I was gripping the wheel of a rental car somewhere off I-95 between Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach while Virginia Giuffre rode shotgun, pounding digits on her iPhone, trying to coax an old employee of Jeffrey Epstein’s to pick up. Each call like this ended the same way: a hang-up mid-sentence, the flat tone of refusal.

It was February 2020, and Giuffre had flown 22 hours from Australia to find a witness, an informant, a source — someone, anyone — who could prove she was telling the truth when she said she had been Epstein’s sex slave, “passed around like a platter of fruit” to as many as three dozen of his friends, such as Prince Andrew. For the past decade, she had been portrayed by Epstein’s defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the tabloid press as an unsympathetic teenage prostitute at best and an unhinged liar at worst. 

The search was proving difficult. Epstein’s pilot, Larry Visoski, wouldn’t open his door. His chef, Adam Perry Lang, texted back but would only speak through lawyers. Our next stop was the house manager, Juan Alessi. I didn’t expect much and told the producer of the podcast we were recording, Broken: Jeffrey Epstein, “We’ll be back at the hotel by six.”

Virginia and I took off to try one last gate. Alessi answered.

“Oh, thank you so much. Okay, we’re on our way,” she said.

I hit the gas before Alessi could change........

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