One year before he was charged with sex trafficking, Jeffrey Epstein was planning a major renovation of his private islands, Little St. James and Great St. James, documents newly released by the Department of Justice reveal.
Hundreds of pages of emails, contracts, and renderings in the Epstein files give insight into his plans for the islands, one of which has become notorious for the sexual abuse that prosecutors allege occurred there, as well as an inside look into his exacting nature.
Over the course of eight months, Epstein paid at least $150,000 to Florida-based design firm Radyca for architectural and interior plans.
The remit: “My employer owns 2 islands in the Caribbean off of St. Thomas that he would like completely redone,” one of Epstein’s assistants wrote the firm in November 2017.
The work was supposed to begin in January 2019 and take two years, according to a December 2017 agreement. Epstein fired the firm in June 2018, emails show.
Ramon Alonso, the president of Radyca and Epstein’s main point of contact for the work, declined to comment on the project or the island. He visited the island at least twice, according to emails and travel information included in the files.
A ‘ladies’ residence’ and ‘isolated’ master bedroom
Various schematics, proposals, and designs — as well as the correspondence about them — reveal how Epstein imagined the properties.
The plans for the two islands included a “ladies’ residence” and master retreat in proximity, as well as a cinema, a “funhouse point,” and various other guest pavilions and outbuildings.
The ladies’ residence was of particular interest to Epstein and the subject of dozens of emails between Epstein and Alonso, who discussed the appropriate structure for “the girls.”
Epstein also gave several notes on the 7,700-square-foot master retreat. In one email, Alonso wrote that “we completely isolated the bedroom from any noise or daylight as requested.” In another, Epstein said he didn’t want guests above his bedroom and that his bedroom windows didn’t need to open any more than to “air out the place.”
The designs were inspired by luxury hotels, including the Soori Hotel in Bali and the Amanera in the Dominican Republic.
Throughout the process, tensions arose between the disgraced financier and his design team.
“i might add that the cost incurred to date. are mine. with virutally nothing to show for it,” Epstein wrote in a May 2018 email, with his usual idiosyncratic punctuation.
In other emails, he called the designs “silly,” said he was “shocked and disappointed,” and told Alonso that the firm had created “nothing at all . of any use. ZERO.”
By June 2018, relations appeared to reach a tipping point.
“Please understand that I don’t mind changing direction as many times as it’s needed to your full satisfaction and I also really like you and working with you but I don’t appreciate when you diminish our work,” Alonso wrote in an email to Epstein.
Two weeks later, Alonso was fired.
“this is silly sorry i have no more time for this,” Epstein wrote on June 30, 2018. “I wish you well.”
It was the last correspondence between the pair in the files. About one year later, Epstein was arrested, and the FBI raided the island. Photos taken at the time show the redesign never occurred.
Little St. Jeff’s: A notorious island
Little St. James was central to the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficking operation, according to witness testimony included in the US’s 2019 case accusing Epstein of sexual abuse and trafficking of underage girls. Epstein pleaded not guilty and died by suicide in jail that year while awaiting trial.
The US Virgin Islands, where the properties are located, sued Epstein’s estate following his death, accusing him of sex trafficking and abusing underage girls on the islands. They reached a settlement in 2022, with the estate agreeing to pay the government of the Virgin Islands $105 million in cash, half the proceeds of a planned sale of Little St. James, and other damages. The settlement did not include any admission of guilt.
Epstein purchased the 72-acre Little St. James in 1998 for $7.95 million. In 2016, he added the 162-acre Great St. James to his portfolio for $22.5 million, according to deeds included in the Epstein files. Epstein’s islands sold in 2023 for $60 million — less than half of the initial $125 million asking price. The buyer, billionaire Stephen Deckoff, has said he plans to transform them into a luxury resort.
Throughout his decades on the Little St. James — often referred to as Little St. Jeff’s — Epstein hosted famous and powerful figures.
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and Howard Lutnick had plans to visit Little St. James, according to emails in the latest batch of Epstein files.
The island had a reputation for parties and, in Epstein’s words, “a ratio” of men to women that could make women “uncomfortable.”
“What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk asked Epstein in 2012 about the possibility of a visit that Musk said never occurred.
Over the years, Epstein embarked on several redesign projects, documents and emails included in the Epstein files show, hiring architects, surveyors, and decorators.
The renovations and redecoration of the islands were also a subject of the 2021 testimony of Ghislaine Maxwell’s former executive assistant, Cimberly Espinosa, with one detail so unexpected that the judge had to follow up
“We even shipped in sand and palm trees and all kinds of things to get the island to what he wanted it to be,” she said, answering the judge’s questions about the scope of her work on the island.
“To be clear,” the judge said, “you shipped in sand to a tropical island, why was that?”
“He wanted more sand on the beach,” the former assistant said.
Jacob Shamsian contributed reporting to this story.
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