How did Jeffrey Epstein's address book end up in the hands of a communist farmer in Vermont?
Insider has obtained and forensically tested a never-before-seen address book that appears to have belonged to Jeffrey Epstein. Hundreds of previously unknown contacts offer a new window into the late sex offender's social circle. Insider first published this video in July 2021.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02 We've obtained a new Jeffrey Epstein address book,
00:08 one that no one has ever seen before.
00:10 Jeffrey Epstein got away with what
00:13 he got away with because of who was in his address book.
00:16 What's interesting for us about this book
00:22 is a new cast of characters who we didn't previously
00:26 know had interactions with or did business with him.
00:29 Our first thought was to just do whatever we could
00:32 to verify that it was real.
00:33 [PHONE RINGING]
00:36 We've obtained a copy of an address book
00:38 that we believe belonged to Jeffrey Epstein.
00:41 And your name and contact information
00:43 are listed in the book.
00:44 [PHONE RINGING]
00:44 Hello?
00:45 I'm a reporter for Insider.
00:47 I'm just calling everybody who's in this address
00:50 book who has not previously been publicly associated
00:52 with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:53 We need to make sure it was a real artifact that really
00:56 represented something about Jeffrey Epstein
00:58 and his connections to people.
01:00 The story is not one that sounds exactly believable.
01:03 Someone dropped Jeffrey Epstein's address book
01:05 in the '90s and now belongs to some guy
01:08 who lives on a farm in Vermont.
01:10 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:13 I'm very careful not to put my fingerprints on the book,
01:23 not to put any sort of DNA or hair or anything like that.
01:29 My name is Christopher Halali.
01:31 Where should I look?
01:32 I currently live on my wife's farm.
01:36 As a student of national security issues, imperialism,
01:40 I was fascinated by the Jeffrey Epstein case.
01:42 There are names that are highlighted.
01:49 And I think one of the most notable highlighted names
01:53 is former President Donald Trump.
01:55 My name is Denise Ondeko.
02:02 And I believe I found the book sometime in the '90s
02:07 walking along Fifth Avenue.
02:09 And I just noticed a small black book on the sidewalk.
02:13 So you're pretty sure that it was somewhere between 54--
02:18 Yes, it could have been here or there.
02:22 We have spoken extensively with Denise.
02:24 And we found her story to be credible.
02:27 I saw the book, picked it up, glanced through it.
02:32 Damn.
02:33 It was filled with names like Kennedy, Rockefeller, Trump,
02:35 et cetera.
02:36 And it was like, whoa, this is bizarre.
02:38 So I kept it for the New York City artifact that it was.
02:42 Did you know who Jeffrey Epstein was at the time?
02:44 No.
02:45 When I rediscovered the book last year, it was like,
02:47 holy [DING] it's Jeffrey Epstein.
02:50 A Manhattan billionaire arrested yesterday
02:52 on federal sex trafficking charges.
02:54 Accusations from indecent exposure
02:56 to inappropriate touching to rape.
02:59 I went to tips at New York Times.
03:01 I sent something to Rachel Maddow.
03:03 I just figured nobody was interested.
03:05 Come the end of November, I really
03:07 needed breaks for my car.
03:08 And I didn't have enough money.
03:09 And I thought, what the hell?
03:13 You know, [DING] you, Jeffrey Epstein.
03:15 You paid for my breaks.
03:16 So I put it on eBay.
03:18 It was right there for everybody to see.
03:20 Most people would think it's a fake or a forgery.
03:22 I took the risk.
03:23 When I received the book in the mail,
03:27 my heart was nearly jumping out of my chest.
03:30 You know, I felt like Indiana Jones.
03:34 It's a dark book.
03:35 It's a book that I think has a lot of suffering behind it,
03:37 a lot of pain, a lot of evil, some would say.
03:41 I felt that it was important for people to see who Epstein knew
03:44 and what sort of network of power was behind him.
03:49 Right now, I'm packaging the book for forensic analysis
03:54 and handing it off to a team of journalists.
04:00 If it comes back and it's not authentic,
04:03 it's a pretty awesome forgery, I have to say.
04:08 One of the moments in the public waking up
04:12 to the magnitude of his crimes was the publication in 2015
04:18 of an address book belonging to Jeffrey Epstein.
04:21 And what was stunning about it was it contained the names
04:24 of Donald Trump and Mick Jagger, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton.
04:33 And it sort of woke people up to the fact
04:35 that this was a guy who had access to the halls of power.
04:39 Our reporting also found about 220 new names
04:43 that didn't appear in this other address book.
04:47 If someone were to concoct a fake book to trick journalists,
04:50 they would start by taking those names
04:52 from the other public little book
04:53 and putting them in this one.
04:55 So we start by sort of correlating the names,
04:57 and then we just started calling people in the book
04:59 whose names have not been previously associated
05:02 with Jeffrey Epstein.
05:04 -Hello? -Hi.
05:05 I'm trying to reach Elena Kayem.
05:07 -This is she. -Hi.
05:07 I'm calling for Suzanne Urcha.
05:09 Would you be able to connect me with her?
05:11 -For who? -I'm trying to reach Joan Severance.
05:13 -We don't currently represent Joan.
05:15 The number you've dialed is not in service.
05:17 -I'm trying to reach Michael Cutlip.
05:19 -This is he. -Elena Barmakova.
05:21 -Who's calling? -I'm working on a story
05:23 about an address book.
05:25 -That we believe belonged to Jeffrey Epstein.
05:27 -Do you mind if I'm recording this call?
05:29 -I do mind. -Okay, give me one second.
05:31 -You haven't seen his book,
05:32 "The Jeffreys," since the late '90s.
05:34 -For them to say, "Yes, I knew him in the '90s,"
05:36 gives credence to the idea that the book is real.
05:39 -It's not the case that everybody who was
05:41 in his address book was an enabler of Jeffrey Epstein.
05:44 It's more adding to the body of knowledge
05:46 to keep chipping away at the mystery.
05:48 -She was not interested in speaking.
05:50 -These are some of the prominent names we reached out to.
05:53 None of them had ever been publicly associated
05:55 with Epstein before.
05:57 -Suzanne Urcha, Melania Trump's best friend.
06:00 She later married Woody Johnson, who now owns the New York Jets.
06:04 -Karl Icahn, special advisor to Donald Trump
06:07 during his presidency.
06:10 -Christina Grievin, the wife of Christopher Cuomo.
06:13 Jill Harth accused Donald Trump of sexual assault.
06:16 -Steven Ratner led Barack Obama's efforts
06:19 to resuscitate Detroit.
06:21 -Marty Peretz, longtime mentor to former Vice President Al Gore.
06:25 Les Gelb was a legendary New York Times columnist.
06:28 Sandy Warner was the chairman and CEO of J.P.
06:31 Morgan until 2000.
06:33 Billionaire John Katsimatidis,
06:35 who told us that he offered Epstein a ride,
06:39 and Epstein sent him a three-foot bottle
06:41 of champagne and thanks.
06:42 -And this just goes to show that in the 1990s,
06:45 he was sort of cultivating a much larger orbit
06:48 that we can see evidence later on.
06:50 -How you doing? -Good.
06:55 How are you? -We also engaged the services
06:57 of a forensic examiner
06:59 who's familiar with authenticating documents.
07:01 -I was cautious because I didn't want to cross over
07:04 into an area that the FBI was investigating.
07:09 My name is Dennis Ryan,
07:11 and I'm a forensic document examiner.
07:15 I'm confident that the book is probably circa 1995 to 2000.
07:21 One of the factors was the Gestetner imprint
07:25 that's on the VeloBind.
07:26 Their organization was certainly out of production by 1998 to 2000.
07:33 It would be very difficult to make up a book with that imprint.
07:37 The most important thing is the change in the area code.
07:40 -So, here's Donald Trump's entry in the 1990s address book.
07:45 You can see that his Palm Beach phone numbers
07:47 feature a 407 area code.
07:50 Now, if we look at Trump's entry in the address book
07:54 from the early 2000s,
07:55 you can see that he has the same phone numbers
07:58 listed for Palm Beach, but with a different area code, 561,
08:02 and that area code was introduced in 1996.
08:05 Jeffrey Epstein is still such a mystery
08:08 over a year after he's died.
08:10 -Accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is dead.
08:12 -Jeffrey Epstein's attorney is questioning
08:14 whether his death was a suicide.
08:17 -I think my biggest takeaway is that Epstein
08:20 had an extremely large sphere of influence,
08:23 and we're not even sure about the true extent of it.
08:26 -I think this book elaborates on that in a different era,
08:30 a different time, and with some different people
08:32 that we didn't know were a part of that circle
08:36 that eventually became a part of the reason
08:39 that Jeffrey Epstein could get away
08:42 with raping and abusing women and girls,
08:45 and I think it's important to keep in mind
08:48 how power is able to avoid accountability,
08:52 and the more we can remember what Epstein's actions represent,
08:57 the more we can prevent people from escaping accountability
09:01 now and in the future.
09:07 -Chick-chick!
09:08 [ Laughs ]
09:11 -What a weird turn of events, how serendipitous
09:16 the whole thing has played out.
09:18 Unbelievable.
09:19 I just remember having that thought, "Should I keep this?"
09:22 If it was a heavy something or other,
09:24 I probably would have tossed it.
09:26 -I think it's an interesting story, you know?
09:29 One book with the FBI, one book on the farm.
09:32 It's fascinating.
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