GUY ADAMS: From partying with topless women in Phuket to his trips to ‘Paedo Island’, how Andrew’s reckless and greed-fuelled friendship with Epstein ultimately destroyed him

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s sensational arrest marks the culmination of a torrid saga that has lasted more than quarter of a century. Here, GUY ADAMS charts the course of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein . . .

Meets Jeffrey Epstein (Feb 1999)

Andrew is dragged into Jeffrey Epstein’s grubby orbit by his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, an old chum of Ghislaine Maxwell.

History does not record when exactly he first met the financier, but by February 1999, he’s on sufficiently intimate terms to use his private jet to visit Little St James, the Caribbean bolthole later nicknamed ‘Paedo Island’.

The Prince’s life is at something of a crossroads: his Naval career is coming to an end and his marriage ended in divorce three years earlier. Still handsome, relatively athletic and highly eligible, at 39 he enjoys the nickname ‘Randy Andy’.

According to housekeeper Cathy Alexander, Andrew returns to Epstein’s island via helicopter a couple of months later, accompanied by a 30-something female companion who claims to be a brain surgeon.

‘She was tall, bleached blonde and had big boobs,’ Alexander later recalled. ‘They shared a room and spent most of their time windsurfing, sailing or doing other water sports.

‘One day, he came back into the house in great mirth, claiming his guest had stepped on a sea urchin and he’d urinated on her foot as a remedy. ‘The royal member has done its duty,’ he chuckled.’

Andrew then repays Epstein’s hospitality by inviting him to Balmoral. He arrives in July 1999 with an entourage of young women.

The following summer, Epstein attends a royal dinner dance at Windsor Castle and that autumn he visits Sandringham for what the Prince later dubs ‘a standard shooting weekend.’

Shortly after Christmas, the duo head somewhere more exotic: Phuket in Thailand, where Andrew is photographed on a catamaran surrounded by a bevy of topless young women.

During the evenings, Epstein and the Prince hit the local red-light district of Patong, attending a disco called Banana and an ‘adult entertainment’ bar filled with go-go dancers called Rock Hard.

Becomes UK Trade Envoy (July 2001)

Epstein’s paw prints are all over Andrew’s appointment as Britain’s Special Representative for Trade, a job he lands thanks to intense lobbying by their mutual friend Peter Mandelson (and despite his brother Charles’s reservations).

The role requires him to travel the globe at significant public expense, glad-handing heads of state, captains of industry and others who might be charmed into cutting deals with UK plc.

It doesn’t carry a salary. And since the Prince’s only known income is a £20,000-a-year Navy pension plus a £250,000 stipend from the Queen, a degree of mystery surrounds how he’s able to afford a household full of servants plus a turbo-charged luxury lifestyle. Some wonder if he’s cutting business deals on the side.

At least some hospitality is, meanwhile, continuing to come from Andrew’s benefactor Epstein, who repeatedly hosts the royal at his homes in both Manhattan and Palm Beach.

Juan Alessi, a handyman at the latter property, will later allege that Andrew enjoys ‘naked pool parties’ and receives regular massages from female employees.

In sworn legal papers, he describes the house as being full of pictures of naked young women and will claim to have set up massage tables on which Andrew was treated on a daily basis.

‘He left us a tip and a key chain from the royal palace as a souvenir,’ reads his testimony.

Epstein accused for first time (March 2005)

One day in March 2005, a 14-year-old girl walks into a police station in Palm Beach, Florida, and reports a serious sexual assault.

The girl, named ‘SG’ in legal papers, alleges that she was lured to a local mansion by a friend, Haley, who said they could earn hundreds of dollars working for its wealthy resident, ‘Jeff’.

There was, however, a catch: the job, for which the boss paid $300, required her to strip naked and performing degrading sex acts.

Understandably troubled she confided in her stepmother, who encouraged her to report the whole thing to the police.

A major investigation ensues which sees Epstein’s mansion raided. Within a few months, detectives have identified dozens of other potential victims. Epstein is arrested in 2006 and police file a 52-page indictment accusing Andrew’s friend of running a vast sex-trafficking ring, with at least 36 named victims.

Epstein assembles a crack team of lawyers to fight the charge, and in 2008, they come up trumps: the prosecution is abruptly shelved after they negotiate an extraordinary plea bargain.

Under its terms, Epstein agrees to plead guilty to two minor prostitution charges.

He is also required to register as a sex offender and pay restitution. He must serve just 13 months in a Palm Beach jail, and is allowed to leave the facility for 12 hours per day, six days a week, to continue running his investment firm.

Andrew allegedly forwards secret emails (Oct 2010)

Epstein’s conviction is widely reported. Yet both Andrew and his ex-wife choose to continue their close friendship with the court-certified child sex offender.

Indeed, in July 2009, a mere five days after the end of his sentence, Ferguson visits him in Miami, bringing with her princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.

Andrew is also in regular email contact with his paedophile chum. In October 2010, he apparently decides to send Epstein details of his official upcoming trips as British trade envoy to Singapore, Vietnam, Shenzhen in China and Hong Kong, where he will be accompanied by German businessman David Stern, who is a close associate of Epstein.

After the trip, on November 30, he allegedly sends Epstein official reports of those visits, a mere five minutes after receiving them.

And on Christmas Eve that year, he allegedly emails Epstein a confidential briefing on investment opportunities, plus the reconstruction of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, which is being overseen by British armed forces and funded by UK taxpayers.

Trade envoys are not supposed to share such messages.

Some 16 years later, these forwarded emails – contained in the recent Epstein files – will lead to Andrew’s arrest by police investigating potential misconduct in public office.

But for now, their existence remains secret.

A visit to ‘Paedo Mansion’ (Dec 2010)

Andrew’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is proving to be mutually profitable.

On one hand, the American financier is basking in the reflected glow of his friendship with a British royal. On the other, Andrew and his ex-wife continue to enjoy hospitality and financial support from the child rapist.

In December 2010, the Prince solicits a £15,000 gift from Epstein to Johnny O’Sullivan, Fergie’s former personal assistant, who is claiming £78,000 in unpaid wages.

The deal is negotiated during a four-day visit to New York during which Andrew stays at Epstein’s home in Manhattan – and the pair decide to blow away the cobwebs via a walk in Central Park.

An incriminating photograph of the outing is splashed on the front page of the News of the World under the headline ‘PRINCE ANDY & THE PAEDO.’

Virginia Giuffre goes public (Feb 2011)

The Central Park picture is seen by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a former victim of Epstein who now lives in a small town in Australia.

In an exclusive interview, she tells the Mail on Sunday, that it has ‘triggered distressing memories’ of how, as a troubled 16-year-old working as a $9-an-hour spa attendant, she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to work as a ‘sex slave’ servicing Epstein and various middle-aged friends, ‘including royalty’.

Giuffre claims she had three encounters with Andrew. The first was at Maxwell’s home in London in March 2001, when she was 17. The second at Epstein’s New York home later that year.

The third, after she had turned 18, on Epstein’s island.

She does not, at this stage, go so far as to accuse the Prince of sexual indiscretion. But she does recall how their first meeting ended up at the Mayfair nightspot Tramp, where she claims to have danced with the then 41-year-old royal.

Crucially, Giuffre has a memento of the night in question. A photograph that will become famous around the world.

It shows Andrew, with his arm around her waist, as Ghislaine Maxwell grins proprietorially in the background.

The Prince is determined to stay on as trade envoy but both David Cameron’s government and Buckingham Palace realise that mounting public anger is making his position untenable.

He’s forced to quit in July.

Giuffre sues Ghislaine (April 2014)

Andrew refuses to call time on his friendship with Maxwell and in 2013 attends her birthday party at The Dorchester hotel in London.

It will soon prove to be yet another PR blunder.

In April 2014, the Daily Mail reveals that lawyers representing Giuffre have filed court papers in Florida which, for the first time, have accused Ghislaine of orchestrating Epstein’s abuse.

They include a transcript of a phone interview in which the victim is asked whether Andrew might have ‘relevant information’ about ‘Jeffrey’s taking advantage of under-age girls’.

She replies: ‘Yes, he would know a lot of the truth.’

As the civil case wends its way through the US courts, lawyers for Giuffre make a stunning allegation: that she was forced to have ‘sexual relations’ with Andrew in London, New York and on Epstein’s Caribbean island.

This claim is then fleshed out via an affidavit filed in late January 2015 in which she claims to have had sex with the Prince three times. ‘I knew he was a member of the British Royal Family, but I just called him ‘Andy’,’ she says.

Buckingham Palace issues a vehement denial of sexual impropriety, calling the claim ‘false and without foundation’.

Meanwhile the Prince is supposed to be hosting a reception at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Rather than cancel the event, he announces: ‘I just wish to reiterate and to reaffirm the statements which have already been made on my behalf by Buckingham Palace. My focus is on my work.’

Trouble over sewers (May 2016)

A tranche of emails obtained by the Daily Mail reveals what many had long expected: that Andrew leveraged contacts he made as British trade envoy to pursue lucrative personal business ventures.

One particularly grubby deal which he’d attempted to negotiate in early 2011, when he was still in the public role, saw him contact officials in the corrupt former Soviet dictatorship of Kazakhstan on behalf of a Greek water company called EYDAP and a Swiss finance house called Aras Capital.

The firms, which had no links to the UK, were seeking a £385 million contract to build water and sewage networks and in return for setting up the deal, Andrew was to receive one percent of its value, or £3.85 million.

Buckingham Palace initially claims that the embarrassing emails are forged. They then change tactics, admitting the messages are genuine, but hire law firm Harbottle & Lewis to argue that publishing them will somehow breach the Prince’s privacy.

The Daily Mail decides to publish anyway.

A decade on, the relationship between Andrew’s private interests and his public role is finally being investigated by the police.

Epstein is arrested (July 2019)

Against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, the Miami Herald publishes an investigation into the remarkably lenient plea bargain that Epstein negotiated a decade earlier.

It identifies 80 potential victims, some as young as 13, and reignites public interest in the case.

In July, Epstein is arrested as he steps off his private jet in Teatro, New Jersey, where he has travelled from France.

The FBI then raids his Manhattan townhouse, seizing dozens of computers and other devices.

The documents obtained from those searches will be slowly made public over the ensuing years, most recently via last month’s release of around three million emails and pictures of what is now known as the ‘Epstein Files’.

Days later, Andrew’s chum is charged with sex trafficking. But he will never face trial.

On August 10 2019, Epstein is found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, in what is later ruled a ‘suicide by hanging’.

Newsnight Interview (Nov 2019)

Far from shutting down public interest, Epstein’s death re-invigorates it. And with criticism mounting, Andrew decides to go on the offensive via an interview with BBC Newsnight.

It proves to be one of the great PR disasters of modern times.

The Prince fails to express even the vaguest sympathy for Epstein’s victims, seeking instead to play down the nature of their relationship, claiming: ‘It would be a considerable stretch to say that he [Epstein] was a very, very close friend.’

As for that fateful visit to New York, when he was photographed with the convicted sex offender, Andrew alleges that it was organised to call a halt to their relationship. They had not spoken since, he states.

The Prince then decides to take a pop at Giuffre, casting her as a fantasist and saying: ‘I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, non whatsoever.’

On the afternoon in 2001 when they allegedly met, he claims to have a cast-iron alibi: he was actually at a branch of Pizza Express in Woking.

As for the notorious photograph of them together he reckons it is a forgery.

Unfortunately, it takes less than 24 hours for pictures to emerge of him wearing the exact same outfit leaving Chinawhite nightclub a couple of months earlier.

That image also appears to show the duke perspiring heavily, casting doubt on his bizarre insistence in the interview, that Giuffre’s recollection of an encounter at Tramp nightclub was unreliable because he’s unable to sweat.

‘NO SWEAT… AND NO REGRET,’ is how one of the front pages sums up the interview.

In the days that follow, Andrew announces that he will step down from all public duties.

Giuffre goes back to court (Feb 2022)

Andrew’s repeated denials outrage Giuffre who, in late 2021, files a civil suit in the Southern District of New York accusing him of sexual assault and rape in the first and third degree.

The Prince’s lawyers respond by seeking to have it thrown out, calling the claims ‘baseless,’ her rhetoric ‘lurid’ and her objective nothing more than a ‘payday’.

His team argues that Giuffre previously waived the right to sue Andrew by negotiating a $500,000 settlement with Epstein in 2008, in which she agreed to indemnify ‘any and all persons who Giuffre identified as potential targets of future lawsuits’.

The judge sees things differently, however. In mid-January he rules that the case should proceed to a full trial.

A day later, Queen Elizabeth, concerned that the affair will overshadow her imminent Platinum Jubilee, strips Andrew of his remaining military titles and royal patronages.

Andrew’s £2,000-an-hour attack-dog attorneys then mount a hugely undignified smear campaign, attempting to persuade the judge that an old newspaper article describing Giuffre (a victim of child sex abuse) as a ‘money hungry sex kitten’ ought to be used as evidence.

It sparks a widespread, and utterly predictable, wave of criticism.

A month later, with the indignity of a deposition looming, Andrew agrees to settle out of court with Giuffre for a confidential sum, believed to be around £12 million, including ‘a substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights’.

The deal prevents Andrew from ‘even repeating his claim that he had no recollection of meeting Ms. Giuffre’.

Andrew’s lies exposed (Oct 2025)

The Mail on Sunday obtains an email which Andrew sent Epstein on February 28, 2011, the day after it had first published the photo of the Prince with Giuffre.

‘I’m just as concerned for you! Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Otherwise keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’

He signed off with: ‘A, HRH The Duke of York, KG.’

The message is hugely significant because it proves that – in contrast to what he claimed in the 2019 Newsnight interview – Andrew had remained in touch with the sex offender long after his 2010 visit to New York.

A second hugely embarrassing email obtained by the newspaper revealed that the Duchess of York had called Epstein a ‘supreme friend’ later that year.

After the emails are published, King Charles decides to strip the Prince of his royal title – he will henceforth be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – and boot him out of his home, Royal Lodge.

Three months later, the ‘Epstein Files’ lays bare the true extent of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, revealing their friendship to be far more intimate than he’d previously claimed and proving that denials by the Royal Household, along with several important statements made in his Newsnight interview, were either misleading or downright false.

Andrew now faces the unappetising prospect of having to account for the whole shabby affair in court.

While he may be unable to sweat, the disgraced Royal is entitled to feel seriously hot under the collar.