When John Alessi was working at Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach home, he told lawyers in 2016, Ghislaine Maxwell was “constantly taking photographs” of topless girls. Virginia Roberts Giuffre sued the alleged Epstein accomplice for defamation in a since-settled civil suit, and Alessi made the claim in a newly unsealed deposition from the case.
“She was very avid with photographs,” Alessi said. “She had this high-tech camera. She was constantly taking photographs.”
Later in the deposition, Alessi said that Maxwell kept photographs of topless girls who came to the house in an album, explaining that he would find the album when cleaning. “When these girls came to the house, most of the European—there were some Americans; they also took their top off—they would go in the sun, they would go in the pool without the tops,” Alessi said.
“Sometimes I saw these albums, and there were pictures of girls at the pool,” Alessi said.
Maxwell is currently being held without bail at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center after pleading not guilty to charges of perjury and facilitating Epstein’s sexual abuse. Her trial is scheduled for July 2021. The unsealing of Alessi’s deposition is the latest development in the Miami Herald’s efforts to reveal court records from Giuffre’s defamation suit. The Epstein victim sued Maxwell after Maxwell denied in the press that she had trafficked Giuffre. One of Maxwell’s own depositions in the case was unsealed last month, but she was evasive enough that she was ordered to give a second deposition, which remains sealed.
Alessi’s deposition may not have an immediate impact on Maxwell’s current case, but it provides an additional window into Epstein and Maxwell’s world. “I want this thing to get over in my life too, because I am getting sick and tired of this constant coming back to me,” Alessi said in 2016. “And it’s—I need to be left alone.”
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