Ghislaine Maxwell’s former Bradford, N.H. hideout is back on the market, this time the 156-acre estate is selling for $2.495 million. Maxwell was arrested there in 2020. Boundless Estates photo
By RAY CARBONE, InDepthNH.org
BRADFORD – The latest information released by the US Department of Justice this week reveal new details about how Ghislaine Maxwell purchased a mountaintop residence here and what happened the day she was finally arrested.
Maxwell was the longtime associate of notorious financier and child sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, who died of suicide in jail awaiting trial in 2019.
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Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking and other related offenses and is now serving a 20-year prison sentence and is seeking a new trial.
Authorities say that she was seeking to evade capture when she purchased the 156-acre estate in a sparely populated area of Bradford.
Documents released under the federal Epstein Files Transparency Act shortly after midnight Tuesday morning say that Maxwell bought the property under a false name; earlier information said that the deal was actually made using a limited liability company or LLC, a business entity that can protect the identity of owners or investors.
The new documents state that a local realtor met Maxwell and a male companion, who identified themselves as Scott and Janet Marshall. The couple had British accents and said Janet Maxwell was a journalist who highly valued her privacy.
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It wasn’t until after the arrest that the realtor recognized Maxwell’s face and notified authorities.
The documents also add some details about Maxwell’s arrest the morning of July 2, 2020. Authorities say they knocked on the door of her mansion on East Washington Road in Bradford around 8:30 a.m. but when no one answered, they forced it open. Maxwell then ran to an interior room where she was found and taken into custody.
A cell phone on a nearby desk was wrapped in tin foil, an apparent attempt to neutralize the exact tracking system that led investigations to her location.
Like most people in Bradford, Police Chief Ed Shaughnessy said he wasn’t aware of Maxwell’s stay in his town before the 2020 arrest. “Do you think that if I knew she was there, I wouldn’t have come up to get her,” he asked rhetorically, reflecting on her apprehension.
Shaughnessy may have been the only local person who was at the scene that day. He said he received a phone call at 4:30 a.m. that muggy morning telling him about the pending arrest and inviting him to take part in Maxwell’s capture.
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“I didn’t know a lot about her at the time,” he recalled. “Then I got up and googled her.”
Shaughnessy drove his cruiser eastwards to the Market Basket parking lot in Warner, where he met up with other law enforcement officials for a pre-arrest briefing. Then his vehicle led about 14 others in a caravan heading westward on the two-lane Rte. 103 about 30 minutes back into Bradford, up Center and West roads, and then left onto East Washington Road.
Shaughnessy said that when he arrived around 8:30 a.m., about 30 law enforcement aircrafts overhead. “I don’t know if they were small planes or helicopters,” he said, but the they were definitely related to the police activity and not to the media that flooded the town later that day.
The large police presence was likely related to court records showing that officials believed Maxwell had both the financial resources and social mobility to flee the country if she wasn’t arrested.
Much of what happened during Maxwell’s arrest wasn’t initially made public. Official reports said that she was taken into custody “without incident,” but later information said that she refused to open the front door and she was seen through a window fleeing into an interior room. Officers forced their way into the home and then into the room where they found Maxwell.
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Chief Shaughnessy said that his local department had no role in the arrest but he did see officers escorting Maxwell into a cruiser. She was held at the Merrimack County Corrections Facility in Boscawen for several days before being sent to New York where she stood trial for her crimes.
That morning, the chief also learned that members of Maxwell’s onsite security team were former British secret service personnel. They said she never left the Bradford property. “Her security team did the food shopping, ran the errands,” the chief recalled.
The former Maxwell estate is for sale again. This summer Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty-New Hampshire listed the property at $2,495,000. Maxwell purchased the residence in 2019 for $1 million in cash using a limited liability company, according to paperwork filed by federal prosecutors.
Town records recently listed the property assessment at $1,829,005 with an annual tax of $30,353. The asking price on the land was recently dropped $30,000 to $2,365,000.
The mountaintop estate is not visible from the road but a careful observer can find the dirt road entrance off East Washington Road, across from a modest brown home and adjacent to a utility pole.
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About one-quarter of the way up the incline a wire fence blocks traffic and announces that one should “Beware of Dog.”
A security keypad sits a few feet in front of the fence. The newly released documents say that there was a full security system in operation when Maxwell lived there.
On various real estate websites, photographs and descriptions depict an extravagant estate. One realtor called it a “privacy lovers dream.”
The main 4,365-sq ft. residence is a timber-framed two-story structure that includes a Great Room with a fieldstone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows. A second structure is a 1800s cape house, with a barn and fireplace. Spectacular views abound and one description calls it the dream of a “hunter, farmer, horse lover, (or) hiker.”
This is not the first time Maxwell’s former residence has been sold. A couple purchased the property last year but later decided to resell it. One local woman said the couple from southern New England might have found central New Hampshire winters too severe.
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The newly released photos and documents have been made public because of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law last month.
One released photo of New Hampshire businessman and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, showed Kamen sitting with businessman Richard Branson and Epstein walking behind them. Another more recently released photo showed Kamen and Ghislaine Maxwell riding a Segway. Kamen has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein matter.
Kamen, the founder of DEKA Research and Development, told WMUR that he was a speaker at the TED Conference in Monterey, California a number of times, including February 2002 (https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_to_invent_is_to_give).
Kamen told WMUR: “If I had to guess, based in part on helpful reminders from friends, I would say that this photo was taken at that conference (or some similar conference) shortly after the launch of Segway where I gave I rides to many, if not most, of the TED conference attendees.
“Unfortunately, Jeffrey Epstein was a central figure in the TED community for many years. I have no specific memory of this photo or any other interaction with Ghislaine Maxwell and had only limited interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. I hope that it goes without saying that those interactions in no way involved any wrong-doing and, in hindsight with what I now know, I regret even those limited interactions. Again, I have no knowledge of any of the horrific actions of Jeffrey Epstein (or Ghislaine Maxwell) other than what I have learned from news reports,” Kamen said.
A staple of many New Hampshire town fairs, the pig scramble may soon look a little different.
A bill signed into law by Gov. Kelly Ayotte last week requires the commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture to create best practices for any event in which people compete to capture a pig. Those guidelines will be published before the 2027 fair season, so they won’t be in place for any fairs with pig scrambles this year, such as the upcoming Deerfield Fair in the fall.
Generally, a pig scramble involves people of the same age competing to capture pigs that have been let loose in a large pen. Contestants have to catch the pig in a drawstring bag, and the first one to do so can take the pig home.
Rep. Cathryn Harvey, a Democrat from Spofford, is the prime sponsor of the bill. She said each fair has different rules for their pig scrambles, meaning some can be more humane than others. One aspect of the events she hopes will change is the bags pigs are captured in.
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“They’re putting an animal in a plastic bag on a hot summer day,” Harvey said. “It isn’t a great idea.”
Although some fairs already use more breathable bags out of burlap, Joan O’Brien, president of the New Hampshire Animal Rights League, said she’s also seen pigs being kept in plastic bags for long periods of time after the event. Not only would a burlap bag improve the pig’s ability to breathe in the heat, she said, but she also wants fairs to require participants to bring an animal carrier for the trip home. Her organization was ultimately in favor of the legislation.
“If you don’t have a carrier, you should not be allowed to leave your pig lying in a bag,” O’Brien said, adding that some fairs already ask contestants to bring carriers. “You should be taking them right home.”
The Deerfield Fair has implemented another rule that O’Brien and Harvey hope becomes part of statewide best practices — having parents supervise their child in the pen. O’Brien once witnessed a child hang a pig upside down by its legs and then lower it headfirst into the bag.
“In the heat of the moment, the kids get excited and they just do whatever it takes to get the pig in the bag,” O’Brien said. She said parents should work with the event referee to make sure their kid is handling the pig humanely.
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Harvey’s bill originally called for pig scrambles to be banned around the state, but both she and O’Brien feel that universal guidelines for fairs would still make the experience better for the animals. Even seemingly small things, Harvey said, like giving the pigs water after the scramble, would be an improvement to the current situation for them.
“I think that the bill will embolden people to speak up at these events,” O’Brien said. “If they think a pig is being mistreated, they’ll be able to say to themselves, ‘I know that there’s supposed to be a rule, so I’m going to say something.’ So I think that would be a good outcome.”
The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services collected samples of the unknown substance found in Sunapee Harbor and will be testing them tomorrow. Authorities say the spill was contained and prevented from spreading further.
HAMPSTEAD, N.H. (WHDH) – Authorities have launched an investigation after responding to a reported untimely death in Hampstead, New Hampshire, officials said.
The Attorney General’s Office is investigating the untimely death of a woman at a home in Hampstead, Attorney General John M. Formella announced.
While the investigation is just beginning, there is no known threat to the general public at this time.
The exact circumstances surrounding this incident remain under active investigation.
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This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.
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