Thread by @VickyPJWard

"Day Four: What the Butler Saw"

My latest dispatch from inside the #GhislaineMaxwellTrial: vickyward.substack.com/p/day-four-wha…

Longtime Epstein housekeeper Juan Alessi put Maxwell much closer to Epstein’s Palm Beach bedroom—literally—than anyone else in the witness box has so far.

Alessi’s testimony was most damning for Maxwell in that he clearly said he’d seen two females he thought were under-age: “Jane” and Virginia Roberts. He said both had frequently visited Maxwell and Epstein in Palm Beach and accompanied them on trips on Epstein’s private plane.

He also mentioned the sex toys he’d had to clean up in Epstein’s bathroom after Epstein’s massages.

Alessi also testified Maxwell had issued “many, many” rules, including to never look Epstein directly in the eye and not speak to them unless spoken to.

He said that when, around 2000, Maxwell gave him a booklet of “rules” that was at least 30 pages long, he found it “degrading.”

Listening to all this, I was reminded how one of my sources told me that Maxwell’s usefulness to Epstein was that she told him “which salad fork to use.”

Unlike Epstein, who grew up in Coney Island, Maxwell had grown up in England the daughter of a global media tycoon. Basically, she was bringing Downton Abbey to Palm Beach.

This might all explain why one of the questions for potential jurors in the jury selection was whether they had any particular feelings about “people who are wealthy or have luxurious lifestyles.”

The vivid details of perceived snobbery in Alessi’s testimony will strike many as both repellant and incredibly odd. Most people don’t live like this, but rich people—particularly rich European people, as Maxwell was—definitely do.

Topless sunbathing—which Alessi said he saw a great deal of—would have been perfectly normal to Maxwell.

So, too, would the instruction to Alessi by Maxwell that read, “Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer a question directed at you. Respect their privacy.”

My gut suggests that Maxwell’s defense will argue today that, in the world she came from, that standard was ordinary.

Of course what’s *not* normal is underage girls hopping on planes and being jetted all over the place.

I'll share more on what happens today in court.

In the meanwhile, here's my Day Four recap: vickyward.substack.com/p/day-four-wha…