Solving a Jeffrey Epstein mystery
Cracking the case of the mysterious 'Doe 183' trying to stay anonymous.
Hi! If you’re getting this email, you probably signed up for my Substack because of my (hopefully funny) tweets about it. I’m planning to use it to share some of the big stories I’ve been working on, as well as kick around some ideas I’ve had swirling around.
For better or worse, a lot of my brainspace for the past few weeks has been occupied by Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the mysterious “Doe 183.”
If you haven’t been following, a federal judge in Manhattan has been methodically unsealing the names of various “Doe” parties whose names have been redacted in long-running litigation between Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend/sex-trafficking pal, and Virginia Giuffre, their most prominent accuser.
A lot of people have speculated that these “Does” are the identities of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s powerful friends, who may have been complicit in the sexual abuse of girls.
It turned out to be more complicated than that. Some are other victims, whose names typically remain sealed. Others were people who were just mentioned in court filings incidentally. Some occupy the gray area of having been accused of recruiting victims for Epstein but also identified as victims themselves.
But there are also, yes, some of Epstein’s friends. In April, the judge unsealed the names of the hedge-fund giant Glenn Dubin and his wife, Eva Andersson Dubin. While he was alive, Epstein maintained a close friendship with the couple. Eva Andersson Dubin, who dated Epstein in the 1980s, testified in Maxwell's defense during her trial.
And then there’s Doe 183.
In a November 18 hearing, the presiding judge, Loretta Preska, said she wanted to unseal the name of Doe 183, whom she identified as someone with ties to Epstein and whose name appeared repeatedly in Maxwell's criminal trial.
"That Doe's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has been a subject of intense media coverage, and Doe 183's name has appeared in numerous places in unsealed portions of Ms. Maxwell's criminal trial transcript," Preska said. "In the court's view, there's no reason to redact Doe 183 from the documents."
But, Preska noted, Doe 183 wanted to appeal her ruling. So, she said, their name would remain secret for now.
The lengths that Doe 183 has gone to in order to hide their identity are unusual. They have been fighting for months — perhaps years — to keep their name out of public court documents.
So, naturally, I tried to figure it who this person is.
Preska gave a helpful clue. She said Doe 183 was mentioned repeatedly at Maxwell’s trial, which I covered.
That narrowed down the list, in my view, to four people: Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Les Wexner.
Other names were mentioned at the trial, too, but these four are the only ones who were mentioned repeatedly.
So I looked at the redacted portions of the documents where Doe 183 has been mentioned. At first, I thought it might be Prince Andrew. He came up in a lot of the relevant documents. But not all of them. (For the record, Prince Andrew’s lawyer told me he didn’t know who Doe 183 was.)
I also thought it might be Bill Clinton, but there weren’t clear references to him in a lot of the relevant documents, either.
There was one common thread, though: Les Wexner. The man who made Jeffrey Epstein rich.
So I contacted Wexner’s lawyer.
And then things got really interesting.