In a 2019 BBC interview, Prince Andrew said he could not recall any incident involving Virginia Giuffre. Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP
By Max Matza for the BBC
Prince Andrew "spent weeks" at sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein's Florida mansion, according to a third batch of unsealed court files.
Juan Alessi, who managed Epstein's residence in Palm Beach, testified that the Duke of York stayed in the guest bedroom and had daily massages.
The testimony appears in around 1300 pages of evidence released on Friday.
The records also paint a disturbing picture of how Epstein procured victims for sexual exploitation.
Hundreds of pages of legal filings have been unsealed this week under order from a federal court.
The legal papers are part of a 2015 defamation lawsuit by one accuser, Virginia Giuffre, against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's imprisoned former girlfriend.
In a 2009 deposition, Alessi told investigators that Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, were "friends" of Epstein and Maxwell. The duchess is not accused of any wrongdoing and Prince Andrew has denied misconduct.
Asked if they ever had "massages" during visits to the Palm Beach mansion, Alessi answered: "Prince Andrew did."
He added that the duchess once briefly visited the house, but "Prince Andrew spent weeks with us", receiving "daily massages".
"I can't remember if he had more than one [per day], but I think it was just a massage for him," he added.
In one of the court filings unsealed this week, one accuser, Jane Doe 3, believed to be Giuffre, alleges she was "forced to have sexual relations" with Prince Andrew while she was 17 in Maxwell's London apartment, in New York and on Epstein's private resort in the US Virgin Islands in an "orgy" with other under-aged girls.
This allegation is not new, and the British royal has long denied any wrongdoing.
In a 2019 interview with the BBC, the Duke of York said he had no memory of ever meeting Giuffre. In 2022, he paid her an undisclosed financial settlement to settle her sex assault lawsuit against him, but did so with no admission as to liability.
An undated photo obtained courtesy of the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. Photo: AFP / New York State Sex Offender Registry handout
Also in the documents unsealed on Friday, witnesses describe how people in Epstein's orbit were directed to "pick up girls" to "bring back for Jeffrey".
Tony Figueroa, a former partner of Giuffre, testified that Epstein and Maxwell paid NZ$320 (£157) for each girl that went to the mansion.
Figueroa said he was paid at age 19 to find and drive teenage girls to Epstein's house, where he often saw other young women.
An undated photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell obtained from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 8 December 2021. Photo: AFP / Handout by US District Court for the Southern District of New York
The girls would chat with Maxwell for 10 to 15 minutes in Epstein's kitchen before heading upstairs to provide a "massage", according to the documents.
Figueroa says he assumed the girls were brought to provide sexual favours to Epstein.
When asked whether any of them were legitimate masseuses, the legal papers show that Figueroa said: "Nope."
In his deposition, Figueroa said he often recruited girls from his high school.
He did not ask their ages, he said, but assumed they were all between 16 and 19 years old.
In his 2009 testimony, Alessi said he recalled seeing Donald Trump - who owns the nearby Mar-a-Lago golf club - at Epstein's mansion.
The witness said Trump ate dinner with Mr Alessi in the kitchen, but never had a massage during any visit.
Alessi said he met Bill Clinton, too, on board Epstein's private plane.
Neither Clinton nor Trump is accused of misconduct in relation to their association with the disgraced financier.
Included in the trove is a 2010 deposition from Adriana Ross, a former Polish model and Epstein assistant who was described in a 2007 non-prosecution agreement as a potential co-conspirator.
She was asked if she was aware that President Clinton's former US National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, had called at Epstein's house within three weeks of a 2005 police search warrant being executed.
The attorney asked Ross whether Berger, who died in 2015, had tipped off Epstein about the coming raid. She refused to answer.
She was also asked whether she was aware that an Epstein friend flew three 12-year-old girls from France over to him "for his birthday" to sexually exploit and that after doing so he sent them back to France the next day.
She replied: "I refuse to answer."
The attorney suggested it was French modelling scout, Jean-Luc Brunel, who sent over the girls.
Ross again refused to answer. Brunel killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022 while awaiting rape charges.
Much of the material officially unsealed this week already came up during Maxwell's trial.
The daughter of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, she was convicted in 2021 and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role as a recruiter for Epstein.
Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008 and took his own life in 2019 while awaiting trial over sex-trafficking charges.
* This story was first published by the BBC.
