Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death occurred six years ago this month — but the National Enquirer has discovered 22 people in the sketchy billionaire’s orbit have also died under murky circumstances, fueling fears of a cover-up by powerful figures seeking to erase potential witnesses.
From the predator’s alleged victims to house managers, lawyers, accountants, investigative journalists and pimps, the list of unexplained fatalities traces a dark money trail that leads straight to Epstein’s inner circle, sources say.
“There were a lot of people entrapped and entangled through Epstein’s web, and many of those people are gone now — dead,” private investigator Ed Opperman tells the Enquirer. “They are all connected through a money trail.”
Financier Steven Hoffenberg confessed in a final account before his death to the Enquirer’s Doug Montero that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted pedophile’s now-imprisoned recruiting madam, were “taping” honey-trap videos of sleazy VIPs with underage girls for a cabal of deep-state blackmailing power brokers.
“This puts a lot of high-powered people in very dangerous situations,” says the gumshoe and podcaster, who was once approached to “dig up dirt” on an Epstein victim and Hoffenberg.
Hoffenberg, the former Towers Financial CEO and Epstein associate — who died in 2022 at 77 after serving 18 years for a $475 million Ponzi scheme — cooperated with the FBI and spoke out about his former protégé’s alleged connections to Israel’s national intelligence agency Mossad.
While Maxwell, 63, is serving 20 years for sex trafficking, Epstein himself became part of the growing body count in August 2019 when he was found hanged inside his New York City jail cell at 66 in what officials deemed a suicide — but his brother, Mark, calls “murder.”
Epstein’s final cellmate, Efrain “Stone” Reyes, 51, died of COVID in November 2020 just weeks after talking with federal investigators probing the monstrous moneyman’s death. Reyes was transferred out of Epstein’s cell just one day before the bigwig’s death, per Daily Mail.
Three of Epstein’s outspoken accusers also suspiciously perished. Virginia Giuffre, 41, was found dead on April 25 in an apparent suicide, while sex slaves Carolyn Andriano, 36, and Leigh Skye Patrick, 29, died of drug overdoses in May 2023 and May 2017.
The three women are not the only dead bodies related to Epstein’s days in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he was accused of abusing and pimping out dozens of young girls.
Despite overwhelming evidence of his purported obscene operation, Epstein received a sweetheart deal orchestrated by the feds in 2008 — and was allowed to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and served only 13 months in a cushy county jail work-release program.
Joe Recarey, the Palm Beach Police detective who led the Epstein investigation and pushed officials for justice, died May 25, 2018, after a brief illness at 50.
Epstein’s ex-butler Alfredo Rodriguez — who swiped his former boss’ infamous little black book and offered to sell it to an undercover FBI agent — died in December 2014 of mesothelioma at 60, after serving 13 months in federal prison on obstruction charges, per The Independent.
Two high-powered attorneys who helped Epstein skate in the West Palm Beach case have also passed away: Kenneth Starr in September 2022 at 76 after surgical complications and Roy Black, 80, who died last month at home, per The Texas Tribune.
Marvin Minsky, the MIT artificial intelligence pioneer named in Giuffre’s Epstein allegations, suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage in January 2016 at 88, while Ronald R. Eppinger Sr., a Miami pimp who was allegedly the first to traffic Giuffre, died at 80 in November 2006.
