Jailed sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell has praised the late Queen in an interview from behind bars.
Speaking from jail in Florida, seven months after she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for helping billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein abuse teenage girls, the disgraced British socialite recalled a meeting with the late monarch.
“The Queen was one of the most exceptional women I ever had the honour and privilege of briefly meeting,” said Maxwell, who was reportedly introduced to the monarch by Prince Andrew and visited Buckingham Palace on multiple occasions as his guest.
“I think anybody of her stature and the longevity of her reign, her elegant and sheer capacity for dedication to her work and to her job was just astonishing,” she said in an interview shown on the Jeremy Kyle show on Monday. “It was one of the great privileges of my life to have that honour to meet her.”
Maxwell described the Queen – who died in September, aged 96 – as having a “sparkle in her eyes that was just mesmerising” and said the pair spoke about their shared love of horses.
When the FBI raided Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2019, they found an image of Maxwell and Epstein lounging in front of a log cabin at Balmoral, the Queen’s Scottish estate, where Andrew is reported to have hosted them in 1999.
The pair also attended a party in June 2000 at Windsor Castle to celebrate Andrew’s 40th birthday.
In addition to complaining about the food at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee – calling the tofu “beyond tasteless” – and claiming to wish she had never met Epstein, Maxwell also discussed the photograph showing the Duke of York at her Mayfair home with his arm around Virginia Giuffre.
Maxwell told TalkTV: “It’s a fake. I don’t believe it’s real. In fact I’m sure it’s not ... There’s never been an original. Further, there’s no photograph; I’ve only even seen a photocopy of it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Maxwell said she hopes victims of Epstein’s paedophile ring were able to “find closure”.
