A modeling agent who was close to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead Saturday in his French jail cell, where he was being held in an investigation into the rape of minors and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modeling agent who spent years traveling with Epstein and the convicted pedophile’s gal pal Ghislaine Maxwell, was found hanged in his jail cell in the early morning hours of Saturday. The manner of death was eerily similar to that of Epstein, who was also found hanged in his jail cell after his arrest back in 2019.
In addition, Roberts said that Brunel (above) had procured thousands of little girls for Epstein to rape. Epstein’s pimp was awaiting trial in France for the charge of raping minors.
Victims of the alleged abuse described shock and dismay that the agent, Jean-Luc Brunel, will never face trial. They described his death as a double blow after Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail while awaiting sex-trafficking charges.
Paris police are investigating Brunel’s death, the prosecutor’s office said. The circumstances of his death were not made public and Brunel’s lawyers did not comment on it.
Brunel denied wrongdoing and said via his lawyer that he was willing to talk to investigators. Brunel’s legal team had repeatedly complained about the conditions of his detention and sought to have him released pending trial.
Brunel, who was in his 70s, was detained at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2020 as part of a broad French probe unleashed by the U.S. sex-trafficking charges against Epstein.
A frequent companion of Epstein, Brunel was considered central to the French investigation into the alleged sexual exploitation of women and girls by the U.S. financier and his circle. Epstein traveled often to France and had apartments in Paris.
Multiple women who identified themselves as victims have spoken to police since the French probe was opened in 2019, and at times expressed frustration with the slow pace of the investigation.
One of them, Thysia Huisman, said the news of Brunel’s death sent her into “shock.”
“It makes me angry, because I’ve been fighting for years,” Huisman, a Dutch former model who told police she was raped by Brunel as a teen, told The Associated Press. “For me, the end of this was to be in court. And now that whole ending — which would help form closure — is taken away from me.”
A lawyer representing Huisman and other victims, Anne-Claire Lejeune, said other women involved in the case feel the same.
Watch the video report below for more details:
Source: AWM
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