Ghislaine Maxwell claims she met Queen Elizabeth and bonded with the monarch over their mutual love of horses.
Ghislaine Maxwell claims she met Queen Elizabeth and bonded with the monarch over their mutual love of horses
In an interview with The Mail On Sunday (15.01.23) from her jail cell at the Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institute in Florida the convicted sex offender, and friend of the late royal’s son Prince Andrew, added the meeting was one of the biggest honours of her life.
Maxwell said in a chat due to be released in full this week: “I thought the Queen was one of the most exceptional women I ever had the honour and privilege of meeting.”
The 61-year-old – serving a 20-year sentence for grooming young girls for her former lover, the paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein – added Her Majesty had a “sparkle” in her eye when they met and said she was “profoundly” sorry to hear the royal had died last year aged 96.
Her comments come ahead of a CBS production by documentary filmmaker Daphne Barak on Ghislaine which will released this week by the broadcaster.
Maxwell’s visits to Buckingham Palace included as a guest of Prince Andrew, and she was invited to a more intimate gathering at Balmoral in 1999 when the Queen, who died at the estate on September 8, was thought to be in residence.
In June 2000, Maxwell and Epstein – found dead from an apparent suicide in his New York jail cell aged 53 in 2019 – were at Andrew’s 40th birthday at Windsor Castle, hosted by the Queen, and the following day they went with him to horseracing at Ascot.
Maxwell has branded her jail conditions “appalling” and has told The Sun On Sunday: “It’s very far from a cushy country club. You’re locked up the entire time.
“If they let you out for an hour, there’s no communal area to get together. There's not a chair for everybody, there’s no way to watch TV.”
Tagged in Queen Elizabeth Prince Andrew