Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan Mansion to Sell for $50 Million

One might think that the massive Manhattan townhouse where late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is believed to have sexually abused countless underage victims should probably just be burned to the ground. (It’s me, I’m the one who thinks this.) But apparently it’s being sold for $50 million instead.

The 28,000-square-foot Upper East Side mansion at 9 E. 71st St. is reportedly under contract, and will be among the most expensive properties to sell in New York in the past year if the deal goes through, according to the Wall Street Journal. The townhouse, originally built in the 1930s for Macy’s heir Herbert N. Straus and purchased by Epstein in the late ’90s, went on the market in back in July at $88 million. The price was later dropped to $65 million, because for some reason it seems not too many people were interested in living in a dead pedophile’s house of horrors.

“I don’t know who would want it,” one broker told the New York Post. “I had clients hang up on me, angry that I even suggested it.”

But it seems the horrifying site of unthinkable violence and tragedy has finally found itself an interested buyer, once again begging the question: Who would want it?

Apparently, we don’t know. The potential buyer’s identity was not revealed in the Wall Street Journal report, though an unnamed source reportedly told the Post the buyer “works in finance and is not from the US.” Whoever they are, seems like the kind of person someone should maybe think about keeping an eye on!

Epstein’s creepy Manhattan mansion was the stuff of fever dreams even before his crimes became public knowledge. Reportedly decorated with taxidermy, massive nude sculptures and portraits, the sprawling manse was described in a now-infamous 2003 Vanity Fair profile as, “no mere rich person’s home, but a high-walled, eclectic, imperious fantasy that seems to have no boundaries.” It was the most valuable of Epstein’s properties, which included homes in New Mexico, Palm Beach, Paris and a private island in the US Virgin Islands, all of which are thought to have been sites of abuse.

Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, which also went up for sale in July, is currently in contract to sell to developer Todd Michael Glaser, who says he, quite reasonably, plans to destroy the property and replace it with a new home.

What will become of the Manhattan house of horrors under its potential new ownership remains to be seen. Speaking to the Post, one Manhattan broker described the mansion as “an exceptional property,” and suggested that a new owner eager to snap up a “great deal” could simply “get it blessed by a rabbi and a priest,” which sounds more like the setup to a joke than an actual plan of action to cleanse a home of the unthinkable crimes that occurred inside of it, but who am I to question the power of god?

Anyway, congrats to the likely new mystery owner of Jeffrey Epstein’s terrifying mansion. May they burn it to the ground.