Years before they were convicted sex offenders, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell used his wealth to gain access to a prestigious boarding school for young artists in Michigan, using a rental lodge Epstein donated to the school as a base from which to recruit some of their earliest victims, according to Department of Justice records and former campus administrators.
The idyllic, nearly century-old Interlochen Center for the Arts, tucked between two lakes south of Traverse City, features grade-school- and high-school-level programs in music, theater, dance, and visual arts, among others. It's famous as an incubator for young artistic talent and boasts alumni such as Josh Groban, Norah Jones, Chappell Roan, Felicity Huffman and Da'Vine Joy Randolph.
NPR reviewed hundreds of pages of Department of Justice documents on Epstein, interviewed current and former Interlochen officials, and spoke with a woman who says that as a teenager at the school she was targeted by Epstein and Maxwell. What emerges is a portrait of Interlochen as an institution that celebrated openness, but that in accepting Epstein's financial support became unwittingly associated with his crimes.
Epstein's association with Interlochen dates back to 1967, when as a 14-year-old bassoon player, he attended the school's summer camp. When he renewed his ties to the school in the 1990s, Interlochen viewed him as a loyal alumnus and major benefactor, administrators said. He lavished the school with donations and used his power and influence to gain access to spaces where the administrators felt young kids and artists were safe.
"In hindsight, mistakes may have been made, but it was just out of naivete," Russ McMahon, a former administrator, said of the ability Epstein had to access the campus. From 1994 to 2003, McMahon was the director of annual giving and later the director of major gifts at Interlochen.
A woman, who testified at Maxwell's 2021 criminal trial, said in a lawsuit that she was 13 years old when she met Epstein and Maxwell at the school's annual summer Interlochen Arts Camp in 1994. She says they began a relationship that started with grooming and led to sexual abuse. NPR does not name victims of sexual abuse.
A few summers later, Epstein and Maxwell met a 14-year-old student who said her first contact with them at the school was the start of a manipulative and controlling relationship that lasted years.
Former administrators at Interlochen told NPR that at the time of these encounters, the campus — which includes the summer camp and a year-round boarding school — was very open, with students, faculty, visiting artists and concertgoers all mingling in the common areas.
Interlochen says it has long maintained a policy that prohibits unsupervised contact between donors and students, but because of that open atmosphere, former administrators said that enforcing that rule was difficult or impossible.
However, since Epstein's crimes have become public, Trey Devey, the current president of Interlochen, said no student is allowed to be unsupervised with any outside adult and the campus has significantly increased security.
How Epstein and Maxwell targeted students
Epstein visited the school for brief stays over several summers between 1994 and 2000, according to testimony from Epstein's personal pilot found in DOJ documents.
In recent years, the two women who said he preyed on them related similar stories — one in court records and the other in an interview with NPR — about their initial on-campus contact with Epstein and Maxwell, saying the pair walked a small dog that they used to help break the ice. After getting to know the young artists, Epstein would then dangle the prospect of financial support for their education, according to the women's stories.
The woman who met Epstein and Maxwell in the late '90s and spoke to NPR recently said Epstein went on to pay her tuition for Interlochen's year-round boarding school and offered to also finance her attendance at a top-tier conservatory after graduation.
To this day, the woman said she isn't sure what drew Epstein and Maxwell to her, but that she feels like there were some criteria she was being measured against – whether that was looks or talent.
Either way, she said the pair were able to gain children's trust and enter their lives.
"Every kindness, every conversation, every moment you thought someone believed in you was calculated," she said. "When you were no longer useful, you learned that none of it was real."
Interlochen says Epstein's last donation to the school came in 2003. In 2008, the school says, it severed ties with Epstein and removed "all donor recognition in his name" after he pled guilty in Florida to charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.
Epstein was arrested a second time in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. He died in prison about a month later. Maxwell was also convicted on sex-trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence.
Contact with underage campers
The woman who spoke to NPR said that she felt that unlike the many other adults and donors who visited campus, Epstein and Maxwell had ulterior motives and used the camp "as a doorway to teenage girls without parents around."
She described them as initially "very charming, very warm, and interesting."
On their first meeting, she said, the pair asked her probing questions and "gave each other little glances and little looks," in response to her answers.
The woman said she spent time alone with Epstein and Maxwell at Epstein's lodge on campus. As an adult, she said that she now views their actions as the beginning of "grooming behavior," designed to make her feel comfortable, and that they had taken a special interest in her and her aspirations.
The woman said she never reported the relationship to Interlochen officials.
Years after those meetings on campus, she said the relationship began to fray when she started saying no to some of Epstein and Maxwell's requests. It came to an end when they asked her to accompany a high profile person to a gathering in New York. When she refused, she was cut off emotionally and financially, with Epstein reneging on a promise to continue funding her education.
"It was keeping somebody on a leash ... If you said 'no' to them, there was fallout," the woman told NPR, describing the end of the relationship.
She said she believes they felt "no remorse" for betraying the trust of children.
"The very things that should be a child's greatest qualities – their trust, their openness, their hope, were the exact things used to manipulate them," she said. "How can you make a child trust you, care about you, and then squash them like a bug?"
The woman who testified as "Jane Doe" during Maxwell's 2021 criminal trial said she was approached by Maxwell in 1994 while sitting on a bench in the main campus area eating ice cream with classmates. Maxwell was walking a "cute little Yorkie" that the girls asked to pet, she said. After the other students returned to class, the girl stayed behind with Maxwell, who was then joined by Epstein, according to the woman's testimony.
The pair asked for a phone number, contacted her mother and arranged a meeting with the mother and daughter at Epstein's Palm Beach, Fla., home, the woman said in her testimony. During a 30-minute conversation there, Epstein hinted at the possibility of paying for the girl's education, telling her mother: "I like to mentor young students who are artists. And I love music, and I love dance, and I give all kinds of scholarships," the woman said in her testimony.
In a 2020 interview with the FBI, the mother recalled phoning Interlochen to inquire about Epstein. It is not specified when the call took place. She told law enforcement she spoke with a receptionist who said of Epstein: "'He is our guardian … he is trustworthy around the kids and there is no need to worry.'"
It is unclear if the mother's conversation with the receptionist was reported to administrators, but Tim Ambrose, who worked at the school as vice president for institutional advancement for a decade beginning in 1990, told NPR that he wasn't aware of it at the time.
In December of last year, Interlochen said in a statement that the school conducted two internal reviews, one in 2008 and another in 2019, and found no report or complaint involving Epstein. It said Interlochen's research "found no claim of him acting inappropriately on campus."
Devey, the current Interlochen president, says "it is possible" that a report was made of the mother's phone call, but that the school's policy in the 1990s had been to destroy paper records after 10 years. So when they did both their reviews, "there wasn't a record" of the conversation, Devey said.
According to "Jane Doe's" testimony, her relationship with Epstein and Maxwell would go on to span years of grooming and sexual abuse that lasted until 2002.
NPR reached out to a representative for "Jane Doe", but they did not comment.
Epstein's donations allowed for access to students and campus
Ambrose's time at the school coincided with a series of large donations from Epstein that eventually totaled more than $400,000 over a 13-year period.
Epstein funded the construction of the on-campus lodge where he and Maxwell later stayed, established a scholarship fund, hosted alumni events, and on one occasion even allowed the use of his private jet to bring renowned concert violinist Itzhak Perlman to Interlochen.
Through his gifts and with the help of Maxwell, Epstein built trust with academy officials such as Ambrose, whose job it was to work with donors and who was the point person for the pair.
"In the time that I was there ... there was nothing that made us aware of Mr. Epstein's reputation," Ambrose said, adding that while he had spoken to Maxwell on the phone, he only briefly met Epstein, who at the time "could have walked on campus and people wouldn't have even known" him.
Ambrose told NPR that in November 1993, he began discussions with Epstein on funding a ski-lodge-style fourplex that Interlochen could rent out. But Epstein changed his mind, saying he wanted a simpler rental cabin, the proceeds from which were to fund a newly created scholarship in Epstein's name, according to Ambrose.
In a February 1994 letter, Ambrose thanked Epstein for the $200,000 donation for the lodge and noted that Epstein could use it for up to two weeks each year and still legally get a full tax deduction for it. "Naturally, we would like you to visit the new lodge this summer," he wrote, noting the upcoming Perlman concert in August.
How Epstein and Maxwell's visits to Interlochen worked
Speaking to NPR this month, Ambrose referred to Maxwell as "the gatekeeper" in the school's relationship with Epstein and said that most of his interactions were by letter; brief, business-like phone calls with Maxwell; and later email.
Ambrose described Epstein as mysterious and aloof. "Ghislaine would call and say 'We're coming in and here's the date and time, and is [the cabin] available?" he said. Maxwell would ask for the lodge to be stocked with a few items, such as orange juice and organic bread, and Ambrose would "pick [up the items] and usually some flowers for the place. And I'd leave them" in the lodge, he said.
Ambrose said Epstein and Maxwell tended to arrive at the start of a weekend and "would self-check in and self-check out" from the lodge. Typically, he wouldn't see them at all. When he tried to meet face-to-face with Epstein, he said, he was often rebuffed.
"They just want[ed] to be left alone. … I certainly didn't want to impose on a visit to campus by being a fundraiser and saying, 'what are you going to do next for us?'" Ambrose told NPR.
In the Feb. 1994 letter, Ambrose wrote that when awards to Epstein's scholarship were made, "Interlochen will notify you, with respect to the recipients." The letter said, "The recipient will also be asked to communicate with the donor. If you would like to [meet] the students, we will help arrange a meeting on campus as well."
That was common practice at the time, because it made big donors "feel good about making a charitable contribution of the size that they did," Ambrose told NPR. "Obviously, you'd want to introduce that young student to a donor," he said. Even so, Ambrose said: "I don't know that I ever arranged, or did anybody ever arrange, a meeting between someone who received a scholarship from the fund and Mr. Epstein."
Around the same time, Epstein was admitted into Interlochen's President's Club for high-level donors. Members were to "assist Interlochen by attending concerts, events and special meetings, identifying prospective students and providing counsel to the president on issues and policies of the institution," according to an email to Epstein from another school administrator.
Safety at Interlochen in 2026
Devey, the current Interlochen president, said campus security today is much tighter than it has ever been. Unlike in the 1990s, for example, the campus now has front gates, 24/7 safety patrols and surveillance cameras.
Since the start of Devey's tenure in 2017, four external safety audits have been done on the campus, he said. Interlochen also has an anonymous reporting form, and concerns submitted through the form are shared with senior administrators.
"A lot has changed over the years, not just with us, but with any educational institution," Devey told NPR. "The level of visibility into what's happening in our campus community is much more robust than it ever was before."
McMahon, the former director of major gifts, said "Jeffrey Epstein was an anomaly" who "was diametrically opposed to everything that everyone was working toward" at the school.
Devey said that what occurred with Epstein is "heartbreaking" and "horrific" and belies Interlochen's core mission, where "there's really great work happening with young people that's changing their lives for the better."
"It's a shame that there are people like Jeffrey Epstein that are manipulating systems and [that he] did it on such a pervasive basis and at so many institutions. We'll learn from that, we'll get better," he said.
Earlier this year, Interlochen announced an investigation into unrelated claims of sexual misconduct at the school that involved staff members who taught in the 1960s and 1970s and are no longer employed at the school.
The woman who spoke to NPR about her experience with Epstein and Maxwell said that young people who dream of success in the arts are especially vulnerable because "if somebody [who] positions themselves as the path to those dreams, shows you that the world is your oyster, you grow to trust them."
"I still love Interlochen," she said. "It's still this magical place where amazing things happen. There are lots of people in this world. There are not that many Jeffreys and Ghislaines."
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