Jeffrey Epstein’s island: What really happened there?
The guests to Epstein’s islands came from across the world and from the highest ranks of society: celebrities and scientists and members of royal families, touching down in a private jet and then boarding a helicopter to the island.
Its owner liked to call it “Little St Jeff”. The locals called it “Pedophile Island.”
But what is the truth about Little St James, the 75-acre private paradise in the U.S. Virgin Islands that billionaire sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein once called home?
A criminal complaint from the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands described it as “the perfect hideaway and haven for trafficking young women and underage girls for sexual servitude, child abuse and sexual assault”.
On this island, the complaint says: “Epstein and his associates could avoid detection of their illegal activity from Virgin Islands and federal law enforcement, and prevent these young women and underage girls from leaving freely and escaping the abuse.”
The island featured in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial. She was convicted of five sex-trafficking charges and was sentenced to 20 years behind bars plus a $750,000 fine on 28 June, 2022.
Finally, in May 2023, it was sold to a wealthy investor for less than half of its original asking price, with the hope of turning it into a luxury resort.
Here is everything we know about Little St James and what Epstein did there.
Little St James is a small island fringed by coral reefs in the bright blue waters of the U.S. Virgin Islands, with sheltered inlets and forested groves rising to dramatic windswept ridges and craggy cliffs.
It lies just off the south-eastern tip of St Thomas, one of the Caribbean archipelago’s three main islands.
The Virgins were purchased from Denmark by the U.S. government at the height of the First World War in order to stop them being used as a German submarine base.
Today, many financial experts regard them as a tax haven, with huge discounts on corporation tax and personal income tax available to companies based there.
It was in the Virgins that Epstein registered as a sex offender in 2010, following his first conviction for child prostitution in 2008. He also based his shell companies in a small unmarked office in a seaside strip mall on St Thomas, alongside a Sam’s Mini-Mart and a salon called Happy Nails.
In 1998, he bought Little St James from venture capitalist Arch Cummin via a shell company, reportedly paying just under $8m (£6m). The new owner quickly scoured away all the native vegetation and replaced it with 40-foot palm trees.
