For decades, Jeffrey Epstein was considered an enigma. Often casually sporting blue jeans and mussed-up hair, the ultra-wealthy Manhattan financier held himself with an air of smugness that transcended still-frame snapshots of him.
He was notoriously well-connected, keeping an expansive and eclectic circle of royals, world leaders, titans of business, renowned scientists, and thought leaders in his pocket. Epstein positioned himself as a cultural savant, holding court with director Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn and discussing their thoughts on Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. When he regretfully declined an invitation to attend a symposium on improvising classical music, the organizer lamented they’d miss his “musical thinking.” His Amazon account paints him as a prolific and well-rounded reader, according to Bloomberg, which went through the dozens of titles he ordered, including books on philosophy, mathematics, investment, historical figures, and “middlebrow erotica.”
But Epstein was not what he seemed. In July 2019, he was arrested and charged with running a sex-trafficking ring so vast and shrouded in secrecy that years after his death that August, the world is still trying to piece together how he was able to operate the illicit network so brazenly for so long. Last month, following a bipartisan bill pushed through by Congress in November, the Department of Justice finally released more than 3 million investigatory files on a man who is now considered one of history’s most prolific sex traffickers with hundreds of victims.
While the documents help reveal the extent of his crimes — and the web of powerful people around him — they also shed light on the personality of a mysterious criminal. The overwhelming amount of emails, texts, business records, flight logs, and credit card statements has slowly begun to unravel the myths that have enshrouded Epstein. They reveal a man who might not have been the all-encompassing cultural aesthete that he wanted the influential people he surrounded himself with to believe. His emails are dry, choppy and curt, riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Once considered an investment wizard with a brilliant mathematical mind, those lofty bona fides have since been called into question. And inexplicably, he had a habit of pestering people to send him playlists of modern-leaning, upbeat songs, including David Guetta and Tiësto. (Two years before his death, he told a woman he was a fan of deep house music.)
Rolling Stone combed through thousands of these files to better understand some of Epstein’s more mundane, day-to-day habits, particularly when it came to his musical tastes. One of his girlfriends told a staffer that she believed his favorite songs were Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables. In 2013, he asked one female student to stop by his Upper East Side townhouse to talk about French composer Claude Debussy and teach him music theory. However, Epstein’s daily listening preferences seemed to be on par with many men born in 1953. According to his Spotify Wrapped for 2016, Epstein’s top genres were “soft rock” and “mellow gold,” and his top songs for the year were “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by Marion Williams, and “Hold On I’m Comin’” by Sam & Dave.
Epstein wanted constant access to his music, even at the dentist’s office. His staffers sent frequent reminders to ensure that his iPod was fully charged and that he brought along headphones to the appointments. An early champion of Spotify, he encouraged acquaintances and young women to download the app soon after it launched in the United States in 2011. (Epstein briefly held a $1 million investment in the company.) Epstein routinely lodged complaints with his staffers when his devices and audio systems across his many homes and vehicles didn’t automatically sync with his Spotify and iTunes accounts. He even had a “personal genius” on speed dial whenever he forgot a password or needed troubleshooting help. (The IT specialist did not respond to Rolling Stone’s attempts to reach them.)
Emails show that Epstein repeatedly badgered people to make and send him playlists, wanting USB thumb drives of songs that he could play in the car and on his private jet, telling one woman to compile tracks of “just what you like” in May 2017. That same month, French pianist Simon Ghraichy sent Epstein the Air France playlist for that month and offered “if you need a playlist for your plane, I could take care of it,” noting he would “avoid Hispanic.” (Ghraichy did not return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
Beginning in 2011, Epstein curated several Spotify playlists, adding “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel in 2012, and “Little Drummer Boy” by Whitney Houston featuring Bobbi Kristina Brown in 2013 to a playlist titled “random.” Another Spotify account that Business Insider previously linked to Epstein showed he had playlists devoted to Elton John, Broadway show tunes, the Beatles, Beethoven, jazz, classical and “gosapel” music. In a departure from Epstein’s professed musical tastes, there were also a handful of noticeably more youthful playlists, which included pop and dance-based tracks, named after Pitbull and exercising.
In multiple email exchanges, Epstein’s seemingly lighthearted requests for new music were followed by light scoldings when he failed to receive the playlists promptly, resulting in light scoldings. In October 2011, a redacted sender, who saved Epstein’s contact information as “Uncle F,” sent the financier over a list of clubby songs after he indicated he’d be more willing to help her secure a guest speaker for an upcoming event at her school if “Uncle F had the playlist he was promised.”
The student, who previously explained to him that she hadn’t had time to compile songs because she was “so so so stressed with school,” sent over a dance-heavy track list, including EDM remixes of Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” and Florence & the Machine’s “Shake It Out.” Many of the songs the student suggested wound up on his public playlist called “Celina.” It’s the same name as the daughter of billionaire couple Glenn and Eva Dubin, who were friends with Epstein. A former Swedish model, Eva was one of Epstein’s early girlfriends in the Eighties and described by Epstein’s circle as the love of his life. Epstein became close with their daughter Celina, whom he allegedly referred to as his goddaughter. (The Dubins have denied Epstein was Celina’s godfather. A family spokesperson recently told the New York Post that the release of Celina’s emails with Epstein wasn’t properly handled by the DOJ. The Dubin Family Foundation did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.)
Epstein chided another young woman for forgetting to send him music in February 2012. “I scheduled my day around you,” he wrote in a typo-filled email. “You have not been nice with me, no playlist. afer one month, you tell me you do nothing all day but chill in the apt i give you, and then you tell me sorry i have no time to make playlist. you are wonderful„ but i am very dissparointed how you treat me as a friend.” In another email exchange from that October, an acquaintance asks, “what new music would make you happy while swimming or shall I just select myself?” while a fourth sender seemed to have created a personalized playlist for Epstein to listen to during his workouts in 2013.
Epstein would also receive unsolicited song recommendations from his circle of friends, with emails showing redacted senders sharing songs like “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear” by Elvis Presley, “California Girls” by the German electronic artist NoMBe, and his last known girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, sending him a handful of Banks songs to check out in 2015. Years earlier, Mette-Marit, the Crown Princess of Norway, recommended that Epstein listen to jazz singer Solveig Slettahjell’s album Antologie, saying it reminded her of “autumn and heartbreak in all forms.” By 2017, when a woman asked Epstein what genres of music he listened to, Epstein said he enjoyed “many different types,” including “classical. deep house. r and b, and jazz.”
Before pivoting to Spotify to hold his library of music, Epstein spent thousands of dollars on iTunes purchases, buying songs like “Butterfly Kisses” in 2010, and downloading silly apps like FatBooth, a face-bloating photo tool, and international messaging services, like WhatsApp and Signal. A significant portion of the charges stemmed from a variety of movies that were rented or purchased under Epstein’s account, including the horror-rock musical Repo! The Genetic Opera, Jessica Alba’s Honey, and the unrated version of Hot Tub Time Machine.
It’s not clear if Epstein was binging these movies alone or with others, as some of the email correspondence shows that he allowed guests at his various residences to watch titles on his account. He also shared his login information with his girlfriend, with charges to an American Express card linked to Shuliak’s name showing downloads of seasons of Madam Secretary, Friends, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder. Still, some of the flicks would have appealed to Epstein’s tastes, including downloads of The Buddha – The Story of Siddhartha and Eyes Wide Shut in 2010; and Dangerous Liaisons and The Affair of the Necklace in 2017.
And in late May 2018, Epstein rattled off a list of movie titles to Shuliak over email, then later that day complained to his tech specialist that his iPad was having trouble downloading movies. Among the titles Epstein had named were Airplane, Animal House, Forrest Gump, Silence of the Lambs, Rocky, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music.
The millions of released documents help strip away the air of mystery Epstein carefully worked to project, revealing a prolific criminal who used the guise of culture, taste, and access to carry out extraordinary abuse. What now remains is a record of a man largely devoid of the sophistication he claimed to possess.
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