The prestigious arts school where Jeffrey Epstein’s shadow still lingers

For three decades, a lodge in the woods by the lake here has stood as a vestige of Jeffrey Epstein’s time at Interlochen, a prestigious arts school and camp in northern Michigan where he travelled as a teenage bassoonist and returned as a celebrated donor.

Years before he was convicted as a sex offender, Epstein directed more than $US400,000 ($567,000) to Interlochen. Much of it was spent on building the Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge. Records released by the US Department of Justice and the school indicate that he stayed there on some of his visits to Interlochen in the 1990s and in 2000.

Warning: This story contains graphic details

It was during those visits, amid the winding paths and practice huts, and the students competing to excel, that Epstein is said to have met two of the earliest victims of his grooming and abuse.

After Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida of a sex offence involving a minor, Interlochen cut all ties with him, renamed the building and removed a plaque that acknowledged his role. Now it is preparing to demolish the lodge in coming days as it works to shed any connection to Epstein, who used his philanthropy 30 years ago to help gain access to two young girls whose tuition he paid.

“It has taken on a negative association that is not reflective of our values,” spokesperson Maureen Oleson said.

There have been no reports of abuse by Epstein occurring at the Interlochen Centre for the Arts, as it is formally known. The school has emphasised that no one reported conduct of this sort during the time when it accepted money from Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while facing sex-trafficking charges in New York. His last gift was in 2003.

But Justice Department records reveal the extent of efforts Interlochen took in the 1990s to please an important donor and how Epstein wielded his chequebook and interest in the arts to fashion an aura of respectability. Some of the documents show that at one point in 2020, prosecutors asked the school for years of financial records as they examined whether Epstein had groomed other girls by paying their tuition. They found no other cases.

A visit to the school last month illustrated how much it has done since to separate itself from that past.

Interlochen’s security practices and visitor protocols have been overhauled, though officials say those changes are not a direct result of Epstein’s legacy. Some 240 cameras have been installed around its 4800-square-metre campus, and a law firm has been hired to evaluate reports of past sexual misconduct by former faculty and staff members.

“I don’t want to attribute everything to Epstein,” the school’s president, Trey Devey, said of the improvements. “Certainly, we have to be even more vigilant as a result of Epstein.”

School officials say the continuing flow of applications from sterling candidates indicates that Interlochen’s reputation has not suffered serious harm. But they do not deny that the affiliation with Epstein has had an impact.

“The association with Epstein conflates the most vile individual with something that’s extremely beautiful and important,” Devey said. “It’s challenging to have an association with this person who is so evil.”

An arts incubator in the woods

In the spring here, amid the towering pines as the loon calls echo over the lakes, it is difficult to imagine how Interlochen, lauded but intense, could be associated with anything more damaging than bruised egos.

Founded in the 1920s, the centre is both a year-round boarding school for teenage prodigies and a summer camp. Each week, starting in late June, some 1500 students, some as young as eight, travel from around the world to live in lakeside lodges and to fill the air with verses from Shakespeare or melodies from Mozart.

Alumni describe it as a magical place, alive with extraordinarily talented, ambitious young people who are encouraged to pursue their dreams in music, dance, the visual arts or creative writing. Many go on to play for great orchestras. Some become famous. Josh Groban, Chappell Roan and Da’Vine Joy Randolph all spent time at Interlochen.

Epstein was a 14-year-old from New York in 1967 when he attended the camp on a scholarship. Gavin Ferriby, who was a camper that summer, remembered in an interview that “Eppy” could be “funny and occasionally curt”. In a blog post in 2023, Ferriby wrote, “He did not seem mildly threatening, just mildly eccentric.”

An alumnus with assets

Epstein, who managed the assets of wealthy clients, began donating to Interlochen in 1990 and held fundraising events for the school, including a 1997 cocktail party at his home to honour Mike Wallace, the 60 Minutes journalist who was an Interlochen alumnus. One year, he helped pay for Interlochen musicians to perform at the Atlanta Olympics. In 1992, he flew violinist Itzhak Perlman on his jet to perform on campus.

The giving included $US200,000 to build the campus lodge that bore his name and was created to house visitors and parents. Rental income from the three-bedroom structure – designed with input from Epstein – was to be directed to the Jeffrey Epstein Scholarship Fund.

“When awards are made, Interlochen will notify you, with respect to the recipients,” Timothy Ambrose, who was then the vice president of institutional advancement, wrote in 1994.

“The recipients will also be asked to communicate with the donor. If you would like to meet the students, we will help arrange a meeting on campus as well.”

After the structure was completed, Ambrose wrote to express gratitude. “It is a remarkable place,” he said in a letter from 1994.

Interlochen said the scholarship fund was never created, but income from the lodge did go into the centre’s general fund, which financed some scholarships. In an interview, Ambrose said that, at the time, Epstein appeared to be just a generous donor.

“There was no way to know,” he said.

In 1993, Epstein was named to the school’s President’s Club, which meant he could, among other things, help in “identifying prospective students”. And for two weeks every summer, under the terms of the gift he made to the school, he could stay at the lodge.

Ambrose told investigators that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion, would call to arrange visits and request supplies for the lodge, such as freshly squeezed orange juice and whole-grain bread. On one occasion, Ambrose said she told him they were bringing a masseuse.

The lodge was only a few minutes’ walk from the campus centre, called the Mall, and its small shops, such as the Melody Freeze, where students bought snacks. It was there in 1994 that Epstein and Maxwell met a 13-year-old vocalist sitting on a bench with her friends, eating ice cream.

Maxwell was walking “a cute little Yorkie”, the woman would later recall in court.

“The rest of my friends, my classmates, left, and I was there by myself,” said the woman, who testified anonymously at Maxwell’s trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2021. “And I sat on the bench still eating my ice cream, and the man sat across from me.”

The lawsuit she filed in 2020 against Maxwell and Epstein’s estate contained her depiction of what occurred next. “Epstein bragged to her about being a patron of the arts and giving scholarships to talented young artists,” according to the court papers.

“Epstein and Maxwell probed her at length about her background, family situation and where she lived.”

A generous new friend

The young woman who met Epstein while eating ice cream at Interlochen described in court years later how he lured her into his orbit. When she had returned to Florida in the fall of 1994, Epstein invited both her and her mother to his Palm Beach home and began supplying the family with money and gifts.

The financial help came in handy. The girl had recently lost her father, a conductor and composer, to leukemia, and home life was difficult.

The first sexual encounter soon followed when Epstein one day led her to his pool house, where he pulled her on top of him and masturbated, she later testified. She was 14 and said it was the beginning of years of sexual demands and, she outlined in court papers, an act of rape. Still, she said, she told no one, not even her mother.

Epstein paid for her to return to Interlochen the next two summers. She later flew on his jet to visit him at his New Mexico ranch or his New York home, and she recalled in court papers that he once introduced her to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, once friendly with Epstein, has said he knew nothing about Epstein abusing underage girls.

The young woman’s mother later told investigators that she grew concerned about the extent of Epstein’s interest in her daughter. She recounted speaking with an Interlochen receptionist, who told her, “He is trustworthy around the kids, and there is no need to worry.”

The school said that it could find no mention of the call in its records and that it would have been placed years before Epstein was identified as a sex offender.

Epstein later paid for her to attend a private high school in New York and put her and her mother up in an apartment. But she moved to Los Angeles in 1999 for an acting career, and eventually broke off contact, she said.

In 2020, after Epstein’s death, the woman sued his estate and Maxwell anonymously and won a $US5 million settlement.

A second former Interlochen camper who said she was groomed by Epstein also described meeting him on the Mall in 1997.

She was 14 and standing beside a decorative wishing well, and he and Maxwell were again walking their dog, the woman, who requested anonymity, said in an interview. She recalled being invited to Epstein’s lodge, where she was given cake, and how, after subsequent conversations, Epstein agreed to pay her tuition for camp the following year.

“You clearly have made one young lady extremely happy,” Ambrose said in a 1997 note. “She is a talented musician, and we look forward to her return next summer.” Epstein paid for two years of her attendance at boarding school at Interlochen and, later, her tuition at music school in New York, where she regularly visited his townhouse.

She said that Epstein and Maxwell often wielded the threat of withdrawing financial support as a weapon, and that they dropped her around 2003 after she refused to attend a meeting with a prominent person in New York. She was forced to pay her music school fees. She described an encounter with Epstein in which he asked her to massage his feet, but declined to elaborate on her interactions with him.

Lingering questions

Although the Epstein lodge was renamed after Green Lake more than a decade ago, it remained something of a place of morbid curiosity. Last month, the Interlochen board decided that the cabin, which had been left empty since March, should come down.

The timing of the demolition has not been announced, and the school has yet to decide what will take its place.

“Interlochen’s executive team and board are currently involved in a master planning process that looks at all areas of campus – the former Green Lake Lodge site will be included as part of that larger review,” said Oleson, the spokesperson.

Also under way is the investigation by an outside law firm into allegations of past sexual misconduct at the boarding school. The review was prompted when a former student came forward in 2024 with a complaint from the 1970s, and the school said other alumni “have shared sobering accounts with lifelong and lasting impacts”.

The outside firm is also looking into the school’s experience with Epstein. Its report is due this northern summer.

Under protocols introduced over the past decade or so, no donor or other adult visitor is allowed to be with a student without an escort. Students are told how to register their concerns about inappropriate behaviour – there is a form – and they can do so anonymously. Everyone on staff is obliged to report any worries.

“We are relying on a network of our employees to be our eyes and ears,” said Ned Hartwick, director of campus safety.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service

1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).