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Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was allowed to leave the Palm Beach County Stockade nearly every day to go to work even though Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has a policy that prohibits sex offenders from participating in the jail’s work release program, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said Wednesday.
The reason Epstein was exempt from the policy, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Teri Barbera, was that the politically-connected financier wasn’t required to register as a sex offender until July 22, 2009 — a day after he was released from jail after serving 13 months of an 18-month sentence on two state prostitution charges, including procuring a minor for sex. Until then, Barbera indicated, he wasn’t an official sex offender.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Deborah Dale Pucillo didn’t make such a distinction in July 2008 when she accepted Epstein’s guilty plea and designated him as a sex offender, a transcript of the hearing shows.
Florida law says that a person becomes a sex offender when he is convicted of soliciting a minor for sex. Some of the the girls Epstein is said to have abused were under the age of 14. The requirement to register with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, so it can alert neighbors that a sex offender is living nearby, is separate, according to the law.
Growing interest in Epstein’s treatment by sheriff’s officials comes as the 66-year-old millionaire who has a $12 million mansion in Palm Beach fights two child sex trafficking charges in New York. Epstein counted President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew as friends.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman on Thursday will decide whether Epstein will be released from jail on bond after being accused by federal prosecutors of luring dozens of underage girls to his Palm Beach mansion and his townhouse in New York for nude massages that, for most, led to sex. Epstein has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
PBSO Chief Deputy Sheriff Michael Gauger, who called Epstein a “model prisoner,” during his stay at the stockade, didn’t return several phone calls on Thursday to comment on the sheriff’s policy about sex offenders being granted work release and how it impacted Epstein.
Gauger has insisted that Epstein was treated like every other jail inmate. His ability to leave the jail 12 hours a day, six days a week was routine, he said.
Bradshaw’s longtime right-hand man defended off-duty deputies who Epstein paid $127,000 to guard him during the months he was allowed to leave jail to work at his nonprofit Florida Science Foundation.
Gauger bristled at a claim made Tuesday by an attorney for some of Epstein’s accusers that young women had sex with Epstein while he was working in his 14th-floor office at One Clearlake Centre on Australian Avenue in West Palm Beach. Only Epstein’s attorneys were allowed to visit, he said.
“That would shock me if the deputies let someone else in,” Gauger said. “They knew exactly what the rules and regulations were.”
But a list of Epstein’s approved visitors, released Thursday by the sheriff’s office, shows it was long. Roughly 20 attorneys, from five law firms, were on it. And any of their paralegals were allowed to stop in as well, according to a 2008 memorandum.
Even sheriff’s officials questioned whether the people had been properly vetted. “An investigator from one of the plaintiff’s attorney has indicated 2 are not paralegals,” Major Christopher Kneisley wrote in May 2010 while Epstein was on house arrest. “Trying to prepare a preemptive strike.
Attorney Bradley Edwards, who represents more than a dozen of Epstein’s accusers, says he has talked to women who said Epstein had sex while he was on work release at his foundation.
“There was more than one person who visited him,” Edwards said at a press conference. “I don’t know if any of them were under the age of 18. They believed they were going there for something other than a sexual purpose and while they were there, surprisingly to them, the situation turned sexual.”
He declined to name the woman or women who told him about the encounters but he indicated that additional details would be coming.
“What you are going to learn is that he was not sitting there conducting some scientific research for the betterment of the community,” Edwards said. “But he was having office visitors, some of whom were flown to him from New York and continuing to engage in similar conduct literally while he was in quote, unquote, jail.”
In preparation for Thursday’s bond hearing, more attention is being focused on Epstein’s activities at his 7,000 ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico, and why he wasn’t forced to register as a sex offender in that state.
Annie Farmer, one of his accusers, testified at Epstein’s bond hearing on Monday that she was taken to his ranch after first meeting him at his New York apartment. In a court affidavit in a civil case involving Epstein, her sister, Maria Farmer, said she was also abused when she worked for Epstein at his New York apartment.
But, she said in the affidavit, her real concern was for her younger sister and the abuse heaped on her by Epstein and his close friend, former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
“During the summer of 1996, Epstein and Maxwell flew my younger sister to their ranch in New Mexico,” Maria Farmer, a Kentucky artist wrote in the statement. ” She was only 15 at the time and they directed her to take off all of her clothes and get on a massage table.”
New Mexico authorities say they are now investigating allegations that Epstein lured underage girls to the ranch for sex.
Judge Berman on Monday questioned why Epstein didn’t register as a sex offender in New Mexico as he was required to do in Florida and New York.
According to documents his lawyers filed Wednesday, he was told he didn’t have to register in New Mexico. News outlets in New Mexico have reported that the state only requires registration if the victim was under the age of 16. The Palm Beach girl wasn’t.
Juan Rios, a spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, said Epstein registered with the agency in 2010.
“Our records indicate that the only contact the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office had with Mr Epstein was when he came into our office to register as a sex offender,” he said in an email. “Our records indicate no other interface was engaged with Mr. Epstein beyond his sex offender registration.”
In the court documents Epstein’s lawyers submitted to Berman, they included emails Epstein wrote to a Santa Fe sheriff’s detectives in 2012, 2013 and 2015, alerting her he would be visiting his ranch.
“As an extra precaution I am letting you know that I will be on my ranch for the month of August,” Epstein wrote in July 2015. “Hope you are well.”
At Thursday’s hearing, his attorneys have said that Epstein will pledge ”$100 million,” as well as real estate he owns, to secure his release. His brother, Mark, who has a $100,000 condo in the Golden Lakes retirement community near West Palm Beach, is also willing to pledge “the full amount of his net worth,” which they estimated at $100 million.
As he did when he was on work release from the Palm Beach County stockade, he is also offering to hire armed guards to watch over him around the clock.
Federal prosecutors, however, contend that due to Epstein’s vast wealth there is no way to devise a bond package that would ensure he wouldn’t flee.