Mountbatten-Windsor is seen wearing the same clothes at Epstein’s door as he is with the woman on his knee(Image: DMG Media)
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was creepily partying with young victims of Jeffrey Epstein at the very moment he said he had travelled to New York to sever ties with his paedophile pal.
At one point during his stay, the disgraced ex-Duke of York was pictured with a young woman sitting on his lap – the second known victim of the sex offender to have been seated on the royal’s knee during his time inside Epstein’s notorious Manhattan mansion. A Mirror investigation has now pieced together images, testimony and records from the time showing the photographs were taken during Mountbatten-Windsor’s infamous December 2010 visit to New York.
The evidence blows apart his long-standing claim that the trip had a single purpose – to personally end his friendship with the convicted paedophile following his conviction.
A new photograph showing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with an Epstein victim on his lap has been published by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).(Image: DoJ)
After being shown the pictures, one Epstein victim told The Mirror: “He told the world he went there to end the friendship, but what we now see is the opposite. There were girls around, people laughing, drinks flowing. It didn’t look like someone cutting ties; it looked like someone perfectly comfortable being there, reunited with his long-lost friend. If he really came to end the friendship, he chose a strange way to do it.”
For years, Mountbatten-Windsor insisted the visit was little more than an awkward farewell meeting. But evidence now shows something very different. Rather than a brief goodbye, the prince was present at a gathering inside Epstein’s home where guests included young women later deemed victims of the sex offender by the US Government.
The former royal, now 66, told his version of events during his disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview with journalist Emily Maitlis. Pressed about his association with Epstein, she asked: “In 2008, he was convicted of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution; he was jailed. This was your friend. How did you feel about it?”
Mountbatten-Windsor replied: “Well, I ceased contact with him after I was aware that he was under investigation, and that was later in 2006, and I wasn’t in touch with him again until 2010.” When Maitlis pushed further – asking directly if there had been any contact – he gave an unequivocal answer: “No contact.”
But newly released images from the US Department of Justice tell a different story. They show the royal sitting with a young woman on his lap, his arms wrapped around her waist, inside Epstein’s sprawling townhouse- a now-notorious 40-room property at 9 East 71st Street in Manhattan.
Mountbatten-Windsor is wearing a blue shirt and a grey hooded jacket with the blonde woman, whose face has been redacted, sprawled on his knee.
A second photograph shows him seated, with another young woman standing behind him, her arms draped around his neck. As with all women identified as victims in the Department of Justice’s Epstein files, their identities have been concealed. The small, low-resolution images appear to have been taken in the dining room of Epstein’s 21,000-square-foot mansion – a property many investigators and victims later dubbed the “House of Horrors”.
Outside Epstein’s New York townhouse, where Andrew stayed in December 2010(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Other allegations involving the royal had already emerged from the same address. In 2009, one victim, Johanna Sjoberg, previously claimed the prince groped her after she sat on his lap inside the house. Her allegations were detailed in sworn testimony during the defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell. In her deposition, Johanna described how Epstein had flown her and Giuffre from Palm Beach to Manhattan to help entertain the prince alongside Maxwell.
Once inside the townhouse, she said, the royal was presented with a Spitting Image puppet of himself. “It looked like him,” she recalled. “And she (Maxwell) brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show. And they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch.
“They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.”
Johanna has also described how she was forced to give sexual massages to Epstein and punished if he failed to orgasm. “I was groomed for it,” she said of her abuse in 2007. I made a pact with the devil in exchange for excitement and glamour. I was only a college student. I was hard-up and foolish.”
Documents released by US authorities – part of a cache of roughly three million files – also indicate Epstein and Mountbatten-Windsor remained in contact after the prince claimed their relationship had ended. Additional images released earlier this year even show the former royal on all fours, leaning over a young woman in what appears to be the same dining room.
By the time Andrew visited New York in 2010, Epstein had already pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting a minor for prostitution and served a controversial 13-month sentence in 2008.
Despite that conviction, he continued to entertain powerful associates at his Manhattan property, a nine-storey building spanning more than 21,000 square feet. Witnesses have described a constant stream of young women arriving and leaving the house during the period Mountbatten-Windsor was staying there.
The royal first encountered the American financier through convicted teen sex trafficker Maxwell, the disgraced media baron Robert Maxwell’s daughter.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor pictured with an Epstein victim inside the financier’s New York home(Image: DoJ)
Epstein’s mansion was said to mirror the disturbing reputation of its owner. The entrance hall where the royal was pictured waving goodbye to a young woman was, according to journalist Vicky Ward writing in Vanity Fair, lined with “row upon row” of individually framed artificial eyeballs reportedly sourced from England.
Video of the entrance also revealed the initials “JE” mounted in brass beside the door. Less obvious was an unusual feature outside: a heating system installed beneath the pavement to melt snow during New York winters. Inside the hallway hung one of the property’s most infamous artworks – a painting depicting former US President Bill Clinton wearing red high heels and the blue dress linked to the scandal involving Monica Lewinsky.
Nearby was a large painting of Epstein behind bars, encircled by barbed wire and armed guards. The financier reportedly joked the piece existed “to remind me that I could go back to prison any time”.
Visitors also described stranger sights: a chandelier from which a life-sized female doll reportedly dangled, and a bathroom where prosthetic breasts were mounted on the wall. One woman who says she was assaulted by Epstein claimed the display allowed him to “play with the nipples” while bathing.
Epstein died by jail cell suicide in August 2019(Image: AP)
The house was filled with photographs of Epstein alongside prominent figures, including the then-Prince Andrew, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mohammed bin Salman and filmmaker Woody Allen.
These were displayed in his study alongside a life-size stuffed tiger and a preserved grey poodle. Given the sheer spectacle inside the residence, questions remain about how any visitor, including Mountbatten-Windsor, could have failed to notice the steady stream of young women or the unsettling atmosphere surrounding Epstein’s world.
Among Epstein’s prized features was a large “human chessboard” positioned at the foot of the main staircase, where the custom chess pieces were modelled on female staff dressed in provocative outfits. Elsewhere stood a life-size statue of a naked African warrior, along with what some visitors described simply as a “leather room”.
