An ostentatious Palm Beach estate belonging to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is going to be torn down and used for its land value.
Florida real estate developer Todd Michael Glaser has agreed to buy the property at 358 El Brillo Way from Epstein’s estate, according to The Wall Street Journal. The 14,000-square-foot mansion hit the market back in July for $21.99 million, almost a year after Epstein’s death by suicide in a prison cell in August 2019.
Epstein had committed suicide while waiting for trial on charges of running an extensive worldwide sex trafficking scheme involving underage girls. A judge and his estate negotiated a victims’ compensation fund in which the sale of the properties would go to the alleged victims and any outstanding tax and creditor obligations.
Epstein had bought the Palm Beach property in 1990 for $2.5 million. While Epstein’s possessions were removed from the estate prior to listing, it still contained the furniture and numerous personal touches, including the initials “J.E.” in raised brass letters above the front door.
Along with Epstein’s primary residence in New York, the Palm Beach estate is where many of Epstein’s underage accusers said the assaults occurred. After police raided it in 2005, they found phone message books with underage girls’ names and a high school transcript of one girl in the desk of its master bedroom.
“Palm Beach is going to be very happy that it’s gone,” Glaser, who regularly works on expensive spec homes and other ultra-luxury properties in Miami, told the WSJ. He has also worked to develop Miami’s One Thousand Museum tower designed by Zaha Hadid.
The Palm Beach property was listed by Kerry Warwick of the Corcoran Group. The deal with Glaser is slated to close in December. The developer’s plans include tearing down the estate in its entirety and replacing it with an Art Moderne home of roughly the same size.
Exact details on how much Glaser paid are being kept private, with some sources speculating that it was somewhere between $16 and $18 million — a price that Glaser once claimed amounted to its land value.
Throughout his life, Epstein amassed an estate that was worth a reported $636 million and included an apartment in Paris, a ranch in New Mexico and a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. His main New York home, a nine-story and 40-room townhouse steps from Central Park, was listed for $88 million this summer and remains on the market.
