Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion A Pope, a President, and a PM share space with Trump
Epstein Ghislaine Maxwell: As questions about Jeffrey Epstein’s life and death refuse to die down — much to the annoyance of US President Donald Trump — new details have emerged, including about the lavish dinner parties thrown the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier at his New York mansion, according to a New York Times report.At these gatherings, celebrities, scients, financiers, intellectuals, and several young women would rub shoulders as framed portraits of Epstein with a prime miner, a Pope, an oil-rich Prince and a President would keep them company.
In a typed letter sent on Epstein’s 63rd birthday, and accessed the New York Times, Woody Allen recounted how the posse of young women who worked as assants reminded the filmmaker of Count Dracula’s castle, which was “where Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place”. Bela Lugosi was the actor famous for playing Count Dracula in the 1931 movie of the same name.
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Who visited Epstein?
The “seven-story, 21,000-square-foot townhouse” is now under a shadow as the place where Epstein held gatherings of the who’s who years after he became a regered sex offender. A framed photo at the estate shows Epstein with a young Trump and his then-girlfriend Melania Knauss, with longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell cropped out. Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, had split from Epstein in mid-2010s.
Another photo shows Pope John Paul II, the head of the Catholic Church from 1978 till his death in 2005. SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk, who had a recent public falling out with Trump and alleged that the current US President was mentioned in the ‘Epstein Files’, peeks out from another.
Former President Bill Clinton can be seen smiling with his arms crossed as he leans on a table while gazing at Epstein. There’s British billionaire Richard Branson as well as former US Secretary of State Larry Summers. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and Cuba’s former president Fidel Castro adorn two separate frames with Epstein the common link.
Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Sharing space with these were other items: A framed dollar bill signed Microsoft founder Bill Gates, with “I was wrong!” written over George Washington’s face and a chalkboard with a map of Israel that had former PM Ehud Barak’s signature preserved Epstein. NYT said Gates’ message could be in a reference to a lost bet.Story continues below this ad
Trump’s former White House chief strateg Stephen Bannon also looks out from framed photos in at least two rooms in the mansion, NYT reported. One of these is a “mirror selfie” snapped Epstein.
Why did people visit Epstein?
The allure of the townhouse, a stone’s throw from Central Park, was twofold.
First was the chance to meet Epstein. The visitors found him to be “fun, smart and curious”. The galaxy of individuals as diverse as “politicians, scients, teachers, magicians, comedians, intellectuals, an etymolog, a concert pian” in a single room seemed like a chance too good to be passed over.
And second was the prospect of mingling with the young women wandering about the property, NYT reported. The mansion itself was redesigned Epstein with framed prosthetic eyeballs and a sculpture of a woman wearing a bridal gown held in the air a rope. It also had his office with a taxidermied tiger on a rug and his suite that displayed a photo with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Going up the stairs took one to the now infamous massage room with paintings of naked women hanging from the walls. In this room, Epstein is said to have ordered teenage women, some still in school, to massage him while he lay naked. Court records and interviews with victims held the NYT showed he sometimes “raped or assaulted them”.Story continues below this ad
What happened at these dinner gatherings?
The food could be “meagre” and something as plain as Chinese takeout, filmmaker Woody Allen described in a letter.
NYT, Epstein’ın Manhattan’daki malikânesine girdi:
🔺Tavandan sarkan gelinlik giymiş kadın heykeli
🔺Vladimir Nabokov’un romanı Lolita’nın 1955 tarihli ilk baskısı
🔺Clinton, Trump, Papa, Prens Salman’la fotoğraflar
🔺Ehud Barak’tan mektuplarhttps://t.co/GhuF8O8UfI pic.twitter.com/4mE3IapLf2
— serbestiyet (@serbestiyetweb) August 6, 2025
The photos accessed the NYT show guests sitting across from each other in leopard-print chairs with a large rectangular table in the centre. Sometimes, a magician performed, while a chalkboard would be brought on other occasions for a guest to sketch a diagram or write a mathematical formula.
What was in the letters sent to Epstein?
Former Israeli PM Ehud Barak wrote to Epstein that “There is no limit to your curiosity”, adding that the New York financier who was found dead in his jail cell was “like a closed book to many of them but you know everything about everyone.”
There were suggestions for the dinner menu, including from media mogul Mortimer Zuckerman, who tried to convince Epstein to have a simple salad and whatever else “would enhance Jeffrey’s sexual performance.”
Allen’s letter mentioned how the spartan dinners of the earlier years took on a more refined form in the later years. The filmmaker, who has faced allegations of sexually assaulting his adoptive daughter, said that on his first visit, the food was very “meagre”.Story continues below this ad
“So meagre, my wife [and] the ones sitting next to her kept mumbling, is this it? Is this all we’re getting? After I leave, I may have to go to a restaurant”.
But, the next time the couple came over, Allen writes that his wife took matters in her own hands. She said in a “tactful way she has: there is going to be more food, isn’t there? Under her badgering, the situation gradually improved and subsequent dinners offered buckets of Chinese food ordered from a local restaurant”.
