Using the directory, I looked up piano technicians in the Virgin Islands. After all, if Epstein did indeed keep a piano in the blue-and-white building, there was a decent chance he needed someone to occasionally tune it. (For pianos in regular use, the recommended frequency is twice a year.)
The directory returned a single entry: a piano tuner named Patrick Baron. So I sent him an email and left a voicemail asking if he had ever tuned a piano for Epstein. Then I tried to put the whole story out of my mind. If this didn't work, I planned to drop it altogether.
Three days later, my phone rang. It was Baron, and yes, he had tuned Epstein's piano.
Baron recounted his experience visiting Little St. James over several interviews with Insider. He never met Epstein, and he didn't recall how his staff originally contacted him ā maybe through another client, or maybe through the online directory.
According to a calendar he kept at the time, Baron went to the island twice: in August 2012 and October 2012. On each occasion, Baron traveled to a dock in Red Hook, a town on the eastern end of St. Thomas, where he boarded a small boat that took him to Little St. James.
Baron didn't recall much about the boat's captain. But he did remember who greeted him on Little St. James. On the first excursion, he met a woman named Karen, who seemed to serve as the island's project manager. On the second excursion, he spoke with a woman named Monique who filled a similar role, though she never actually greeted him in person while he was on the island.
After the golf-cart driver dropped him off, Baron entered the building. Here's what he remembers about the interior:
-The floors appeared to be made of wood and were covered with a large Oriental rug.
-The interior had two levels, with the first four to six feet at ground level and the rest on a slightly raised platform accessed by a single step.
-To the right, against the eastern wall, was a nondescript gray couch or sofa.
-Directly ahead was a desk, about 10 feet long, made of dark wood.
-Behind the desk were several columns of floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
-The bookcases went high enough to require a ladder. But there was no ladder.
-The bookcases were filled with hardcover bestsellers. (Baron said he didn't notice "anything scholarly.")
-To the left, against the western wall, was a small black grand piano. According to Baron's notes, it was manufactured by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, whose piano-manufacturing operations were acquired by Baldwin Piano Company in 1988.
-Above the piano hung a portrait of Epstein and the pope. (Baron wasn't certain which specific pope, but when I showed him photos of the most recent three, he said his best guess was John Paul II.)
-The interior consisted of only one large room; there weren't any doors or stairwells that may have led to other rooms.
On both visits, after Baron finished tuning the piano, the same golf-cart driver took him back to the island's dock, where the same boat captain returned him to St. Thomas.
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spookshow69 ago
Iām sure you could go underground under the rug.