Now that Jeffrey Epstein has died, attention has shifted to his close associate and paramour-turned-pimp Ghislaine Maxwell as the best source of information on all the seedy activities that he was involved in. But what do we know about Maxwell, other than she was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the once successful and later disgraced newspaper magnate who died mysteriously at sea?
Dana Kennedy has done a deep dive into Maxwell’s life and it turns out that her entire family and in-laws are at one and the same time talented, highly educated, liked to interact with famous scientists, entrepreneurial, corrupt, and prone to making plenty of money and declaring bankruptcy, getting involved with sex cults and intrigue and espionage, and dying mysterious deaths. If her family story was made into a TV mini-series, it would strike many people as utterly preposterous.
In Kennedy’s words, her family’s closet has more skeletons than a house of horrors. I cannot do justice to all the twists and turns of Maxwell’s story with a few excerpts. Kennedy’s article really has to be read. One noteworthy item is the speculation that she is already collaborating with federal prosecutors.
Rupert Maxwell died from the yacht Ghislaine, named after her.
Robert Maxwell. Nicknamed “Captain Bob” or, postumously, Captain Bob-Bob-Bob. I was once offered a chance to scab for him: some of his magazine journalists were on strike, at some point I’d sent an article to one of his publications (it wasn’t published), and one of his minions offered me work. I did not reply to the offer.
KG,
Thanks. I corrected it.
Mano,
There is also a twisted tale about Maxwell and Cleveland.
Maxwell was responsible in 1987 for a hostile takeover bid of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich , the publishing house where I was an editor.
The company’s reaction to the bid was ultimately responsible for the destruction of the company’s stock value and the loss for many long-term employee’s pensions.
I was luck enough to jump ship before it all fell apart.
Jeff
Well, yeah. The more privileged one is, the stranger one can be.
John Morales @5: If you are strange and poor, you are crazy. If you are rich and strange, you are simply eccentric.