13 Year Old Jane Doe 4 and the Missing Donald Trump Files
How
FBI 302s, a Hilton Head real estate scheme, and 37 missing DOJ pages
connect Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump to a teenager's abuse in the
early 1980s — and what the documents prove
Cliff’s Note: Ellie
Leonard is a contributing editor at Blue Amp Media, and what she does —
reading every released document, finding the details no one else finds,
and reporting only what she can prove — is exactly the kind of work we
built BAM to support. This piece is free to read. If you want more of
it, a paid subscription to Blue Amp Media is how we make sure she can
keep going. Subscribe below, or just read on.
by Ellie Leonard, BAM Contributing Editor
Trigger warning: this article contains limited descriptions of abuse
When
the DOJ handed us three of four missing 302s—code for “FBI
interviews”—from a young teen out of the Southeast, it didn’t really
feel like a lot to go on. We knew they’d been hidden for a reason. After
all, this was the second major case implicating Donald Trump and
Jeffrey Epstein together for sexual abuse of a child. But we didn’t have
much to work with, and what we did have all occurred in the early
1980s, pre-internet, and with a number of details that felt out of place
for who we’d come to know as the early 2000s middle-aged millionaire
sex predator.
But even with very little information, the FBI had
taken “Jane Doe 4” seriously, interviewing her at least four times. It
was only recently that NPR reporters discovered the missing 53 pages of
Doe’s 302s, leading to an uproar, and eventually the DOJ handing us 16
more pages, the remaining 37 still nowhere to be found. But not only did
the FBI take this woman seriously, but she was now represented by Lisa
Bloom, daughter of Gloria Allred, and lawyer for one of the most
significant cases in this entire investigation: Katie Johnson.
So
with my laptop in hand, some late nights, and a whole lot of coffee, I
dug in. I wanted to see if this case was provable, disprovable, or
simply a question mark swallowed up by time.
FBI Interview 1 - July 24, 2019
To
summarize, Jane Doe 4 arrived at an unknown island in 1981, where her
mother was hired as a broker for a real estate firm managing vacation
homes in the Sea Pines Plantation. This clarified that we were talking
about Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. At 13, the girl attended
school with her siblings, and was encouraged by her mother to make
babysitting fliers to hand out to visitors and long-term renters for a
little extra cash. She did, and quickly got her first call, a man she
remembered only as “Jeff.” When she arrived, there were no children, and
“Jeff” offered her alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. After that, things
got hazy, but she knew he sexually abused her, and could only think how
pleased her friends would be that she’d found someone to give them
drugs.
Hilton Head High School’s yearbook, 1985
This
continued over the course of two or three years, and often included
other men, old and overweight, wealthy, and often physically abusive.
The only one she ever named was “Jim Atkins,” but often shut down the
interviews, too upset to say any more. Epstein had a woman with him at
times, though not likely a partner in the traditional sense. She “wasn’t
black or Caucasian,” Doe remembered, but came off as very “cold.”
Ghislaine Maxwell in the 1980s
At
some point, Doe found pictures of herself in one of “Jeff’s” drawers,
Polaroids that he’d taken on a tripod when the young girl was naked. It
was this moment that set off a chain of events, leading to her mother’s
criminal conviction on the island. But we’ll come back to that.
I
started piecing apart this investigation with tiny details, unique but
simple things Doe included in her statements that might otherwise appear
like they don’t matter. She mentioned a crinkly “cardboard shirt” he
made her wear during one of their “between 6 and 20” interactions. She
said her mother had a house somewhere nearby, one she’d bought for
$55,000 in 1981. One of the abusive men had stomped her toe. She’d gone
to a Rick James concert in Savannah and bumped into “Jeff,” who offered
to drive her home, but dropped her off miles away. When the police
picked her up, they’d fed her fried chicken. She couldn’t remember if he
was called “Jeff Epstein” or not, but remembered he looked like Lurch
from the Addams Family, very long in the face. And when he got angry, he
lisped and she could see he had a snaggle tooth in the back of his
mouth.
Doe’s
mother passed away a long time ago, and she never told anyone else
except a close friend what had happened to her when she was 13, maybe 14
years old, and in the years after. And when Jeffrey Epstein was
arrested in July, 2019, her friend gave her a call, reminding Doe what
she’d said all those years ago. At some point she agreed to come
forward, but she still wouldn’t mention anything about Donald Trump. And
when the only picture she had to show agents the man named “Jeff”
included Trump, she requested that the agents crop the President out.
But
the friend remembered what Doe said, that at some point “Jeff” had
taken her to New York, into office buildings, big homes, and she was
chided and abused by Donald Trump. He made fun of her for being a
tomboy, just as Epstein had made fun of her overly large breasts, making
the girl extremely self-conscious. And without going into detail, Doe’s
experience with Donald Trump deeply reflected the same experience had
by Katie Johnson, that not only included sexual abuse but physical as
well.
And now we had a case that was, again, seemingly credible
according to FBI records, and also credible enough to be represented by a
major law firm representing other Epstein and Trump survivors.
So
I started at the very beginning. They’d moved to the island in 1981,
when her mother purchased a house for $55,000. I didn’t have her
mother’s name, so I’d have to go in another direction before I could dig
for a deed.
According
to Doe, her mother had been charged with embezzling money. She was very
up front about both her and her mother’s criminal histories, issues
with sobriety, and frequent moves, marriages, and divorces. Doe wanted
to be credible, but knew a woman in her position would have to fight. So
I looked for the case, using archived copies of the Island Packet
Newspaper, and I found it. Her mother had embezzled $22,000. But
according to Doe it wasn’t a simple case of stealing. She’d eventually
told her mother about the abuse and the pictures in “Jeff’s” drawer. And
Doe’s mother tried to get everything back, anything she could do to
protect her daughter, stealing money to give to the young, wealthy New
Yorker who vacationed on the island.
This takes us back to Jim Atkins.
Jim
Atkins, as described in Doe’s interviews, was Jeff’s wealthy friend
from Ohio. He was the “money guy” or something involved in education,
maybe a dean, someone on the board, but connected with a “for-profit”
college out of Cincinnati. I dug for schools, bypassing the major
universities and checking every board of regents, board of trustees,
administrations, faculty, donors, you name it. And then we found
him—yes, we; it’s a team effort—Jimmy L. Atkins of Fort Mitchell,
Kentucky. He was director of the now defunct Betz College Inc. and Betz
Business School. He also owned Harbour Homes Realty, which managed most
of Sea Pines Plantation, and was Doe’s mother’s boss. They’d also dated,
she claimed, likely an affair hidden from his wife back in Ohio.
I
found the school records, the ownership records, and the records of
Doe’s mother’s embezzlement case. And something definitely felt off, as
indicated by her lawyer in the newspaper.
“[I am]
dismayed by the fact that the commission has acted in such an arbitrary
and capricious manner by revoking [REDACTED]’s license, without any
opportunity for her to be heard relative to the accusations. It
certainly appears to me that the actions of the commission, at least at
this point in time, are premature and grossly violate the basic
rudiments of due process.” - Jane Doe’s mother’s attorney
In
short, Jimmy Atkins had bypassed all due process when it came to a full
audit and chance for Doe’s mother to state her case, pulling the plug
on everything immediately. This resulted in Doe’s mother losing her job,
and having to pay Atkins back $150/month, equivalent to $448 by today’s
rates. She couldn’t afford it, and when threatened with jailtime, her
daughter went to Atkins to beg for leniency. He told her he hoped they’d
“end up in the gutter”—the man who sexually and physically abused Doe.
Eventually,
Doe and her mother and siblings all moved away from Hilton Head, her
mother remarried, and ended up on the West Coast. Their marriages were
what you might expect, following trauma and a criminal history that
would never disappear.
At
some point Doe met up with a man, maybe a roommate, maybe just a
friend, and smelled cologne on him that repulsed her, triggering a
memory that caused her to panic. Years later, the pair remembered the
day and the cologne, “Grey Flannel,” that the man had worn. History
shows us that Grey Flannel peaked in popularity sometime in the 1980s,
leading one to believe she would have smelled it during a moment of
trauma around the same time.
And that “cardboard shirt,” a weird,
crinkly material called “Tyvek” that was quite popular in the ‘80s, and
might have been worn with penny loafers, which Doe said “Jeff” wore, and
would trade out often for a newer, shinier pair.
She
remembered shelves filled with books, and classical music, but also
Neil Diamond. We know now that Epstein always kept massive bookshelves, a
busy reader in order to keep up his façade of knowledge in every
subject, but also was an accomplished classical pianist. And Neil
Diamond? His name shows up the files, innocently enough, but Epstein
seemed to care about his music.
But what about the drugs? What
about the gin and tonic she said he occasionally drank? That didn’t seem
like Epstein. Or at least not the Epstein we know in 2000, 2004, 2010,
2019. But this might have been Jeff Epstein, the young financier, the
rich-but-not-so-rich guy getting his feet wet in things like overseas
intelligence and billionaire tax management. He was still sociopathic
and a sexual deviant, but he might’ve been a little less careful—maybe
not the teetotaler we knew him to be in later years. She never said he
took drugs, only handed them out as a kind of payment, something he
replaced later with real cash. And if you look at the history of the
Southeast, just as Doe said, drugs like LSD and cocaine spiked just
after the early 1980s. It made her suspicious, but she didn’t push.
Then there was that Rick James concert, the one in Savannah when she was 15. Trickier to pin down, if I’m honest. Rick James did
play quite a bit in Georgia and the Southeast, but not necessarily the
exact dates Doe said. He was in Savannah in 1982, when she was 12, in
Atlanta in 1983, and then took a break until 1985, when the tour started
back up along the East Coast. It’s not a huge discrepancy, considering
she’s trying to remember one night 40 years ago (could you give details
about that Green Day concert in the ‘90s?), but she wasn’t far off.
Maybe there are more details in the other 37 pages we still don’t have.
But
there was one other thing that stood out to me, and I will include a
trigger warning here just for clarification. Doe mentioned that one way
Epstein abused her was by tugging at her nipples, something described in
multiple other survivors’ interviews. A small detail, though just as
damaging, but curious to hear the same form of abuse across the gamut of
women’s stories.
FBI Interview 2 - August 7, 2019
When
Doe finally talked about Donald Trump, a couple interviews in and
encouraged by the FBI, she mentioned unique and interesting details
outside of the actual abuse. She knew he had illegal building permits.
And she’d heard him talking about “washing money” through his casinos.
His favorite number was six. What did it mean? She didn’t know.
Jane
Doe did her best to run from Hilton Head and the abuse that she endured
there. But like most kids who never resolve their trauma, she struggled
with relationships and crime. In 2023 she was arrested for taking money
from a dying man saving for his funeral. She admitted it, talked to the
agents up front, and the story is pretty devasting. Doe’s picture shows
the years, the trauma, the substance abuse, and the damage a man like
“Jeff” inflicted on all those little girls. But it was also another
detail Doe provided that linked to real information that I could track
down.
Obviously
we’re not at the end of this story, not even close. I’ve reached out to
the brokers and agents who worked with Doe’s mother, trying to find any
kind of a record that showed Jeffrey Epstein rented a vacation home or
homes on Hilton Head Island in the 1980s. There are flight logs from
several years later that showed he traveled to the island quite a bit, a
hotspot for wealthy investors and yachting types. But nothing was
digitized, and I’m sure no one thought anything of destroying a box of
rental records that was four decades old.
But maybe not. Maybe
there’s something still there that they could find, like a little girl’s
babysitting flier, or a man giving piano lessons, or a wealthy young
New Yorker with a long face, a snaggle tooth, and a lisp that showed up
when he got upset.
Cosmopolitan Magazine’s “Bachelor of the Month” - July, 1980
For
now, we know who Jane’s mother is, and when she passed, and the name of
her nursing home. We know Jane and her siblings, when she was born,
where, who she married, her criminal history, and the fact that she
desperately wants to remain anonymous, which I will respect. But the
FBI believed her enough to call her back three more times. The Bloom
Firm believed her enough to represent her case.
And the DOJ believed her enough to hide 37 pages, detailing her abuse at the hands of the President of the United States.
Jane Doe 4 sued the Epstein Estate in 2019, and later received a settlement.
This is an ongoing story...
This is why Blue Amp Media exists.
Ellie
spent weeks on this. Late nights, archived newspapers, property
records, court filings, FBI interview transcripts — cross-referencing
details that a 13-year-old girl remembered 40 years ago against
documents that the DOJ tried to keep hidden. And she found things.
Verifiable, documented things. That is not nothing. That is exactly what
independent journalism is supposed to do, and almost never does
anymore.
There are still 37 pages missing. This story is not over. And Ellie is not stopping.
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Epstein files cast pall among US faculty and students: ‘I just feel a deep disappointment’
Ties to the disgraced financier run deep through the academic world, documents released by the DoJ show
Major
institutions of higher education in the US are reckoning with the
latest release of the Epstein files after discovering the disgraced
financier Jeffrey Epstein’s relationships with board members, professors and administrators on campuses across the country.
On
9 February, faculty at Barnard College, the private women’s liberal
arts’ college affiliated with Columbia University, published an open letter
signed by more than 70 faculty members calling on the university to
“acknowledge and investigate” recently released correspondence between
Epstein and Francine LeFrak, a prominent donor and member of the
school’s board of trustees. LeFrak appears in the Epstein files 15 times, according to reporting from the Barnard Bulletin.
In one appearance, LeFrak asked – in 2010 – to join a close friend and Epstein during “the holidays”; in another, later that year, she invited
Epstein “as her guest” to a trip to Rwanda, where she founded an
initiative that provides occupational training and employment for female
survivors of that country’s genocide.
The
letter notes that the connection between Epstein and LeFrak is
“repugnant”, particularly since the interaction took place following
Epstein’s 2008 conviction of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
“We
do not believe that people who maintained contact with a notorious sex
trafficker and convicted sex offender express our values, nor have they
behaved as proper trustees of Barnard College,” the letter states. It
also calls on Barnard to remove LeFrak’s name from the newly constructed
Francine A LeFrak Center for Well-Being, which houses the school’s
sexual violence education, prevention and outreach program, among other
initiatives.
Many faculty members expressed
confusion and outrage specifically regarding LeFrak’s relationship to a
program that is meant to encourage the health and wellbeing of young
women.
“I just feel a real, deep
disappointment, because I think, as a women’s college, our mission is
directly antithetical to every revelation of those files,” a Barnard
professor, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
“It
is some very privileged, powerful, in many cases secretive and
nefarious men controlling the lives and narratives around a wide swath
of women. How can a women’s college – with its stated commitments to
women’s health, wellbeing, excellence – have a prominent name on campus
that is now associated with a sex offender?”
A
Barnard spokesperson the school has “retained independent counsel to
review the facts and advise the college accordingly”, and noted that
“Barnard is a place where women’s education is championed and where
women are supported, uplifted and given the tools to become the best
versions of themselves. Barnard has never accepted money from Jeffrey Epstein, and we are not aware of any connection to the college.”
Elsewhere,
Columbia University disciplined two people affiliated with its dental
college after documents revealed that they helped Epstein’s girlfriend
get into the school. Dr Letty Moss-Salentijn was stripped of her title as vice-dean of the dental college while Dr Thomas Magnani was removed from the school’s admissions review committee and volunteer leadership roles.
The Low Memorial Library on the Columbia University campus in New York City on 10 February 2023. Photograph: Ted Shaffrey/AP
The university also noted that they will be making a donation of $210,000,
the same amount it received from Epstein and related entities, to two
New York-based non-profit organizations supporting survivors of sexual
abuse and human trafficking.
On the other side
of country, UCLA community members have been reeling at a swath of
email correspondence between Dr Mark Tramo, an adjunct professor of
neurology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and Epstein over a
12-year span. While UCLA removed Tramo’s profile page from its website,
he is still teaching classes at the university.
“As
an academic, I am absolutely outraged by how [Tramo] abused his
position,” a UCLA alumni who asked for anonymity wrote to the Guardian.
In 2010, Tramo forwarded Epstein messages
from two female students – one at UCLA and the other at Harvard – who
had written him to express interest in research opportunities through
the Institute for Music and Brain Science, which Epstein had donated
money to.
The next day, Epstein replied: “are either of these cute.” Tramo responded: “we’ll see! (you’re terrible!)”
A petition
calling on the university to fire Tramo has garnered more than 10,000
signatures. UCLA declined the Guardian’s request for comment.
At
Bard, the tiny liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York,
the latest release of Epstein files have struck a nerve at the center of
campus.
Tthe campus of UCLA in Los Angeles, California, on 11 August 2025. Photograph: Daniel Cole/Reuters
A long-term relationship was revealed between Leon Botstein, Bard’s president, and Epstein, prompting students to pen an open letter calling for Botstein to resign.
In his own letter to the Bard community, Botstein sought to clarify his relationship with Epstein, writing:
“My interactions with Epstein were always and only for the sole purpose
of soliciting donations for the college. Mr Epstein was not my friend;
he was a prospective donor.”
In response to a
request for comment, a Bard spokesperson referred the Guardian to a
statement sent out by the school’s board of trustees to the community on
19 February, in which they announced that the school had retained an
external law firm to conduct an independent investigation
into communications between Epstein and Botstein. The independent
review will include “the full scope of these communications, financial
contributions connected to Epstein and any related matters relevant to
understanding these issues fully”.
“Botstein
has created the Bard that we know,” a current student, who asked to
remain anonymous, said. Botstein has been at the helm of the school for
more than 50 years and is widely considered synonymous with the
institution.
That student also said that the
Bard community conflicted over whether Botstein should resign. Those
against his resignation have noted his longstanding tenure and role as a
prolific fundraiser for the school.
“[The
Bard community] speaks out about a lot all the time, but this is
something that people can’t talk about because if they do, they lose
their funding, their livelihoods,” the student said.
Another student, who also requested anonymity, emphasized the significance of Botstein’s fundraising efforts on campus.
“Putting
Bard in a transitional period, or a presidential search, would only
hurt the more vulnerable parts of the institution,” she said. “We’re not
a very wealthy college, and I think we’ve done really amazing things
with the money that Botstein has fundraised.”
At Harvard, former university president Larry Summers
announced in December that he was stepping down from his teaching
position while the school investigated his ties to Epstein. The
university also confirmed that it was widening its investigation to look into donor relationships with the disgraced financier. A 2020 internal review found that Epstein donated $9.1m to the Ivy League institution between 1998 and 2008.
Similarly, Yale University barred
computer science professor David Gelernter from teaching while the
school reviewed his connection with Epstein. In an email, Gelernter recommended a student to Epstein for a software project, calling her a “v small good looking blonde”.
Ohio State announced
an investigation into OBGYN and university professor Dr Mark Landon
after files revealed Epstein was sending regular payments to him. Union
College trustee Brad Karp resigned from his position
on the school’s board over emails sent to Epstein, in addition to his
role as chair of law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
Earlier
this month, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) confirmed in an
email to the community that they suspended “a FIT employee who has an
alleged connection to the Epstein enterprise”. While not named in the
email, the professor was identified as Lawrence Delson.
The
latest release of the Epstein files has created seismic repercussions
in a wide variety of industries in the US, the UK and beyond, including
politics, business and entertainment.
In the UK, the long-term relationship between Peter Mandelson
and Epstein revealed in the files led to Mandelson’s dismissal as
British ambassador to the United States. Mandelson has since been asked
to testify in front of Congress about the relationship. More notably,
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, was arrested on 19
February on suspicion of misconduct in public office by police
investigating his dealings with Epstein.
Ramifications in the US business world were felt by billionaire Thomas Pritzker, who stepped down as executive chair of the hotel chain Hyatt after his ties with Epstein were made public. Top lawyer at Goldman Sachs Kathryn Ruemmler resigned from her role after emails revealed a close relationship between her and Epstein, whom she referred to as “Uncle Jeffrey”.
Dr
Peter Attia stepped down from his position as chief science officer for
David, a protein bar company, after his correspondence with Epstein,
which included particularly lewd language, was released.
Casey
Wasserman, a leading Hollywood talent agent, decided to sell his agency
after communications with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell were
revealed. Wasserman is also the chair of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los
Angeles, but has not yet stepped down from that role.
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![Rick James / Kool & The Gang / Maze / War / Atlantic Starr / One Way on Jul 3, 1982 [649-large]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uTcP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F659eadda-c30c-4b64-a44f-d4cda2f32254_836x1200.jpeg "Rick James / Kool & The Gang / Maze / War / Atlantic Starr / One Way on Jul 3, 1982 [649-large]")
