Hunting Ghislaine

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In LBC’s new podcast Hunting Ghislaine, investigative reporter John Sweeney (Panorama, Newsnight, The Observer) sets out to tell the strange story of Ghislaine Maxwell. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Hunting Ghislaine is a new LBC podcast investigating the life of Ghislaine Maxwell. Hosted by reporter John Sweeney ( Panorama, Newsnight, The Observer), the podcast is co-commissioned by Global and The Story Lab, part of dentsu creative. Episodes will be available every Thursday from 19th November on Global Player. In a sense they were made for each other. He was the powerful male figure, and key to a life of luxury, that she had lost when Robert Maxwell went overboard. She had a Rolodex of connections – not least Prince Andrew, who could provide the shady financier with a veneer of social respectability and cachet. Sweeney comes to a weary conclusion. “Power and money can help blind justice around the world,” he says. “But in America it’s normal.”

Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, speaks during a news conference to announce charges against Ghislaine Maxwell for her alleged role in the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein. Launched in November 2020, written and presented by award-winning investigative journalist and author, John Sweeney the six-part podcast tells the story of Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of disgraced billionaire media tycoon Robert Maxwell and former partner of notorious convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Just so you know, this is fiction: but Heawood and his compadre Kennedy Fisher are played so brilliantly by Barnaby Kay and Jana Carpenter that they’ve started to feel like real people. I find myself rooting for the cynical, intrepid Fisher in particular, despite this series’ dark questions around who she is and what she’s really been up to. This is a new element, and means that our two heroes are not working together as closely as before; Fisher is in a small coastal town in the US, Heawood in Mosul, though there might be a sinister connection between both places…

Global Player is Global’s entertainment hub, which allows listeners to enjoy all of Global’s radio brands, award-winning podcasts and expertly curated playlists all together and all for free on mobile via the Global Player app, online and through your smart speaker. After bullying the secretary, she blurts out what the Sun editor said: “I don’t want to talk to that fat Czech c**t.” The secretary vanished, never to work at the Mirror again. That is, when 14, 15 or 16, they were invited by Maxwell or her assistants to give Epstein a massage, that they didn’t know that it was going to be sexualised, that they were nearly always white, slender, just post-pubescent, free of tattoos, naïve, each and every one more child than woman.

John Sweeney said: “No old school Fleet Street reporter like me who knew what a monster Robert Maxwell was cannot feel some pity for Ghislaine Maxwell on the day he fell off his yacht. But then Ghislaine fled to New York to serve a second monster. This is a dark fairy story of our times, about how power and money and connections can, for a time, blind justice. But not forever.” Robert Maxwell's luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. Multi-millionaire Maxwell probably plunged to his death from the yacht. A New Weekly Podcast On The Trial Of Ghislaine Maxwell Hosted By Investigative Reporter John Sweeney Available Every Friday Exclusively On Global Player Co-commissioned by Global and The Story Lab, part of dentsu creative If Maxwell was like that to his staff, how did he treat Ghislaine, the apple of his eye? Monstrously says an old enemy, Richard Ingrams, former editor of Private Eye who was sued so many times by Maxwell that he can’t remember. Sweeney raises the question of whether she has been left to carry the can for these two men who, the evidence suggests, killed themselves (Maxwell herself never believed her father’s death was suicide). As he writes: “The vast majority of Epstein’s Palm Beach victims never meet Ghislaine, never hear her name.”

I have had a week of listening to different mysteries, and it has been most enjoyable, thanks very much. Absorbing, well-told, what’s-really-going-on? tales unfurling in your ears is a wonderful way to distract yourself from 2020’s killer combo of fear and boredom. Oh, the comfort of stories with a beginning, a middle and an actual, definite end! Plus, when there’s a scary element, even ironing becomes exciting. Then there was the shared interest in sex. Epstein – as Donald Trump observed – had a widely known enthusiasm for young girls. According to one visitor, there was only one book on view in his home: the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortune of Virtue. Others, too, spent a lot of time around Epstein and Maxwell without ever twigging that something dark was happening. At the top of that list would be former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. They may be lots of things but no-one calls them naïve. As Epstein’s girlfriend, his alleged pimp and partner in a series of sex crimes Ghislaine has remained in the shadows. When Epstein’s life began to unravel, Ghislaine vanished, only to reappear when she was arrested by the FBI last year. She denies six charges of enticing girls for sex with Epstein and perjury.