Epstein was born in Brooklyn in January 1953, the son of a parks-department worker. He studied at Cooper Union and at New York University’s Courant Institute and left both without a degree. In September 1974 he began teaching math and physics at the Dalton School, one of Manhattan’s most expensive private schools. Its headmaster until that summer was Donald Barr, father of the future attorney general William Barr, and the internet loves the link. Who actually hired Epstein is not settled: Barr had announced his departure, and accounts point to him, the math department or his successor. Barr also wrote a 1973 science-fiction novel featuring sex slavery, which gets passed around as a clue. It is a real book; it is not evidence of anything about Epstein. [1][2][3][4]
At Dalton he tutored the son of Alan “Ace” Greenberg, chief of Bear Stearns. Greenberg hired him in 1976. Epstein rose to limited partner by 1980 and left in 1981; accounts of why differ, and the firm never gave a full public explanation. He set up his own firm, J. Epstein & Co., later called Financial Trust, and told people he took only clients worth more than a billion dollars. [1][2]
Approved reader comments and ratings appear here when JavaScript is on.