358 El Brillo Way

The house at 358 El Brillo Way was a waterfront mansion in the Town of Palm Beach, Florida, owned by Jeffrey Epstein from 1990 until his 2019 death. The 2005 investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department into conduct at the house produced the first criminal case against Epstein and identified dozens of teenage girls who said they had been abused there.¹

Acquisition and the House

Epstein purchased 358 El Brillo Way in 1990 for about 2.5 million dollars.² The roughly 14,000-square-foot, six-bedroom house sat on about eight-tenths of an acre fronting the Intracoastal Waterway and had been designed by the Palm Beach architect John Volk.² The previous long-term owner had been Owen Ray Skelton, a founder and chief engineer of Chrysler, who held the property until his death in 1969.³

The house became Epstein's Florida residence, and he traveled frequently between it, the 9 East 71st Street townhouse in Manhattan, his New Mexico ranch and his U.S. Virgin Islands island.¹ Staff at the Palm Beach house arranged appointments described as massages, and visitors were directed to an upstairs room set up with a massage table.⁴

The waterfront location placed the house a short distance from other prominent Palm Beach estates, and Epstein maintained it as a household with domestic and scheduling staff whose later statements and records became evidence in the police investigation.⁴

The 2005 Palm Beach Police Investigation

In March 2005 a woman reported to the Palm Beach Police Department that her fourteen-year-old stepdaughter had been molested by a wealthy man who lived on El Brillo Way, and detectives quickly identified the man as Epstein.⁴ From that account, investigators learned that Epstein had been paying girls from a West Palm Beach high school for sessions described as massages, and that the conduct extended to a network of dozens of girls.⁴ Police Chief Michael Reiter supervised the inquiry, and lead detective Joseph Recarey conducted the interviews over a probe that ran for roughly a year.⁴

The complaint was received on March 15, 2005, and the girl identified "Jeff" from a photo lineup. Between March 2005 and February 2006 detectives took sworn taped statements from five victims and seventeen witnesses. Recarey's affidavit described Haley Robson, who had been approached at 17 and paid 200 dollars for a massage, bringing other girls to the house; Robson told police that Epstein said he "would pay her if she brought over some girls" and that "the younger the better." Epstein's assistant Sarah Kellen recorded the girls' names and telephone numbers, and the affidavit put payments at 200 to 1,000 dollars per visit. Detectives obtained trash from the house through the supervisor of the Town of Palm Beach sanitation bureau, subpoenaed Kellen's telephone records, and matched her calls 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."⁵

Detectives documented a recruitment pyramid in which girls were paid roughly 200 to 300 dollars per visit and given money or incentives to bring other girls, who in turn recruited still more, building outward from a small number of initial contacts.⁴ Investigators interviewed two dozen girls and their parents on camera, obtained phone records, and conducted surveillance, and they later said Epstein's own representatives surveilled the police and pulled investigators' garbage during the case.⁴ The girls' accounts described being taken to the upstairs massage room at the house and paid in cash.⁴

Reiter said the volume and ages of the victims were unlike anything in his experience and that he came to believe Epstein's earlier offers of donations to the department had been attempts to probe whether police were investigating him.⁴⁶ According to the Palm Beach Post, Epstein had given the department 90,000 dollars before the investigation began, and the money was returned after his arrest.⁷ Reiter told NBC News that when police executed their search warrant at the house it had been cleaned and a surveillance computer removed, "with all the wires left hanging there."⁶ When the state prosecution narrowed, Reiter wrote to the State Attorney objecting to the handling of the case and ultimately referred the matter to the FBI.⁶

The Case and the Non-Prosecution Agreement

Recarey's probable cause affidavit, sworn May 1, 2006, recommended charging Epstein with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor under Florida Statute 794.05(1) and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation of a 14-year-old under 800.04(5), all second-degree felonies, and a companion affidavit sought charges against Kellen.⁵ State Attorney Barry Krischer did not file those charges and instead took the case to a Palm Beach County grand jury. In 2006 Reiter wrote to Krischer that his office's handling was "highly unusual" and asked him to consider whether "good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification."⁸

The grand jury heard the case on July 19, 2006. Recarey testified first, and Assistant State Attorney Lanna Belohlavek called two of the girls, out of the roughly two dozen police had interviewed, questioning them in terms that cast doubt on their credibility. The grand jury returned one count of felony solicitation of prostitution under Florida Statute 796.07.⁴⁹ Recarey and Reiter objected that the charge did not reflect the conduct against minors that detectives had documented, and the police chief's referral moved the matter into federal jurisdiction.⁶ The transcript remained sealed until Circuit Judge Luis Delgado released it on July 1, 2024 under a statute enacted that year.⁹

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, led by U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, prepared a sex-trafficking case but in 2007 negotiated a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein's lawyers.¹⁰ 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." The agreement was signed on September 24, 2007, and that day the line prosecutor wrote that the colleague calling Reiter "knows not to tell Chief Reiter about the money issue" and was "telling Chief Reiter not to disclose the outcome to anyone."¹¹ Under the 2008 resolution Epstein pleaded guilty in state court to two prostitution-related charges, registered as a sex offender, and served about thirteen months in the Palm Beach County stockade with extensive work-release privileges, while the agreement also conferred immunity on potential co-conspirators and was not disclosed to the victims.¹⁰ During his incarceration Epstein spent his work-release days at the Florida Science Foundation, an entity he had incorporated, co-located at the West Palm Beach office of one of his attorneys, and the foundation paid the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office 128,136 dollars.¹² In August 2019, after a letter from Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, Governor Ron DeSantis ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate; its May 2021 reports found that Epstein "received differential treatment" in the sheriff's custody, that the off-duty deputies had been hired mainly for his protection rather than to monitor him, and that there was no evidence of bribery or influence or of any crime by sheriff's or prosecutors' staff.¹³ A federal judge later ruled that the failure to notify the victims violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act.¹⁰¹¹

Work Release Visits and Home Detention

Epstein's work release ran through the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Extra Duty Permits System, where the paid deputy detail was carried as Permit No. 7804, "Florida Science Foundation," with a "Plain Clothed Position" and an "Unmarked only - Plain Clothed Position," and a work summary reading "Provide security for Jeffrey Epstein." Deputies' July 2009 overtime reports record the midday trips to the house. On July 5, 2009 a deputy maintained front office security until 11 a.m., then "FOLLOWED MR. EPSTEIN TO HIS RESIDENCE" and kept security until 2:45 p.m. before following him back to the office. On July 11, 2009 the deputy on the day shift wrote that Epstein arrived at the office at about 7:15 a.m., that "At 1149 hours we departed the office and arrived at 1200 hours at his residence at 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach," that he "backed into the drive way and provided security to prevent unwelcome guest from entering his property. I did not go into the residence," and that Epstein left the house at 2:31 p.m.; he added that when he asked a sheriff's official about his duties "at the residence," he was told "the function is to provide security." Another report reads: "At approximately 1200, escorted Mr. Epstein to his residence. At approximately 1430, escorted Mr. Epstein back to the office." The sheriff's media relations office faxed the July reports on July 21, 2009, the day before Epstein's release from the stockade to home confinement.¹⁴¹⁵

A retired deputy who escorted Epstein home told the Associated Press in 2019: "I didn't do an interior sweep of the residence. I followed instructions to the letter." In August 2009, during his home detention, Epstein was stopped by police while walking on the beach and said he was walking "to work" at an office nearly eight miles from his home. Michael Gauger, the sheriff's chief deputy during Epstein's incarceration, acknowledged coming to the mansion for dinner with Epstein; emails released in 2026 dated the dinner to September 2009. In the privacy waiver his lawyer filed with the FBI in 2010 for a records request, later reused for a request to the CIA, Epstein listed a St. Thomas address as his current residence and 358 El Brillo Way as his prior address.^15161718

The Palm Beach investigation and the non-prosecution agreement became the factual basis for the 2018 Miami Herald series that renewed national attention on Epstein, leading to his July 2019 federal indictment in New York on sex-trafficking charges.¹⁰

The 2021 Sale and Demolition

After Epstein's death the Palm Beach house was listed by his estate, initially around 22 million dollars, and in March 2021 it sold for 18.5 million dollars to the developer Todd Michael Glaser.² The proceeds, like those of the New York townhouse sale, went to the estate and its victim-compensation fund.¹⁹

Glaser filed a notice of commencement for total demolition, and razing of the house began in April 2021.¹⁹ He changed the address of the cleared parcel to 360 El Brillo Way, citing the notoriety attached to the original number, and the lot was redeveloped.² A new estate built on the site was later marketed at a figure far above the demolished house's sale price.²

The demolition removed the physical site where the 2005 investigation had begun, and the redevelopment proceeded as the estate continued to resolve civil claims arising from conduct that victims said had occurred at the house.¹⁹