Following Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide by bedsheet two weeks ago, attention has turned to his inner circle, which included L Brands C.E.O. Les Wexner and Prince Andrew, among other rich and powerful individuals. But innermost of all was Ghislaine Maxwell—daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell—who now stands accused of grooming Epstein’s harem of “masseuses,” which she has denied.
Robert Maxwell, the multi-millionaire publisher of a stack of tabloids including the Daily Mirror and the New York Daily News, met his end in 1991 after supposedly falling off his yacht, Lady Ghislaine, in the pre-dawn hours while it was cruising near the Canary Islands—a scene unworthy of Jackie Collins. (To this day, the cause of death remains unresolved.) In the wake of Maxwell’s final cannonball, it was discovered that he had looted some $560 million from the Mirror Group’s employee pension fund, leaving his nine children not just emotionally crippled from a lifetime of dealing with their father’s relentless bullying, but also disgraced and significantly poorer.
To ask, “Where are they now?,” of Maxwell’s children, is akin to fast-forwarding to the series finale of HBO’s Succession.
Michael, born 1946, was gravely injured in a car accident at age 15 and went into a coma. He died several years later, without ever regaining consciousness.
Philip (1), born 1949, was something of a science-and-math prodigy, and won a scholarship (needs-blind, presumably) to Balliol College, at Oxford, when he was just 16. He later moved to Argentina, a country with many charms, but the clincher was its location: several thousand miles away from his father. According to the Daily Mail, when he married an Argentine woman against Maxwell’s wishes, the break was complete. The 70-year-old Philip is reportedly living in an $80-a-week apartment in London.
Anne (6), born 1949, once dreamed of being an actress. Whether she failed to take Hollywood because of a lack of talent or, as her father allegedly suggested, because she was “ugly” can only be guessed at. Anne, who also studied at Oxford, went on to become a Montessori teacher and, according to The Telegraph, works under a different name as a hypnotherapist, a profession that will be familiar to anyone who has seen Get Out.
Isabel (3) and her twin sister, Christine (7), born 1950, helped found Magellan, one of the world’s first search engines, in 1993, and sold it three years later for shares in Excite. The pair became millionaires—but should have insisted on cash. Within a few years, their shares had dwindled, and, in 2015, Isabel declared bankruptcy. She has her own connection to Epstein, through her third husband, the magician Al Seckel, who was an acquaintance of Epstein’s and who organized a scientific conference on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James. Seckel, it turned out, had neglected to divorce a previous wife, so he was never technically Isabel’s husband, and his sideline as a rare-book dealer involved as much legerdemain as did his day job. He was reportedly found dead in 2015, at the bottom of a cliff near his home in the South of France, where Isabel still lives, according to the Daily Mail. Christine, meanwhile, is reportedly married to an astrophysicist and living in nearby Provence.
Karine, born 1954, died at just three years old from leukemia.
Ian (2), born 1956, and Kevin (5), born 1959, were tried for their suspected involvement in Maxwell’s fraud and eventually acquitted, though a government report concluded that Kevin bore a “heavy responsibility.” When he was arrested, Kevin was roughly $500 million in the hole, which at the time made him one of the most indebted Brits, but nothing that would threaten Donald Trump’s track record in this area. A mismanaged foray into construction led to a temporary ban from running the business. Undoubtedly moved by an acute sense of fellow feeling, Kevin and Ian started an aid organization to help failing Greek companies during that country’s financial crisis.
Ghislaine (4), born 1961, dealt with her father’s death by leaving England (on the Concorde, as one did) for America, where she was able to pass for a slumming aristocrat. It was as a member of New York society, such as it was, that she first encountered Jeffrey Epstein. Following Epstein’s arrest in July, Ghislaine was initially assumed to be somewhere in Europe, but she is now believed to be either camped out at an In-N-Out Burger franchise in Southern California or hiding in the Massachusetts home of her boyfriend, tech entrepreneur Scott Borgerson. Borgerson says he is not harboring or dating her.
Ash Carter is the Articles Editor for air Mail
