New York
Four Epstein Victims Ask N.Y. Lawmakers to Open His Estate to Lawsuits
Seated before an array of New York State senators on Monday, Lara Blume McGee was asked by one lawmaker why it had taken her so long to go public with the details of how Jeffrey Epstein had abused her.
She paused for a moment, another victim of Mr. Epstein’s by her side, and leaned forward to speak into the microphone in the State Capitol.
“Fear,” said Ms. Blume McGee, who had been 17 and an aspiring model when Mr. Epstein abused her. It took her about 20 years to come forward.
“Jeffrey Epstein was a great manipulator,” she added, explaining that she feared being sued and having her life ruined by his capacity for retribution.
Ms. Blume McGee was among four women who testified in the State Capitol about the trauma Mr. Epstein inflicted upon them and the lasting damage he did to their lives. The appearance of two of the women — Ms. Blume McGee and Carine Silva De Deus — had been expected, but two other women — Glendys Espinal and Alexandra Golematis — also came forward. Both said they were speaking publicly for the first time about their experiences with Mr. Epstein.
Their testimony comes as State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat from Brooklyn, seeks support for legislation intended to update state sex-trafficking laws. The goal, Mr. Myrie said, was to better equip the state to handle the kinds of crimes that Mr. Epstein was accused of committing by criminalizing the actions of people who helped perpetuate his behavior.
If passed, the laws would also allow Mr. Epstein’s victims to sue his associates and his estate in state court for punitive damages. State law prevents people from seeking punitive damages from the estate of someone who has died.
“Trafficking is not sustained by one single actor. It is not just Jeffrey Epstein,” said Kathryn Robb, a lawyer who has been pushing for these sorts of legislative changes across the country.
“It is a network that includes financial backers, businesses and other intermediaries, who often escape accountability,” she added. “This bill will disrupt that.”
Ms. Espinal, a Bronx native, said she first met Mr. Epstein during her sophomore year of high school, when she was brought in to give him massages. The demands from the financier quickly escalated, and she said she still has post-traumatic stress disorder from these interactions, which occurred between 2005 and 2008.
“What was going through my head at the time was just pure shame and intimidation,” she said.
Mr. Myrie’s bill, which has no companion legislation in the Assembly as of yet, is not state lawmakers’ only effort to reckon with Mr. Epstein’s legacy and the pain he caused hundreds of women.
Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter, a Democrat from the Syracuse area, and Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat representing parts of Manhattan, have introduced a bill that would close what they call the “Epstein loophole.” In the state’s laws relating to prostitution, the buyers of a sex worker’s services, or those facilitating them, are excluded from punishment under the statute relating to people being punished for “advancing prostitution.”
“New York should act quickly and close the Epstein loophole, which would have prevented men like Jeffrey Epstein and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs from being charged with trafficking at the state level,” Ms. Hunter said in a statement last month.
“This bill is necessary to ensure that traffickers and sex buyers are held accountable, while survivors of sexual exploitation are given the care and support they need,” she added, explaining that the law would also reduce punishments for those who perform sex work.
Mr. Epstein and his estate have settled several lawsuits with victims in recent years. The New York Times reported in February that a recent court filing showed that his estate was valued at $120 million, though the estimate might be an undercount.
Nathan Werksman, a lawyer for the women who testified on Monday, said that time was of the essence to change the law and give Ms. Blume McGee and others the chance to seek financial damages from Mr. Epstein’s estate.
Mr. Myrie’s bill, which the Senate Codes Committee passed on Monday, creates a one-year look-back period so that people can sue for actions that fall outside the statute of limitations. In this manner, it resembles the Adult Survivors Act, which in 2022 opened a one-time window in New York permitting people to file sex-abuse lawsuits after the statute of limitations had expired.
“The Epstein Estate is a finite amount of money that is dwindling every day, every week, and every month,” Mr. Werksman said.
“Jeffrey Epstein was able to escape criminal accountability, and his estate can escape civil liability if the estate dwindles down to nothing,” he added.
Lawyers for Mr. Epstein’s estate did not respond to emails seeking comment.
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
For almost 32 years, Gerald DeCock’s life in New York City has revolved around his apartment in the Hotel Chelsea. His 750-square-foot studio is where he paints, does yoga every morning, meets clients for haircuts and never, ever cooks — all for $2,700 a month, a steal for the prime Manhattan location. Rooms in the recently renovated hotel typically start at about $500 a night.
That may all be about to change. After a yearslong legal battle, the hotel’s owners may evict Mr. DeCock, who believes he has the only unit that is not rent-stabilized in the residential side of the building.
He isn’t ready to think about starting over. He knows it will be difficult to find a place he can afford downtown, near his friends and his favorite restaurants.
Now, Mr. DeCock is hoping for a miracle — or at least a check from the building’s owners that can help him land on his feet. (The hotel’s press representatives did not reply to requests for comment.)
Between cutting hair and selling paintings, Mr. DeCock, who is 67, made $70,000 last year.
No ConEd Bills
Mr. DeCock arrived in New York in the early 1990s after a stint in Paris, doing hair for photo shoots. He bounced around apartments in Chelsea before a friend told him about a newly available unit in the hotel, where she lived at the time.
The $2,000 per month studio was small, but had high ceilings. It looked like the somewhat sterile hotel room it had been, with white walls and not much else to it, except for an old stove that never got especially hot.
He moved in on Oct. 1, 1994, and has been there ever since.
There is no sign that any corner of the walls was ever bare. The apartment is a riot of color, with every inch, including the floors and one side of the oven, painted in bursts of hot pink and gold and purple. His paintings line the walls, and there is always incense burning. All the other doors on the floor are painted a muted black. He has papered his with overlapping triangles of fuchsia, silver and bright blue.
Over the years, as Mr. DeCock has decorated and redecorated, he has made his apartment the hub of his social life and his workplace.
He sees clients for haircuts at his home, or sometimes meets them in their own homes, so he does not have to rent space at a salon. He charges $150 to $200 per haircut and has been seeing some of the same clients for decades. Last month, he made about $6,000 on haircuts alone.
The apartment is warm and well-insulated in the winter, because it’s on a high floor. Though the studio tends to get stuffy in the summer, the air conditioning bill has always been covered by the hotel, because it’s impossible to sort out whether the residents or hotel guests who share the hotel’s floors are using the energy.
Mr. DeCock doesn’t think he’s ever seen a ConEd bill for this apartment.
Home Is Where the Fumes Are
The walls are covered in a patchwork of paintings he has created on his kitchen table or on the floor, largely motifs of moons, suns, crosses and other “spiritual” symbols.
Most of his paintings are done on 16 inch by 20 inch canvases and sell for $500, though he has one 10 foot by 10 foot piece he is hoping to sell for $20,000.
He sold a package of 21 paintings to the hotel, at a 20 percent discount, for about $8,680 total. He sees the sale as a good reason for the hotel’s owners to keep him in his home, even though they could turn his apartment into a large hotel room. “I’m your brand, man,” he said, referring to the owners. “What are you doing?”
As Mr. DeCock has started to face the likelihood that he’ll soon have to move, he hosted a sale to empty out dozens of paintings. He made about $6,000 over a few days, as friends, neighbors and at least one local celebrity streamed in and out of his apartment, toting paintings under their arms as they left.
Mr. DeCock tries to keep the cost of his painting materials low. He sticks to inexpensive canvasses from Michaels or Blick Art Materials right across the street, where a pack of twenty 16 x 20 inch canvasses sells for $51.49. And he uses only acrylic paint, which is less expensive than oil-based paint. It also gives off fewer fumes, which is helpful, since he paints a few feet away from his lofted bed.
“I call this place the vortex,” Mr. DeCock said of his apartment. “It brings out the creative juices.”
In My Neighborhood
Mr. DeCock hasn’t left New York in as long as he can remember. He barely even goes to Brooklyn.
“Everything I do is in the neighborhood,” he said. It’s where he meets friends, eats his meals and takes long walks on the piers by the Hudson River.
What Mr. DeCock doesn’t do, he said, is buy clothes or shop for much of anything, including groceries. He does not drink coffee at home. His fridge is empty save for a bag of grapes recently brought over by a friend, and he stores his paint bottles above the freezer. There is a sole bottle of vinegar in the pantry.
Mr. DeCock, who is a vegetarian, stopped cooking after the pandemic, when he admitted to himself that he was terrible at it.
Now, he goes out for almost every meal — although he often skips lunch or dinner without noticing. He might run across the street for an order of the $27 seitan scaloppine at his favorite vegan restaurant, or walk a few blocks to a Mexican restaurant, where he’ll order the vegetarian enchiladas for $24.50.
When Mr. DeCock is home and not working or sleeping, he’s often watching television. His big splurge is cable, his Spectrum bill is $250 a month. He also pays for Netflix, $19.99 a month, and Hulu, $18.99 a month. A Colorado native, Mr. DeCock sometimes misses nature, so he compensates by watching reality television shows about people who have to survive in the wilderness.
It reminds him that he’s happy to live in New York and really happy to be in his apartment at the Chelsea.
“I’ve had a life here,” he said. “It’s defined me.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, is in a Florida hospital in critical condition, his spokesman said Sunday.
The spokesman, Ted Goodman, would not specify which hospital and said that the former mayor “remains in critical but stable condition.”
“Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak,” he said, before asking “that you join us in prayer” for the former mayor.
It is unclear when Mr. Giuliani, 81, was taken to the hospital.
President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, called Mr. Giuliani a “True Warrior, and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City, BY FAR.”
He used the occasion to again advance his false claim that Democrats “cheated” in the 2020 election.
“They cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!” he said.
Mr. Giuliani has struggled with legal and financial problems in recent years, and in the summer of 2025, he was involved in a car crash in New Hampshire in which he suffered a fractured vertebra. After that, Mr. Giuliani made at least one public appearance in a wheelchair.
Mr. Giuliani became mayor in January 1994 after he defeated Mayor David N. Dinkins, who was running for a second term. He remained in office until December 2001 and helped lead the city in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Later, he became a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump during the president’s first term and quickly became embroiled in a number of investigations related to the presidency.
Mr. Giuliani was a crucial part of the team that helped Mr. Trump advance the claim that he won the 2020 election. After Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Giuliani was indicted multiple times and contended with a number of costly defamation suits related to those efforts. Now disbarred, he has kept a far lower profile during Mr. Trump’s second term in office.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
Along the Park
Dear Diary:
It was April Fools’ Day, and the weather kept changing from sunny to drizzle, as if the gusty wind was moving the sun back and forth behind a cloud.
I put my jacket on and off as I walked along Prospect Park. The trees were still bare, but spring was slowly awakening with yellow forsythias, and every child walking by stared at my new purple hair, hungry for color.
A guy in the bike lane yelled, “Hey!”
I turned to him.
“Sorry,” he said, pointing to someone else. “I’m talking to this guy.”
“But you actually look familiar,” I said.
“So do you,” he said, laughing.
I entered the park to hear pop music near the band shell. Two people with a portable speaker were dancing.
I wanted to join the party, but I realized that I hear the music, so I’m in the party. I danced along from a distance.
From high above, hundreds of blackbirds swooped down like falling peppercorn into the black-and-white woods ahead. As I got closer, I saw specks of tiny green buds emerging on each tree limb.
I left the park, passing three people who had converged because their dogs could not contain their joy. The people laughed like old friends, but within seconds they had walked off separate ways.
As I passed Seeley Street, I overheard a friend through the open window, cheering on a drum student.
I laughed. I should be getting home before the possible rain, I thought, but today, everywhere was home.
— Mare Berger
S. Klein’s Basement
Dear Diary:
It was around 1960, and my mother, my sister and I were in the bargain basement at the S. Klein department store on Union Square.
My sister, 13, was trying on winter coats in the aisle between the bins and discussing two final options with my mother when a woman riding the escalator up to the ground floor weighed in.
“Take the red!” she called out.
We took the red. I miss S. Klein’s.
— David Hammond
Brooklyn Warehouse
Dear Diary:
I woke up to my alarm at 2:45 on a Saturday morning, then maneuvered trains and city blocks through darkness to an unremarkable warehouse in Brooklyn.
Inside was a cathedral of music. Hips gyrated, and arms exalted rhythm. Fog embraced kissers, dancers, exhilaration, prayer, meditation, community.
I found my intention and connected with my spirit and the energy of bodies around me, alone and together, holding friends as family and strangers as friends.
I departed at 8:45 a.m. to a cold, golden morning, feeling lighter, freer, learned and loved.
A shopkeeper opening up for the day called out from behind me, his question nearly drowned out by the morning traffic.
“Hey, what’s happening over there?” he asked.
“Just a little dance party,” I replied. “Nothing crazy.”
— Carlie Cattelona
Helping Hand
Dear Diary:
I ride my bicycle 99 percent of the time. It’s just me and the city. I move fast enough to keep things interesting, but slowly enough to catch the weather changing or feel the mood of the people on the sidewalks.
Every so often, I have to take the train. On very rare occasions, it’s me, the train and my bike, a combination no one ever seems thrilled to encounter.
Because I know this, I try to shrink myself into an apologetic bicycle origami project once I’m on the train. I fold. I hover. I whisper “sorry” to people who haven’t even seen me yet.
On one such evening, I was trying to avoid anyone’s shins while hauling my bike up a flight of stairs after getting off the train, when I felt someone close behind me.
Terrified that I’d clipped someone, I whipped around to see a smiling woman who had one hand casually gripping the back of my bike.
“I got you,” she said, like we were old friends moving a couch.
I told her I had it under control.
“Two hands are better than one,” she said. “I got you.”
So we climbed the stairs together: me, my bike and a total stranger, moving in perfect, unspoken coordination. At the top, she let go, nodded and vanished into the crowd.
— Evan Abel
Central Park Zoo
Dear Diary:
Years ago, our nanny would take our son and daughter to the Central Park Zoo, where they could be set free from their stroller.
It was safe because the children loved the zoo and always stayed in the nanny’s sight and because the zoo’s walls meant there was no way they could leave.
One spring day when I was not working, I decided to accompany them all on a walk through the park, with the kids in their stroller.
As we passed the zoo, a guard at the entrance beckoned our nanny over and had a deep consultation with her.
She was laughing when she came back.
“He wanted to know who was that strange woman walking with me,” she said.
— Georgia Raysman
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
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