Many unanswered questions remain about the relationship between Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — formerly Prince Andrew — and Jeffrey Epstein, but the former royal once said they were introduced by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell, the British socialite who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex-trafficking underage girls for Epstein after pleading not guilty, and Mountbatten-Windsor are understood to have enjoyed a close friendship in the ’90s and early 2000s, when they were regularly spotted together on the New York and London social scenes.
Two sources who were interviewed for the 2022 ITV documentary “Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile” said that Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell were so close that Buckingham Palace staff believed they dated at one point in the early aughts.
It was also in the early 2000s that Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre alleges Epstein and Maxwell made her sleep with the then-prince on multiple occasions when she was 17.
Giuffre, who died by suicide in April 2025, sued Mountbatten-Windsor in 2021 over allegations he sexually assaulted her at Maxwell’s London home, at Epstein’s New York home, and on Epstein’s private island.
Mountbatten-Windsor has long denied the allegations, saying he doesn’t recall ever meeting Giuffre. Still, in 2022, they reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount. He has also been stripped of his royal patronages and military and royal titles.
On Thursday, he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office amid renewed scrutiny over his relationship with Epstein.
He has long been tied to Epstein through his friendship with Maxwell. Here’s a timeline of their friendship as documented in news reports and interviews over the years.
Mountbatten-Windsor met Maxwell when she was at university
Mountbatten-Windsor said in his infamous November 2019 interview with BBC Newsnight that he’d known Maxwell since her university days.
Maxwell attended Oxford University, graduating in 1985, during which Mountbatten-Windsor was serving in the Royal Navy.
Maxwell also came from a well-connected family. Her father, Robert Maxwell, was the owner of the Daily Mirror newspaper and a onetime member of Parliament before his death in 1991.
The pair were often spotted together in the late ’90s and early aughts
Maxwell and Mountbatten-Windsor seemed especially close in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when their outings on the New York and London social scene were widely covered in the press, and the friends were often pictured together.
- February 1999: Flight logs obtained by the Daily Mirror show Mountbatten-Windsor flew with Maxwell aboard Epstein’s private jet to the financier’s private Caribbean island, Little St. James.
- Late summer/early autumn 1999: Mountbatten-Windsor hosts Maxwell and Epstein at Balmoral, according to a model who attended the getaway and later spoke to the Daily Mail.
- February 2000: Mountbatten-Windsor vacations at Mar-a-Lago with Maxwell before attending a fashion show in New York, according to a 2001 article in The Evening Standard.
- April 2000: Mountbatten-Windsor makes another trip to New York, where he “socialized with Ghislaine,” The Evening Standard reported.
- May 12, 2000: Flight logs again show Mountbatten-Windsor flying aboard Epstein’s private jet from New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida, with Maxwell also on board.
- June 21, 2000: Epstein and Maxwell attend a party at Windsor Castle, partially in honor of the prince’s 40th birthday, the BBC reported.
- June 22, 2000: Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell are pictured attending the Royal Ascot.
- September 2000: Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell are pictured together at the Wiltshire wedding of the prince’s former girlfriend, Aurelia Cecil. Pictures show the two arriving at the wedding in the same car, the BBC reported.
- October 31, 2000: Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell were pictured together at Heidi Klum’s Halloween party in Manhattan.
- December 2000: Mountbatten-Windsor hosted Maxwell and Epstein at Sandringham for a “straightforward shooting weekend,” according to his 2019 BBC Newsnight interview.
- January 2001: Mountbatten-Windsor takes a trip to Thailand with Maxwell, The Evening Standard reported.
- March 2001: Virginia Giuffre alleged that she met Mountbatten-Windsor for the first time at Maxwell’s townhouse, in a meeting arranged by Maxwell and Epstein.
Maxwell and Epstein were believed to be dating at some point during this era. At Maxwell’s child-sex-trafficking trial in 2021, Cimberly Espinosa testified that she worked at Epstein’s company from 1996 to 2002, largely as Maxwell’s executive assistant. Espinosa said that when she first started at the company, she believed Epstein and Maxwell were dating, but she got the impression they broke up sometime in the last two years of her employment at J. Epstein and Co.
A former Buckingham Palace royal protection officer says Maxwell visited so often that he suspected she and the prince were dating
Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell may have started dating around 2001, according to Paul Page, a former royal protection officer who spoke for the ITV documentary.
Page said he first met Maxwell in 2001, and that Buckingham Palace staff suspected Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell had an “intimate relationship” by the frequency of her visits.
“From the way she was allowed to enter and exit the palace, at will, we realized … suspected that she may have had an intimate relationship with Prince Andrew,” Page said. “A colleague of mine remembered her coming in four times in one day from the morning till the evening — she kept coming in and out, in and out.”
Another source who spoke on the program was Euan Rellie, a banker who said he also became friendly with Maxwell during university.
“I got the sense that Prince Andrew and Ghislaine had probably been girlfriend and boyfriend in the past,” Rellie said in the documentary, according to the Telegraph. “They had an easy warmth around each other.”
At the time of the documentary’s release, Prince Andrew’s press office did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on the claims.
Years later, Maxwell is behind bars, and Mountbatten-Windsor is in police custody
On Thursday, Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Earlier this month, following the release of documents from the US Justice Department’s Investigation into Epstein, the UK’s Thames Valley Police said it was looking into claims that Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential trade reports with Epstein in 2010, when Mountbatten-Windsor was a trade envoy.
He has previously denied all allegations against him. In a 2019 statement, he said, “At no stage during the limited time I spent with him did I see, witness or suspect any behaviour of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction.”
Mountbatten-Windsor has not commented publicly on the recent allegations of misconduct in office.
Hours after the arrest on Thursday, King Charles, Mountbatten-Windsor’s brother, released a statement saying, “The law must take its course.”
In their own statement, the family of Virginia Giuffre said, “Today, our broken hearts have been lifted by the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty.”
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