What a tragedy.

What else can you say about the suicide of Virginia Giuffre at only 41?

To fight and fight and fight in the way that she did, not just against Jeffrey Epstein, the man who had hired her and used and abused her, but to stick up her hand and go boldly and publicly after Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell — and a list of other powerful men she accused of participating in Epstein’s predatory circle: Senator George Mitchell, Senator Bill Richardson and Glenn Dubin (all of whom refuted her accusations).

And to win, what’s more…

Epstein would not have faced the music in 2019 had it not been for Virginia.

When Virginia joined a class action lawsuit against Epstein in late 2014 and named names, including Ghislaine Maxwell’s, Maxwell fought back, accusing her of being a liar. That was when the infamous photograph of Maxwell, Giuffre and Prince Andrew was shoved back into circulation, having been out there briefly, once before in 2011.

In response, Virginia sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation – and, although the case was settled, it was the discovery in this litigation, that wound up being the backbone of the 2019 criminal case against Epstein – and, later, after he died without facing a trial – Maxwell.

When I sat through Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, I wrote how the ghost of Virginia hung over the courtroom, even though she was not called as a witness, because Maxwell’s defense would likely have used her as a distraction, given that one of the four victims on the stand, Carolyn Andriano, who later sadly died of an overdose, said that it was Giuffre, and not Maxwell, who first recruited her into Epstein’s dark orbit.

Virginia didn’t deny any of this, but her complicated role as victim-turned-victimizer (she wasn’t the only woman Epstein put in this position) and then later as possibly the most high-profile of the survivors, and someone who received many millions in settlements, including from Prince Andrew, meant that other victims, including those who stood with her publicly outside the courtroom in New York, were not always so generous about her, behind her back. Most recently an Epstein survivor, Rina Oh, sued her for recruiting her but the case was dismissed on the grounds that Virginia was a victim, too.

And then of course, there’s her years long legal battle with Alan Dershowitz, my guest on here two weeks ago, which was vicious and fractious – and wound up with a settlement and a remarkable acknowledgement by her that she “might have made a mistake” when accusing him …

I have often said of the whole Epstein/Maxwell sordid saga that it was much more messy and complicated behind the scenes than people realize.

I met Virginia once. I interviewed her for CNN. I remember being struck by how clear-eyed she was, how composed and articulate, and how the appalling life of sex slavery that she described seemed so far removed from the self-possessed person sitting across from me.

I dm’d her when she posted the sad photograph of herself in a hospital a couple of weeks ago, saying she has just four days to live following a car accident. I didn’t expect to hear back, but you can just tell when someone is not all right, so I wanted to express sympathy.

The word going around — and I stress, this is second-hand — was that she had struggled after getting her settlement from Prince Andrew.

When I read that her estranged husband, Robert, had full custody of her three children, and there was a restraining order against her … I feared for her mental health.

There is no hell on earth worse than losing your children. And she had said in the past that her entire raison d’etre … the reason she had begun the fight against Epstein and his world, was because of her children. To protect them.

In the completely surreal small world we live in, I am in DC for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend. I was at a partly last night waiting for my friend and fellow Substacker, Jessica Reed Kraus, of House Inhabit, to show up.

My readers may recall I met Jessica covering Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.

So, when Jessica texted me in the middle of the party, I was not expecting to read: “Have you heard about Virginia”?

It was as if time had stopped.

A few minutes later Jessica arrived, accompanied , ironically, by Lady Victoria Hervey, who is a friend of Prince Andrew and been vocal defender of his. We talked among ourselves about how extraordinary, sad and, again, messy, this story is. And what an irony, that this story, which introduced the three of us to each other, should have a deeply tragic coda like this.

We live in a twisted world.

Virginia, may you rest in peace.