Jeffrey Epstein’s former Higher East Aspect mansion has undergone an enormous, million-dollar transform in an try to wash all traces of the pedophile financier and his twisted intercourse crimes, The Publish can reveal.
However a brand new memoir from Epstein’s late sufferer Virginia Giuffre has dragged 9 E. 71st St. — as soon as New York Metropolis’s largest personal dwelling — again into the grim highlight.
In “No one’s Woman,” which was launched this week, Giuffre describes being repeatedly subjected to sado-masochistic sexual torture in a therapeutic massage room that she named “The Dungeon.”
Giuffre describes being chained up, fitted with a collar and crushed within the room till she handed out.
The townhouse — situated one block from Central Park and throughout the road from The Frick Assortment — seems a lot because it all the time did from the skin.
The one change is a small brass “JE” that Epstein branded on the façade, which is now lacking.
Nevertheless it’s a distinct story inside.
Metropolis information present {that a} $925,000 renovation was accomplished final 12 months by the house’s new proprietor, former Goldman Sachs exec Michael Daffey.
Daffey picked up the historic dwelling for a cut price $51 million in 2021 — two years after Epstein was discovered hanging in federal lockup in Manhattan whereas awaiting path for raping and intercourse trafficking girls and women.
It was an enormous price-cut from the $88 million asking worth, and sources informed The Publish on the time that the finance bigwig was planning “an entire makeover, bodily and spiritually.”
Information point out Daffey accomplished renovations on 5 flooring, which included flattening quite a few partitions to open up the maze of rooms the place Epstein preyed on numerous girls and entertained heads of state, journalists, lecturers and captains of business for greater than 20 years.
Epstein’s previous partitions, gilded ceilings, lighting fixtures, shelving, and gaudy molding and millwork have been stripped away from many rooms, and have been changed with new trimmings, together with a large dose of gypsum walling and tiling, in response to constructing information.
His previous home equipment have been excised from the kitchen, along with his previous sprawling research being mixed with the kitchen, breakfast room and a rest room.
Epstein’s bed room and his monumental grasp lavatory advanced — which takes up no less than 1 / 4 of the third flooring — seem structurally unchanged.
Nonetheless, a wall has been knocked down in a close-by again bed room that seems to be the notorious therapeutic massage chamber the place Epstein abused scores of victims.
It’s that room that Giuffre known as “The Dungeon” in “No one’s Woman,” posthumously launched Tuesday after her April suicide.
And it’s the place she stated Epstein steadily raped her from 2000 to 2002 — together with when she was nonetheless a teenage woman.
Giuffre described the room as a “gloomy” black marble alcove in Epstein’s home of horrors, which was stuffed with a “garish” decor she thought was supposed to intimidate and disturb.
“Black-lacquered cabinetry, bloodred carpets, an enormous taxidermied tiger and a custom-made chess set whose items have been scantily clad girls,” she wrote, additionally recalling how she was compelled to sleep beneath a tapestry depicting wild boar devouring lifeless animals whereas screaming youngsters watched in horror.
That room had an intercom that Epstein would use to summon her for intercourse — at the specter of punishment.
Each room within the dwelling was rigged with cameras the perv used to observe his company and victims alike, Giuffre stated.
“To me, although, the home’s most unsettling design element was a hidden again staircase whose banister was adorned with a collection of carved eyeballs that stared at you as you gripped them, climbing up or down. The message was clear: ‘We’re all the time watching you,’” she wrote.
Nevertheless it was in “The Dungeon” the place Giuffre described the worst depravity.
The assaults — which Giuffre known as Epstein’s “periods” — usually started along with her massaging him and pinching his nipples and ended with intercourse.
Over time, nonetheless, periods in “The Dungeon” turned increasingly torturous.
“He’d begun to experiment with whips and restraints and different devices of torture. In session after session, he would play out varied fantasies, with me because the sufferer,” Giuffre wrote.
“I used to be gagged, and sometimes hog-tied. Epstein preferred to place a black leather-based, metal-studded collar round my neck that continued down my backbone, the place it hooked up to a sequence that sure my fingers and ft tightly collectively.”
“The backbreaking contortions this contraption compelled upon me prompted a lot ache that I prayed I might black out. After I did, I’d awaken to extra abuse,” she added.
It’s such experiences many New Yorkers say would stop them from ever setting foot within the 9 E. 71st St.
“It’s a darkish, darkish, bizarre place,” stated 26-year-old Henry Francois, who lives close by.
“Would I dwell inside? No, I don’t assume so,” he stated. “Not that I consider in ghosts, it’s simply horrible. It’s like whenever you stroll round at night time and have a bizarre feeling. You consistently really feel on edge.”
It wasn’t all the time so. The roughly 20,000 square-foot home was constructed within the Nineteen Thirties by Macy’s division retailer inheritor Herbert N. Straus, who died died earlier than it was completed. It was then donated to a hospital, turned a personal faculty for years, earlier than Victoria’s Secret lingerie mogul Les Wexner purchased it and crammed the rooms with Picassos. Like Straus, Wexner by no means moved in and as an alternative bought it to in 1998 to his longtime buddy Epstein for $20 million, the New York Instances reported.
Daffey — an Australian who made a killing as a Goldman Sachs government, then upped his fortune by way of Bitcoin whereas chairing the $21.8 billion crypto platform Galaxy Digital — purchased the house after flipping his $24.6 million Noho penthouse.
Quite a few neighbors and passersby stated they’d be nice dwelling in a house the place any person died — however universally rejected dwelling wherever Epstein preyed.
“I actually can be nice dwelling in a spot the place somebody can be murdered,” stated Higher East Sider Chris O., “The intercourse dungeon stuff is the place I draw the road.”
California native Liz likened dwelling in the home to calling a Holocaust museum dwelling.
“You don’t assume you’ll have any degree of peace or tranquility in a home like that,” she stated.
“Too many ghosts.”
