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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Christopher Bucktin

Ghislaine Maxwell jail mates with gun-toting drug dealer with machete conviction

Ghislaine Maxwell has been bedded down with two serial drug traffickers, one of whom is a ruthless gun-toting dealer with “a very significant conviction for using a machete with about a foot long blade”.

The convicted teen sex trafficker, 60, shares her sleeping quarters with Manda May Rowell and Shacara Bryant inside Florida’s FCI Tallahassee prison.

Between them, the pair have more than 70 convictions and are each currently serving five years for serious drug trafficking offences.

A source said: “Ghislaine’s bunk mates could not have come from more different and difficult upbringings than her.

“Whereas she was given anything and everything she wanted, life was not great for both Manda and Shacara.

Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein (US District Court for the Southe)

“Shacara, in particular, had it so very tough.

“From a young age, both got in with the wrong crowd, seeing them head down roads they refused to turn back on.

“Both their trial judges told them they were the owners of their own fates after being given numerous chances to change, but it is impossible to imagine a more different childhood from all the privileges Ghislaine was given.”

Maxwell is being held in the prison’s general population housed in ‘Unit B South’ - a dormitory of 120 beds separated into “cul-de-sacs” of two bunk beds in each.

Although they provide some privacy to her and her “bunkies”, they have no door to them.

Each woman is provided with their own locker - the size of two microwaves on end - but they must purchase their own padlock from the prison’s commissar, and everything they buy must fit in.

Maxwell, who works in the prison’s law library, can visit the store once every two weeks to stock up, spending a maximum of $360 (£336) each visit.

Rowell was sentenced in December 2019 in Iowa’s Southern District in Council Bluffs.

The 30-year-old was found in a motel room in April 2018 with more than two pounds of methamphetamine.

According to court documents obtained by the Mirror, when armed police raided the room, they found “a loaded .380 semi-automatic pistol”.

On a mobile phone, they also discovered pictures of heavily tattooed Rowell “holding the firearm in that hotel room and operating the laser siting device on the firearm.”

Other photos showed her holding a different gun.

As a convicted felon, former Taco Bell worker Rowell was banned for handling one.

Outlining the case against the career con, prosecutors said: In the motel room where the defendant had possession of the firearm was methamphetamine and all of the drug paraphernalia needed to distribute methamphetamine.”

But the most sinister side to Rowell was revealed in her sentencing report.

In seeking up to nine and half years behind bars, United States Attorney Marc Krickbaum wrote: “She has been on probation on at least three different times and has not been successful once.

“She has a very significant conviction for using a ‘machete with about a foot long blade’ to threaten a person.

“The need to protect the public from the criminal acts of this defendant is very real and should be considered heavily by this court in determining a sentence.”

Meanwhile, mum-of-two Bryant began her criminal life at just 14, carrying out an aggravated battery but also being convicted of the use of a throwing a “deadly missile into a building”.

The 36-year-old has been arrested 37 times for more than 40 offences.

Bryant’s terribly dysfunctional upbringing was highlighted during her sentencing in Tampa in December 2019.

Many of the former KFC worker’s offences are for motoring, but in March of that year, she was arrested for selling almost 100 grams of crack cocaine.

Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich sentenced Bryant to the lowest term sought by prosecutors after hearing her life story.

After recommending several programmes for her while inside, the judge told her: “You’ve got a bad record, but you can’t keep living. You’ve got to get beyond that.”

Along with her bunkmates, Maxwell has formed a close friendship with the infamous female killer, Narcy Novack, inside.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in June after being found guilty of the enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls for her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein to abuse.

The billionaire Wall Street financier and convicted sex offender killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.

Epstein had been awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.

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