Juan Alessi

Juan Alessi is a former house manager of Jeffrey Epstein's residence at 358 El Brillo Way in Palm Beach, Florida, where he worked from about 1990 until 2002. According to his 2019 interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he came to Epstein through Leslie Wexner, one of the Palm Beach clients for whom he did repair work, and Ghislaine Maxwell took charge of the household soon after he started. He testified for the government at Maxwell's criminal trial in December 2021 about the household rules, the daily scheduling of massages and a teenage girl who visited the house, and he authenticated Epstein's contact book, admitted as Government Exhibit 52.¹²³

Hiring Through Wexner

Agents of the FBI's New York office interviewed Alessi on July 13, 2019, a week after Epstein's arrest, and memorialized the interview on July 15. The report states: "JUAN ALESSI was a repairman for millionaires throughout Palm Beach. JUAN ALESSI had about 20-30 customers, one of which was LESLIE WEXNER. It is through WEXNER, that EPSTEIN learns of JUAN ALESSI. EPSTEIN reached out to JUAN ALESSI around 1989 and asked him to come work at his house." Alessi worked first as a part-time contractor, became full time at about 45,000 dollars a year, and became estate manager as his duties moved indoors. His wife was hired to shop and to "take care of the girls who come to clean the house." He recalled that Epstein had a girlfriend at the time "named Eva Anderson," and that "around 1993, Ghislaine Maxwell came to the house and she took over, becoming in charge of the whole house." The report's header gives the interview date as July 30, 2014, which conflicts with the July 2019 dates in its footer.²

The Household

At the trial Alessi, then 71, testified that he worked at the house for twelve years from 1990 and left in 2002, and that Maxwell arrived about a year after he started: "From the day she came to his house, she right away took over." She told him "she was going to be the lady of the house" and that "she was in charge of the other properties," and she wrote a "58-page book of rules and duties" for him, which he called "enough for 10 people." One instruction read: "Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer a question directed to you." He took it as "a kind of warning that I was supposed to be blind." Maxwell told him, "Jeffrey doesn't like to be looked in his eyes," and instructed him to "never look in his eyes."¹

His duties included arranging Epstein's massages. Epstein had one a day in 1991 and three a day by 2002: "It was a massage in the morning, a massage in the afternoon and a massage after the movies," with sessions "scheduled to come anytime, at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night." He was never in the room, because the doors were kept closed, but went in afterward to "clean up," collecting "towels, sex toys, costumes and pornographic materials," and cleaned the sex toys and returned them and the massage oils to Epstein's and Maxwell's dressing rooms. He estimated that "75% to 80%" of the women he saw at the pool "hundreds of times" were topless, and said photographs of topless women were kept at Maxwell's desk. "I know everything that happened in that house," he said.¹

Alessi testified that he met the accuser who testified under the pseudonym "Jane" in the mid-1990s, when she came to the house with her mother, and that he was later sent to collect her "from school to bring her to the mansion." "She appeared to be young, 14, 15," he said. Her name was listed as a massage therapist in the house contact book he used to book Epstein's massages.¹

Government Exhibit 52

The government called Alessi to authenticate Epstein's contact book. He was examined by the government and questioned on voir dire by the defense on December 8, 2021, and Judge Alison Nathan admitted the book as Government Exhibit 52 over defense objections to authentication and on hearsay grounds in a memorandum opinion and order of December 9 (ECF No. 535). A copy of the same book had been kept by Alessi's successor as house manager, Alfredo Rodriguez, who offered it for sale through a cooperating witness to an undercover FBI employee and was sentenced in 2010 to eighteen months for concealing it from federal investigators. On December 29, 2021 the jury in United States v. Maxwell convicted Maxwell on five of six counts.³⁴⁵