NEW YORK _ She hasn't appeared publicly in months and her former neighbors just off posh Park Avenue say they've heard nothing. Yet from some mystery location, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime partner and alleged enabler in his sex trafficking network, has filed a claim against the estate of the multimillionaire financier.
The filing occurred in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the estate of the disgraced businessman is being settled. It was filed on Friday but it appeared on the docket late Tuesday, just hours before the March 18 deadline that effectively closes the window for asking the court for a piece of Epstein's fortune. It was first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday but had been rumored for days.
The Miami law firm Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer filed the action on behalf of Maxwell. It has an office in the Virgin Islands and has not responded to requests for comment.
The most recent court-ordered valuation of Epstein's estate, in February, estimated its worth at $636.1 million. Maxwell's filing before the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, settling his estate, denies knowledge of Epstein's misconduct but seeks compensation for legal fees incurred from defending herself against lawsuits brought by his victims, the Times said.
Several of the women who allege sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein when they were minors also assert that Maxwell helped procure young girls for the former Wall Street whiz.
Those who knew Epstein and Maxwell describe her fervor in serving and protecting him. Maxwell, 58, has long said she had a special relationship with him.
Search for images of her on the internet, and there Maxwell is on Epstein's arm alongside Donald and Melania Trump. She appears in photos with former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Britain's Prince Andrew and even in one with Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul and recently convicted sex offender.
Maxwell has largely been missing since Epstein's controversial death by hanging last Aug. 10 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. It was the culmination of Epstein's world caving in following the Miami Herald's Perversion of Justice series that highlighted how powerful people helped him escape punishment in 2008.
Since then she was photographed reading a book on espionage at a Southern California In-N-Out Burger, maybe spotted briefly in New England and reported without any proof to have been in southern Brazil, Israel or even in FBI custody at a safe house.
So it was surprising when rumors surfaced in the Virgin Islands that Maxwell might file a claim against the tangled Epstein estate to recover money. She was not named when Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George in January labeled Epstein's businesses a criminal enterprise. Maxwell was spared the co-conspirator label George weeks later applied to Epstein's personal U.S. lawyers, Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, whom she is trying to keep from involvement in a victim compensation fund.
Just when the socialite Maxwell and Epstein met is unclear. They seemed to have begun dating in London or soon after her move to New York in the early 1990s during a period where Epstein worked as a financial bounty hunter helping investors sniff out embezzlement. He had befriended her famous father, British publishing giant Robert Maxwell, who mysteriously died in November 1991 after disappearing from his 180-foot yacht named Lady Ghislaine for his daughter.
Found floating in the ocean, Robert Maxwell's death was called a suicide or accident, but his daughter told the news media at the time that she thought he'd been murdered. He was accused posthumously of embezzling millions from the pension funds of his companies. British newspapers have reported that she has received about $160,000 a year since her father's death from a Liechtenstein trust he established.
Epstein and Maxwell reportedly dated for a number of years but their relationship developed into a de facto business partnership. People who knew them both considered her his obsessive gatekeeper and protector. His victims say she was also his procurer of a seemingly endless source of underage girls who would be paid to massage him but then suffered sexual abuse.
In New York, Maxwell in 2000 began living in a nearly $5 million property just a few blocks from Central Park and close to Epstein's palatial Upper East Side mansion, itself across the street from the famed Frick Collection gallery. Property records in New York show Maxwell's town home was owned by a secretive limited liability company called 116 East 65th Street, LLC., formed on June 15, 2000, for the purchase. The address for the LLC was Epstein's Madison Avenue address, and correspondence was designated in care of Indyke, Epstein's longtime lawyer.
Maxwell's New York property highlights how her finances appeared to be intertwined with those of Epstein, who by then was managing the investments of Leslie Wexner, the wealthy retailing magnate who founded The Limited and later owner of Victoria's Secret.
New York permit records from 2013 list Maxwell as owner of the five-floor, 12-room property and president of the limited liability company, which was formally dissolved on Jan. 3, 2018, according to corporate records.
Sales records for the Maxwell occupied home show it sold for about $15 million in April 2016. That was for less than the $16.5 million it was listed for in April 2009 amid Epstein's legal troubles, which he escaped with a controversial non-prosecution deal. The property was removed from listing in October 2009, months after his July release from incarceration in Florida.
Maxwell reportedly is or was licensed to fly helicopters and pilot submarines and was described as a woman of multiple interests and talents. She frequently accompanied Epstein at his other properties, including the Zorro Ranch in New Mexico and Little St. James, the private island in the Virgin Islands where he built a massive compound that became his main residence after serving a minimal sentence for a state charge of solicitation of a minor.
In the final years of Epstein's life, Maxwell ran a non-profit organization called The TerraMar Project. Ostensibly for ocean conservation, it's not clear what exactly it actually did when operating between 2012 and 2017.
