Ghislaine Maxwell has said that a fellow inmate at her Brooklyn lockup allegedly threatened to strangle her in her sleep in exchange for money, her lawyers claimed in a new court filing on Wednesday.
“[One] of the female inmates in Ms Maxwell’s housing unit told at least three other inmates that she had been offered money to murder Ms Maxwell and that she planned to strangle her in her sleep,” the filing said.
Her lawyers also said that “other similarly charged defendants” – namely sexual abuser and cultist Keith Raniere and pop star and paedophile R Kelly – were both given conventional detention “in general population” in Brooklyn before their convictions, in contrast to Maxwell.
The unnamed inmate allegedly said “she had been offered money to murder”.
Maxwell’s attorneys on Wednesday also said the inmate claimed the money she would get from the hit would be worth “an additional 20 years’ incarceration”.
The attorneys said: “This incident reflects the brutal reality that there are numerous prison inmates who would not hesitate to kill Ms Maxwell — whether for money, fame, or simple ‘street cred.’”
Her lawyers argued that Maxwell should be sentenced to “well below” the 20-year imprisonment probation authorities have recommended in her New York federal sex-trafficking case.
In a pre-sentencing report, Maxwell’s lawyers provided the court with descriptions of her condition in jail and also provided details about her emotionally distressing upbringing as part of their argument for more leniency.
The attorneys also provided details of Maxwell’s abusive father, the disgraced publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, and claimed that he was abusive toward her and his other children.
They told the court: “Ghislaine vividly recalls a time when, at age 13, she tacked a poster of a pony on the newly painted wall of her bedroom. Rather than mar the paint with tape, she carefully hammered a thin tack to mount the poster. This outraged her father, who took the hammer and banged on Ghislaine’s dominant hand, leaving it severely bruised and painful for weeks to come.”
The former socialite was convicted of sex trafficking and related charges last year in December for luring young girls into Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. She has, however, claimed innocence.
The attorneys also said Maxwell had been sentenced under rules intended for serial abusers of children, even as there is “absolutely no evidence that Ms Maxwell is attracted to minors or has the sort of uncontrollable impulses that would compel her to re-offend”.
It was Epstein who “had such proclivities” while Maxwell’s role was to “facilitate” his sexual abuse, the lawyers claimed.
“Indeed, after she moved on from Epstein in the early 2000s, Ms Maxwell was involved in two long-term relationships with men who had young children and was actively involved in their lives without even the slightest hint of impropriety,” they added.
