In one of the great unmade movies, Woody Allen directs a remake of Dracula with Jeffrey Epstein as the count. To celebrate the sex offender’s 63rd birthday in January 2016, Ghislaine Maxwell gathered tributes from friends. Allen’s contribution praised the food “well served” at dinners in Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“I say well served – often it’s by some professional houseman and just as often by several young women reminding one of Castle Dracula where [Bela] Lugosi has three young female vampires who service the place. Add to this that Jeffrey lives in a vast house alone, one can picture him sleeping in damp earth.”

One wonders what “service” Allen might have imagined for these young women and how those who were preyed upon could be construed in his screenplay as vampiric predators. But the image of Epstein as the undead ghoul was eerily prescient.

A nocturnal Count Jeffrey continues to hover at the window of Donald Trump’s White House bedroom. Last July, Trump himself picked up the metaphor of the undead, complaining bitterly of “a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein”.

© The Irish Times