How Epstein never concealed his penchant for young, unsuspecting girls all through his journey from Dalton School to Wall Street
Embattled millionaire and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, now housed under trial at a Manhattan correctional center, had a penchant for young and unsuspecting girls, according to victim accounts and their testimonies. His ebullient but sexually deviant behavior probably characterized every walk of his life — right from his teaching days at Dalton School to the hedge fund manager that he later turned out to be.
Epstein had no college degree to flaunt when he started teaching at Dalton at 21. He reportedly used his charms and connections to enter the school where the sons and daughters of millionaires studied. That he later launched his finance career at the school could be a testimony to his early, planned positioning for a future hob-nob with the jet-setting elite of the US.
"Epstein was considered a little creepy by the girls," alumna Karin Williams told Miami Herald. "I won't say that the girls didn't like him. But they thought he was odd," she pointed out. His flashy ways didn't go unnoticed. "He was the only one in the school with a full-length fur coat," said Williams, who remembered his 1970 fashion statement in a school which had a conservative dress code.
Epstein launched his financial career in the school at a parent-teacher meeting in 1976. He impressed the father of a student with his "intelligence". "This parent was so wowed by the conversation he told my father, 'You’ve got to hire this guy'," said Lynne Koeppel, daughter of the late Alan "Ace" Greenberg, an executive at Bear Stearns investment bank.
Epstein told the parent that he envisioned himself on Wall Street. He quickly rose through the ranks in Bear Stearns, becoming a "partner" in 1980.
"In retrospect, you could see how maybe he was looking for young nymphs in school," Dalton alumna Heidi Knecht-Seegers told Miami Herald. Incidental as it may be, one of his recent accusers Jennifer Araoz said she was "approached" by an accomplice of Epstein when she was a 14-year-old freshman, outside the Talent Unlimited High School, East 68 Street, a couple of blocks away from his mansion.
Aaroz and other victims described Epstein's exotically furnished mansions which mostly left the tastes of a sexual purveyor unconcealed. His $56 million, seven-storey New York mansion, one of the largest private homes in Manhattan, had a full-size female doll hanging from the chandelier. Victims reported a floor chessboard with nude figurine-pieces. A more unsettling "decor item" was a self-commissioned painting depicting Epstein in a jail scene behind barbed wire. The painting also showed a guard station and a correctional officer. Apart from these, investigators unearthed a huge stockpile of nude photographs and CDs containing such images.
Before and after Epstein
Courtney Wild, who was 14 years old in 2002, looks back and deciphers her transformation before and after Jeffrey Epstein. She was "captain of the cheerleading squad, first trumpet in the band and an A-student at Lake Worth Middle School."
After she met Epstein, she was "a stripper, a drug addict and an inmate at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida’s Panhandle."
Wilde said she had "brought" Epstein 60-70 girls who were between the ages of 14 and 16. She said Epstein liked "girls who were white, appeared prepubescent and were easy to manipulate into going further each time." Wilde, who was released after a three-year jail term for drug charges in October 2018, said she would visit house parties and pubs where girls congregated. The "Scouters", like Wilde, told prospective recruits that they could earn $200 to $300 to give Epstein a massage, according to an unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation obtained by the Miami Herald.
Epstein's modus operandi indicated a classic pedophile. Most psychology theories loop four factors in to examine pedophilia: sexual congruence (explains the emotional need to relate to a child), arousal (why the adult could become sexually aroused by a child), blockage (why alternative sources of sexual and emotional gratification are not available), and disinhibition (why the adult is not deterred from such an interest by normal prohibitions).
Epstein could fit into one or most of the above-stated frameworks, a fact that the prosecutors will likely highlight to get him classified as a child sex offender who "exhibits a high re-offend" possibility.