The Summer He First Came Back: Epstein, Maxwell, and the Interlochen Arts Camp

Jeffrey Epstein attended the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan in 1967. (EFTA00265663) He was a teenager. Twenty-seven years later, he returned to the same campus with Ghislaine Maxwell, stayed for a week in a lodge he had paid to build, and left with a 13-year-old girl's mother's phone number.

This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Part 1 documented the Butterfly Trust's payments to more than 30 schools across 10 countries. Part 2 examined the trust's self-dealing mechanics and post-death restructuring. This installment examines one institution in close detail: what the documents show, what the subpoenas asked for, and what a sealed court order was issued to protect.

The Lodge

In August 1993, Interlochen administrators sent Epstein a memo outlining a proposal for "scholarship lodges" to be built on campus. (EFTA00090261) The blueprints came from Town and Country Log Homes. The proposed location was waterfront, near Frohlich Lodge. The structures would be wheelchair accessible. The cost was estimated at $125,000 to $150,000 per half-lodge. The architect was Karen Sargent, an Interlochen alumna from New Jersey.

The memo was a solicitation. Epstein accepted it.

In February 1994, Epstein and Maxwell donated $200,000 to Interlochen for the lodge. (d-6177, EFTA00008716) The result was a two-bedroom building on the Interlochen campus. That summer, Epstein and Maxwell used it. They stayed for a week in August 1994.

The lodge was not just a gift. It was a residence. It placed Epstein and Maxwell inside the physical perimeter of a residential arts camp whose students ranged in age from 8 to 18, most of them away from home for the first time, many from families who had stretched their budgets to send them.

The Girl Between Classes

During their August 1994 stay, Epstein and Maxwell approached a student on the Interlochen campus. She was between classes. She was 13 or 14 years old.

They obtained her mother's contact information.

She was later invited to Epstein's property in Florida. She became, in the words of NPR's February 2026 reporting, "Epstein's first known victim." She testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's federal trial in New York. The Interlochen records documenting this were entered into evidence as Government Exhibit 741 in case 20 Cr. 330.

The encounter followed a pattern that would repeat across more than a decade: a young person identified in an institutional setting, a casual approach that seemed harmless in the moment, a collection of contact information, and then an invitation to a property where adults would not be present.

Interlochen, in this case, was not incidental. It was the point.

The 1998 Application

Four years after the lodge stay, someone submitted an application for an arts camp program at Interlochen. The application was for a 4 to 8 week summer session. It was faxed, likely to admissions. FBI notes describe the document and an interview with Interlochen staff member Dan Besselsen. (EFTA00159743)

Besselsen told investigators that Interlochen's admissions process requires evidence of artistic talent and audition materials. The school keeps educational records for 99 years. The application under review included a signed enrollment agreement "as it relates to tuition."

The FBI notes do not identify whose application this was. The notes exist because federal investigators found it relevant enough to document.

Tuition as Control

At least one victim told investigators that Epstein paid her tuition to attend Interlochen's year-round boarding school. He also offered to fund her attendance at a top-tier conservatory after graduation.

This is a financing model, not a gift. When a teenager's continued education depends on a single donor's continued approval, the donor holds leverage over every aspect of her life. Interlochen's academic year program is residential. Students live on campus. The school is in a rural part of northern Michigan, hours from most major cities. The physical isolation compounds the financial dependency.

Epstein ran this same structure at institutions on four continents, as documented in the Deutsche Bank exhibit obtained by federal prosecutors. (EFTA01681865) The Interlochen case is the earliest documented instance. It is also the one where the mechanism is most visible: build something on campus, pay tuition, gain access, identify a target.

The $50,000 Donation

In 1999, Epstein donated $50,000 to Interlochen. This was five years after the lodge stay. The donation was accepted. He continued giving through at least 2003, when he made his last recorded gift to the institution.

In 2009, when Interlochen administrators learned of Epstein's 2008 federal conviction in Florida, they removed all donor recognition in his name. They conducted an internal review. The conclusion, according to a statement they later issued: they "found no record of complaint or concern about Epstein."

The 1994 victim's account was not public in 2009. Her testimony at the Maxwell trial came more than a decade later. The absence of a complaint in Interlochen's files does not mean nothing happened on the Interlochen campus. It means no complaint reached the file.

Six Subpoenas in Thirteen Months

On February 6, 2020, the Southern District of New York issued a subpoena to Interlochen requesting "any and all donation(s), tuition payment(s), and/or any other financial contribution(s) or payment(s) made to Interlochen by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell." (EFTA00020846)

That was the second of six subpoenas the SDNY would issue to Interlochen over the following 13 months.

The first series, designated DS8 in the EFTA document set, includes three subpoenas: EFTA00019503, EFTA00020846, and EFTA00026851, spanning February 2020 through March 2021. The second series, designated DS9, includes EFTA00092436, EFTA00092440, and EFTA00092633, all from February 2020.

Six subpoenas to a single arts institution. The SDNY does not issue six subpoenas to an organization when it expects the first one to produce everything it needs.

A federal court issued a seal order over the proceedings. The order stated there were "reasonable grounds to believe that disclosure will result in the intimidation of potential witnesses, or the destruction of or tampering with evidence." A seal order of that kind requires a judge to find probable cause. It is not a routine precaution.

Interlochen retained Jeff Jocks of Sondee, Racine and Doren PLC in Traverse City, Michigan to represent it in the proceedings. Lawyers exchanged emails with SDNY prosecutors through October and November 2021, during the period of Ghislaine Maxwell's trial. (EFTA00022997, EFTA00032809, EFTA00013279, EFTA00023182)

The final documented response from Interlochen's counsel: "Interlochen doesn't have any other documents regarding tuition payment information."

The Template

Interlochen is not a peripheral detail in the Epstein case. It is the earliest documented example of a method he used for the rest of his life.

The method has four components. First, make a gift that creates physical infrastructure on an institution's campus, which produces regular access and a visible presence. Second, pay tuition or fees for individual students, which creates financial dependency and a private relationship between Epstein and the student's family. Third, use that relationship to invite students to his properties, removed from any institutional supervision. Fourth, when scrutiny arrives, the institution has a record of a donor, not a predator, because the institutional relationship was structured to look legitimate at every step.

Harvard received $6.5 million. The MIT Media Lab received millions routed through intermediaries after Epstein's 2008 conviction made direct gifts inadvisable. MC2 Model Management sourced women internationally. The Deutsche Bank tuition exhibit lists more than 30 schools on four continents.

But those came later. In the summer of 1994, Epstein and Maxwell were at a summer arts camp in Michigan, staying in a building they had paid to construct, and a teenager was between classes when they walked up to her.

She was the first. Interlochen was where it started.