Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Week 2
A Summary + Analysis of Days 2 & 3 of Week 2.
New York, New York (AA)
Week 2 Day 3 of the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial saw witness Shawn take the stand, the ex-boyfriend of Carolyn. Other than Shawn’s personal history, no new information came out of the testimony but it was strongly corroborative of Carolyn’s testimony which will likely aid the prosecution. Like Carolyn, Shawn has had problems with drugs. He got convicted in 2015 for possession of methamphetamine and in 2017 he received a conviction for felony possession of a firearm, serving time in prison before being released in 2020.
Shawn corroborated the pink color of Epstein’s house at the time he visited, as well as the lingerie gift received via Fedex from Epstein in New York. Shawn said they would go to Epstein’s house every 2 weeks, and that Sarah Kellen would call him to request Carolyn’s “massage” services.
Explosive testimony from Carolyn came on Day 2 when she relayed Kellen calling her to offer $500-600 dollars for a photoshoot, which Kellen ended up executing while Carolyn was nude. As far as I know, that constitutes production of child pornography.
Why is Sarah Kellen not in custody?!
She also testified to Ghislaine Maxwell molesting her, feeling her breasts, hips, and buttocks and telling Carolyn that was she had a great body for Epstein. Carolyn was 14 years old when this molestation happened.
The prosecution admitted a picture of Carolyn’s birthday party under seal, so those in the overflow courtroom and observing were not able to see the picture.
Carolyn’s home life was pretty tragic, as her grandfather molested/raped her from the time she was 4 years old and her mother was a drug addict and alcoholic. She was formerly addicted to cocaine and pain killers, but currently takes methadone for her opiate addiction, Xanax for anxiety, and anti-schizophrenia drugs because she sometimes hears voices that tell her her own children will be trafficked.
She was then asked if she could tell the difference between reality and fiction, truth and lies, to which she responded she could.
Carolyn lied to Shawn about her age, stating she was 17 when in reality she was 13. It was not until her 14th birthday that Shawn discovered her true age and the same age when she first met Jeffrey Epstein. Both Shawn and Carolyn would hangout with Virginia Roberts and her then-boyfriend, Tony Figueroa, driving around Florida and smoking marijuana.
She described first walking into Epstein’s house and seeing Ghislaine Maxwell, thereby referring to her as “Maxwell” as she could not pronounce “Ghislaine”. She went on to describe Epstein’s bedroom and the first time she partook in a “massage” session with Epstein and Virginia Roberts.
Her voice was visibly shaken when relaying this first session and Roberts getting undressed. A similar reaction occurred when she was showed a picture of Epstein in order to verify his identity.
She testified to going over to Epstein’s house for “massages” over 100 times over the course of 4 years, from the time she was 14 to the time she turned 18. It was when she was 18 that she said, “I realized I was too old”, as Epstein requested for her to bring him girls younger than her.
Carolyn was cross-examined by Pagliuca in a court session that some described as “sleazy”, with the witness bursting into tears more than once. Pagliuca continued to point out discrepancies in the various testimonies that Carolyn gave to the government over the years and what she is saying today. Some "journalists" (activists) were cheering her sarcastic answers to Pagliuca but it seemed Carolyn did not understand Pagliuca's intentions. The cross-examiner does not have to have two consecutive questions be directly correlated.
When asked two disparate questions in a row by Pagliuca (which happened several times) she would say things like, "What does that have to do with the previous question?" (paraphrase) Carolyn again started to break down when asked what she did with the money she made from the "massages", responding with the answer, "buying drugs". However, when Maurene Comey questioned her at the end of the day she had another outburst, stating that Ghislaine Maxwell had ruined her life. This testimony probably undid a lot of the questioning that Pagliuca conducted in the aforementioned cross-examination.
At the very end of the day after testimony had finished, the prosecution declared they may rest their case by the end of this week! This may be why today in court there was a visible uptick in the attendance of observers, possibly in anticipation of the trial ending much sooner than expected (6 weeks).
Menninger seemed to do a decent job in her cross-examination of FBI Agent Stephen Flatley, questioning the certainty of determining if Maxwell was the one who created the advertisement for a "massage therapist". The advertisement of the computer user "GMAX" created the document: "Help Wanted: Are You A Massage Therapist? Work in Palm Beach Home. Excellent Pay. Mostly Weekends." (The metadata was also listed). I thought it was funny how FBI Computer Analysis Response Team Coordinator, Stephen Flatley, kept pronouncing Ghislaine's name as "JizzLane".
After Shawn’s testimony on Day 3 (Wednesday), Nicole Hesse was called to the witness stand, a former part-time house manager for Jeffrey Epstein at El Brillo Way until 2004. Her duties included maintaining things like the A.C. and listening to instructions given to her on a notepad and via phone. She would rarely interact with Epstein and Maxwell, as she did her house maintenance work while they were away. Message pads from this time were shown and verified by Hesse, before being admitted by the prosecution as evidence.
The chief pilot for Epstein was next on the stand by far the most interesting testimony of the day. He worked as a pilot for Epstein from 1991-2019, a total of 28 years. He testified to mostly flying to and from Epstein’s houses in Palm Beach, Florida, New York, Columbus, Ohio, and the Zorro Ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was first hired by Epstein in 1991 in Columbus, Ohio before hiring his then-co-pilot, Lawrence Visoski, who testified in Week 1 of the trial.
Rodgers testified that “She would be #2” in the hierarchy, referencing Ghislaine Maxwell as having worked under Epstein, something which has been disputed by victims and others outside of criminal court.
Rodgers would only ever say “Hi” to passengers, rarely talking with them at length if at all. The planes he flew for Epstein were a Gulf Stream, a twin engine CESSNA, and a Boeing jetliner. In terms of record-keeping, he kept a passenger manifest, aircraft log, and his own personal flight log, the latter of which was submitted under seal with a redacted version shown to the public observers in the courtroom.
There were many places listed as departure points and destinations in the flight log, including Traverse City, Michigan, the closest airport to the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Epstein would travel there nearly yearly in August, with one exception being a flight made on the 31st of July. The most oft-seen destination on the log was Teterboro, New Jersey, which was the place Epstein was taken into custody in 2019.
Other places listed with Bedford, Massachusetts:
Nuys, California
Tangiers, Morrocco
Grenada, Spain
Paris, France
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands
Canada
Luton, England
Bangor, Maine
Cahokia, Illinois (for aircraft renovation)
Rodgers testified he never saw minors on-board the aircraft unless they were with parents or a nanny, and that both Jane and Virginia Roberts appeared to be 18 although he never checked I.D.’s of passengers. He said in court he never saw sexual activity of any kind, with minors or otherwise. He could not visibly see the passenger cabin while in-flight though he was never explicitly told not to leave the cockpit or not to mingle with passengers, nor was he given any rules about what he could not do with passengers. He rarely used the bathroom in-flight but when he did he likewise did not see untoward behavior, nor any evidence of used condoms, sex toys, or anything that’d suggest sex on flights.
Rodgers listed Sarah Kellen as a frequent passenger, that he would send flights manifests to Epstein at the end of every month and that he had no reason to believe that Ghislaine Maxwell was reviewing flight manifests.
As mentioned in my broadcast this evening, Everdell did a good job of trying to point out that witness/victim Jane, who shares the same first name as a former assistant of Epstein, could not be determined to be a different person than the one that Rodgers met in November of 1996.
That was until Rodgers testified that he did not meet Jane #2 until 2003, meaning that Jane #1 could not have been Epstein’s assistant! This was a big moment in the courtroom today, and got an audible reaction from onlookers, myself included.
Other names brought up today were Mark Epstein and Les Wexner, though unfortunately not to any real consequence. Wexner was mentioned only as the main reason Epstein would travel to Columbus, Ohio and Epstein was mentioned only to be determined he was not on flights with Jane.
As mentioned in my broadcast, also big was the testimony from Rodgers that he was not familiar with the name, Annie Farmer, nor did he ever recall seeing her on flights. Annie Farmer’s testimony is highly anticipated by almost all of whom I have spoken with at court, and it seems they are purposefully delaying it, perhaps a trick by the prosecution to psych her out by keeping her in limbo.
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