NEW YORK — The Manhattan jury deliberating Ghislaine Maxwell’s fate asked Tuesday to review testimony from three women who say the British socialite groomed them for Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse.
Jurors headed home after the first full day of deliberations in the closely watched sex trafficking trial without reaching a verdict. The panelists requested transcripts of testimony from three of the four women who took the stand against Maxwell: Jane, Carolyn and Annie Farmer.
Jane and Carolyn testified they were each 14 when Maxwell and Epstein started sexually abusing them in Palm Beach. The women alleged the abuse lasted years.
Farmer said in court she was 16 when the couple flew her in 1996 to Epstein’s “Zorro” ranch in New Mexico, where they touched her inappropriately.
The jury asked Manhattan Federal Court Judge Alison Nathan in one note whether they could consider Farmer’s testimony as evidence that Maxwell conspired to commit a crime. Judge Nathan said they could.
Notes from the jury also revealed they were examining a 2007 interview Carolyn gave to the FBI. In it, she discussed meeting Epstein and Maxwell in 1999 when she was 14 years old through Virginia Giuffre, a prominent accuser of the dead sex offender.
In the FBI interview, Carolyn told Special Agent Jason Richards that she witnessed Giuffre have sex with Epstein on Carolyn’s first trip to the financier’s Palm Beach mansion.
According to trial testimony, Carolyn also described meeting “an older lady with short black hair and an accent,” without mentioning Maxwell’s name.
“When you spoke to the agents in 2007, you did not say anything about Ghislaine Maxwell; correct?” Maxwell lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca asked Carolyn on Dec. 7.
“Ms. Maxwell was not the topic of discussion at that time,” Carolyn answered. “The only thing Ms. Maxwell was involved in was fondling and touching my breasts and my buttocks, and for that, my soul is broken and so is my heart.”
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to charges she groomed young girls for Epstein’s sexual abuse and lied about the conduct under oath. She faces a maximum 80-year prison sentence if convicted on all counts.
The 59-year-old’s lawyers say she has been unfairly substituted for her ex-boyfriend Epstein after he died by suicide in 2019, squandering the prosecution’s case against him.
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