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somewhere between Daddy Warbucks and Eyes Wide Shut. The domesticity of the house, and the background of Epstein’s problems, centers around a group of young women who act as his support staff and companions. Some have worked for him for many years, marrying, having children, and continuing as part of his business and household infrastructure. One woman, on an afternoon when I was there, recently married, had just returned from an around the world honeymoon that Epstein had arranged for her. Some are his romantic interests. His present girl friend is in dental school. One former girlfriend, Eva Andersson Dubin, a Swedish model and Miss Universe finalist, became a doctor and married hedge funder Glen Dubin and together they finance the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital. Most at one time will travel with him to his other floating residences—the ranch in New Mexico, a vast apartment in Paris, the Island in the Caribbean, the house in Palm Beach. This is so outside of conventional living or staffing or romantic relationships that it is hard to describe 1n a straightforward or straight-faced way. It sometimes seems part of Epstein’s implicit challenge: not just look at me, but can you even believe what you see? Or it seems he is just oblivious to what others are thinking. A willful and perhaps fatal tone deafness. But Hefnerian prurience can also be quite businesslike: poised young women in a mansion on the Upper East Side with various office responsibilities are really not that different from any of the art galleries in the surrounding neighborhood. Epstein’s young women mingle freely with his powerful guests, not so much as hostess or, in tabloid language, harem-like (or as “sex slaves”), but often as attentive students (that, of course, might be regarded as having its own fetish-like attraction). Not long ago, Epstein invited me to sit in on a day of presentations to him in his dining room by various “quants.” Quant theory involves making investments based solely on mathematical and statistical models. This method can often have uncanny predictive powers. But the problem is it doesn’t scale very well—the market, having discerned a pattern of successful investing, quickly copies and discounts the advantages of the strategy, . Epstein’s effort was to identify, dissect and choose a dozen or so promising algorithms (each quant is effectively hawking his secret sauce algorithm) and invest up to $5 million with each. I knew paltry little about this and so rather found myself identifying with the young women to whom Epstein was explaining the basic math and mechanics—out of my league, but grateful for the lesson. The Epstein house/office is, by careful design, exclusive and club like, part hang out, part secret society. Along with the difficulty in explaining why, even after his jail term, the rich and powerful continued to beat a path to his door, it’s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022848