Sarah Ferguson told convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein she knew a “single” woman with a “great body” he should meet, weeks after his 2009 release from prison.
The former British royal’s offer has been uncovered in a tranche of documents — part of the so-called Epstein files — made public by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) last week.
Ms Ferguson, formerly the Duchess of York, was married to the late Queen Elizabeth II’s second son Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for several years and has maintained a high public profile since their 1996 divorce.
This week Mr Mountbatten-Windsor moved out of the Royal Lodge, his home in Windsor, to a temporary property on the Sandringham Estate, multiple UK media outlets have reported.
In an email sent on September 17, 2009, Ms Ferguson wrote about a woman saying “she is single and [has] a great body”.
Her message goes on to say: “OK well marry me and then we will employ her.”
While the email address it was sent from is redacted in the files the contact is listed as Sarah.
Other emails in the files from the same address are clearly communications from the former royal.
This picture of Sarah Ferguson was released as part of the Epstein files, though the date it was taken is not known. (Supplied: US Department of Justice)
The Epstein files comprise millions of documents and being named in them does not imply any wrongdoing.
In another email to Epstein, sent in July 2010, Ms Ferguson tells the sex trafficker and paedophile he was her “pillar”.
Ms Ferguson had two children with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor who was stripped of his royal titles last year after being accused of multiple sexual assaults by a woman who Epstein trafficked. He denies any wrongdoing.
Their daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, are first cousins to the Prince of Wales, William — heir to the British throne — and the Duke of Sussex, Harry.
Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019. (AP: New York State Sex Offender Registry)
Also revealed in the latest set of documents is an email to Epstein asking him to foot the bill for Ms Ferguson’s travel to Miami.
Two days after Epstein was released from the Florida prison where he served more than a year behind bars for child sex offences he received an email from his assistant Lesley Groff asking if he could pay for flights from London to the United States and back for Ms Ferguson and “the girls”.
The message, sent on July 24, 2009, said the then-duchess would be in business class, that the girls would fly economy, and that the total bill would be around $US15,000.
It is unclear if Epstein paid, but Ms Ferguson and her daughters did make a trip to the US shortly afterwards.
Charity closes as Prince Edward says ‘remember the victims’
On Tuesday, local time, Ms Ferguson’s charity Sarah’s Trust announced it would “close for the foreseeable future”.
The organisation, founded in 2018, billed itself as a conduit for philanthropists to connect with worthy causes in need of funding.
“This has been under discussion and in train for some months,” a spokesperson for Sarah’s Trust said.
“We remain extremely proud of the work of the trust over recent years.”
Ms Ferguson has previously said she regrets her friendship with Epstein.
Documents released last week have shed more light on what the former prince might have been lying about in that fateful sit-down with the BBC’s flagship current affairs program, Newsnight.
Ms Ferguson has multiple messages in the Epstein files. In one, from August 2009, she tells the disgraced financier he is “the brother I have always wished for”.
However, she later accused Epstein of only being friends with her to “get to Andrew” and complained that he no longer responded to her messages.
“I did not even know you were having a baby,” she wrote in an email released in the latest batch of files, which has made headlines because Epstein was thought to have been childless.
“It was soooo crystal clear to me that you were only friends with me to get to Andrew. And that really hurt me deeeply (sic). More than you will know,” she wrote.
While Ms Ferguson and Mr Mountbatten-Windsor have not yet addressed the latest emails contained in the Epstein files, on Tuesday a senior member of the royal family did.
Prince Edward — the Duke of Edinburgh and a brother to Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and King Charles III — told an event in Dubai it was “really important, always, to remember the victims and who are the victims in all this”.
