Ghislaine Maxwell on the death of Epstein: ‘I believe he was murdered’

Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed that prison guards allowed her disgraced former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein to die and that the infamous photograph of Prince Andrew with Virginia Giuffre is a “fake,” reports the Daily Mail.

In clips of a video interview with Jeremy Kyle last August, the convicted sex offender and former British Socialite offered no apologies to Epstein’s victims, instead saying that they should take their disappointment out on the authorities who allowed him to die.

After being asked to address Epstein’s victims, Maxwell replied: “I say that Epstein died and they should take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities who allowed that to happen. And as I said I hope they have some closure by the judicial process that took place.” She also said that she believed Epstein was "murdered" in prison.

Maxwell, 61, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in recruiting and trafficking four teenage girls to be abused by serial sex offender Epstein.

Maxwell also claimed in the interview that she had no memory of Prince Andrew meeting Virginia Guiffre and suggested that the photograph of the two together is a fake. 

Guiffre maintains that she and Andrew had sex after being directed to do so by Maxwell, and while the Duke of York has always denied the allegations, mostly famously during a Newsnight interview in which he claimed to have been at a Pizza Express in Woking at the time the alleged assault took place, the disgraced royal did settle out of court for an undisclosed last year.

“I have no memory of them meeting. And I don't think that picture is real,” Maxwell said in the TalkTV interview. “It is a fake. I don't believe it is real for a second, in fact I am sure it is not. There has never been an original, there is no photograph.”

“There is no original of that photo, (just) copies of copies and parts of it, according to some experts, look like it has been photoshopped. I don't remember her in my home,” she added.

Lisa Bloom, lawyer for Epstein’s victims, dismissed Maxwell’s claims that the photograph is a fake, calling her comments “disgusting” and saying that Andrew has every right to prove it was not real during the legal proceedings against him, reports the Daily Mail.

In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Bloom said Epstein's victims “are disgusted and offended every time Ghislaine Maxwell opens her mouth and has an opinion on something.”

“How does she know anything about that photo? Of course she would have never received an original of it - in court proceedings we work with photocopies. I can tell you that Prince Andrew, when there was an active case against him, had every right to get the original, to send it out for testing, to prove the point it was a fake... and it never happened,” she went on.

“Instead he settled, reportedly for millions of dollars. And that's where it's going to end, it really doesn't matter what Ghislaine Maxwell has to say about it.”

There are abundant conspiracy theories surrounding the circumstances of Epstein’s death while on suicide watch at The Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10, 2019. Maxwell once stated she believed he was murdered, but now claims authorities allowed him to kill himself.

Epstein’s family’s attorneys argue that the marks on his neck suggested he had been strangled rather than hanged by a sheet.

In his book, One Damn Thing After Another, former Attorney General Bill Barr stated that he had reviewed all the surveillance footage from the night in question and concluded that Epstein was alone in his cell the whole time.