Marcinko was born Nadia Marcinkova into a comfortably-off, respected family in Slovakia. She told federal investigators who interviewed her after Epstein’s death that she had first met the financier in New York in 2003, when she was 18, at a birthday party for Jean-Luc Brunel. A close friend of Epstein’s, Brunel ran the New York branch of modelling agency Karin Models. Marcinko said she had been working for the agency in Paris, and Brunel brought her to the US a few weeks before his party, on a visa he had arranged.
This seems to be backed up by email chains the BBC has traced in the Epstein files, which reveal that for many years afterwards, Marcinko and Epstein celebrated the same date – 17 September – as their “anniversary”.
Marcinko was an unlikely international model, says a primary school classmate who we are calling “Jozef”. Though she was beautiful, she was very shy – “what we call šedá myška, a little grey mouse”.
She began modelling as a teenager, with assignments soon taking her to Japan and Taiwan, she once told a Slovak newspaper.
A few days after she first met Epstein at Brunel’s party, Epstein invited her to his mansion in Palm Beach, Marcinko told investigators. And from there, flight logs confirm, she went on to his private Caribbean island, Little St James.
She was legally an adult, but the imbalance between them in power, wealth and age was huge. Epstein was already 50, so 32 years her senior.
Because Brunel sponsored her visa, and because Epstein bankrolled Brunel’s agency – to the tune of a million dollars – she felt, she later told investigators, that “Epstein could have her deported with a single phone call to Brunel”.
Soon after meeting Marcinko, Epstein flew her to his private island, Little St James, in the US Virgin Islands
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