Examining Jeffrey Epstein’s Vail connections following new revelations

Contacts of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were revealed this week as a federal judge began unsealing court records related to a settled 2015 civil lawsuit.

While the names revealed won’t come as much of a surprise to those following the case, the repeated mention of Les Wexner, the billionaire founder of Bath & Body Works, is a reminder of Epstein’s many connections to Vail and Aspen. Wexner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Wexner and Epstein met in the 1980s, a relationship that would result in Wexner giving Epstein power over his finances and obtaining a New York mansion, private plane and luxury estate valued at roughly $100 million, according to the New York Times.

“Virtually from the moment in the 1980s that Mr. Epstein arrived on the scene in Columbus, Ohio … Mr. Wexner’s friends and colleagues were mystified as to why a renowned businessman in the prime of his career would place such trust in an outsider with a thin résumé and scant financial experience,” the New York Times reported.

Wexner owned a home in Vail in the 1980s and was the subject of a 1985 New York Magazine piece detailing his self-professed encounter with a “dybbuk” while climbing a mountain in Vail, an incident in which Wexner “almost froze to death,” according to the piece.

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A dybbuk, according to Encyclopedia Brittanica, is “a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person.”

The New York Magazine piece went on to describe the many relationships in Wexner’s life, including his friendship with Vail’s chief of police at the time, Curt Ufkes.

“The chief of police lives in (Wexner’s) house in Vail,” according to the New York Magazine profile.

Ufkes, who now lives in Aspen, is listed in Epstein’s notorious “black book” of contacts where he is listed as a way to get in touch with Wexner.

Wexner has repeatedly said he was not aware of Epstein’s wrongdoing. Wexner severed ties with Epstein long before Epstein struck a plea deal in 2008 in which he pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida and was forced to make payments to victims and register as a sex offender.

That plea deal, in which the justice department found that former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta exercised poor judgment in handling the investigation, allowed Epstein to avoid a possible life sentence and instead serve 13 months in a work-release program.

Vail home and Vail Resorts connection

Epstein owned a home at 375 Mill Creek Circle in Vail, an investigation by the Daily Mail revealed, which was transferred to him in 1998 by Libet Johnson, the heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.

Following Epstein’s death, the home was sold for $24 million in July 2020.

Less than a year later, Leon Black, whose company Apollo Ski Partners became the majority shareholder of Vail Associates in 1992, stepped down as the CEO of Apollo Global Management “following the revelation that he paid more than $150 million to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein,” according to the New York Times.

Apollo Ski Partners went on to become the modern Vail Resorts.

“Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management had assigned a young executive, Rob Katz, to the Vail account in 1992, and he had been intimately involved in the company’s significant moves, including the purchases of Breckenridge, Keystone, and also Heavenly, and the RockResorts lodging outfit,” former Steamboat President and COO Chris Diamond wrote in “Ski Inc.”

Apollo dissolved its stake in Vail Resorts in 2004.

Black has been accused of rape in three separate cases, one of which was thrown out after a judge ruled a non-disclosure agreement signed by the alleged victim invalidated the suit.

Two other cases, one involving an underage girl, remain ongoing. Black has denied the accusations.

Earlier this year, Black agreed to pay $62.5 million to avoid Epstein-related lawsuits in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Black is also under investigation by the Senate Finance Committee for his financial dealings with Epstein.

The committee’s investigation began in June 2022 and was “prompted by inconsistencies in a report by the law firm Dechert LLP that Apollo’s board of directors commissioned to examine Black’s ties to Epstein,” according to the committee. “The Dechert report found Black paid Epstein, who was neither a licensed tax attorney nor a certified public accountant, a total of $158 million in several installments between 2012 and 2017. The payments were inexplicably large; well in excess of what Black paid any other financial advisors and far higher than the median compensation of Fortune 500 CEOs at the time.”

Connection doesn’t mean criminality

Epstein’s other Colorado connections include Robert Hurst, a former board member at the Aspen Music Festival and member of the executive committee of The Aspen Institute; and Joe Pagano, an Aspen-based venture capitalist. While both men are listed in Epstein’s black book, neither has been accused of any wrongdoing.

Epstein was known to associate with many wealthy and powerful individuals through his philanthropy efforts — others named in the initial documents include former President Bill Clinton, former President Donald Trump, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Michael Jackson, David Copperfield, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz.

As NewsNation pointed out in its coverage of the Epstein case, “It’s imperative to note the list does not imply that everyone is accused of wrongdoing or illegal and immoral behavior.”