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TTERSON

*

...d to had been invited by Ghis-
at Epstein's town house. There,
guests far outnumbered the male
you'd see at Upper East Side din-
ny seemed foreign and dressed a

...ded a cocktail party thrown by
attended, which was filled, she
els," Ward wrote. "Some of the
an says."
had worked with Epstein, said,
nore so. Money does that to you.
to himself—that he would never
him in the media. Right now, in
owing his trip with Clinton, he
..."

148

CHAPTER 38

Vicky Ward: November 2002

W hat I had 'on the girls,'" Ward explained in a Daily
Beast article published after Epstein's arrest, "were
some remarkably brave first-person accounts. Three
on-the-record stories from a family: a mother and her daughters
who came from Phoenix. The oldest daughter, an artist whose
character was vouchsafed to me by several sources, including
the artist Eric Fischl, had told me, weeping as she sat in my liv-
ing room, of how Epstein had attempted to seduce both her and,
separately, her younger sister, then only 16."
Ward had written it all down in her notes. She had crossed
the t's, dotted the i's.
But when she called Epstein to get his response, he denied
the allegations completely.
"Just the mention of a 16-year-old girl," Epstein told her,

149

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