A previously not-seen-in-public Jeffrey Epstein 1990s address book – last sold for £400 in December 2020 on eBay – is about to be offered for sale at auction; it is estimated to fetch as much as £800,000 and one is left asking: “Will someone really pay so much to keep this out of the public eye?”
An American auction house in Chesapeake City, Maryland that has previously hammered down macabre items including one of the monstrous maniac Adolf Hitler’s watches for £881,000 ($1.1 million, €1 million or درهم4 million) and his personal Führerbunker telephone handset for £160,000 ($200,000, €186,000 or درهم735,000) is about to attempt sell one of the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous address books later this month.
Curiously found on a Manhattan sidewalk in the late 1990s and last sold in December 2020 on eBay for just £400 ($500, €465 or درهم,1,800), the price sought for the diary concerned is yet to be revealed. Bill Panagopulos, owner of selling representatives Alexander Historical Auctions, did, however, tell The Daily Beast:
“There are no comparables for the sale of this kind of relic, but based on my experience, if I pressed to offer a price, I would think it be £80,000 to £160,000 ($100,000 to $200,000, €93,000 to €186,000 or درهم367,000 to درهم735,000), and up.”
Going further in comments to The Times, Panagopulos added of the address book:
“This criminal relic undoubtedly still has many stories to tell those who want to do the digging. Jeffrey Epstein was the epitome of evil and this book should be forever kept as evidence of his awful crimes.”
“It could fetch as little as £40,000 ($50,000, €47,000 or درهم184,000) or as much as £801,000 ($1 million, €930,000 or درهم3.7 million).”
“Why? There is so much confidential information, so much potential for new revelations within the book, that I believe there may be someone out there who will buy it simply to make it ‘disappear.’”
The address book – which was last sold on eBay for just £400 ($500, €465 or درهم,1,800) in December 2020 to a “graduate student living on a farm in Vermont” – is believed to date to 1997 and is thus a far earlier record than the much mentioned 2004 ‘Epstein Little Black Book’ that was used during the federal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell. It features a “handwritten annotation,” according to a July 2021 report by Business Insider’s Angela Wang, that is dated 1st October 1997.
The item offered was found in the “mid-1990s” [surely late 1990s, we’d counter] on a pavement on New York’s Fifth Avenue by a musician named Denise Ondayko . She is said to have “picked it up out of curiosity,” according to The Sun, and “put the book in storage.” It was supposedly not until 2020 that she realised that the item “may have links to Epstein.”
In her article, Wang detailed much more about the book’s provenance than is described in the current listingon the Alexander Historical Auctions website. She observed:
“If legitimate, the 1997 book purchased on eBay would provide a window into Epstein’s social circle at least seven years before the era captured by the 2004 book. Its format was remarkably similar to the 2004 book, with detailed entries for long-known Epstein associates, as well as many names never publicly connected to Epstein before.”
“The address book’s unconventional provenance prompted skepticism — but Insider found initial interviews with both the Vermont man and the eBay seller to be credible. The seller [Ondayko], a self-described ‘enigmatic rock chick’ living in Manhattan’s East Village, had found it on Fifth Avenue in the 1990s and kept it as a souvenir, intrigued by the famous names listed inside. She rediscovered the book while cleaning out her storage unit [in 2020], and after realising it belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, sold it on eBay after a friend suggested it could be worth some money.”
“Insider took extensive steps to verify the authenticity of the book, beginning with outreach to those listed inside. We extracted the text from a scanned copy of the book and organized its entries into a searchable database; a comparison with Epstein’s previously known little black book found that the 1990s address book contained 221 unique names and 128 that appeared in both books.”
“In total, Insider reached out to four dozen prominent individuals who had never previously been tied to Epstein. More than a dozen told Insider on the record that they had crossed paths with Epstein in the 1990s.”
“To rule out the possibility that the address book was a forgery, Insider hired a forensic document examiner to investigate the book, driving to retrieve the book in Vermont, where we filmed an interview with its most recent owner for a forthcoming mini-documentary. The document examiner concluded that the book dated to the mid-to-late 1990s and had not been altered.”
“‘I’m confident that the book is circa 1995 to 2000,’ the document examiner told Insider. His investigation involved studying both the book’s physical characteristics, which included a distinctive binding strip manufactured in the 1990s, as well as its contents, including entries that contained a Palm Beach area code that was retired in 1996.”
“In addition to seeking the opinion of a forensic examiner, Insider spoke to sources who could corroborate accounts of the book’s discovery. A longtime friend of the eBay seller told Insider that she recalls looking through the book in her Manhattan apartment in the 1990s.”
“While the book bears no inscription definitively identifying it as belonging to Epstein, it does contain an extraordinarily detailed directory of more than 80 phone numbers associated with the sprawling estates in Manhattan, West Palm Beach, New Mexico, and Ohio that Epstein owned in the early 1990s. It includes numbers for more than a dozen vehicles, a horse stable, a bunkhouse, dedicated lines for internet modems, and phone and beeper numbers for many known Epstein staff members.”
“Notably missing are his Paris apartment, purchased in 2002, and his private island, Little Saint James, acquired in 1998 — both of which appear in Epstein’s later address book. The Rolodex, however, does contain an entry for Diane Cummin – misspelled as ‘Diane Cummings’ – then-wife of financier Arch Cummin, who owned Little Saint James prior to its sale to Epstein. The book also lists detailed entries for Epstein’s relatives, whose addresses matched residences listed in public records searches.”
Alexander Historical Auctions’s listing adds:
“The history of this criminal relic is fascinating… The 64pp. page book measures 4.5 x 5.25 in. and is Gestetner-bound in black plastic. The entries are printed reproductions, likely reduced in size to accommodate this rather small binding. There are 386 printed entries with two additional entries penned in a childlike hand on the last page, very similar to Epstein’s hand but the sample is too small for us to warrant this as fact. They vary in length from only a few lines to over 10-15 lines or more each, and each of these entries may have several more names included within.”
“Additionally, 94 names bear black, hand-applied checkmarks, and five have been highlighted in yellow. All five names, including that of Donald Trump, are well-recognised financial and industrial figures. The significance of the checked and highlighted names is unknown.”
“The details included in the vast majority of the entries are most extensive: Epstein not only includes the name, address and telephone number of his contact, but in most cases also adds other residential addresses and numbers, contact information for family members, secretaries, immediate employees, and associates of the individual, cell phone and pager numbers, and in at least one instance, a contact’s girlfriend’s number. There is also a good deal of information hinting at Epstein’s sordid past.”
“Of the 1,731 names contained in the two volumes together, 221 appear in our earlier [1990s] book but do not appear in the circa 2004 book.”
“The book may be examined by appointment at our offices upon two days’ notice. No copies nor photographs are permitted.”
Bidding opens on 15th May and ends on the 15th June and on 16th June, the top two bidders will be “offered an opportunity to make a final offer.”
Editor’s note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples and watch his current nightly show on YouTube at 8.30pm daily.
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Your finger on the pulse as ever, Matthew. Thanks for letting us know