A former modeling agent known as “Jeffery Epstein’s pimp” was found dead in a French prison where he was being held on rape charges.
Officials said Jean-Luc Brunel, 75, was found dead Saturday after apparently hanging himself overnight, according to a translated report in the French-language LeMonde.
A report in the Daily Mail noted that “His death in an alleged hanging will fuel conspiracy theories around the Epstein affair after the financier also died in prison while awaiting trial in what authorities concluded was a hanging.”
Brunel was indicted on rape charges in December 2020 and again in September 2021. His death will end any police investigation into those cases, as well as his potential links with Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking at the time of his death.
Weird how this keeps happening! https://t.co/eJJ2e3yRS7
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) February 19, 2022
The Daily Mail recounted the events as told by a source it did not name.
“A night patrol found his lifeless body at about 1 a.m. A judicial inquiry has been launched, and early evidence points to suicide,” the source said.
“There is an investigation going on to confirm all this, but at the moment it looks like he killed himself alone, and it was a routine patrol that found his body hanging,” the source said, noting that Brunel was not considered a suicide threat and was kept in a part of the prison where there are no video cameras.
“There were no obvious fears for the prisoner’s health, and he was not on a suicide watch, having already been in prison for many months,” the source said.
Brunel was accused by Virginia Roberts Giuffre — who this week won a court settlement in her lawsuit against Prince Andrew alleging sexual misconduct– as being a procurer for Epstein.
🔴 A French former modelling agent and friend of the late Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his Paris prison cell where he was being held on charges of raping minorshttps://t.co/QheFF9193T
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) February 19, 2022
She said in 2019 that Epstein told her he had slept with “over a thousand women that Brunel brought in,” according to NBC.
Giuffre testified in France against Brunel last year.
“I wanted Brunel to know that he no longer has the power over me, that I am a grown woman now and I’ve decided to hold him accountable for what he did to me and so many others,” Giuffre said after her testimony behind closed doors.
At the time, she called for others to testify against Brunel.
“I’m urging more witnesses — even if it is outside of the statute of limitations — to come forward,” Giuffre said. “The judge is listening, the authorities are listening, I’m listening.”
“We want to help put this monster away where he belongs,” she said. “We can’t do that unless we all work together.”
“Whether you are a witness of Jean-Luc Brunel at one place or another — and it doesn’t even have to be him doing something illegal, it can just be placing him somewhere, and by doing so it can help place together another victim’s story, corroborate,” she said.
Jean-Luc Brunel, the modeling agent who was accused of procuring girl for Jeffrey Epstein, and the close friend of convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, was found hanged in his cell between Friday and Saturday night. pic.twitter.com/0KLwGFgs4C
— Marlon Ettinger (@MarlonEttinger) February 19, 2022
Brunel’s lawyers issued a statement saying he was the casualty of unfair prosecution.
“His distress was that of a 75-year-old man crushed by a media-judicial system that it is time to question. Jean-Luc Brunel has constantly claimed his innocence. He multiplied his efforts to prove it,” his lawyers, Mathias Chichportich, Marianne Abgrall, and Christophe Ingrain said in a statement. “His decision [to end his life] was not guided by guilt, but by a deep sense of injustice.”
Story cited here.
