On Sept. 24, 2003, James Detwiler, a Certified Industrial Hygienist, conducted what he anticipated would be a standard visual inspection of a residence in New York City for potential mold contamination. What he didn’t realize at the time was that he would be recounting that inspection in meticulous detail decades later.
The residence was 9 East 71st Street in Manhattan, the seven-story townhouse then owned by Jeffrey Epstein, and the site of countless alleged crimes, including sex trafficking of minors.
“My sister-in-law within the last month called me, she said 'tell me that story again, I told some of my friends and they couldn't believe it,'” Detwiler, now 78 and retired, told Raw Story.
Having earned a degree in environmental engineering, Detwiler often worked on behalf of home insurance companies to assess mold contamination in residences. But in 2003, he was asked to assess Epstein’s property and issue a report to Douglas Schoettle, a close associate of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, according to an FBI tactical intelligence report.
Detwiler said he walked into the assignment blind, and had no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary. Within moments of being allowed into Epstein’s home, however, that abruptly changed.
“Knocked on the door, didn't get a response, but then I tried the door handle and it was open. I yelled in and then somebody came and took me in and asked me what I was there for,” Detwiler told Raw Story. “I explained it to them, so then they introduced me to a gentleman that was involved in the renovations, a supervisor of some kind.”
After taking his first steps inside the townhouse, Detwiler’s attention was immediately captured by several oddities.
“I'm walking in and I noticed in the foyer shelves on either side that contained clear jars with liquid and eyeballs in them that seemed to be looking at you as you walked in,” Detwiler said. “So the guy said, 'this guy has a lot of odd things in here!’”
Detwiler was then given a quasi-tour of the home, where he described seeing a “laboratory” that had “some exotic-type tub,” which he observed had overflown and “contaminated some material that looked like some mold was growing.”
The two then made their way to just outside Epstein’s bedroom, which Detwiler recalled was on either the second or third floor of the residence, and was strictly “off limits.” The individual accompanying Detwiler did, however, share some colorful details of Epstein’s bedroom habits.
“The guy said 'yeah, this guy's a bachelor and likes to bring girls here,'” Detwiler said, recalling what the individual told him. “And [he] explained about his bedroom, which he kept at 50 degrees, which was a challenge from an engineering standpoint; they had to design special equipment just to provide that temperature.”
Right beside Epstein’s bedroom, according to Detwiler, was a “huge walk-in closet,” with one wall covered with woolen hats “of all different colors and sizes” hanging off of wooden pegs. Their purpose was soon explained to Detwiler.
“The guy told me, 'yeah, this guy brings the girls in, they go in here first and pick a hat because he tells them it's going to be cold in the bedroom,’” Detwiler said.
“He did mention how he brings lots of girls there. I'm not sure, but I think he might have said that he likes a different girl every day or every night, or something, and I wondered, how in the world does he arrange that? Who finds these girls in New York?”
Describing his mindset at the time as “bewildered,” Detwiler was then brought to a room that would leave his “mouth almost hanging open.”
“He said, 'I want to show you one other area,' and we went to a place he said [was] a gymnasium, and I thought, 'Wow, a home big enough to have a gym!'” Detwiler told Raw Story.
The gymnasium, Detwiler said, was “fairly dark” when the two first entered. The man accompanying him walked across the dimly lit gymnasium to turn on the lights.
“I think my mouth dropped open at that point,” Detwiler said.
Plastered on all four walls were what he estimated to be around two dozen “huge black-and-white photos of scantily clad young women,” some of whom were partially clothed and “seemed like [they] could be teenagers.”
“Some of these looked pretty young. They definitely weren't under 12, but they seemed like [they] could be teenagers, at least some of them,” Detwiler said.
“I guess my thought was certainly other people had seen these, and if there was any question about them being underage, certainly this would have been reported to police or somebody, or somebody would be looking into this, I'm not going to be the one to call the police and tell them now.”
The large photographic prints, which Detwiler estimated to be 2 by 4 feet in size, appeared professionally shot, and all featured young women or girls posing in front of what appeared to be tropical scenery.
“I asked the guy, I said, 'Gee, that doesn't look like New York or any place around here, where does he get these photos taken?'” Detwiler said, recalling his conversation at the time. “He said 'he flies them to Florida where he has another home, and that's why you see the pool there and palm trees.' I said 'that explains that.'”
It was after Detwiler’s experience in the gymnasium that the tour had reached its end, and he was escorted by the individual out of the home. In his final report – obtained by Raw Story and addressed to Schoettle, Epstein’s architect and acquaintance – Detwiler concluded that any mold in Epstein’s home had “been effectively removed,” and that the “potential for atypical mold exposure in the structure is low.”
It wouldn’t be until Epstein’s first conviction in 2008 – and the subsequent news coverage that featured footage of Epstein’s New York City townhouse – that Detwiler realized exactly whose home he had toured nearly five years earlier.
“I did tell some friends; you know, 'you won't believe this place I was in in New York,’” Detwiler recalled. “As soon as I saw [on the news that] that was the place I was in, it sunk in: 'Oh my gosh, I was actually in Epstein's house!'”
Now back in his home state of Pennsylvania after a 10-year stint in Indiana, Detwiler said he’s been asked countless times to share details about his tour of Epstein’s home.
He’s also grown more interested in following news surrounding Epstein, as well as the Trump administration’s heavily scrutinized release of Epstein-related files, millions of which remain unreleased, and in violation, critics say, of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“As I was reading about these files being released by the [Justice Department], I couldn't help but wonder, there certainly has to be a lot of other videos, photos, who knows where all this is in storage, so sort of waiting to see if any of that comes out,” Detwiler told Raw Story.
“I'm thinking at some point this will be written down as not only the crime of the century, [but] the crime of all time – at least in the United States.”
