A ‘secret’ British girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein sent him messages talking about having the disgraced financier’s child and sharing an article suggesting the hiring of slaves’ descendants, emails reveal.
Shelley Lewis, 49, was previously identified by Epstein’s ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell as having been in a relationship with the late paedophile between 1999 and 2002.
Now documents shared in the latest tranche of Epstein-related material suggests Ms Lewis was in touch with Epstein as recently as 2018 – nine years after his release from prison after serving a sentence for soliciting sex with under-age girls.
Ms Lewis is said to have forwarded to Epstein an online link to a story about a community with ancestry linking back to enslaved people from Africa – adding to the message: ‘Where to find new help.’
The story covered the Gullah Geechee community, descendants of people brought to the US as slaves in the 18th century.
Ms Lewis, a former children’s book publisher who now works as a ‘wellness entrepreneur’ based in Abu Dhabi, later discussed having a baby with Epstein, according to emails released by the US Department of Justice.
The Mail on Sunday revealed in August 2020 how Manchester-born Ms Lewis was said in court papers to have dated Epstein between 1999 and 2002 and took a series of flights on the paedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private jet.
She later wed wealthy Turkish property developer Mahir Furtun in 2015 but they divorced two years later.
Her marriage to Mr Furtun came a few months after Ghislaine Maxwell asked Epstein to encourage Ms Lewis to make public her relationship with him.
Ms Lewis grew up in Cheshire and once worked in the contemporary art department of Christie’s auction house in New York.
She went on to run a firm hosting yoga retreats in the US as well as companies offering ‘lifestyle guru’ courses to clients who wished to ‘heal from their past’.
There is no suggestion Ms Lewis was involved with nor aware of any criminality during the alleged relationship with Epstein, who died in jail in August 2019 aged 66.
The newly published emails include one message in which she appears to tell Epstein in 2010: ‘I just gave you a great gift by enabling you to “do what you do” gracefully.’
Another in 2014 says, ‘Love you!!!’, while she is also said to have sent him she a photo of a pig dressed as a tiger – prompting a response from Epstein: ‘Predator on the outside, gentle inside. The opposite of what I have to deal with.’
An email thread from 2017 included a message purportedly from Ms Lewis saying: ‘Don’t worry, won’t put you on the spot about a baby.’
The Daily Mail has contacted Ms Lewis for a response. The Times reported she had declined to comment.
Maxwell had written to Epstein in 2015, shown in a previous tranche of documents released in July 2020: ‘I would appreciate it if shelley would come out and say she was your g’friend – I think she was from end [19]99 to 2002.’
Epstein did not question the assertion that ‘Shelley’ was his girlfriend during that period, simply replying: ‘Ok with me.’
Flight logs appeared to show Ms Lewis was a frequent passenger on Epstein’s private jets, often travelling only with the US financier.
Destinations included New York, where Epstein had a £55million townhouse, and Little St James, his private island in the Caribbean.
Ms Lewis was 22 in 1999 when it is understood she met the then 46-year-old businessman in New York, where she worked for Christie’s.
She deleted all her social media profiles shortly after the release of the court documents in 2020, but in previous interviews she described how she was helped by a ‘mentor’ in New York who ‘was so original in all his thought processes that he couldn’t even see the box’.
She said: ‘My already inquisitive and curious nature evolved. I supposed it gave me a kind of ‘anything is possible’ mentality.’
In the mid-2000s, Ms Lewis published a children’s book called A Key To The Heart, which was praised by Harry Potter author JK Rowling and former US First Lady Laura Bush. Ms Lewis later told how she had a ‘spiritual awakening.’
Speaking in 2020, a former colleague expressed shock at Ms Lewis’s links to Epstein, saying: ‘Shelley was always very well connected and beautiful. I am shocked and saddened.’
Her father Brian, a retired millionaire businessman, told the Mail on Sunday then he felt ‘very sad’ for Epstein’s victims, adding: ‘I’ve not seen my daughter for ages. I have no idea what she would want to say.’
Financier Epstein, who courted the world’s elite, was found dead in his cell in 2019 awaiting trial for masterminding a global network of child sex abuse.
His madam, British socialite Maxwell is in jail for helping him recruit schoolgirl victims to molest.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke of York – a friend to them both who denies claims Virginia Roberts was forced to have sex with him aged 17 – has had his royal titles stripped from him and been sent into exile in Norfolk.
He has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
