Ever since its release, Netflix’s “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” has been effortlessly ambling its way back to the top of the viewership charts and has been firmly there since a while now. The four-part documentary exposé came out in 2020, but saw a jaw-dropping leap in viewership, almost by 430 per cent, five years later. According to Luminate, a Los-Angeles based entertainment data and analytics firm, the mini docu-series tallied a total of 73 million minutes during the week of July 18 to 24 in 2025, from a total of 13.6 million minutes watched for the series, a week prior.
The depraved life of Jeffrey Epstein is a perpetual rage bait mystery for viewers and that is where the strength of Epstein as a subject for books and pop culture material lies. There’s abuse, power, and mystery. Each week brings along new developments, bigger names and telling mails, followed by explosive headlines and revelations.
Soon after the series on Epstein dissecting his life to the highest corridors of wealth and power came out, the OTT platform followed that up with a documentary on socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. The 2022 one-episode docu-series on Maxwell focuses on how she became the biggest enabler and accomplice of the sexual predator.
Meanwhile, the accusations and denials continue to reverberate across the Parliaments of the several nations, from India to the UK. The redactions on mails made public have further prompted a deep digital dive as the earlier investigative reports on the disgraced financier continue to be culled from the archives and pulled back into public memory and circulation.
“Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice” by late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Epstein and Maxwell’s most outspoken victim, details her journey. Guiffre fought for justice for years and brought to light his crimes in the face of intimidation and denials. The series on Epstein too focuses on many of the survivors, including Virginia Giuffre herself, putting across their side of the story as vulnerable teenage girls from broken homes who were preyed upon by Epstein. “Filthy Rich: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein” by James Patteron stands out on two grounds—Patterson is not only a thriller novelist but was also the Florida neighbour of the reviled billionaire paedophile.
The Streisand Effect, proved once again
“Perversion of Justice” by investigative journalist Julie K Brown is a look at her journey of reporting the story which led to federal re-examination of the case. The book, published in 2021, reportedly went out of stock last year at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, even as President Donald Trump was speculated to be resorting to covering up the infamous files by threat, politics of distraction and lawsuit intimidation. Brown took to X sharing that she had been “hearing from interested buyers who couldn’t find any print copies. I’m told the publisher is printing more copies.”
Also read: Ex-Prince Andrew arrested over ‘misconduct’ amid Epstein scandal
Moving on, “Relentless Pursuit: Our Battle with Jeffrey Epstein”, has been narrated from the perspective of the victims’ lawyer Bradley J Edwards, who represented the women survivors for over a decade. The book shines a light on the shady, deeply entrenched network of Epstein, the power he wielded and how he almost got away with it all at several points in time.
“Nobody’s Girl” specifically includes accusations against Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, which he denied, even claiming that he never met her. However, the former royal settled the civil lawsuit out of court in 2022 with Guiffre. Although the amount has not been disclosed, it is speculated to be close to 12 million pounds.
The perspectives with which Epstein’s life has been attempted reflects on not just the depraved life of the late financier but also his enablers spanning from power corridors in politics to the guarded social circle of Upper East Side. Precisely what Pultizer Prize-nominated journalist Barry Levine’s “The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell” seeks to highlight Epstein’s connections to influential people, including Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Les Wexner and Donald Trump. The book also details his last few hours as a free man in Paris, the operation to catch him and his final days in a prison cell.
That is not the extent of information and content existing on Epstein; a few databases and online media companies even allow amateur researchers to access the disgraced financier’s emails on their own and see what they can find.
Courtesy, the never dying scandals and news space, the audience knows the bits and pieces but there’s plenty of material available for those wanting to know the full story. It’s a connected web of hits and clicks, every single time the new developments hit the headlines, social media discussions and search engines trends reflect the same.
Epstein’s death by suicide in prison, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, remains a fertile ground for conspiracies: was he murdered? Was he blackmailing? On January 30 of this year, the US Department of Justice released more than three million pages of documents exposing the vast length and breadth of Epstein’s social circle and financial ecosystem. In total, information spanning 3.5 million pages has been released, along with 2,000 videos and a whopping 180,000 images. It’s taken some time for the vast documentation to be sifted into information and reports and in most cases, raised more questions than answers. But every answered question in the minds of viewers across the world results in digital clicks or a book sale.
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