Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s lavish Manhattan townhouse: A stuffed tiger, a Lolita first edition and a photo with Trump
A private Caribbean island, a waterfront estate in Florida and a ranch in New Mexico are just a few of the properties disgraced billionaire Jeffrey Epstein amassed before his death.
But it is his former townhouse in New York City that is attracting renewed attention, amid ongoing questions about the so-called Epstein list.
The New York Times has given a fresh glimpse inside the 28,000sq ft, 40-room Manhattan mansion, which was put on the market for $88 million in 2020.
A stuffed tiger, paintings of nude women and a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous novel Lolita are among the oddities found within.
The Times has published a new cache of photographs and letters belonging to the disgraced late financier that capture his peculiar taste in interior design and busy social whirl, which saw him regularly welcome celebrities and influential people to his seven-storey home.
The newspaper notes that “dozens of framed prosthetic eyeballs lined the entryway” to the property while a sculpture of a woman wearing a bridal gown and clutching onto a rope hung suspended above the central stairwell.
The photographs also show a stuffed tiger positioned on a plush rug in a well-lit room with a chandelier looming overhead.
Shelves, mantlepieces and cabinets are seen lined with framed snaps of Epstein posing with famous people he knew, from Pope John Paul II to Fidel Castro.
Another contains an old photo of Epstein posing with Donald Trump and his future wife Melania Trump, with the image cropped to exclude the former’s ex-girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, currently behind bars in Texas.
Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing over his past association with Epstein and is currently suing The Wall Street Journal for reporting that he once sent the sex offender a “bawdy” doodle for his birthday. He remains under pressure from his own supporters to release the Justice Department’s files on the financier’s crimes.
Epstein’s mansion, which was built in 1932, was also reported to have a massage room, which was likewise decorated with artwork of nudes, as well as an ornamental silver ball and chain, and which was lined with shelves of lubricants.
Epstein’s accusers have previously alleged that the Central Park property was outfitted with a network of CCTV cameras, one of which appears to be visible in the photographs obtained by the NYT.
The green copy of Lolita, dating from 1955, is noteworthy given that the novel recounts an older man’s sexual desire for an underage girl.
It also inspired a queasy nickname to the plane Epstein used to fly back and forth to his private Island of Little St James – dubbed the “Lolita Express.”
