New book reveals how the FBI finally ran Ghislaine Maxwell to ground

Nestling among pastures and streams on the shores of a New England lake, Bradford, New Hampshire (population: 1,662), is a place where nothing much of note ever happens. It has a single set of traffic lights and one of the lowest crime rates in America.

So when the noise of two small planes flying high overhead broke the peaceful dawn one summer morning in 2020, puzzled residents soon realised something was afoot.

Dick Morris, a carpenter, first heard a buzzing noise at 5am. 'At first I thought it was a paraplane — basically an engine with a seat and parachute, which is common around here. You hear one for ten minutes and it's gone. But this went on and on.

'I went out to load my truck at 7am and the plane was still going. I thought, 'What the heck is this guy doing? Then I noticed another high-altitude plane, so there were two buzzing round and round.'

Another local came across a queue of 15 vehicles stationary in the main road, and demanded to know who the drivers were and what they were doing. He was told they were from the New England Aerial Map Society. Unfortunately for those who were trying to hide their identities that July morning, the man was an expert on geology and maps — and he knew the New England Aerial Map Society didn't exist.

Becoming very suspicious, he asked to look inside one of the vans but was brusquely told it was off-limits. At this point, seriously alarmed, he asked his wife to call the police.

By now, most of the town was awake, trading all kinds of theories about the sudden influx of strangers. No one, however, guessed the truth: that the convoy was gearing up to raid the well-hidden lair of Ghislaine Maxwell, former girlfriend and confidante of billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, while FBI spotter planes hovered above in case she tried to escape.

Maxwell had moved to Bradford seven months previously. She paid $1 million in cash for a four-bedroom, mountain-top property set in 156 acres of woodland.

The payment was made through a limited company to hide her identity. The broker who made the sale claimed that a British man attended the viewing and had put the company name Granite Reality LLC on the purchasing paperwork.

The firm was registered to an address in Boston shared by several companies, including a law firm that had previously acted on behalf of Ms Maxwell.

'They said they didn't want the buyer's name known, so I thought it must be a movie star,' said the broker. 'She wanted to know details of flight patterns over the house, which was very strange.'

The property was the perfect bolthole, with breathtaking views from every room to the Mount Sunapee foothills to the west, and described by Sotheby's estate agency arm as 'a stunning custom-designed timber-frame home and an amazing retreat for the nature lover who also wants total privacy'.

According to U.S. attorney Alison Moe, Maxwell posed as a journalist called Jen Marshall to secretly purchase the sprawling hideaway.

'The estate agent told the FBI agent that the buyers for the house introduced themselves as Scott and Jen Marshall. Both had British accents,' said Moe. 'Scott Marshall explained that he was retired from the British military and was currently working on a book. Jen Marshall described herself as a journalist.'

And there Ghislaine Maxwell lived quietly for seven months, minding her own business and sending her British bodyguards out to do her shopping.

Later, Lois Kilnapp, the boss of Bradford's recycling tip, recalled that a long-haired British man, aged around 40, had been coming there to dump materials since the previous December.

'I became very friendly with him,' she said. 'I used to joke with him that he was the Duke of Sussex because he led me to believe he owned [Ghislaine's] home.'

In March 2020, the man told Ms Kilnapp that he was heading back to the UK and introduced a second Brit to her, who took over recycling duties. Like the first man, he was 'big and rugged', said Ms Kilnapp. 'I'd guess they were ex-military.'

Maxwell was clearly taking no chances: she had been hiring security men with experience in the Special Forces, at an estimated cost of a quarter of a million dollars.

By July 2, 2020, the day of the FBI raid, she had been on the run for a year while wanted for her alleged role in disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.

That morning, at 8.20am, the convoy of FBI agents set off into the New Hampshire woods. Heading a quarter of a mile up a steep dirt road, they passed a granite slab with the name 'Tuckedaway' carved in it and finally came to a halt in front of brand new metal security gates.

An FBI agent cut through the padlock. Then 24 agents stormed forward. Two officers from the Internet Crimes Against Children task force were also on hand.