Rather than go into a room where they would normally grill a suspect, Rush brought them to his own office, which had a couch and two chairs, with a coffee table, file cabinets and a peg board on one wall.    
       Katie was amazed at how young Virginia Giuffre appeared, more so than Susannah. The girl looked more like a hippie than a hooker, free of make-up with gray-blue eyes and thin lips. Pretty but not stunning. She was wearing a denim skirt, sandals and spaghetti strap top, with  a strand of Thai beads around her neck and a turquoise bracelet. She was smiling.
       Everyone shook hands and sat down. Katie asked if she could use her tape recorder, Virginia shrugged and Rush turned on his own recorder.
       “I’m going to ask you some basic questions, Miss Peters, things I know you’ve gone over before.”
       “It’s Mrs. Giuffre, if you don’t mind.” She said.
       Katie and David then learned that she was born Virginia Louise Roberts in Sacramento, California, in 1983, with a younger brother to her parents Sky and Lynn Roberts, who relocated to Loxahatchee in Palm Beach County.

       “Now,” Rush said, “you told us before you came from a ‛troubled home,’ and that you were molested at the age of seven by a family friend.”
       Giuffre nodded and said, “I was just so mentally scarred already at such a young age, and I ran away from that, and after a while I was put in a series of foster homes. Hated every one and I ran away every time.  From the time I was fourteen I was living on the streets where I was always hungry and suffered more abuse.”

       “And who was Ron Eppinger?” asked Rush.
       “He was a sex trafficker in Miami (right), and he took me in and abused me, too. He was sixty-five and ran this bogus modeling agency named Perfect 10, out of which he trafficked girls. Finally the FBI got him for prostitution and money laundering, and he was put away after pleading guilty. Far as I know he’s still in prison. At least I hope so.”
       Katie and David were both thinking of the rottenness that allowed such people to thrive and thought again of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland where the abuse had been sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
       Giuffre continued: “I had no place else to go, so I went home to live with my father, who worked as a maintenance manager at Mar-a-Lago (below), which is owned by Donald Trump. My father got me a job there as a spa attendant. It wasn’t a great payday but it was clean and safe. Plenty of security in that place because of the kind of clientele it attracted.”
       “And that’s where you met Ghislaine Maxwell?”
       “Yeah, I was sitting around at the spa reading a book and this woman with a British accent came up to me and like started talking to me, told me I was such a pretty girl, and bullshit. She asked if I knew massage therapy and said she could get me a job as a traveling masseuse for Jeffery Epstein.”
       “Did you know who that was?”
       “Not a clue. I just assumed he was another old rich guy who could afford to fly around with his own personal masseuse. Shit, I didn’t actually know anything about being a masseuse but it didn’t seem to matter to Ghislaine. She told me she knew some guy who would train me, and if it works out, I’d  make good money and travel.”
       “What happened then?” asked Katie. 
        “The training started immediately. It was everything, down to how to be quiet, be subservient, give Jeffrey what he wants. A lot of this training came from Ghislaine herself, and being a woman, it kind of surprises you that a woman could actually let stuff like that happen. But not only let it happen but to groom you into doing it.”
       “And then?”
      “We went over to Jeffrey’s and, I gotta say, that was a freaking big house. And I’m led right into this massage room and there’s Jeffrey naked. Ghislaine told me to take off my clothes and give him a blowjob.”
       Katie realized how identical the stratagem was to what Susannah had told her.
       “They seemed like real nice people so I trusted them, and I told them I'd had a really hard time in my life up until then. I'd been a runaway, I'd been sexually abused, physically abused. That was the worst thing I could have told them because now they knew how vulnerable I was. From then on they were grooming me to be a masseuse who also gave the guys sex. From then on my whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy. And their whole entire lives revolved around sex.”
       Katie asked, “And when was this?”
       “Like two years ago. I mean, compared to what I’d been through, it wasn’t such a bad life. I got to travel to New York, Jeffrey’s private island and the Zorro Ranch.  I loved that place because it was so different from South Florida. Dry heat.  But it all went bad real fast.   I was passed around like a platter of fruit to Jeffrey’s friends. It was a wicked and really scary time for me, and I really couldn’t understand how in the highest level of the government, powerful people were allowing this to happen. Not just allowing but participating in it. And I was a piece of fruit in the whole rotten business.”
       Rush said, “And that’s about where we left off last time we spoke, correct?”
       “I guess so.”
       “And on the basis of what you told us we opened an investigation, but you took off to Thailand.”
       For the first moment Giuffre winced as if she’d been struck.
       “I took off because Ghislaine wanted to send me to this fancy massage therapy school in Chang Mai. And when I got there I met the guy I married (right). He’s a good man, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to me over there. And, listen, I came back because you people don’t seem to be going anywhere with this investigation, so I decided to give you the names of the other guys in Jeffrey’s world. If you don’t take it seriously I can always go straight to the Miami Herald.”
       Katie said, “Mrs. Giuffre, I am part of the press, and I, for one, guarantee I’ll report what you tell me if I can get sources to back it up.”
       “Where you from again?”
       David spoke. “McClure’s magazine. And Katie’s one of the finest investigative journalists in the country. What she says she’ll do, she’ll do.”
       Rush tried to get his questions back on track.
       “It may seem, Mrs. Giuffre, we’ve been dragging our feet on this case, but it’s because now the FBI and the IRS are also involved, and anything you tell us about these powerful men in Epstein’s grasp the more likely he and some other people will be going to prison for a long time.”
       “I hope I live long enough,” she said. “Jeffrey’s surrounded by buffers. These kind of people never go to jail or they get a slap on the wrist.”
       “Then why do you want to get further involved?” asked Katie.
       Giuffre laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? If I can’t get Jeffrey and his bitch Ghislaine hanged then I want them to be publicly exposed and humiliated. They go to jail, even better. I just want the trafficking of young girls to stop. That’s it for me. If that happens I’m never setting foot in Florida again. And by the way, I’m expecting a child.”
       “You mean you fear for your life if you stay here?” asked Katie.
       “You’re damn right I do. Jeffrey has, like,  a big revenge streak in him. He’s careful but even if he has to wait, he’ll try to get to anyone who betrays him.”
       “Do you know of anyone he’s gone after?”
       “Nobody he’s knocked off, though I wouldn’t doubt it. More like threatening them, like beating them up. You ever heard of a guy named Vargas out of Miami?”
       David and Katie looked at each other, then at Rush, who said, “We know he runs a brothel down there. How’s he involved?”
       “Vargas is one of the people Jeffrey uses for like strong arm stuff. There are others. Vargas usually hires them.”
       “And you think this Vargas, through Epstein, has ordered hits on people?”
       Giuffre smirked and said, “What are you? A sergeant, lieutenant or captain?”
       “Captain.”
       “And, like, I have to tell you these things?”
       “Okay,” said Rush, “let’s get back to Epstein’s friends. “Who are these powerful men who attend these parties?”    
       Giuffre puffed, “That’s a long list. I was only there for like eighteen months and I didn’t know most of these guys. A lot of them were like local politicians, developers, bankers. I was introduced to a lot of them and was their girl for the night. Everybody I assume was getting sex—I mean like they weren’t there for the free food and booze. All of them leering and giggling. Most of them looking like they hoped their wives wouldn’t find out.” 
       “So, who were some of these men?”
        “I remember the first guy Ghislaine had me meet, a big hedge fund manager named Dubin (left).”
        “Glenn Dubin?” asked David. “Billionaire, head of  the Robin Hood Foundation.”
        “I guess so. He was the first powerful guy Ghislaine gave me to.  He was one of those guys who would like boast to me about how he’d married a Miss Sweden, and how his kids had met Jeffrey, like he was just attending some bible meeting. Jeffrey was obsessed with his teenage  daughter Celina. What a creep. Ghislaine put us in a room and we had sex, while his pregnant wife was sleeping in the next room.”   
        Katie shook her head. “Who else?”
        “That attorney who was in the O.J. trial. Dershowitz (right)? A fat pol from New Mexico, I think, Bill Richardson. The heads of a lot of modeling agencies, scouting out girls they never planned to use as models. The head of Victoria’s Secret. Bill Clinton I saw on Jeffrey’s island with two girls. He liked the young ones. That  British guy, Tony Blair (left). Jeffrey once had 12-year-old triplets flown in from France for his birthday and flown back the following day after being sexually abused by some Wall Street guy. Other times he’d take away a girl’s passport so she couldn’t’ leave the U.S. He brought in girls from Brazil and other South American countries,  and Europe—Jeffrey loved Russian girls—and the MC2 modeling agency in New York that this scumbag named Jean-Luc Brunel (right) opened after Jeffrey lent him some money. He brought in all his newest, youngest girls. Jeffrey even forced some girls to marry new foreign girls so they could stay in the country.
    “Oh, then there was this Saudi Prince.  What a sleazebag, walking around in these long white dresses looking like Lawrence of Arabia. Then there was some big billionaire from South Africa named Angus. Who names their kid ‛Angus’? What a pig he was!”
     “Donald Trump?”
    “Oh, yeah, he and Jeffrey were close friends, soul buddies. He and Ghislaine went to the White House a bunch of times. And both of them only wanted really young girls. They’d stand around and, like, rate us, give us numbers, like, ‛Oh, she’s a nine” and ‛Hey, man, look at the rack on that one,' and worse, and all the girls could hear what they were saying. Then there’s Prince Andrew, who Ghislaine told me I had to ‛do for him what you do for Jeffrey.’”   
       “You mean massage?” asked Katie.
       “Yeah, Jeffrey’s kind of massage.”
       "Did you get paid for that?” asked David.
       “Oh, yeah, I got about $15,000.”
       “I’ve read that you traveled pretty extensively with Prince Andrew.”
       “Oh, yeah, I had a ball. Tahiti, Mexico, even his huge palace in London. He had more than one, you know. I was pretty dazzled. I wasn’t allowed to talk about him with anyone, but, hey, I made a lot of money off Andy and  drank a lot of Champagne, which, frankly, I never even really liked all that much. I used to ask for bourbon on the rocks. I remember Andy telling me, ‛Well, could you at least order Scotch?’ but I didn’t like Scotch.”
       “And you’re willing to go on the record about meeting these guys?” asked Rush.
       “Whatever nails Jeffrey I’ll talk about.”
       “And do you have any evidence that you were with all these men?” asked David.
       “Not much. Things were all done on Jeffrey’s property, and they made sure nothing got left behind when these guys were finished with the girls. There were videos, though, and the men had to know they were being filmed.”
        “Do you know where those tapes are stored?” asked David.
        Giuffre said, “Safe and sound.”
        “Do you believe Trump and Clinton when they say they had no idea what was going on?”   
        Giuffre laughed. “The walls were lined with photos of naked girls!”
        “And Andrew was in on all this?”
        “Of course.  Now, Andrew, with him I’ve got lots of stuff, a lot of which he gave me as gifts. Some of the rest I picked up from hotel rooms and restaurants along the way. My husband wants me to trash it all but I said it's going to come in handy one  day. Today’s the day, I guess.”
           “Did you ever see any money passed around at these parties?” asked Katie.
           Giuffre blinked. “Are you serious? You think these guys were paying us out of their own wallets? I can’t believe you even asked that.”
           Embarrassed, Katie responded, “I meant, like, pay-offs?”   
           Giuffre shook her head again. “Yeah, right, they were stuffing big thick envelopes into Jeffrey’s pockets all night. Gimme a break.”
           The interview went on for an hour, until Giuffre said, “That’s it for me. I’m here for like two more nights if you want to reach me, but after that I’m going back to Thailand for good. I want my baby born there.”
       Rush, Katie and David thanked her for her help. Rush knew she was having a session with the FBI before leaving, and there would be some comparing of notes afterwards.
       “I wish you luck, Mrs. Giuffre. You’ll have police security until you leave the U.S.”
       “That’s cool, but I may need it in Thailand, too. Jeffrey’s got friends there, and I’m sure he’ll find out I’ve been in here talking to you.”
       “We’ll see what we can do with the Thai police.”
       “Good luck with that. No offense, but they’re like way more corrupt than the cops in Miami or around here.”
       She then turned to Katie and David and said, “And you two should be on alert, too. If Jeffrey and Ghislaine find out you’re snooping around, they’re gonna make sure you know it.”
       David thought of the spider in his bedroom and winced.