The picture they tried to bury: Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein enjoy shooting party at the Queen’s hunting lodge… with the billionaire also accused of having sex with teenager Virginia

Early December in the year 2000 and members of a shooting party gather for a photograph in front of the Queen’s hunting lodge on her Sandringham Estate. The eye is drawn to the familiar figure in blue at the centre of this previously unpublished image. It is none other than Prince Andrew, who looks rather glum despite having every reason to feel carefree. Perhaps he’s had a premonition of what’s coming down the line.

Overall, though far from universally popular, the Duke of York’s life is unclouded at this time and he remains within the bosom of the Royal Family.

Only many years later when scrutiny fell on two of the guests – billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – would the weekend begin to lose its lustre. The Mail on Sunday can reveal that someone else in the photo, another American billionaire, casts what was by all accounts a jolly gathering in an intriguing new light.

Tom Pritzker, chairman of Hyatt Hotels, is linked to the duke in a most embarrassing way. Now 75, the Chicago-based businessman was accused – like Andrew – of having sex with Virginia Giuffre. Ms Giuffre claimed she was the victim of trafficking and abuse by Epstein and his powerful associates when she was a teenager. Like the duke, Mr Pritzker has strongly denied the claims.

Less than three months after the hunting lodge snap, Andrew posed with his arm around 17-year-old Virginia’s waist for a photograph that would ultimately lead to his downfall.

With all this in mind, how to describe the merry gathering in the Norfolk countryside? ‘Just a straightforward shooting weekend,’ was Andrew’s brisk assessment when questioned about it during his now-notorious Newsnight interview nearly two decades later.

Some might argue that Epstein’s presence ensured it was anything but straightforward.

What Mr Pritzker made of the shooting party is not known, but for Epstein, who collected prominent businessmen, academics and showbusiness stars, it was a means of strengthening his ties to the British royal family. Earlier that year he was a guest at a Windsor Castle party hosted by the Queen.

The photograph is a graphic reminder of how high the Brooklyn-born sex predator reached. He is said to have cherished it as a souvenir of a happy weekend spent with Andrew and his aristocratic friends and displayed it prominently in his homes around the world.

A source who was close to Epstein for more than 20 years said: ‘Some very powerful people would clearly have liked to see this photograph disappear forever.’

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a copy was obtained by police in Paris investigating claims that French model agency boss Jean-Luc Brunel, who killed himself while awaiting trial for rape, recruited under-age girls for Epstein including three 12-year-old sisters. The triplets were presented to him ‘as a surprise birthday present’.

Following his suicide in a New York prison cell in 2019, Epstein’s £8million apartment in central Paris was raided by detectives.

A police source said of the photograph: ‘Prosecutors were attempting to build up a clear picture of Epstein’s contacts, including those in the United Kingdom. It is for this reason that it [the Sandringham photo] was obtained.’

It is worth noting that a quarter of a century ago, Epstein was untainted by scandal, his name preceded by the word ‘financier’ rather than ‘paedophile’. Certainly, there is nothing to suggest his fellow guests on the pheasant shoot had even the slightest inkling of his sexual predilections or any wrongdoing.

But while public exposure was some years ahead, he was already spinning his sordid web, aided by the enthusiastically grinning woman on his right in the photo, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Others in the picture would doubtless wish they’d turned down the duke’s invitation.

Indeed, a source says that after Epstein died and the scale of his depravity became clear, some of the guests talked about destroying their copies of the photo.

So who else joined the duke’s shooting party? Standing next to Andrew in a tweed cap is Charles Butter, one of the Queen’s godsons, who accompanied Maxwell to society events in London. Mr Butter was once pictured at a party with Shelley Lewis, a British ‘spiritual entrepreneur’ named as Epstein’s alleged ‘secret girlfriend’ who joined him for flights on his private jet.

Also in the line up are Alexandra Dixon, whose name appears in Epstein’s ‘little black book’ and Caroline ‘Cazzy’ Stanley, Countess of Derby. She was briefly romantically linked to Andrew before she became engaged to her husband Edward, a former Grenadier Guards officer known as Teddy, also in the picture.

During the shoot, Epstein’s attire sparked criticism from snobbish courtiers.

‘Dressed more suitably for a shopping trip on Fifth Avenue than an English pheasant drive in his LL Bean hunting boots and $1,000 leather parka,’ read one report.

One of the guests recalls a ‘German or Danish countess’ being among the party. And then there was Mr Pritzker, pictured arm-in-arm with an unidentified blonde woman.

In 2024 Mr Pritzker was one of dozens of Epstein associates named in unsealed court documents in a defamation case that revealed a web of accusations and denials reaching the highest tiers of global influence.

The documents revealed a deposition given by Ms Giuffre. In it, a lawyer asks if she’d had sex with Mr Pritzker, a member of one of America’s richest dynasties. Ms Giuffre says: ‘I believe I was with Tom once’.

A spokesman for Mr Pritzker has called it a ‘false and isolated allegation’ which the businessman vehemently denies.

At no point does she suggest that Epstein or Maxwell, daughter of the late disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, instructed her to have sex with him, though later she said she’d had sex with the ‘owner of a large hotel chain’ at his ‘cabana townhouse thing’ in France.

Back in December 2000, Mr Pritzker flew into RAF Marham with Epstein and Maxwell on board, before enjoying the duke’s hospitality at the Queen’s estate 20 miles away. The arrangement was described as ‘unusual’ by civil aviation sources, as Marham is the RAF’s biggest frontline base and home to four Tornado squadrons.

But the Ministry of Defence insisted that Epstein had been given no special treatment, and that civil aircraft were routinely allowed to land there.

Flight logs for Epstein’s Gulfstream jet show that it flew from Teterboro Airport outside New York to Le Bourget in Paris on December 5, 2000, with Epstein, Maxwell, a woman called Kelly Spamm and ‘ET’ on board. ET is thought to refer to Emmy Tayler, Maxwell’s British assistant.

The group flew to Luton the next day, and on December 7 landed at RAF Marham, by now also carrying Mr Pritzker and an unnamed woman. At the time it was reported that Prince Andrew had thrown a surprise birthday party at Sandringham for Maxwell, who, it was noted, had recently taken him to two controversial ‘leather and PVC’ nightclub bashes in New York.

It was said that hiring the vast 237-room Sandringham House cost around £20,000 at the time for a long weekend.

The bill would have included accommodation, food and wine, providing extra staff to wait on guests and a contribution for increased security. The BBC’s Emily Maitlis asked him about it during the Newsnight interview: ‘Am I right in thinking you threw a birthday party for Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, at Sandringham?’

The Prince replied: ‘No, it was a shooting weekend.’

One of the guests concurs with his recollection: ‘There were drinks on Friday, a black-tie dinner on Saturday, no real dancing. It was a standard shooting weekend, and I remember it being rather uneventful.’

Flight logs show that Epstein and Maxwell left the country on December 9 from Norwich International Airport.

After spending Christmas Day with the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family at Sandringham, Andrew boarded a plane on Boxing Day, having accepted an invitation to stay at the exclusive Amanpuri Resort in Phuket, Thailand, where he was pictured on a yacht surrounded by topless women.

There were reports of him wandering around go-go bars in the red-light district and attending a party at which most of the guests wore G-strings.

Andrew was in a towelling toga. Epstein, who was jailed for 18 months in 2008 after admitting soliciting an under–age girl for prostitution, is alleged to have used his fleet of private aircraft, which also included a Boeing 727 and a helicopter, to traffic girls around the world for illegal sex.

Several civil lawsuits brought by alleged victims accuse him of breaking US laws by ‘knowingly transporting’ under–age girls across state and international borders to be abused.

Entries in the flight log show that he often flew alone with Virginia Giuffre, then Virginia Roberts, who claimed she was his ‘sex slave’ from the age of 15. Ms Giuffre died by suicide in April.

Twenty-five years after the picture was taken, Prince Andrew’s life could not be more different. It continues to be shaped by his paedophile friend, even from beyond the grave.

Last month, for instance, The Mail on Sunday exposed how his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson wrote Epstein a gushing message in 2011 apologising for publicly disowning him. In the fall-out, it was reported that the duke would not be welcome at Sandringham this Christmas.

Last night, Andrew Lownie, author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, described the photograph as highly significant, adding: ‘This is very revealing of Andrew’s circle and completed Epstein’s hat-trick of visits to royal residences.’

• Additional reporting: PETER ALLEN and CLAUDIA JOSEPH