It begins, as so many Jeffrey Epstein stories do, in a room where power recognised power. In this case, the room was reportedly the Plaza Hotel in New York in the early 1990s. A young woman from Texas, Melanie Starnes, later Dr Melanie Walker, has told people that she was introduced there to Epstein by Donald Trump. Three decades later, her name now sits at the centre of another uncomfortable triangle involving Epstein, Bill Gates and the elite networks that allowed a convicted sex offender to keep moving through the world’s most powerful circles.
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