was released from jail in a controversial plea deal after serving 13 months for soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Bill Riley, with Steve Kiraly one half of the Riley Kiraly private detective agency, who sent the inventory, discussed the situation in an email that also mentioned Roy Black, one of Epstein’s attorneys.
Multiple victims of Epstein had filed a civil lawsuit against the paedophile months earlier, and lawyers representing them had raised concerns he was stashing incriminating evidence in storage units.
Weeks before Riley’s email, the victims obtained a court order from a Florida judge demanding that Epstein and his employees not destroy any evidence, including any that might be stashed in secret lock-ups.
Police appeared not to have discovered the storage lockers, with Epstein asked in a deposition in April 2010 whether he had smuggled computers out of his home prior to the 2005 search warrant.
A lawyer asked Epstein: “Where are those computers today?” and suggested that they contained “the names and telephone numbers of hundreds of underage minor females that you sexually molested”.
Epstein’s staff were also questioned about the computers in separate depositions, with one asked in March 2010 whether “those computers reveal criminal activity of only Jeffrey Epstein or of others?”
The paedophile rented at least six storage lockers across the US between 2003 and 2009, and search warrants reviewed by the Telegraph suggested that the FBI never raided them. The FBI declined to comment.
Copies of the hard drives stored in the Palm Beach locker were found in Epstein’s New York residence following his arrest in 2019, but the original computers are thought never to have been found.
An FBI forensic analyst testified about the copied hard drives in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial in 2021, but did not disclose finding any compromising material on them. He said they contained photographs of Epstein and Maxwell and a job advert written by “GMax” seeking a massage therapist to work at Epstein’s Palm Beach home.
Emails show Epstein repeatedly ordered his staff and private detectives to wipe computers and shred tapes in the years up to his 2019 arrest.
In an email sent in May 2014, an individual called William Murphy discussed with Richard Kahn, Epstein’s accountant, and Merwin Dela Cruz, his Manhattan housekeeper, plans to destroy computer equipment contained in a server room at the paedophile’s New York mansion.
Many victims of Epstein have said they believed that he had covert cameras fitted throughout his properties to record footage for sexual gratification or potential blackmail.
Earlier this month, the Telegraph revealed that in 2014 Epstein ordered staff to install secret cameras inside Kleenex boxes at his home after being sent an email reading: “Remember what we spoke about if you want to put cameras in the house. It will have to be very discreetly done. The Russians may come in handy.”
That appears to conflict with law enforcement statements, with the FBI previously saying there was no evidence that Epstein was storing compromising material.
An internal FBI memo released in the latest tranche of files stated: “We are aware of the theories circulated in the media and online that Epstein video recorded the abuse of his victims, including by other men, but we have found no evidence to support that theory.
“Indeed, had we found such videos, we certainly would have used them as evidence in the criminal cases we investigated and prosecuted, and would have pursued any leads they generated. We did not, however, locate any such videos.
“The Palm Beach police department video-recorded interviews of victims at their police station, video-recorded parts of their search of Epstein’s Palm Beach residence and seized a small number of videos from Epstein’s Palm Beach residence.
“None of these videos depict the abuse of any victims or provide evidence suggesting anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell participated in the abuse of victims.”
The Telegraph approached Riley and Kiraly at their homes in Florida last week, but they said they were legally unable to comment on work carried out for Epstein.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.