Epstein associate accused of supplying girls to financier, found hanged in prison
Jean-Luc Brunel, the former head of a French model agency who was accused of rape in the 1990s and later of supplying young girls to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was found hanged in his Paris prison cell early Saturday. The French Penitentiary Administration confirmed his death in La Santé prison to The Washington Post.
The 76-year-old was found dead in his cell at around 1 a.m. Saturday during an overnight check by guards at the Paris prison, prosecutors told Le Monde. Brunel was being held as part of an ongoing investigation into the alleged rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation. Several models had accused him of sexual assault and rape, and French police had interviewed many potential witnesses in the case. Brunel had denied the allegations.
He was a close associate of Epstein’s — and the two men’s deaths were similar in nature. Epstein, 66, died by suicide in his prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting his own trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Brunel’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They told Le Monde that the apparent suicide of their client “was not driven by guilt, but by a deep sense of injustice.”
“Jean-Luc Brunel [had] continued to proclaim his innocence,” the attorneys said.
Brunel’s death comes days after Britain’s Prince Andrew settled the sexual abuse lawsuit brought by Giuffre who says she was trafficked to him by Epstein, a multimillionaire investor whose well-known associates also included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, among others. The amount and details of the settlement between Andrew and Giuffre — who said she was recruited as a teenager by Epstein and his longtime paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, in Palm Beach, Fla. — were not disclosed in a court filing this week.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/02/19/jean-luc-brunel-hanged-epstein/
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