Now that Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier and friend to presidents, has been arrested and charged with running a sex trafficking ring, the public is beginning to learn a bit more about Epstein’s private life, and the luxury townhouse in which he is accused of having sexually assaulted a host of young girls for years.
Per the New York Times, Epstein’s $56 million Manhattan home contained a number of features that, even if he weren’t an alleged child molester, would easily be considered deeply weird. Among them: “A mural that Mr. Epstein had commissioned in recent years: a photorealistic prison scene that included barbed wire, corrections officers and a guard station, with Mr. Epstein portrayed in the middle.”
Public relations specialist R. Couri Hay told the Times that he’d visited Epstein’s home for a meeting and to see the mural three months ago. Hay recounted to the Times that Epstein said: “That’s me, and I had this painted because there is always the possibility that could be me again.”
The Upper East Side home—whose massive front doors police pried open with a crowbar during their weekend raid—also reportedly features a hallway festooned with fake eyes initially created for injured soldiers. And in a particularly grotesque detail given the allegations against him, he also decorated his home with “a life-size female doll hanging from a chandelier,” according to the Times.
Even Epstein’s chess set was enough to trigger major creep alarms. One visitor to the home told the newspaper the set featured “custom figurines dressed in underwear — each piece, he noted, was modeled after one of his staffers.”
During his initial court appearance on Monday, attorneys for Epstein—who pleaded not guilty to the charges against him—claimed that because there had been no threats of violence or coercion against the girls Epstein is accused of assaulting, he could not be considered a rapist.
According to prosecutors’ court filings, police recovered a “vast trove of lewd photographs” featuring multiple women at Epstein’s home, loaded onto “compact discs with handwritten labels including the following: ‘Young [Name] + [Name],’ ‘Misc nudes 1,’ and ‘Girl pics nudes.’”