What really happened to Virginia Giuffre?
She took on Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew, then died by suicide in April. For the first time, her family share diary entries, private messages and photos that reveal her secret battle with her husband
Josie Ensor, The Times - July 1 2025
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On March 30 Virginia Giuffre shared a photo on her Instagram page, showing her bruised and bloodied after a car crash outside her home in Australia.
“They’ve given me four days to live,” she wrote of her prognosis. “I’m ready to go.”
To the outside world, it appeared to be the latest in a series of tragedies to befall Virginia, who had accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexually trafficking her to his high-profile friends, including Prince Andrew.
But her family understood the post for what it was: a desperate and final plea for help.
Three weeks later, on April 25, Virginia took her own life, alone on a ranch in remote scrubland north of Perth, aged 41.
Virginia’s family said little in the months that followed, even as media speculation and conspiracy theories swirled — that she had made up the crash, that her death had been ordered by influential people trying to silence her. Now, her relatives have decided to speak out in their first interview, to honour what they say were her last wishes.
“Her death was a terrible ending to this story, but there is a big part of it she never got to tell,” Amanda Roberts, the wife of Virginia’s younger brother, Sky Roberts, told The Times.
That story is one of abuse by those, like Epstein, who trafficked and exploited her. But it is also a story about a bitter battle with the person closest to her: her husband of 22 years and father of her three children, Robert Giuffre.
Amanda, using a nickname for Virginia, said: “Jenna may have fought battles with some of the most powerful men in the world, like Epstein and Prince Andrew, but what people didn’t understand was that [in her final days] the hardest battle of her life was at home.”
For the first time, Virginia’s family is sharing a diary she kept from the beginning of this year, in which she shares her memories of her marriage as it was breaking down, as well as photos, text messages and legal filings, in which she alleges that Robert was violent, abusive and “emotionally and physically controlling”.
Virginia claimed in her diary that her husband’s behaviour worsened as she became the face of the campaign to bring Epstein and others to justice. “The stronger I became, the scarier he became,” she wrote, accusing him of trying to stop her from “advocating for the victims of trafficking” and, in the final months, allegedly preventing her from seeing her children.
“What you have to know about Jenna is she was never afraid of any of these people,” Sky said. “She was ready to move on with her life, but she wanted that life to be with her kids.”
When contacted for comment, Robert’s attorney said that “the passing of the wife of Robert Giuffre and mother of their children is tragic”. But his counsel was unable to comment on specific allegations of abuse due to live proceedings in the Western Australia courts.
Meeting Robert
Born Virginia Lee Roberts, she experienced abuse at a young age when a family friend molested her aged seven.
She was spotted one day by Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell while working a summer job, aged 15, at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Virginia described how she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” among the Epstein and Maxwell’s friends until she managed to escape, aged 19.
An aspiring masseuse, she had been sent by Epstein to Thailand for a course at the International Training Massage School. It was there, in 2002, that she met Robert, a 26-year-old mixed martial arts (MMA) instructor from Australia.
Instead of returning to Epstein in New York, as she had promised, she ran away with Robert and they were married ten days later.
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