Sweater gone: Ghislaine Maxwell causes prison lockdown

A supposedly missing sweater caused an hour-long lockdown in the Texas federal prison where Ghislaine Maxwell (64) is serving her 20-year sentence. The convicted sex offender is said to have alerted prison staff after a fleece sweater she had purchased in the prison canteen could no longer be found. According to a report by RadarOnline Maxwell insisted that the garment’s pockets contained her prison ID card and important documents – prompting authorities to launch a search operation. Hundreds of inmates were sent to their dormitories while staff searched the building.

According to insiders, the lockdown lasted between four and five hours. It was only broken up when a fellow prisoner said she had accidentally taken the sweater with her – with the intention of returning it. “Nobody had stolen anything. This woman had picked it up to give it back,” a source explained RadarOnline. “It was all an innocent mistake, but they still held everyone for four or five hours for their investigation.” An insider also emphasized that such an effort was unusual for such a succinct occasion: “This happens a few times a month because of a fight, a medical emergency or a routine count – but never because of a lost sweater.”

Aside from the sweater incident, insiders also report alleged benefits that Maxwell is said to be enjoying in prison. She is supposed to share her living area with only one other person, while many other inmates are housed in four-bed rooms. She is also said to have an old IBM electric typewriter in her room, which she takes with her to lessons. She is reportedly working on a book with it. The US Federal Bureau of Prisons rejected the allegations of favoritism. Spokesman Donald Murphy told the Daily Mailthat employees of the authority are expressly prohibited from granting individual prisoners special treatment: “Any deviation from this standard undermines public trust and the fair administration of justice.” Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and abusing underage girls for the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein († 66).

A few days ago it was also announced that Ghislaine had made the next legal attempt to overturn her conviction in the Epstein scandal. In new documents filed in federal court in New York, she claimed her rights were grossly violated in the trial. She referred to documents from the so-called Epstein Files, which became public at the beginning of the year. These were intended to prove that lawyers for alleged victims had acted as “de facto representatives of the government”. The public prosecutor’s office in Manhattan strictly rejected this at the time and continued to consider the verdict and sentence to be legal.