WHO KILLED JEFFREY EPSTEIN?
US, 2020, 150 minutes, Colour.
NB. Check Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.
Two documentaries about billionaire sex-offender, Jeffrey Epstein, appeared in 2020. The first was on Netflix, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich. The second is this one, highlighting the death of Epstein in the New York prison, the suspicious circumstances attending it, the possibility that it was murder and various conspiracy theories.
Quite a number of testimonies are given in both documentaries by a number of the same people. However, there is a larger selection in Filthy Rich, including quite a number of the young women who went to Epstein’s estate, allegedly for massage, became involved in his sexual activities, many of them brought in by Epstein’s companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the British newspaper Baron, Robert Maxwell. (She has denied all charges – and has disappeared.).
The first film supplies more information than the second.
While Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein does trace Epstein’s origins, poverty, education, emerging conman -and narcissist, his career in business and out=manoeuvring partners, there is more background from Filthy Rich.
When the film focuses on the prison, his physical condition, the strange coincidence of the guards falling asleep, means for killing himself in his cell, there seems to be some basis for conspiracy theories. However, former prisoner and now guard, Bill Merswell, is of the opinion that it was a suicide. However, the main commentators in this film, a legal analyst who is in favour of the conspiracy to murder, a journalist who covered the events from the 2000s to his death, a journalist in criminal lawyer Prof, give the various angles.
48 hours before his death, Epstein changed his will to make it legally difficult for any kind of redress from his estate to be given to the women victims. Another point is that he could have been prepared to give up names and information of well-placed people and celebrities for bargaining and that he was killed…
Epstein’s life and career was certainly unsavoury, to say the least, but, his associations with celebrities like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew (who does not come out very well from either film), Harvey Weinstein, means that it is a story in the public eye and, perhaps and unfortunately, symptomatic of society, sexuality and exploitation.
