--- alias: - Palm Beach - Town of Palm Beach - Palm Beach, FL - Palm Beach, Fla. category: City created: 2026-09-25 location: Palm Beach County, Florida start: 1911 summary: Barrier-island town in Palm Beach County, Florida, incorporated in 1911, home of Mar-a-Lago and of Jeffrey Epstein's house at 358 El Brillo Way, where the 2005 police investigation of Epstein began. tags: - Place - PalmBeach - Florida - JeffreyEpstein - DonaldTrump - MarALago - NonProsecutionAgreement - PalmBeachPolice updated: 2026-09-25 --- Palm Beach is a town in Palm Beach County, [Florida](/places/florida/), on the barrier island between Lake Worth and the Atlantic. It was incorporated by its first charter in 1911 and has its own police department. [Donald Trump's](/people/donald-trump/) club [Mar-a-Lago](/places/mar-a-lago/) and, from 1990 to 2019, [Jeffrey Epstein's](/people/jeffrey-epstein/) house at [358 El Brillo Way](/places/358-el-brillo-way/) stand in the town. A 2005 complaint to the town's police about the house produced the first criminal investigation of Epstein, which the county's State Attorney took to a grand jury and federal prosecutors ended with a [non-prosecution agreement](/events/epstein-non-prosecution-agreement/).[^1][^2][^3] ### Town and Society The 1911 charter created the office of town marshal. Joseph Borman, occasionally employed before his election by the first mayor, Captain Dimick, served as marshal, tax collector, tax assessor, fire chief, voter registrar, code enforcement officer, building official, mosquito control officer and secretary of the town caucus until 1946, and became the first police chief when the [Palm Beach Police Department](/organizations/palm-beach-police-department/) was formed on October 17, 1922. From 1911 until the Second World War, society baseball games between the New York "Police" and the Philadelphia "Convicts," played at the present site of the tennis courts of The Breakers with Palm Beach police officers on both sides, raised money for the police pension fund; players included Woolworth Donahue, E. F. Hutton and Walter P. Chrysler. The town's police dispatched for West Palm Beach from 1933, and military police patrolled Palm Beach during the war as a rest point for servicemen.[^1] Mar-a-Lago was built in the 1920s for Marjorie Merriweather Post; its tunnel under South Ocean Boulevard leads to a beach cabana beside the Bath and Tennis Club. When Trump opened it as a club in 1995, only one Palm Beach club was open to Jews. Trump had first sought to subdivide the estate; after a year of hearings the Town Council voted the plan down, Trump sued the town for 50 million dollars, and the council approved a club with restrictions on traffic and noise. In December 1996, when the council refused to lift the restrictions, Trump sued again, alleging that the town discriminated against Mar-a-Lago in part because it was open to Jews and African Americans; the town said it was deciding a zoning matter. In 2004 Trump and Epstein bid against each other for the town's oceanfront mansion Maison de l'Amitie, sold out of bankruptcy to Trump for 41.35 million dollars.[^2][^4][^5] ### The Epstein Investigation Epstein bought 358 El Brillo Way, a waterfront house on the Intracoastal side, in 1990 for about 2.5 million dollars. In March 2005 a woman reported to the town's police that her fourteen-year-old stepdaughter had been molested by a wealthy man who lived on El Brillo Way. Under Chief [Michael Reiter](/people/michael-reiter/), chief from 2001 to 2009, Detective [Joseph Recarey](/people/joseph-recarey/) took sworn statements from victims and witnesses, obtained Epstein's household trash through the supervisor of the Town of Palm Beach sanitation bureau, and matched the calls of Epstein's assistant [Sarah Kellen](/people/sarah-kellen/) to the girls against the arrival records of Epstein's aircraft at Palm Beach International Airport; the calls clustered "in the days just prior to [Epstein's] arrival or during the time Epstein was in Palm Beach." Epstein had given the department 90,000 dollars before the investigation began, and the money was returned after his arrest.[^1][^3][^6][^7] Recarey's affidavit of May 1, 2006 recommended five felony counts. The county's State Attorney, [Barry Krischer](/people/barry-krischer/), instead took the case to a grand jury, which heard two of the girls on July 19, 2006 and returned one count of felony solicitation of prostitution; Reiter wrote to Krischer that his office's handling was "highly unusual" and referred the case to the [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/). On September 21, 2007 Krischer wrote to the federal line prosecutor, "Glad we could get this worked out for reasons I won't put in writing," and the non-prosecution agreement was signed three days later. Epstein pleaded guilty in state court in 2008 and served about thirteen months in the county stockade with work release, during which deputies of the [Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office](/organizations/palm-beach-county-sheriffs-office/), paid through an off-duty permit for the "[Florida Science Foundation](/organizations/florida-science-foundation/)," escorted him from the foundation's office to his house for midday visits. After Reiter left in 2009, the town's police were headed by a Director of Public Safety until 2018.[^1][^3][^8][^9][^10] ### Registration and Residence Epstein registered as a sex offender in the [U.S. Virgin Islands](/places/us-virgin-islands/), and his filings with the territory described the Palm Beach house as a "vacation home." In a privacy waiver his lawyer filed with the FBI in 2010, he gave a [St. Thomas](/places/st-thomas/) address as his current residence and 358 El Brillo Way as his prior one. On February 19, 2019, after he was detained and refused entry in the [Dominican Republic](/places/dominican-republic/), he flew on "to his vacation home in Palm Beach, Florida," and his May 2019 travel notice to the territory listed a stay "at my vacation home in Palm Beach, Florida" before trips to New York, [New Mexico](/places/new-mexico/) and Paris. The Virgin Islands government, in its complaint against his estate, valued the Palm Beach house at 12 million dollars. The estate sold it in March 2021 for 18.5 million dollars to the developer Todd Michael Glaser, who demolished it and changed the address to 360 El Brillo Way.[^11][^12][^13][^14] [^1]: Town of Palm Beach Police Department, "History of the Police Department," accessed September 25, 2026 (1911 charter; Joseph Borman; October 17, 1922; society baseball games; chiefs, including Michael S. Reiter, 2001 to 2009, and Kirk W. Blouin, Director of Public Safety, 2009 to 2018). https://www.townofpalmbeach.com/299/Historyof-thePolice-Department [^2]: "Trump did open Mar-a-Lago to blacks and Jews, but in a business move, not a crusade." *PolitiFact,* February 11, 2020. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/11/viral-image/trump-did-open-mar-lago-blacks-and-jews-business-m/ [^3]: Opinion and Order, *Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 v. United States*, No. 9:08-cv-80736-KAM (S.D. Fla. Feb. 21, 2019), ECF No. 435, at 7, 9 (Marra, J.), quoting ECF No. 407 at paragraphs 33, 52. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.317867/gov.uscourts.flsd.317867.435.0.pdf [^4]: National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, "Mar-A-Lago," 1100 South Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida, National Park Service Southeast Regional Office, August 31, 1981, section 7. https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/80000961_text [^5]: Czopek, Madison, and Gabrielle Lazor. "The facts and timeline of Trump and Epstein's falling out." *PolitiFact,* republished by *PBS NewsHour,* July 31, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-facts-and-timeline-of-trump-and-epsteins-falling-out [^6]: Palm Beach Police Department, probable cause affidavit of Detective Joseph Recarey regarding Jeffrey Epstein, sworn May 1, 2006 (redacted). https://archive.org/stream/JeffreyEpstein/Jeffrey%20Epstein%20Redacted%20Probable%20Cause%20Affadavit_djvu.txt [^7]: "Notorious Palm Beach mansion Jeffrey Epstein bought for $2.5M," *Palm Beach Post / Yahoo.* https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/notorious-palm-beach-mansion-jeffrey-202519748.html ; Hannah Phillips, "Congresswoman's claims about Epstein police probe were misleading," *Palm Beach Post* (via AOL), May 13, 2026. https://www.aol.com/articles/congresswomans-claims-epstein-police-probe-181112537.html ; "The Palm Beach cop who Jeffrey Epstein couldn't stop," *Union-Bulletin / Associated Press.* https://www.union-bulletin.com/news/national/the-palm-beach-cop-who-jeffrey-epstein-couldn-t-stop/article_699648e0-ce21-53fe-aaad-6e797deaeebf.html [^8]: Holly Baltz, "Who is Jeffrey Epstein's first prosecutor? It's not his first rodeo in the national glare," *Palm Beach Post* (via Yahoo News), July 10, 2024. https://www.yahoo.com/news/jeffrey-epsteins-first-prosecutor-not-090053542.html ; "Ex-Florida police chief: Epstein case 'the worst failure of the criminal justice system' in modern times," *NBC News,* 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-florida-police-chief-epstein-case-worst-failure-criminal-justice-n1057226 ; U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA01308629, DataSet 10, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Extra Duty Permits System overtime report forms, Permit No. 7804, "Florida Science Foundation," July 1 to 14, 2009. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01308629.pdf [^9]: "Judge releases Jeffrey Epstein grand jury investigation transcripts," *WUSF / Associated Press,* July 1, 2024. https://www.wusf.org/courts-law/2024-07-01/florida-judge-releases-transcripts-2006-grand-jury-investigation-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking [^10]: Julie K. Brown, "Perversion of Justice," *Miami Herald,* 2018, on the 2008 state guilty plea and roughly thirteen-month sentence with work release. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html [^11]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA00624683, DataSet 9, FBI Privacy Waiver and Certification of Identity signed by Jeffrey Epstein. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00624683.pdf [^12]: Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 1:22-cv-10904-JSR (S.D.N.Y.), Exhibit 83, ECF No. 194-24 (filed June 20, 2023), pp. 7, 54 to 55 (Appendix 1 to the April 30, 2019 Kellerhals Ferguson Kroblin letter; Epstein travel notice of May 2019). https://web.archive.org/web/20260117011719/https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/Government%20of%20the%20United%20States%20Virgin%20Islands%20v.%20JPMorgan%20Chase%20Bank,%20N.A.,%20No.%20122-cv-10904%20(S.D.N.Y.%202022)/194-24.pdf [^13]: Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. Darren K. Indyke et al., No. ST-20-CV-14 (V.I. Super. Ct.), Second Amended Complaint (filed November 30, 2022), estate asset allegations; reproduced as ECF No. 1-1 in Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 1:22-cv-10904-JSR (S.D.N.Y., filed December 27, 2022). https://web.archive.org/web/20260117011558/https://www.justice.gov/multimedia/Court%20Records/Government%20of%20the%20United%20States%20Virgin%20Islands%20v.%20JPMorgan%20Chase%20Bank,%20N.A.,%20No.%20122-cv-10904%20(S.D.N.Y.%202022)/001-01.pdf [^14]: "EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Epstein house sold for $18.5M in Palm Beach," Darrell Hofheinz, *Palm Beach Daily News,* via Corcoran, and "Notorious Palm Beach mansion Jeffrey Epstein bought for $2.5M," *Palm Beach Post / Yahoo.* https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/notorious-palm-beach-mansion-jeffrey-202519748.html ; "Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach mansion is being demolished," *The Real Deal,* April 20, 2021. https://therealdeal.com/miami/2021/04/20/jeffrey-epsteins-palm-beach-mansion-is-being-demolished/