This woman ran Epstein’s diary for 18 years. How much did she know?

London: Apart from Jeffrey Epstein himself, the name that appears most often in the Epstein files is not Donald Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell or Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, but that of the convicted sex offender’s long-time assistant Lesley Groff.

Among the millions of documents detailing Epstein’s correspondence which have been released by the US Department of Justice, Groff’s name appears more than 160,000 times. By comparison, the name of Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, appears 53,000 times, while Donald and Melania Trump trail on 38,000 mentions.

Groff, 58, has always maintained she was kept deliberately in the dark about her boss’s crimes, but others have queried how someone so close to Epstein could have remained blind to his misdeeds. In interviews, Epstein said his assistants were “an extension of [his] brain”, while Groff, who worked for the financier for nearly two decades, said she knew what he was thinking. She booked his massages: Did she not know what was going on?

On Tuesday, her role in Epstein’s world will come under intense scrutiny when she appears before the US House of Representatives’ oversight committee in Washington, DC. Epstein’s victims, law enforcement officials and the millions gripped by the saga will hope Groff’s testimony can illuminate a case that, despite years of intense global scrutiny, still refuses to yield all its secrets.

“It wouldn’t take very long to hang out with Jeffrey Epstein to know what he was involved in, and she was with him for years,” says Nick Bryant, an investigative journalist who published Epstein’s little black book of contacts in 2015.

“She was just facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s machine and getting paid well for it. Epstein was essentially a cult. And it can be easy for people to be sucked into a cult, where the cult of Epstein becomes your life, and you facilitate whatever he wants you to facilitate.”

At the heart of things

The volume of documentation bearing Groff’s name is a testament to her central role in Epstein’s life. From 2001 until 2019, when he was found dead in prison while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, Groff ran his day-to-day existence as his most senior and longest-serving assistant. She presided over Epstein’s diary, attending to his travel, meetings, calls, meals and social events, not to mention his frequent massages.

Whenever Epstein was dealing with Trump, former UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York, Bill Gates or any other member of his bulging address book of the world’s elite, Groff was right at the heart of things. She and her boss developed the kind of seamless working relationship vital to high-level assistant work.

“I know what he is thinking,” she told The New York Times in 2005, “and I know when I need to be fast. It’s a nice roll we are on.” In the same piece, Epstein said his assistants were “an extension of [his] brain” and a “social prosthesis”, adding that “their intuition is something that I don’t have”.

Yet while other figures in Epstein’s orbit have had their lives turned upside-down thanks to their association with the financier, Groff has seemingly carried on relatively unaffected.

She lives a quiet life in New Canaan, an affluent town in Connecticut, where she has occasionally been photographed practising yoga or walking her dog.

She has never been charged with a crime. She has always insisted, through her lawyers, that she was ignorant of Epstein’s criminal activities, and has been as shocked as the rest of the world by the ongoing revelations around him.

“It is our strong position that Epstein purposefully kept Lesley isolated from his criminal conduct since he had no reason to confide in her and every reason to lie,” said her lawyer Michael Bachner, in a statement to journalists this year.

“Epstein lived in two worlds – one legitimate and the other not – and made sure they did not collide … Lesley now realises that Epstein made her a face of his legitimate world.” The statement also emphasised that Groff “never witnessed or was told of anything illegal related to [the] massages”.

However, these denials have not stopped speculation that, given her closeness to Epstein over such a long period, she might know more than she has revealed so far.

Getting the full story

When the FBI created a diagram of Epstein’s inner circle, Groff was there, alongside Epstein’s girlfriend, Maxwell, Kahn and other senior associates (only Maxwell has faced criminal charges). The letter requesting Groff’s presence at Tuesday’s hearing stated: “The committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation.” In other words: we still do not have the whole story.

Much may hinge on Epstein’s massages, as booking the appointments was part of Groff’s job. In the mornings, according to the FBI interviews, Epstein would ring Groff and ask her to “Call X and see if she can do a massage at 4”. If one masseuse was unavailable, he would tell her to try an alternative.

“From the beginning, massage was a part of Epstein’s day; they were normal appointments,” the FBI report says. “Groff thought Maxwell told her Epstein had to have a massage every day […] It was presented like it was totally normal.”

Epstein’s “massages” were anything but normal: they were often a front for sex with young women, some underage, on occasions as young as 14. In FBI interviews, one of Epstein’s victims, who was under 18 when the crimes took place, claimed that Groff arranged the massages, which “turned sexual right away”. The victim claimed it was “pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on”. She alleged that Groff had arranged a payment from Epstein to cover an abortion, as well as hotel accommodation. Groff denies those allegations.

“I am not alleging that every employee committed a crime,” says Lisa Phillips, an Epstein survivor and justice campaigner.

“However, individuals with significant access to Epstein’s activities may possess crucial evidence that could help establish the truth, identify witnesses, corroborate survivor testimony and assist ongoing investigations.” She notes that among the Groff emails is one in which she messages Epstein to request a temporary access code for Mountbatten-Windsor (then- Prince Andrew) and his staff.

“If Lesley Groff has relevant information, I urge her to come forward and co-operate fully with the appropriate authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom,” Phillips adds.

“Survivors deserve answers about how a global trafficking network targeting vulnerable young women and girls was able to operate for so long and whether others helped sustain, protect or conceal it.”

‘Job to organise one man’s life’

Groff took a roundabout route to Epstein’s side. Little is known about her early life. According to an interview with the FBI in 2021, released as part of the Epstein files, Groff studied at the University of Texas in Dallas before moving to New Jersey, where she worked for an office-supplies company for nine years. After divorcing her first husband, she worked at Nordstrom, a department store. She is keen on fitness and met her second husband, Ike, at a triathlon.

By 2001, when she was in her mid-30s, Groff had pivoted to try to find work as an events planner on Wall Street. It was at this point that a recruiter approached her about becoming an assistant for a financier, a “job to organise one man’s life”, as the FBI interview records it. Groff was interviewed for the role at 457 Madison Avenue, Epstein’s business headquarters in New York, by Maxwell and Maxwell’s assistant, before being interviewed by Epstein the next day.

According to the FBI records, Groff found it to be “a very vibrant office” where the phone kept ringing. She got the job. As part of her contract with Epstein, she signed a non-disclosure agreement that stated that if she revealed any information about his affairs, she would have to pay him $US100,000 ($140,000).

Once in the role, Groff quickly assumed responsibility for Epstein’s life. At the time she started, he did not use email, so she was constantly answering one of two phones, making and breaking appointments, booking rides on the jet, dealing with chefs and pilots and other staff. It was hectic. She was warned that mistakes were “not tolerated”.

Groff informed the FBI that Maxwell had told her she was “here to work”, that Epstein’s friends were not Groff’s friends, and that she was not to engage in frivolous conversation with the financier.

If she bought him cinema tickets, she wasn’t to ask what he thought of the film the following day. On some days, Groff went home in tears, but the work was invigorating, as was the proximity to the great and good.

“Groff felt it was pretty incredible to see all the people Epstein dealt with in politics, television, etcetera,” records the FBI interview. “Groff felt ‘wow’; prior to working for Epstein, she never knew people who owned a plane, etcetera.”

Those who dealt with her say Groff was friendly and competent. One New York businessman even suggested her efficiency was the envy of Germany’s armed forces. But she learnt early on not to mix work with pleasure. In the weeks after she started, she went to a party with some of Epstein’s Wall Street contacts. He found out and “torched” her, threatening to fire her. She never repeated the mistake.

Still, Epstein evidently valued her. Some years after she started working for him, she moved to work from his home – a seven-storey house on East 71st Street – instead of the financier’s office. He told The New York Times that when Groff got pregnant in 2004, he bought her a car and offered to pay for a nanny, saying there was “no way” he could “lose Lesley to motherhood”.

The following year, he doubled her salary, from $US60,000 to $US120,000. Epstein also sent her on a lavish holiday to Florida and gave her beauty treatments. Ike, forwarding an email Groff sent about the holiday, described Epstein as “seriously the best boss ever”.

In 2015, Groff toured Epstein’s plane, rode on his helicopter and took a boat to Little St James, his private island in the Caribbean, before staying at a hotel. By 2016, Groff had emailed Ike to say that her salary was up to $US150,000, plus a bonus.

While he could be generous, however, it was always clear that Epstein inhabited a different dimension of wealth from his staff. In her FBI interview, Groff remembered seeing an invoice for a carpet for Epstein’s private jet that amounted to more than she made in a year.

Despite the endless massages, the private jets and other trappings of elite lifestyle that Groff was privy to, for the early years of her employment, she might have been able to claim no knowledge at all that her boss had a darker side.

‘This could be bad’

That became impossible after 2008, when Epstein pleaded guilty to two state-level charges in Florida, including procuring a girl under 18 for prostitution, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Groff continued to work for him.

As part of the plea deal Epstein struck in that case (which granted the financier federal immunity), the US government had agreed not to pursue any charges against her or other Epstein associates, including Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova.

The Epstein files disclose that, as part of her role, Groff was responsible for handling cash payments – usually between $US500 and $US1000 – as well as dental and beauty appointments for the cast of women and girls requested by her boss. If they were coming from overseas, she would arrange their visas, travel and accommodation.

She also occasionally had to work as a confidant, helping to track down a mislaid bikini or reassuring someone nervous about meeting Epstein.

In October 2011, having arranged for two women to meet Epstein, she received an anxious message from one of them.“Hey Lesley, My friend just got back, and I spoke to her now about tonight,” it read. “She has never done anything of this sort before, and is a little nervous about the whole thing. I don’t know what Jeffrey has planned for tonight, but is it ok if they just meet this time? She would really feel more comfortable that way. If Jeffrey would rather not, its ok.. Let me know.”

On other occasions, Groff seems alarmed by the accusations around her boss. In an email to Ike in 2014, Groff wrote: “Oh man. I knew down thing [sic] was going on but I did not know what. This could be bad.”

Bachner, her lawyer, said: “After Epstein’s arrest in 2008, he continuously lied to Lesley and other members of the staff, insisting that he had been blackmailed and set up. He angrily said the allegations against him were simply false, and he had no idea that the ‘prostitute’ he had contact with was a minor. In Lesley’s mind, that was the reason that he was treated so leniently by law enforcement before and after he was sentenced.”

‘Lesley wishes she had never met Epstein and that she had resigned.’

Michael Bachner, Lesley Groff’s lawyer.

Others have previously claimed that Groff facilitated Epstein’s wrongdoing. In 2017, the author Sarah Ransome brought a case alleging that she had been abused by Epstein, and that Groff, among other employees of his, helped enable his conduct. Later the same year, Ransome withdrew her case against Groff and the others, and, in 2018, reached a settlement with Epstein and Maxwell.

Epstein rewarded Groff for her loyalty right up to the end of his life. Two days before he died in jail in New York while awaiting further charges of sex trafficking, he wrote a will in which he said he forgave any outstanding loans he had made to his long-time assistant. After he died, a criminal investigation was launched into Groff, but was dropped two years later. Subsequent civil cases were also dropped or dismissed.

Groff, through Bachner, declined to comment for this piece. In an earlier statement, Bachner said that although Groff “considered resigning, Epstein was manipulative in persuading her to remain”. Groff was “awestruck by the quality of the company that continued to surround Epstein after his conviction, including: heads of state; philanthropists; scientists; philosophers, past and present elected officials; and men and women of universal approbation”.

“Lesley wishes she had never met Epstein and that she had resigned,” he added. “Instead, her life has been turned upside down – including being viciously threatened – simply for doing her job as a secretary for a con-man who intentionally misled her and kept her isolated from his criminal conduct.”

Fairly or not, Groff’s denials have not stopped the speculation surrounding her role. The House oversight committee hopes that she will shed more light on what she knew about Epstein’s activities, but they may be disappointed.

Although Groff is mentioned 160,000 times in the files, there is no concrete evidence that she knew the extent of Epstein’s crimes. Whether that was due to ignorance, wilful blindness or something in between may remain a mystery.

After all, along with efficiency, the most desirable quality in an assistant is discretion.

The Telegraph, London

National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line: 1800 737 732. Crisis support can be found at Lifeline: 13 11 14

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