Fellow conspiracy realist. Every so often, we run into a classic episode that only becomes more relevant over time. As we're gearing up for a new chapter in our series on Epstein, tune in for was Epstein a Spy? We're returning to this episode from twenty twenty, the Gallaine Maxwell Update? Who killed Robert Maxwell?
Robert Maxwell? Who's that you know?
Maxwell? The Maxwell House? Maxwell's Oh, Maxwell's silver hammer? No, not true. This is something that I actually hadn't really thought about in a hot minute. We're talking about Gelaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, who passed away under super mysterious and sketchy circumstances.
One last non consensual swimming lesson.
Hey, did you ever hear our episode on the octopus or the Promise software scandal? Robert Maxwell is at the heart of those What are those things? Just look them up. We'll listen to those episodes too, because this guy supposedly did a whole thing with Promise, a buged version that spied on governments.
Let's roll the tape.
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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul. Mission control decands most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. As we record today, Maxwell is currently incarcerated and trying desperately to get out of to get out of jail in time for the holidays. You might recognize this name, folks. It's most associated with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted child abuser who died under mysterious
circumstances while in prison. We did a multi part series on this how it was a three four episodes.
Yeah, we've done several updates since that series too, So yeah, there's a lot.
Did we even do like an update to the update or we added like an addendum or something? Is there was some breaking news that day?
Yes, that is correct.
Hotel room if I'm not mistaken.
We recorded one of the last bits of that update in a hotel room as the as the story was developing. And we're returning today for an update on Galaine Maxwell, who was in the news a little bit, but not getting as much coverage. Hadn't been getting as much coverage as Epstein for a time. That changed recently for some very odd reasons. But let's start at the beginning with Glaine. Here are the facts.
Gallaine Maxwell was born in France on Christmas Day, December of nineteen sixty one. As she was the youngest child of media magnate some might describe as disgraced media magnate Robert Maxwell. He founded a publishing house that went on to be quite successful called Pergamon Press. She was one of nine children, and she grew up in absolute opulence of the highest order. She lived in a mansion that had a name, you know, and you know it's a mansion if it has a name, that's more like an estate.
And it had a great one, a very British one, Headington Hill Hall.
It's a good name. And Maxwell is also pretty interesting and cool name.
It always makes me think of that Beatles song, Maxwell's silver Hammer.
Hey there you go, a lot like that. Robert Maxwell's a character that could be an entire episode. I mean maybe it should. Maybe eventually we'll do that. But let's just focus on Gelain here for a bit. You know, she grew up very in luxury, let's say, very privileged. Eventually she attended Oxford University, and she kind of she wasn't I wouldn't characterize it as being used. I would say she was effectively utilized by her father to become
a socialite. As a socialite, as a person who makes connections, who kind of goes in first and you know, connects other people to the Maxwell family, I.
Think of socialites, you think of people like Paris Hilt and you just sort of live these frivolous lives. She was almost more groomed to be like an operative, you know what I mean. Like it was very much. I think you were right on when you first said it. I think she was used at an early age and kind of groomed to be this tool of her father's empire.
And that could be said for other siblings, other members of the Maxwell clan. We're going to be planting some seeds about Sir Robert Maxwell and they will come to fruition in this episode. Yeah, socialite is a group is an umbrella term that can mean a number of things. Given that her father had a bedside manner that could
be best described as terrible. He needed someone like this to be able to make those connections, to play the games of the wealthy and channel philanthropic endeavors, and you know, at times do what is essentially the legal version of laundering money. So today, of course, Galaid Maxwell is best known for her long running relationship with the the disgrace financier and convicted child abuser, the late Jeffrey Epstein. But there are still What I find interesting is there's still
questions about how Maxwell and Epstein met. The Times reported that Maxwell and Epstein met in the early nineteen nineties after she had had a difficult breakup with Count Gianfranco Sigona Mozzoni, who, like a lot of like a lot of European aristocrats, took their vast generational wealth and channeled it into industries. This is a hotel guy, so she had a rough breakup. She's at this party in New York.
She meets Jeffrey Epstein. They hit it off, but other sources argue they met before then, that they met in nineteen eighty eight. A there's a cool podcast about this called Broken Seeking Justice, and in there they relay information from I'm a convicted con artist, a Ponzi scheme guy named Steve Hoffenberg, and he had once upon a time worked with Epstein, and on that show he says that Gallaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein met through her father, Robert Maxwell,
and Matt I love your point there. He is best known as Robert Maxwell, but that's not the name he was born with. The podcast, by the way, was unable to corroborate Hoffenberg's claim. But then there are other sources that say a very similar thing.
And one of these people was a former staffer of Epstein's who says that Gallaine Maxwell was making them look at albums, like photo albums and just kind of going over, oh, here's this, here's this person, and it was photos from her father's funeral. Apparently, when this staffer was just told, oh, yeah, that's when I met Jeffrey. Just we're talking about the Siga Hotels clan, you know, kind of connecting up there
with the Maxwell family. You have to know that if you've ever heard of The Daily Mail or I mean the Mirror, that's what that's what her family owned.
Which are all kind of trash papers. If I'm not my stad mean, they're sort of like considered lower on the journalistic integrity totem pole.
Let us say, well, yeah, and especially in you know, twenty twenty, in the twenty two thousands and stuff. But remember we're talking about the eighties and nineties, like as these papers are kind of first coming to become a.
Thing, and they were still I mean, Maxwell could be described as a media magnate, but he was also often described as a tabloid tycoon.
Yeah, like a yellow journalist kind of type. Deal.
Right, So however, Maxwell, Galain Maxwell and Epstein actually did meet. They soon became an item. They were dating for some amount of time, and afterward they remained to the public eye. As you know, is associates one of those relationships that ends amicably, no harm, no foul. That's a that's a beautiful thing, as anybody who's experienced that can attest. If you want full details on the extent of Epstein's proving crimes and Galaine Maxwell's alleged involvement, then check out our
multi part series on Epstein. It is not appropriate for all audience members. It goes very it's a very in depth look at his origins, what he did, his close calls, how he got caught, and the questions remaining around his.
Death, and I haven't watched it yet, but i've been maybe because it's just, you know, times are dark. I kind of want like uplifting material. But there's a Netflix documentary that's supposed to be quite good as well.
Essentially, bottom line is that Glaine Maxwell is currently accused of aiding and abetting multiple acts of sexual abuse, grooming, afficking, and more. This included her scouting out victims of Epstein and his associates like Prince Andrew. This also included accusations of occasionally participating in sexual acts with the victims herself, so actually getting her quote unquote hands sturdy.
And there's a lot of alleged activity there that isn't necessarily, you know, identified in any of the cases against her, but alleged activity activity of her, specifically recording a lot of these activities.
Right right, which comes into play later because we do know that Epstein obsessively recorded encounters, especially with especially encounters that he had brokereed he and Galaine had broken between the victims and notable figures in the world of politics, in the world of aristocracy, and in the world of business.
Robert Maxwell is one of these giants. He wasn't. As far as we know, he was aware of Epstein and had worked with him or interacted with him, and he has some murky involvement, but he's not in this story. The reason you don't see him too often in the Epstein saga is because he died in nineteen ninety one, and about nineteen days after his death, someone took a photo at the Plaza Hotel during a memorial event for
this guy. And this photo shows Galain Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein mid conversation, and they look like they're having a pleasant time. Just remember, we'll get back to Robert in a second. We're just planting the seeds. So back to the crimes. Epstein quick timeline arrested July sixth, twenty nineteen. Unlike the previous rest this one sticks. He goes on to die in jail on August tenth, twenty nineteen, before
he reaches trial. Lane Maxwell is arrested in New Hampshire on July second, twenty twenty, in a house that she bought with cash. It's a million dollar house. It makes me think of our Foreign Investment episode. She's arrests on multiple charges related to this abuse of young women and Girls by Epstein. Her trial has been set for July twelfth, twenty twenty one. Like everything else, that's probably pandemic pending.
Yeah, and as we are recording this episode, she currently sits in prison. Her bail was denied because she has a lot of money and access to planes. She also, by the way, has a helicopter or pilot's license. I don't know if it's still valid today, but at one point she got a helicopter pilot's license and was gifted a helicopter by Epstein.
Her father actually is also just a peek into this guy. Her father was actually a big fan of helicopters too. He owned a He had a helicopters strip on top of one of his buildings almost entirely so he could use it to fly over Rupert Murdoch's office on his way to and from things because Rupert Murdoch did not have a helicopter.
Do you think he like with Haka Lugi out of the helicopter, like on to the top of the building.
Just I'm sure he was.
He was.
Yeah. He was also known for urinating off the top of his office building and the side of his boat and off the side of his boat. But at least he was a yacht.
Guys. You can't call it a book, sure.
But his at least he was wearing clothes when he was urinating off the building. That's not the case with the ship.
Now, I wanted to add one little detail that I hadn't heard before when I was watching like an old sixty minutes not old like you know, from when the Epstein case kind of first really heat it up, and it was talking about gal Maxwell and from the perspective of this young former art student at the New York Art Institute or I'm sorry, the New York New York Academy of Art and Epstein apparently and Maxwell were benefactors of Hers name was Maria Farmer, and like they really
liked her paintings and bought some of her first work, and then Epstein hired her to kind of be his art buyer, like for his mansion, to like you know, like outfit his home with like, you know, good art, tasteful art, because he liked her taste. But she would ride around with them all the time, and we spent a lot of time with Maxwell personally. She talks about a story in this sixty minutes where Maxwell would very frantically at the end of the day say, oh, gosh,
I've got to go find the new Biles. I have to go get the new Biles. And she's like, I don't know what that means. And she realized that she would go just like run out of the car, go to like parks or like when schools were letting out, and she would see her just write down her phone number and give it to these young girls. Some of them, she said that had braces that were like, you know that young And then they'd turn up to the mansion and they just say, Oh, they're going to be models,
you know for what. I don't know what do you need models for if you're a financier, but.
Yeah, financial models. So that's a common thing. No, you're right though, that sixty minutes is worth a watch. You can also hear a couple of audio interviews I think with the same person, same victim. So it appears that now currently it appears that Galaine Maxwell also has another close romantic relationship a tech ceo and former Coastguard officer
named Scott Borgerson. They met some time ago before the arrest, and they interacted also through an obscure organization Maxwell founded called the Tara mar Projects like Earthsea Project, and they appeared to be in a relationship, although Borgodson denied it. For a while they were living together in Manchester by the Sea after Maxwell Soldier town Home on the Upper East Side in twenty sixteen. That's the same year she struck several confidential settlements in civil court with women who
said they were exploited by Epstein. But Porkinson is interesting, Okay, So he's not this landed gentry or he's not someone who inherited a bunch of money. He comes from rural Missouri. He actually did earn his way in the world, and so he's somewhat anomalous in a lot of these upper echelon circles. He also has a bit of red meat
for the more conspiracy minded of us. He also worked for the Council on Foreign Relations from two thousand and seven two thousand and eight he was Fellow in residence and then and then he transferred and became visiting fellow for Ocean's governance with the organization from eight to twenty ten.
It's kind of interesting, like I would maybe you kind of characterize someone like this as new money right, because all of these like you know, landed gentries, as you say, Ben in the generational money, they often look down on folks like that, which is ironic considering it typically means that someone actually bootstrapped themselves from nothing to like being a success, as opposed to just kind of inheriting it and like you know, parleying their you know fortune they
were born with into more you know fortune. It almost is interesting that that's usually almost a term of abuse. So it is interesting that he would have found his way into the inner circle with someone like Maxwell.
In the CFR and then at this, at one of these hearings post arrest, it's very weird, prosecutors drop a bombshell because they say that Maxwell is in fact secretly married, but they do not disclose the identity of her spouse. It's just not Epstein. At some point post relationship with Epstein, she got married, and investigators weren't able to find any information about this on publicly available, widely available databases. But that could mean that they married in a foreign country
or something. There are a couple of different ways that could happen and still be legal. But now that spouse appears to be Scott Borgensen. This has not been solidly proven, but it adds some wrinkles to an already twisting story.
There's a great New York Times article about this that quotes a defense lawyer, Jeffrey Chabrow, and he says something very interesting, and I don't want to be too cynical about this, but he raises a good point when he says, there are reasons that people might get married other than love, especially if they're facing a criminal indictment.
Yeah, you know, one of them is kind of obvious if you've watched any crime procedural on television, that whole like, you can't test against me if you're my spouse thing. But the big one, and the one that makes a lot of sense here, I think, is the concept that being married can help you move some money around a lot easier. And we know, at least according to the reports, that Gilaine Maxwell is worth around twenty million. That's what she kind of has or had, I guess at one
point very recently. But it would seem that the circles in which she runs her background, her interactions with Epstein, the amount of money that he had and his Epstein estate currently has. It feels like maybe there is or was more money to be moved around.
Curious or and curious or yeah, and in the latest news. So right now, just to be completely transparent, we're recording this on December eleventh, or preparing for this episode on December tenth. Yesterday, reports emerged that Maxwell Borgenson and some of Maxwell's siblings are teaming up to propose a somewhere between a twenty eight point five million and thirty million dollar bail package. It's twenty five million straight from Scott, the other five ish million from her siblings, and it's
an attempt to free Maxwell before the holidays. They're trying to get her out of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, and they say this, she'll relinquish her multiple passports, she'll go to house arrests, she'll get electronic monitoring. She has a French passport that's one of the one she has, and French authorities have brought a case against her there as well. The team that is trying to get her out, the lawyers Borkinson and the siblings haul the plan operation
get Gallain out. We're not even we're not even at the crazy part yet. To get there, we have to look at some speculation.
Can we say, can we just say maybe they spend thirty million dollars to get her out just to have like Christmas dinner? Yeah, but like separated by six feet wearing masks. That's just that's hilarious to me.
Well, I'm sure if you have a all right, I'm gonna say it. Wealthy people are going to get the vaccines first, Oh, no question. So I think that they may already be. I don't know, I don't know. I don't want to I don't want to be that person. But statistically, they're much more likely to enjoy post pandemic freedoms faster, more quickly. So to get to the actual crazy part of this, we have to look at some of the speculation, some of the concerns, some of the
rumors that have been spreading as Galain Maxwell has been incarcerated. First, number one, let's point out the biggest badger in the bag. People are worried about the possibility that she will be quote Epstein's does that mean.
As though she would appear to commit suicide while being held in prison, Although perhaps it was not suicide, that's the speculation, and you know, there we can't prove, right now on this podcast, And I don't think there's anyone out there right now that can come on a podcast and prove to you for sure that Jeffrey Epstein did not commit suicide. But as we've talked about on numerous episodes on this show, Jeffrey Epstein's death feels ridiculously fishy.
Oh yeah, I mean the whole like the guards fell asleep story. I mean, that's that's just come.
On busted cameras, the hyoid bone, the timeline. There are issues with it. Even if you consider yourself convinced that he took his own life and a series of ridiculously incompetent actions allowed him to do so sucessfully, there's still a lot of questions. And it's not just you know, people in the Internet or people on podcasts speculating about this. There are also investigative journalists, numerous citizen observers, legal groups, and Epstein's own lawyers say that they don't believe the
official story. So naturally, similar concerns are going to arise regarding Maxwell's safety. But then that from that, okay, from that piece, we build another one. This there's a I'm doing a bit of a conspiratorial Bob Ross thing right. So our first brushstroke is the circumstances of death. Our second brush stroke is concerns about, Okay, if Jeffrey Epstein
was murdered, who was behind it? Their concerns that there might be some person or some organization behind his murder, and then therefore they would be the most likely culprit were anything untoward to happen to Glad Maxwell.
He was six?
Was it six?
Yes, Prince Andrew, am I six? That's just I'm joking there, No.
No, dude, I mean to me, it's almost like you could take your pick. There are probably several world governments that would have had reasons to bump that guy off with as international as his clientele was in terms of the investments. God knows, that was probably a lot of crooked stuff going on there, not to mention all the people that were on his plane and on his island and complicit that we don't even maybe know about, you know.
Yeah, And I do want to say that, Prince Andrew, if you're listening, I think no Sweat would be really cool street name for your back then.
I didn't sweat back then.
Explain the origin of that to me, Ben real quick, I heard you mentioned it at the top of the show. I don't think i've heard that one. He was literally saying, I don't sweat, so that you couldn't have my DNA or something or what's he saying.
So in twenty nineteen, he was trying to prove that he did not assault a seventeen year old in the nineteen nineties, and part of his explanation for that was that the victim said that she danced with the Prince and you Prince Andrew was sweating profusely and then so much so that she had to go have a bath
later because she was sodden from it. And then he said, quote, there's a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition, which is that I don't sweat, or I didn't sweat at the time, and that was was it. Yes, I didn't sweat at the time.
So does he just like hang his head out the window with his tongue out like a dog like? Is that how he.
Releases didn't go it, didn't go into it. I think it's a good street name.
And in that same interview, the interviewer says to Prince Andrew, just for the record, you've been on his private plane. Yes, you've been to stay on his private island. Uh huh, on his home own palm Beach. Sure, you've visited Gulayne Maxwell's house in Belgrade. Here in London, I.
Mean, yeah, what are you getting at? I mean, come on, he.
Yes for the record on our show. He just says yes to every one of those questions. But I don't really know why we're saying this, mostly just because that concept that, oh, it couldn't have been me, because of the whole sweat thing. When you compare that to the fact that he was in all of those places where the alleged sexual abuse was occurring, it just you can tell it feels off.
Yeah. So that's where we get to the idea, the concern of conspiracy, collusion, some sort of hidden hand at play behind this. Again, if these were homicide, If this were a homicide, because Epstein had tons of potential enemies, relatives of his victims, which were sadly, probably the least threatening because they will tend to have the smallest amount
of state level influence and ungodly amounts of money. So he also had those powerful associates, including a course prince Andrew Prince Prince no sweat Andrew, and they may have wanted to silence him before he revealed any damning information about their own involvement in his sex ring. There are also possible intelligence organizations using Epstein as a part of an elaborate honey trap operation to secure leverage over political
industrial elites. Again, that's not proven, but I think that's the first place a lot of our minds went post death at this point. Each of these groups we just described could have a motive if again Epstein was murdered. But how could we if that's the case, How could we figure out the most likely culprit? For some the answer can be found by approaching this through an entirely different angle and asking ourselves not who killed Jeffrey Epstein,
but asking ourselves who killed Roger Maxwell? What are we talking about? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
So Glaine's father, Robert Maxwell, who we talked about a little bit at the top of this show. He's a media tycoon. He went missing on November fifth, nineteen ninety one.
He was sixty eight years old. He was last seen on his yacht named the Lady Gallaine at four twenty five am local time where he was and after a bit of searching and attempts to locate him, his body was found nude in the Atlantic Ocean, and this was just off of the Canary Islands where his yacht was found and his body was discovered.
The official conclusion from an inquest held in December of nineteen ninety one found that his death was the result of a heart attack in conjunction with accidental drowning. Essentially, that he was nude urinating off the side of the vessel as he often did there. It is from yeah,
is noted by several It's not conjecture. It's noted by several people throughout his life, and that while he was in this act he fell overboard, whether it was from staggering from the heart attack, or whether he slipped the railing. Here is wire on this yacht, and he's a pretty large man. He's pretty top heavy, so gravity is working against him if he tilts, you know, too far forward. But here's the thing. Three pathologists were unable to agree on the cause of death. You'll also see that Maxwell
did not have serious heart conditions. He also he didn't seem to have serious lung conditions, though he did have earlier lung operations. They're just saying it's not as if there were a ticking cardiac time bomb. So murder was ruled out by the judge. Suicide was also kind of taken off the board. One of his sons also said, you know, I don't think my old man would take his own life. It wasn't in his makeup or his mentality.
And it was his yacht, and he frequently urinated off the side. And if through toxicology reports they didn't find that he was grossly intoxicated, drunk, or you know, on some other substance that would cause him to lose his footing easily, I don't know. If it just feels weird, feels very weird.
And they proceed with the funeral. His funeral is a huge event. We mentioned that memorial service in New York right at the Plaza Hotel, but his actual funeral takes place in Israel. The funeral is attended by the Prime Minister, by the President, by at least six former and currently serving heads of Israeli intelligence, and then politicians from across the domestic political spectrum there, including the opposition party. He's
buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. This is a huge affair, And of course, yes, it makes sense that it would be a huge affair because of his stature in the media industry. However, it is the guest list is unusual. Like Rupert Murdoch for instance, might not might have a ton of celebrities at a funeral, might have some politicians he was friends with, But would he
have the current president, would he have prime ministers? Would he have like the head of the ANSSA or the FBI or the CIA there as well, just to make sure he's in the grave, you know.
Yeah, maybe that's what it is, just to ensure to do the whole wake thing and just watch him for a while and all right, all right, we'll let him go. But you're right that and we won't know until Murdock goes what happens with his funeral.
But and I'm not wishing death on anyone, no.
No, no, no, no no.
It's just.
The intelligence thing is what makes me wonder, not necessarily the heads of state, it's the intelligence side.
It's just hmmm, I want to say too, there's a lot of parallels here between the epstein death and this death in that you know, Epstein also didn't strike anybody that knew him as the type that would have had the wherewithal to kill himself under any circumstances. You know, it takes a certain amount of what's the word bravado and kind of like any interview you here with Epstein,
he's always talking about how he knows himself. He uses the fact that he has a secret eye to explore all of the things that it means to be me. And you know, he talks like someone with a lot of with very self possessed that I don't really buy would have done that. And this Maxwell seems to have a very similar character.
Oh sure, Yeah, here's the thing. So there are all these pieces that we have to add to our painting. Here years later, years after his death, after the official conclusions, etc. In two thousand and seven, there's this production crew. They're researching a biopic for BBC and it's on Maxwell. It's called In a Burst of Creativity Maxwell, And they found a suitcase in the possession of one of his security guys.
This suitcase contained a bunch of tapes because in the time leading up to his death, he had become paranoid, and he had started wiring the offices illegally of his employees and various associates, the same way that Nixon obsessively recorded everything. So that's a strong indication that he appeared to believe trouble was on the horizon. But why Yeah, right, good question, Matt. That brings us to his other two careers.
I'd like to call them, because you see, in addition to being a medium mogul, it turns out that Maxwell had not one, but two other career pursuits. First, he was making a living as a thief.
After his death, when all this stuff came to light, everybody changed their tune about Robert Maxwell. It was only a couple of months too after he died where a bunch of banks, several banks came forward and they were frantically calling on some loans that have been taken out, and one of them had to do with the pension for the companies that he had started that he was running.
You see, to come to light that Maxwell had been using, or had used already hundreds of millions of pounds from his various companies pension funds to shore up shares of the Mirror Group in an attempt to save the organization for bankruptcy. There were articles in papers just before his death that were calling him the man that saved the Mirror, the guy that had somehow come up with all this money to prop it up, to prop up the Mirror Group and to make it okay for all the employees.
But what he'd actually been doing is stealing their pensions. Four hundred and sixty million pounds worth.
Yeah, and I mean, let's think about it. Like in the in the UK, especially senior citizens are often referred to as pensioners because that's how they live when they're older and can't work anymore. So he's a sly robbing from little old men and women to pay back his loans.
Right, However, the money moved, it was no longer moving in his favor, which just let me once again shout out the fantastic graphic novel series The Black Monday Murders. If you haven't read it yet, go read it. It's by an author named Jonathan Hickman. I think the artist's name is Tim Koker. But if you are one of if you are Hickman and you are listening to this podcast, put out, please man, put out volume nine, Don't Leave Me Hanging?
Have you dropped this one on the podcast before? Ben?
I can't remember some podcasts. I'm a big fan of it.
Sounds great.
Oh god, it's I don't even want to give you the rough description. I'll tell you off air really quickly.
Another quick recommendation, don't want to spoil anything. But there's this incredible new show that just hit Amazon Prime. I think he wants the first five episodes for free, but it's on AMC Plus and it's called The Gangs of London and it's like a out this organized crime syndicate in London that is all revolves around a front facingly
legitimate real estate mogul kind of situation. And there's a lot of parallels with these types of things in that show in terms of like laundering money and intrigue and you know, just like kind of faction warring factions and stuff.
And it goes to show you how, at the end of the day, like business is war and there are no rules, you know, because people you get to a certain point where you just want more and more and more, and being denied that you'll do anything that you have to to keep what you have and to get more.
It makes me think about Maxwell flying over Murdoch's tower, right, you know in his helicopters, well, knowing that he's just taking that money pulled it into his helicopters.
Actually, so this is true, but it gets away from it gets away from Maxwell because you know, you find great fortune and you find great danger when you were functioning at these heights. Right. So the bottom line is this.
There's a bunch of back and forth. It turns out that the way the way the financial catastrophe is handled means that his pension theft is partially repaid from public funds, from UK taxpayer money, and the pensioners get eventually works out they get around half of what they were supposed to, which can absolutely wreck your life in retirement.
Is that a bailout? Ben Is that what that would be called? Like literally the government stepping in and giving taxpayer money to bail out a corrupt business person who stole from pensioners.
It kind of is there's this public private cooperation that occurs. The pension funds get replenished with money from two banks Golden Sacks, Sheerson Layman and the British government, and it gets supported by a surplus taken by the government of like one hundred million pounds, So that means that, yeah, the British taxpayers paid for part of this guy's crimes. But that's still not enough to save the company or even save all the entirety of the pensions. So the
Maxwell Companies file for bankruptcy in nineteen ninety two. So this is all for nothing. Essentially, it was to staunch the wounds. Yeah, it didn't save the company, which was Maxwell's aim, but it did at least give those people some of their pension back.
Well, I just mean the robbing, like the stealing of the pension funds, was for naught because it didn't even ultimately accomplish the goal that he was hoping, which is to keep the company from filing for bankruptcy.
Oh yeah, yeah, and you know he's dead when the company files for bankruptcy has passed on. One of his sons, Kevin Maxwell, is later declared bankrupt with debts to the tune of four hundred million pounds. This makes him This gives him the dubious distinction of being the most bankrupt person in the United Kingdom. So that's great heights and
great lows. He and another sibling, Ian and two other former directors went on trial in ninety five for a conspiracy to defraud, but they were unanimously acquitted by a jury of their peers. So that's his other career. That's Robert Maxwell's other career. It's proven it was a thief, regardless of his motivations. He has a second career. It's a career that. Yeah, it's a career that many of our astute fellow listeners knew we were going to get to.
And we'll bring this back to Galain in a second, but we need to we need to explore this because not enough people talk about it. His second career was as a spy. I am ready at this point to say, you know, I am ready to say that I personally believe this is true.
In my opinion, I feel that as well. I'm I'm not gonna say it out loud like that yet, but listen to this, Okay.
Now, it feels there's a ring of truth to it, to be sure.
So back to this funeral. There's a line from the eulogy that stuck out to multiple observers and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's this nobody will ever know the extent to which Maxwell helped Israel. This could be, This could be a couple of things. First, people say very nice things about their loved ones at eulogies. That's what eulogies are for. Secondly, yeah, Robert max Well is commonly regarded as a hero in Israel.
He provided immense amounts of funding for various industries. He was instrumental maintaining lines of communication between Soviet countries and Israel during the Cold War era. There's a ton of stuff there. But the big question is was he just a really wealthy guy using his immense wealth to help out a nation that he saw as a homeland or
was there something different? Because multiple journalists, including respectable ones like seboor Hirsch, have basically come out and said this guy is massade.
Yeah, I mean, and just really quickly, like just look at who attended his memorial service. You had Israeli Prime Minister Etzak Shamir at the time, Israeli President Kaim Hertzog and a source quota to saying no less than sixving and former heads of Israeli intelligence, and many dignitaries and politicians both government and opposition.
And there's some interesting stuff that was reported. Back in twenty thirteen, there were several outlets that had published reports that the FBI was a bit afraid that Maxwell was some kind of spy. They though thought he was a Soviet spy, and they thought he was trying to essentially use his publishing empire to send intelligence I guess, to breach the Iron Curtain through his publications, if that makes sense,
to go pass through it. And you know, there was an investigation and eventually they did close it, and I think that was in nineteen fifty seven. It was way back, but the suspicions remained in both the United States and the United Kingdom's governments.
Also do want to point out, you know, intelligence agencies like to portray themselves as domestically in step with one another, but intelligence agencies have shut down each other's investigations before. They're not they're not always on the same team. And I could tell you a little bit about what the
FBI suspicions were like in the in the fifties. There they were they were concerned that Maxwell was taking scientific journals and research and then using his publishing empire as an avenue to translate those articles into Russian and then communicate them to Soviet forces, so this could be seen as this could be seen as conveying privileged information. That was their main concern, that he might be helping them get a technological leap frog on the US, which makes sense.
It'd be weird to use a publication for that, right, because that would be more of a slider under a door somewhere.
Right, right. So, I mean that's probably part of why they eventually closed out their investigation. Be as you said, there were there were still reservations, you know what I mean. This was not an Anthony Bordain no reservation situation. Multiple people, I know, they're not all going to work, We're live. Multiple people who were familiar with this case and with this figure in the US and across upon the UK were like, Okay, sure, maybe not that one, but this
guy is up to something. And it turned out maybe they knew he was up to something because they were also hiring him to do other stuff. It's it's weird because he's not just the spy for one country, right.
This is true. There were rumors swirling around that he was a spy for several different countries at the same time. The USSR, Israel and the UK. He was accused of having ties to the Mesade abduction of Mordecai the New New who was a person who kind of lets slip some secrets about Israel's secret nuclear program, and he is has been kind of isolated to the country, is being held there, unable to leave to this very day. He also alleged ties to the Promise affair p r O.
M I s WHOA. Yeah, Yeah, that's largely because the FBI withdrew his file from public view. And Matt, you want to tell us little bit more about the promise affair.
Well, I just can't believe. I can't believe that he's got both of those of a new New and Promise software in his background, potentially.
Because the shadow of Castlero.
Right man, dude, Yeah, it's feeling like an uber conspiracy here with Maxwell.
WHOA.
Okay, the Promise Promise debacle was something we've done in a video on I believe we've talked about it. Yeah, we talked about it on an episode fairly recently. No way, do we just do the Casteleiro story and not fully go into promise Yes, oh lord, you guys are in for a treat when we do that episode. It's a maybe you could characterize it as a software battle between Uncle Sam a couple other countries and this thing called inslaw, but that's how I say it in slaw, but inslaw.
And it's essentially this weird thing where this company alleges that the government stole their software, or at least the underlying operation of their software, and then used it to conduct intelligence. And it's really creepy stuff. And this guy, this journalist, Danny Casilero, may have lost his life due to finding out about it. And this thing called the octopus that he called the octopus.
Yeah, and the rabbit hole potential here is profound. So there's this thing that started happening where people were digging into questions about Maxwell's involvement in this. And as they were digging into it, they noticed that the FBI started classifying parts of their parts of their reporting on him.
But we know what those formerly unclassified materials said. They said that Maxwell accessed an NSA database with info on how to tap government databases around the world, and he got in trouble for that, or he got a lot of heat for that, which is weird because it's exactly what US and Israeli intelligence are accused of modifying the promise software to do they're also accused of stealing it
from inslaw. So this led some conspiracy theorists to claim that instead of slipping off his boat while peeing, Massad had itself killed Maxwell because Israel had refused to bail out his companies, and he threatened to retaliate by saying, look, I know where the skeletons are, and I will shine a light on and that.
And that tracks, I would say, given his willingness to steal from pension funds. I mean, he seemed like he was definitely desperate and was going to go to whatever means necessary to you know, stay solvent. Uh, probably not particularly smart, you know, gamble to go up against Masad knowing what we know about them and how you know hardcore they are. But this tracks to me. I don't know how you guys feel.
Well, it's an interesting thing. Like if you game it out and you just imagine him on his yacht feeling like, you know, he's pretty isolated out there in the water, both in a good and bad way, and then I don't know, God, this is amazing. Thank you Ben for making that connection. I don't know how I missed that connection with Robert Maxwell.
WHOA, we don't. I mean, we still don't. That's it, Hey, whoa, we didn't prove anything.
Yet, No, I know, I know, but just but again, like in this world of conspiracy, they're all these webs, right, and I just didn't realize that there was a connection there whatsoever.
It's nuts, right, It's nuts. So let's pause for a moment, and when we return, if we returned, we are going to start tracing this breadcrumb trail back and we'll get to Gallane at the end. We're back, all right. So, as we said, let's talk about the relationship between Robert
Maxwell Jeffrey Epstein. There are multiple sources claiming Maxwell somehow gave Epstein his start in business and finance, whether that's through connecting him with people who could help him, or whether that's through giving him money and saying, okay, off to the stock market with you, my boy, or whatever.
And so given the long standing, to a degree credible questions about the two men's possible involvement with intelligence activities, it's tempting and it's easy to trace this sort of invisible line, you know, like you just did Matt connecting these guys? What was the purpose of their interaction? This brings us to what I can only call the big what if because we have to go through so many what ifs to get here. But okay, first, what if
Epstein was murdered? What if Maxwell was also murdered? If those two things were true, could the same organization have been responsible for both homicides?
Three?
Big what's there? And then we so we looked into the work of some journalists who have published books on this very question.
Yeah, there's a two thousand and three book. It's called From Bevon to Blair Fifty Years Reporting from the Political front Line. It's a former Mirror journalist, Jeffrey Goodman who's writing it, and he concludes that Maxwell was murdered quite possibly by agents of the same intent telligence organizations that had assisted Maxwell in the past. And we've got a couple excerpts here from the book that we'd like to
read for you. First, one is quote the possibility that Maxwell could have ended up in the Old Bailey, that's a jail Essentilly in prison on charges of criminal fraud raised critical questions for a number of countries involved in the Maxwell triangle of international dealings. So he's already there laying out the connections essentially in the danger, and he goes on to say, Bob Maxwell, Robert Maxwell in the
dock of the Old Bailey was not a prospect. Any of these groups, which included the United States, Britain, Soviet Russia, Israel, and France, would have appreciated the intelligence services in all of these countries were aware of the dangers. My own theory is that any of them, or even a combination of several, could have been responsible for Maxwell's death. Now,
really quickly, think about what that means. If someone with intelligence from all of these different countries, who has knowledge of the inner workings of intelligence agencies and bad things that they've probably done from all these different countries, is in jail, he could turn on any one of them or all of them, or you know, one could be
the winner essentially and everybody else gets screwed. And that completely checks out from a factual standpoint if in fact he was functioning as a spy or in some kind of intelligence aspect for these groups.
Yeah, yeah, And it's not as crazy as it might sound, because think about this, if you are if you are an agency or an organization like any of the ones named, then what you are doing is maybe less a matter of what would be considered ethical and more a matter of how you control the distribution of order and chaos. So there's a calcul if there's any there's homicide involved, then there has to be a calculation where someone says, okay, how do we handle the financial fallout and what this
does to the markets. And if the calculation comes back and it's like we can handle it, we can actually turn it to our advantage, then why would you help this person just because it's the right thing to do? Forget that. No, there's a very nietzchean I think reasoning and intelligence agencies.
A little tiny added detail. The Old Bailey is more than just a jail. It's actually the central Criminal Court of England and Wales. And you might remember it's the building that is targeted as a terrorist attack in v
for Vendetta. It represents kind of like you know, the law in London in the UK, and so he would have been potentially in like a holding cell there with all of the people sniffing around asking all the wrong questions that these governments would not want to have had him under interrogation answering, right.
A lot of publicity.
Yeah, and you imagine someone in that position would have to make some kind of a deal for his own safety. Sure, yeah, almost immediately, and he would have to be on the table like beforehand. You'd have to you'd want to get a judge to give you some kind of immunity, let's say, for crimes that took place in the nineties and early two thousands in Florida.
Right. Right. There's another book that was published a year before. It goes even further with his accusation. It's called Robert Maxwell Israel's Superspies by these authors, Matt Dillon and Gordon Thomas, and it specifically claims that Massad got rid of Maxwell after he was driven by financial desperation to call them and threaten to blow the whistle on past activities. That
because he had assisted these places numerous times. He said, I'm going to blow the whistle on this if you don't give me the cash I need to keep my business afloat. His business is, by the way, I don't think we said that he got all told they were about three billion pounds underwater before, you know, before.
He was, Oh, that's that's intense, three billion pounds down. Yeah, and then you ask, you know, Israel essentially to pay for it.
In there in their claims, you know, and just numerically it makes sense because if you need three billion pounds or three billion dollars, once you get to the B level of this stuff, you need state assistance. Maybe maybe there are banks that could help you, but they would want the state involved, maybe the maybe the Catholic Church, but they would also probably want the banks involved.
So does that mean he was a pretty terrible business person to let his businesses get that far in debt. That's unheard of. That's that's insane.
They're they're huge empires. It's we're talking about the press, right, We're talking about newspapers, right. I mean, these things have been making so much money, you know, for decades, and then all of a sudden the bottom kind of falls out.
That's true. So I mean in the same boat as a lot of a lot of publishers, I'm sure. Yeah.
And then we want to note this book, Israel's Superspies, based on interviews with former intelligence agents from three different countries Israel, US, UK, and according to the book, he was actually out there by the Canary Islands, not for funsies, but because he was expecting to receive a payment from Massad and his yacht was anchored so he could have
a rendezvous with these agents and they met him. Did Yeah, in this theory, they met him, but they didn't give him what they he thought they were going to give him. To be to put a fine point on it, the story is that he got drugged and tossed overboard. But we bring it all back together, so we've got a
lot of stuff here. If indeed these men were murdered, and if indeed they were murdered by the same organization, it always seems to point to some intelligence organization, or if they were murdered by like a web of interlocking organizations that you sometimes conflict but all got on board about stopping this guy from squealing, then is it possible that Gallai Maxwell, who was so close to both of these individuals, was also somehow involved in or associated with
the various murky missions these men are alleged to have undertaken. I don't know, And if that's true, what does it mean for the future of Galeis Maxwell? More importantly, I would argue, what does it mean for the victims of the Epstein ring who continue to fight for justice as
we record this episode today. I don't know, and I know it's a hell of a logical leap to say that there might be that some of this might Like the Robert Maxwell stuff I think we can say is very credible, The Jeffrey Epstein stuff, I think we can say indications are very troubling. The Gallaine Maxwell stuff, though it's still it exists concurrently with these other things, but it's not proof yet. I don't know what it is, dude.
For me, the alarms are all going off, and again it is just opinion at this point, but it feels as though the activities that Glaine and Epstein were involved in, specifically the filming and recording of sexual activities that were going on in all these locations across the world with powerful people, with Gallaine's connections to her father and possible spy activities, it just it's at least if you were writing it as a fiction piece, it would be perfect. Does that make sense?
Uh? Huh No? I mean, look, obviously part of the show sometimes is like are interesting and informed speculation, and that certainly is part of what we're doing here, But god, if it doesn't all kind of add up in a big, big way.
I mean, people do I feel like maybe I should have said this in the Rebecca Quorum episode. I don't remember if we did. It is true that people do slip and fall yes off of votes. That does happen in the Quoreum case. Obviously it's hard to slip and fall somehow getting around a six foot enclosure. But in this case, Yeah, there are a lot of questions. I am not surprised that these questions remain, because a lot of them do need to be answered, and it gets
pretty deep into the Cold War. It gets pretty deep into the idea of compromot they would call it, and the idea of the nature of leverage and power. But really this point, we don't know how that bail package
will go for the Galain Maxwell team. While her team's reportedly doing everything they can to assure the court she's not a flight risk, and while the DOJ has even been keeping her on a strict suicide watch, like every fifteen minutes someone comes in to make sure she's alive, it's still no surprise that people around the world think her life is in serious danger or could be, you know. But if that's the case, then what has protected her
so far? If someone is behind all of this, then who were they and what happens next?
Yeah, we'll have to find out as we get closer to her trial, because it feels like that won't be a I don't know if any of this is true, it feels like that wouldn't be allowed to continue.
No, I agree, I mean, I think something likely is going to happen that's going to prevent that from taking place.
I think so, do you. One of my questions too, is Okay, obviously, I think there's a lot of sand to the Maxwells, to the Robert Maxwell stuff, and I'm still I'm still very much on the fence about the Jeffrey Epstein death. But one question that I wanted to bring to you guys, and I think it's something that surprised all of us when we were first looking into the Epstein case, is why isn't there a dead hand system that got deployed here, you know what I mean,
in either the Maxwell case or the Epstein case. And does Gallaine Maxwell have some kind of insurance policy?
Is that?
I don't know, Maybe she was the dead hand, you know what I mean, like maybe she controlled it. Yeah, that's all. It's all speculation, right, We actually want to hear from you. I'd love to hear your speculation, but I've also I think we would love to hear if you knowe something, if you wouldn't mind communicating with us, if you feel safe about doing that, and we'd very much like to hear what you have to say on
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