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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 336-3 Filed 09/07/21 Page 11 of 22 in the past. I had good reason to believe she had information on Ghislaine’s role in recruiting girls for Epstein. This type of information was becoming more crucial than ever, because it was at the center of Virginia’s defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell. I called every number for Maria that I could find. I had my investigators call every number that they could find. Finally, Maria called me back and left me a message saying that she knew I was trying to reach her. I returned her call immediately. She started off by telling me that she had spoken with Vicky Ward from Vanity Fair a long time ago but her experience was not included in Ward’s story, which was devastating to her, and that she really didn’t know whether she should talk to me. She had already suffered more than she could handle from her experiences with Maxwell and Epstein. She didn’t know me, and she certainly didn’t trust me. Maria eventually agreed that she would talk to me, but only in person. She gave me her address in Paducah, Kentucky. This was a town and region of the country that I knew nothing about. I told her I would go there and spend as long as I needed for her to have the opportunity to tell me everything. By the end of the phone call we had built a rapport. Later that month I flew up to meet with her. To get there I had to fly to Nashville and drive over to Paducah. I stayed in the only hotel that I could find within ten miles of her house and planned to meet with her the next morning. By the time I arrived for our meeting, Maria had hundreds of photographs sprawled across her floor. She had also dug out her old diaries, telephone books, and Rolodexes. It looked like she might have spent the whole night before digging things out of boxes in her closet. We chatted for only a few minutes before she launched into everything that she thought I had come to Paducah to hear and see. Unlike other witnesses who were cagey and reluctant to share, Maria was grateful that I had come so DOJ-OGR-00005144