A green massage table seized from Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach estate has been carried into a Manhattan federal courtroom, where British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial for her alleged role in the sex abuse of girls.
Prosecutors said many of Epstein’s encounters with teenagers began as massages before escalating, calling the term “massage” a “ruse” to get girls to touch Epstein.
Ms Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of sex trafficking and other crimes for allegedly recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse.
Her attorneys argue she is being scapegoated because Epstein cannot be prosecuted, after killing himself in a Manhattan jail in 2019 at age 66 while awaiting trial on sex abuse charges.
Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019.(AP: New York State Sex Offender Registry)
Jeffrey Parkinson, a retired police officer involved in the 2005 search as part of an investigation into Epstein’s conduct, testified on the fifth day of Ms Maxwell’s trial that he carried the massage table from Epstein’s estate.
Prosecutor Maurene Comey also showed jurors a photo of a box labelled “Twin Torpedos” that a colleague of Mr Parkinson’s, Michael Dawson, said contained sex toys taken from an upstairs closet.
“We were looking for massage tables, we were looking for massage oils, we were looking for sex toys, we were looking for correspondence,” Mr Dawson testified on Friday afternoon.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of sex trafficking and other crimes.
The demonstrations came after Epstein’s former house manager, Juan Alessi, completed his own testimony.
Mr Alessi had testified on Thursday that Epstein was receiving about three massages every day by the time he left his job in 2002.
He said he sometimes found sex toys while cleaning the massage room and stored them in Ms Maxwell’s bathroom.