Crime Weekly - S3 Ep299: Crime Weekly News: Jeffrey Epstein Whistleblower Dead of Apparent "Suicide"

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Virginia Giuffre, a central figure in exposing Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network and a vocal advocate for survivors, was found dead at her home in Australia on April 25 at the age of 41. Authorities have reported her death as a suicide. Giuffre's family released a heartfelt statement, highlighting her unwavering commitment to justice and her role as a beacon of hope for many survivors. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.OneSkin.co - Use code CWN for 15% off!

Hey everybody, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And real quick before we jump into this week's episode, as you can probably see if you're watching on YouTube, I have the new colorway hat from Criminal Coffee. coffee it's the light blue and what would you call this like a royal blue royal blue for sure yeah i love it yeah so the criminal i like the brown the like warm leather brown patch with the blue and the different the kind of different color blues this is my favorite color scheme i like it and this hat too if you're watching on youtube it actually the patch will get darker it's real leather so as over time it actually darkens and it becomes like that patina color,

which is really cool. But one of the benefits of having my studio right next door to criminal coffee is when a new hat drops, I can just go grab it and throw it on. But we only have a limited stock for each color. We have three different colorways. You can go check it out at criminal coffee co.com. In addition to that, we have all of our coffee and we're going to be having an announcement pretty soon. If you've been following us on the Criminal Coffee social media page, then you may already know what that is. But if you want the latest and greatest news for free, just sign up for our newsletter

over at criminalcoffeeco.com. You'll get the best discounts and the latest updates on what we have going on behind the scenes. Okay, for this week's episode, this is something that many of you may be familiar with already. We're talking about, you know, Jeffrey Epstein and all the conspiracies surrounding his death and what he was involved in and how certain people who are involved with Jeffrey Epstein or this group of individuals end up dead. So here we have Virginia Guffrey. She was a prominent advocate and key figure in exposing Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network. She was recently found dead

of an apparent suicide at her home in near Gabby, Western Australia on April 25th, 2025. Her death has prompted renewed calls for a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death. And I think we can all understand why. Again, for those of you who have been living under a rock, when you think about Jeffrey Epstein and the people that he was surrounded by, these are some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. And to this day, as we sit here right now, even though Epstein and some of the people involved in Epstein Island have been exposed. There are many people who have not. And it's interesting how with all of these powerful people possibly being on the Epstein list,

anybody who could expose them, they end up dead. And it's always by a suicide. Yeah, exactly. It's Epstein's body count. And Virginia Guffrey not only kind of went head to head with Epstein, but also with a member of the royal family, Prince Andrew, who obviously is still alive. Some people believe Jeffrey Epstein is still alive, but that's neither here nor there. Real quick, what do you think? Yeah, I don't think that – I don't believe that he died in prison the way that they said he did. The camera's going off. The guard's not being there. Do you think he's still alive?

No, I think he, I think someone had him taken out because they didn't want him to be like, okay, you're coming after me, but I, but you have bigger fish to fry. And here's all the names of all of these powerful people who will, you know, be a better get than me, who are more important and more powerful and more influential than me. And if you let me off, I'll give you everything you need on these people. That's what I believed they didn't want to happen. And I think that someone or more than one someone had him taken out. But I don't believe he took his own life with the cameras going out. It's just, come on. I mean, he didn't do it to

himself. I'm not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. I'm more of a evidence-based investigator. That's where I come from. I need something to support it, but I will absolutely acknowledge that the set of circumstances surrounding his death are at minimum suspicious. Just the series of circumstances that unfolded in order for his death to occur and no one to have witnessed it and the cameras and stuff. And we could do a whole episode just on that, but I will concede the fact that even without evidence to support foul play, the circumstances that we are left with and the open holes in his death, it leaves a lot to wonder. I also do not think he's alive, but yeah, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that, like you said,

people in high places were concerned that he would eventually roll on them in order to get a better deal. And we're talking billions of dollars. It's just too much money for one person to stay alive. We're talking about very famous, influential people who nobody knew. When Jeffrey Epstein hit the scene, nobody even knew who he was. And that blew up to such an incredible extreme because of the people who were in his presence and in his company and visiting him at his island. That's why he became such a big deal. And we know that he had recording devices all over the place. He was getting blackmail and things on people. So he knew where all the bodies were buried. He had all this information. And it would have been very easy for him to be like, I'm Jeffrey Epstein. Who the heck am I? However, this person, this person,

and this person are in your summer blockbusters. This person's running your political scene. Isn't it more important that you get these people rather than me? And honestly, yeah, the legal system would have said, yeah, let's give you a deal if you hand us, just like they do with the mafia, basically, right? You get a low-level mafia dude in there. He's kind of running things behind the scenes. And then he's like, hey, let me give you the boss. And they're like, all right, dude. Yeah, that's fine. Deal. Yeah, deal. So let's talk about Virginia Guffrey, because she was recruited as a teenager while

working at Mar-a-Lago, and she was later groomed by Ghislaine Maxwell, leading to her being trafficked to Epstein and his associates. She played a significant role in bringing attention to Epstein's crimes and advocating for survivors of sexual abuse. And now we have attorney Spencer Coven. He's represented multiple Epstein victims, and he's emphasizing the need for transparency, stating that Virginia's death must be fully investigated to address any lingering doubts and to provide closure for her family and for the public. And Coven's highlighted, you know, obviously the psychological toll that survivors of sexual abuse endure. He noted that they are at a higher risk of suicide due to the lasting trauma. He also acknowledged public skepticism, especially considering Virginia Guffrey's past statements. I believe she posted something on social media in 2018 or 2019

saying, hey, let me be clear, I will never take my own life. So basically, if something happens to me, I did not do this to myself. Jeffrey Epstein said the same thing, didn't he? Well, I don't know, but there's no way an egomaniac like Jeffrey Epstein would ever take his own life. I thought he had said something like that somewhere. Maybe it was, I mean, there's been a lot of them, but multiple people who have said that have ended up dead. I do wonder sometimes if they're saying that because they at that time feel that way, but circumstances can change. Or if they are feeling that way and they're just putting it out there because maybe they want to have a little mystery around what's happened to them. They don't want it to be just clear cut that they took their own life.

You never know what someone's thinking in the moments that lead up to their death. Because for most people, it's unimaginable to think you would get to that point that you would do that. But it's a real thing for a lot of people. And I'm glad I haven't been put in that situation. But to try to rationalize why someone would put that out there and if there's more to it or if it means 100% that they never would do that just because they said it. I think if you took a poll in the comments right now, it would be 50-50 how people feel about that. Well, there are some weird circumstances surrounding her death. So it's not really that cut and dry. And I mean, obviously, at the time of her death, Virginia Guffrey was

reportedly estranged from her husband. She'd been involved in a custody battle over their three children. She was also facing allegations of domestic abuse. These personal challenges may have obviously contributed to her emotional distress. However, in March of 2025, Virginia Guffrey claimed she was involved in a severe car accident. She stated that she had days to live due to renal failure. She was also begging to be able to see her children one last time because she was dying. Now, here's the thing. Local police reported the incident, the car incident, as minor with no injuries. So this led to questions about the accuracy of her claims. And authorities have stated that Virginia's death is not considered suspicious.

However, her lawyer, Carrie Loudon, initially expressed doubts about the suicide ruling, suggesting the possibility of misadventure, but she later clarified she did not believe the death was suspicious and that the coroner's determination is pending, which is suspicious all on its own, to have Virginia's lawyer come out and be like, hey, this is shady boots. And then later be like, let me clarify, that's not what I meant. It sounds like somebody got to the lawyer as well. I don't know. But the circumstances of Virginia's death just really don't make any sense. She had posted a picture of herself with bruising all over her face. And now people are saying, by the time that picture was posted, she was already dead. Virginia's father has come out and said, there's no way my daughter took her

own life. This isn't basically what I believe. I know her, et cetera, et cetera. So we're not really exactly sure what's happening here. And I do think that there should be a thorough investigation. Obviously, that's going to be a lot up to her family if her family wants to push it or if they want to just kind of let it. I don't know. I think considering who she was affiliated with, who she's spoken publicly against, who she's become, you know, she's become like the face of this case against Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew. And so I'm just not sure that this is as cut and dry and straightforward as at least officially it's being made out to seem. Very possible. I want to talk about how we would investigate something like this

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Give your skin the scientifically proven gentle care it deserves with OneSkin. All right, so we're back from break and we were talking about how we would investigate this case more thoroughly. If you look at it just on the surface, I don't think anybody would disagree about how we would investigate this case more thoroughly. If you look at it just on the surface, I don't think anybody would disagree that Virginia would have had a lot of enemies,

ones that were known to the public and ones that weren't, ones that haven't been exposed yet to the public, right, but would still have some incentive to see her dead. So knowing that on the surface as a detective, what do we do in a case like this? Well, first off, you want to do a thorough autopsy. You want to go in there and I don't think they've released how she allegedly killed herself. Have they? No, no, they haven't. I don't think that they at least not unless they get a lot of public pressure and even some law enforcement or justice officials to say, hey, we have to be, you know, open about what's happening here. But no, they haven't. So let's just for the sake of this example, you know, there's a few different ways that she could have killed herself if she did it, whatever the way may be, let's say by hanging, right? You would obviously want to make sure that in the autopsy that the injuries were consistent with that hanging. But here's where the problem comes. If she was murdered, then it was a contract hit. It was done professionally and it was done in a way to make it

look like a hanging, if that's what it was, right? Again, totally don't know. We're just using it so we're not, we have an example to go off of. So as a detective, you're going to go in there and you're going to look at the crime scene, right? Let's say that the crime scene still secured and more than likely things inside the crime scene are going to align with a hanging. You're going to find them. They're going to be tied up somehow. And they're going to, it's going to look like they had something under their feet to keep themselves propped up until they were anymore. And you're going to look at the apartment, you're going to dust and fingerprint and DNA swab, all these things. If the contract killer did it the right way, you're not going to find anything. So at that point, where do you go? You're going to look at cameras, you're going to interview

witnesses, you're going to talk to residents in the community, you're going to do everything you can. But as a realist, we have to acknowledge the possibility that if this was done right, you're probably not going to find anything. So you go in there and I've said this before, when as, as an investigator, you're looking for the mistakes. Now, if, if, if you're in this crime scene and there's no indication of how she could have gotten herself up there, or the autopsy report doesn't come back consistent with which the injury she should have, well, then maybe you have something. Are you still going to be able to tie it back to a person who ordered the hit or even the person who carried it out? Me sitting here talking to you guys, probably not. Probably not. Especially when we think about this amount

of money that's on the line and the risk to these high powered figures, they're going to be willing to spend a large sum of money to hire someone to do this the right way. So I don't say that to be Debbie Downer or demoralizing about it. What I am saying is even if we all believe that she was murdered, if they got to Jeffrey Epstein in a prison and years later, we're still debating whether or not he killed himself out in an uncontrolled environment with no cameras like this what do you think the chances are that someone out there is going to solve it right what's your thoughts on what i said so far i mean obviously i i do agree with you and if what we're saying is true anybody who would have any interest in seeing virginia guffrey silenced and gone

would be very powerful they got the resources They got the resources and the connections probably to make sure that it doesn't get investigated thoroughly. That also, which is what kind of happened with Epstein, right? And that's what I'm saying here. Like if we're not talking about just a complete conspiracy where everyone's being paid off and there was a detective who goes in and is like, hey, I can't be bought. I want to solve this one, right? There still may be nothing there. There still may be nothing there. Yeah, honestly, a detective going in and saying, I can't be bought, sounds less realistic than the conspiracy to- So I push back on that. I'll push back on that because I can't be bought. And I was a detective

and I know there's many detectives like me. Not everyone's going to give up their job for money. Not everyone's going to give up their, you know, a lot of people who sign up to be police officers don't sign up for the money because to be frankly honest with you, they don't get paid shit. So it's one of those things where I know it sounds like an anomaly, but there are people out there, not only in law enforcement, but in every career who have ethics and integrity and would, would not do that. So I'm saying that if you got a good cop in there and they were trying to do the right thing because of those resources, there may be a limited amount of data at that crime scene that can even be vetted. And because of that, even if

they feel personally that she didn't kill herself, there may not be enough evidence to support that. And there definitely wouldn't be enough evidence to tie back to the person who did it or the person who hired the person to do it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And I'm kind of just saying if there's, if whoever, you know, if somebody was involved with this and that person obviously had enough strings to pull to make it happen, they're not going to, they're not going to leave it up to, you know, the universe to see what kind of detective is sent out there. They're going to get to the top of the line in law enforcement.

And then that person, whoever's in charge of that specific police department or police entity, is going to make sure that whoever goes to the scene is kind of following the same narrative. They're not going to send this good-hearted, morally directed detective to Virginia Guffrey's home. That still means you're poisoning the well. I'm not saying it's not possible. I don't, for the people who are going to be on Stephanie's side being like, oh, Derek's saying nobody can be, is corrupt in law enforcement. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is what you're suggesting is a lot more complicated and a lot more risky. Because if you go to the wrong person and you try to buy them and it doesn't work, your whole thing's up. The better plan here is to hire someone who's really good at what they do and make it look like a suicide because then that means there's only one person other than the person who hired the contract killer who knows what happened, right? Hey, you, you go in there, make this look like a suicide. I don't care who shows up at the crime scene. They're going to see it and they're going to determine that it was a suicide. You start trying to buy people off and all these other things. Has it happened before? Of course it has.

I'm not acknowledging it hasn't, but what you're saying is a lot more convoluted than it probably even has to be. I mean, how many people were involved in the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing? You would have had to have, you know, like I said, pulled a lot of strings in order to make that happen. Somebody would have shut off the cameras. You would have had more than one person who was aware that this was a thing that was happening. So I'm not saying it's not, but there's also a possibility that that's not what happened, that Jeffrey Epstein did kill himself. So I'm just playing devil's advocate here where I acknowledge that all these years, especially the circumstances around Epstein, it's suspicious. And yes, you could, but with that particular case,

you have to go to that length because it's inside a prison. So you're going to have to buy people off to get the camp, like you said, the cameras and all that stuff to do that in order to make that work, you have to have multiple people involved. Yeah, I agree. And I do want to actually say that the urgency to get Epstein and to make sure that he was silenced was pretty high. But for Virginia Guffrey, she's kind of been out there speaking publicly for years and years, and it doesn't seem as if she had any new information or that she was going to say anything new or different. So why now, I guess? Why now? Especially she went after Prince Andrew in 2021. He settled with her even though he denied the

claims, which I don't believe. Nobody believes that. Prince Andrew's a scumbag. We all saw his interview. He denied the claims, but still paid her off in 2022. So you'd think that if somebody was going to go after her, it would have been before she started calling out all these high profile figures. I mean, who knows the motive? My thing is just from a surface level, carrying out the crime, she's a lot more accessible. You don't have to reach, the tentacles don't have to go too far. You get one good person in Australia who's willing to travel to Australia to do this. They scout out the area. They develop some counterintelligence and they figure out the best time to do it and how to do it. And they do it. And you really don't need a lot of people involved to pull it off. But why now? I guess that laid it out there a little bit. We're talking about the potential that she was murdered and it was a cover up. There's also a possibility that when she made those comments that she would never kill herself.

She truly believed that. And that was in 2019, by the way. That's in 2019. We're talking about 2025. A lot can happen in life. Oh, yeah. And a lot did happen to her. And you just pointed out that she was already having some issues, making some claims that appear to potentially be false. So her mindset on in April of 2025. after she made that claim and said it was inaccurate, but she was going through a divorce from her husband.

She claimed he was, she claimed he was, you know, physically abusing her. So some people say that the bruises on her face were from that. And, and so she made up a story and, you know,

she's going through a custody battle. It looked like she hadn't seen her three kids in a while. Those factors, especially being separated from your children, and Virginia Guffrey has spoken out publicly multiple times about how important her children are, how having her daughter was one of the facilitating factors that had her come out against Jeffrey Epstein

and tell her story to begin with because she didn't want her daughter to grow up in a world like she had. So being separated from your children, I don't think anybody can prepare for the emotional turmoil that that will put somebody in. Yeah. Yeah. Not having your kids, going through a divorce, recent injury that may have been causing some pain, even if it wasn't to the extent that she was expressing. A lot going on, a lot of circumstances where everybody has a boiling point where they say it's enough is enough. And you would hope that they would go get the help that they may need or confide in someone who

they trust, but that's not always what happens here. Especially for somebody like her. She had gone through so much trauma. There was probably really not a lot of people that she trusted, especially after going through what she did with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew. And then she gets married and you think that this is my person and then things go wrong with that person. You've got to be to a place in life where you're like, hey, just people suck and nobody's going to be there for you. Exactly. No, it's a horrific situation either way. Either this woman took her own life tragically because she felt that was the only way out or there's something more nefarious going on here.

But I agree. I think it needs to be investigated more thoroughly if it hasn't been done. So already, if anything, they have to release what they've done, put a, if it's a closed case, put out there what detectives did in this,

in this investigation to confirm that she did in fact kill herself. I will say in a lot of instances, if you put it all out there and everyone has the opportunity to review the information they're going to pick it apart but if you did your job more than likely that the rumor mill is going to subside they're going to say yeah you know what they did everything they could there's no can't whatever the case may be there'll always be someone who will pick it apart or they can go to hey the report that was put out maybe the person who put it out was paid off, which is not impossible. Yeah. So you're never going to please everyone. Yeah.

It's been, it just happened. Yeah. About a week and a half ago. So we got, which is why I'm kind of like, well, how do you know it was a suicide? Like to me, it probably wasn't drugs, you know, because I was thinking. No, it might have been something apparent. It would have had to have been something apparent for them to already say. Gunshot wound.

Yeah. Hanging something. Because you wouldn't have toxicology back by this point. So it would have had to have been something apparent because I was thinking maybe she was really sad, took too many pills, trying to sleep, and then just sadly overdosed accidentally. But it doesn't appear that that was the issue because toxicology wouldn't be back. You wouldn't be able to tell if that overdose had been happened intentionally or unintentionally until you did some more investigation. So like Derek said, yeah, there's got to be something more apparent to make them say, yeah, this looks like. She killed herself with a gun, GSR on her hands, a hanging, again, the ability to stand up on

something and then drop down when she needed to. But even all of that, I'm acknowledging, even if the scene is exactly the way it looks like it should be and everything aligns with a suicide, it still doesn't mean that it wasn't a staged suicide. Yeah, we have seen that happen before, yes. Exactly. So you're never going to please everyone, but at minimum, law enforcement should do whatever they can, dot their I's, cross their T's, to minimize the speculation around it especially when you have this prominent figure who a lot of people have always thought she could be something someone who ended up dead because of the information yep exactly she caused to certain people and what

she could potentially still know that she hasn't said yet so it's it's a very troubling case and it's going to raise a lot of eyebrows and justifiably so. So we will continue to follow it. If there are developments that change from what they're saying now, we're going to update you guys, but weighing down in the comments below, if you're watching on YouTube, or if you're on audio, pause the episode for a second, don't drive while you're doing this, go on there, leave us a review and let us know what you think. Do you think that this is more likely a suicide with a tragic set of circumstances involving a person who unfortunately didn't feel like there was any other way out? Or do you think there's more to the story?

What's your opinion on it? We want to hear from you. Any final words, Stephanie Harlow? I am very curious to see what the general consensus is. I've gotten a lot of messages of people saying, you should talk about this, you know, which, so I know that people are, yeah, I know people are watching. I know people have their own thoughts.

So I am interested to see what the, you know, general view of what happened to Virginia Guthrie is. So let us know in the comments, if you're watching on YouTube, let us know in a review, if you're listening on podcast platforms and, uh,

yeah, very sad all over. She, she didn't have an easy life. And you hate to see this. You like to see an underdog story where they rise up and they live a happy life and they have people who love them around them. And that's not what happened with Virginia. And sadly, I think that's just the norm. It's kind of like the outlier. If somebody goes through all of this abuse and trauma in their lives and then they come out on top. It kind of just probably felt for Virginia like blow after blow after blow

after blow. And I feel very, very badly for her. Completely agree. Guys, that's going to do it for us. We'll be back later this week on audio. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. Have a good night. Bye. Thank you.