Prince Andrew told Jeffrey Epstein “we are in this together” the day after a damning picture was published of the Duke of York posing with teenage Virginia Giuffre, according to reports.
A bombshell email appears to show that Andrew stayed in contact with the convicted sex offender for weeks after he claimed to stop speaking to Epstein and shows the Royal reassured his friend the pair would “rise above” press scrutiny.
The Mail on Sunday reports that the email shows “definitive proof” that the Duke lied in his infamous BBC Newsnight interview, which he claimed he “never had any contact” with Epstein after the pair were snapped walking together in New York’s Central Park in 2010.
The email was sent 12 weeks after Andrew was said to have cut contact with Epstein, who was later found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Writing to Epstein on February 28, 2011 – the day after the picture of him alongside teenage Virginia Giuffre was published, Andrew wrote: “I'm just as concerned for you! Don't worry about me!
“It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it.
“Otherwise keep in close touch and we'll play some more soon!!!!”
The email was reportedly signed off with “A, HRH The Duke of York, KG”. The KG is understood to refer to the Duke’s “Knight of the Garter” position, which he still holds.
Ms Giuffre, who died in Western Australia in April aged 41, was one of the most outspoken accusers of convicted sex offenders Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
In 2022, she settled her lawsuit against Andrew for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was 17 after she was trafficked by Epstein. He denied the claim and ever meeting Ms Giuffre.
The Duke of York paid millions to settle the civil sexual assault case with Ms Giuffre who alleged the duke slept with her on three separate occasions.
The latest revelation comes weeks after an email to Epstein from Sarah, Duchess of York, showed her labelling him as her “supreme friend” as she apologised for disowning him in the media.
The surfacing of the email led the duchess to be dropped by a number of charities, of which she had been a patron, as her spokesman claimed the message was written because he had threatened to sue her for defamation.
Royal authors have described how there is no point of return for Andrew following the latest scandal around his relationship with Epstein, with one historian calling his behaviour “a major crisis for the Monarchy…perhaps the gravest since the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936”.
Historian A N Wilson wrote in the Mail on Sunday: “The King and the Prince of Wales cannot be seen to support or underwrite Andrew any more.
“His very existence as an official Royal is a scandal. So they must cast him out, for if they show him mercy, they are themselves implicated, and we are only a hair's breadth away from a republic.”
Meanwhile, royal author Ingrid Seward told The Sun the “small but hugely damning email” leaves Andrew in trouble.
She said: “By getting caught in this lie, he has put one foot in the mire and slipped and got his whole body in the muck.
“If it was his contention that he had never met Virginia, or indeed that the infamous image was a creation, then surely he would have said something straight away?”
She added: “This is the point of no return for Andrew. The lifeless tentacles of Epstein’s reputation are ruinous to many people and I can’t see a way back from this.”
Andrew had told Newsnight that his walk in the park with Epstein in December 2010 was when they agreed to part company.
He said: “And to this day I never had any contact with him from that day forward.”
However, the message from Andrew’s official email address shows the pair were in contact three months later.
Andrew also insisted to broadcaster Emily Maitlis that the London encounter with Ms Giuffre “never happened” and he even suggested that a photo of him with his hand around the then 17-year-old could have been forged.
But in the new email he does not mention the theory to Epstein.
Prince Andrew and Buckingham Palace have declined newspapers’ requests for comment on the story.
