She travelled with him constantly, she told investigators. And emails, both in their tone and content, suggest they rapidly became a couple. Ghislaine Maxwell was still Epstein’s close friend, and was finding other women for him, but their sexual relationship was coming to an end, our research suggests. Marcinko was now his main girlfriend, the emails show.
But though there is plenty of sentiment in the emails – and Epstein writes to someone else in 2009 that “I am in love with nadia” – the exchanges also reveal how domineering he was.
An email from that year gives a flavour of what he seems to have expected from her.
“I want you to learn how to cook eggs. scrambled poached over easy… I want you to learn how to run a house.. I want no arguments during the monday to friday, week… I want you to read one of the hundred great books every month… I want beautiful things only in the house. you cannot put anything in, without letting me see it first. J”
After his death, Marcinko told investigators Epstein had controlled every aspect of her life, including her weight and clothing. She said he had forced her to have multiple plastic surgeries and physically abused her.
We have not found any direct mention of those incidents in their email exchanges, but that does not mean they do not exist somewhere in the files. In one email we found, she accuses him of “abusive partner behaviour”.
And there is repeated reference to Epstein’s expectation that Marcinko will scout for other women or girls for him.
In 2006 she wrote: “What do you imagine is a fun sex thing? I will do what I can, even though if this is simply about you having sex with someone else, I don’t know how it makes our relationship better. I will try to find girls whenever we are in New York.”
Some messages suggest Nadia knew Epstein preferred his women young. But we have found no evidence in the files that she ever introduced him to girls who were under age. Nevertheless even recruiting adults, through deception, for exploitative purposes, can be defined as trafficking.
That same year, 2006, Epstein emailed a request to Brunel to put Marcinko on the payroll of Brunel’s new modelling agency, MC2, and pay her $50,000 (£37,014) a year. It is not clear what the salary was for as Marcinko was no longer working as a model. But whatever she was expected to do, she was clearly uncomfortable about her dependency on Epstein.
