V.I. Judge Denies New York Times Request for Epstein Estate Reports

A V.I. Superior Court judge this week denied a request from The New York Times to unseal reports related to the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, noting that the court already deemed the records confidential in 2020 and that unsealing them now “would jeopardize innocent third parties.”

“The facts have not changed over the last five years,” V.I. Magistrate Judge Simone Van Holton-Turnbull wrote in an order signed Tuesday. “This case is still of immense public interest. Considering recent news media events, the case is at the most intense public interest since Mr. Epstein’s passing. The need to protect third parties from undue harassment, in particular the need to protect victims that were minors at the time, is thereby even greater than when the Estate’s motion was originally granted.”

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute as part of a sweetheart deal with federal prosecutors for which he only served 13 months in prison with work release. He was arrested again in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking minors. He died in a New York City jail cell that year in what the city’s medical examiner called a suicide by hanging.

The case attracted immediate and sustained international interest because of Epstein’s prior conviction, the scope of his alleged abuses and his associations with high-profile and wealthy people. The case also drew attention to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein received some $300 million in tax breaks from the territory’s Economic Development Commission while operating a web of shell companies from his primary residence on Little St. James.