Jeffrey Epstein

A new documentary traces the relationship between the predator, his benefactor, and the New York media.

Wexner had the money that Epstein was seeking, and Wexner got from Epstein the glamour and smoothness that he was seeking.” In 1996, Christopher Mason wrote in the New York Times how Wexner had bought the uptown mansion and dumped millions into it, only to sell it to his “protégé,” Epstein. “Les never spent more than two months there,” Epstein told the paper. In 2003, Wexner would gush to Vicky Ward in her now infamous report in Vanity Fair that Epstein was “a most loyal friend” who is “very smart with a combination of excellent judgment and unusually high standards.” “That’s unethical!” Kosner could be heard shouting in the background of the call.) Yet Wexner would appear on the cover of New York again two years later after buying Bendel’s, the department store hailed as “New York’s citadel of chic.” He got Jackie O. to stand next to him at the store’s reopening. “A lot of it played out in the New York City of the late ’80s, ’90s, and aughts,” says Tyrnauer. “There’s a particular flavor to that world, which now seems like a lost world. That’s when an elfin Wexner appeared on the cover, flanked by two models, under the headline “The Bachelor Billionaire.” Wexner, the mag noted, “Doesn’t go to galas, he doesn’t read WWD or W, and he doesn’t pronounce ‘La Grenouille’ right. (“I did get very excited about the stock, which I wanted to buy, and Ed would not let me buy it,” she added, referring to Ed Kosner, then the editor of New York and now her husband. What Angels and Demons magnifies is how Victoria’s Secret was both a calling card and the ideal hunting ground for Epstein. The documentary presents interviews with company executives and never-before-seen footage of Epstein at the first Victoria’s Secret fashion show, in 1995, and tells how Epstein would pose as a Victoria’s Secret recruiter to women around the country. And it doesn’t matter … The bachelor billionaire is written about by gossip columnists, courted by women, and wooed by charities.” Tyrnauer says, “The cover of New York magazine then was the curtain-up for the next new billionaire who was going to make a go in the arena. “Turning a blind eye is a very key phrase with this series,” says director Matt Tyrnauer. Epstein had been introduced to Wexner in the mid-1980s by an insurance executive and soon became money manager to the mall magnate at a time when his company (then called the Limited, later renamed L Brands) was riding high. The film contains a scoop: In 2006, a fax appearing to come from inside L Brands shared an Epstein victim’s employee records — she worked at a Victoria’s Secret in Florida — with Epstein’s defense attorney, which showed that she had been fired for an alleged theft of approximately $209 in merchandise. But that’s what set the stage for this.”