Palm Beach Police Department Investigation — Case 05-368 (Town of Palm Beach v. Jeffrey Epstein)

Town of Palm Beach Police Department case 1-05-000368 (commonly cited as 05-368) was opened on March 14, 2005 after a Palm Beach County family reported that their 14-year-old daughter had been driven to a residence at 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach, where the homeowner, Jeffrey E. Epstein (DOB 01/20/1953, white male, then 52), paid her for a 'massage' that included sexual contact. The incident report classifies the matter as 'SEXUAL BATTERY,' lists the victim's family as the reporting party, and identifies Sarah Kellen (then a 25-year-old listed as 'Personal Asst./Epstein') and Haley Robson (then 18, of Royal Palm Beach) as additional 'still-suspect' subjects from the case's earliest days (EFTA00007157, DOJ-OGR-00032286).

The lead investigator, Detective Joseph Recarey of the PBPD's Special Investigations / Criminal Investigations Unit (345 South County Road, Palm Beach), worked the case from March 2005 through 2006 under Chief of Police Michael S. Reiter. Over the next eleven months, the department conducted what its own probable-cause affidavit described as 'a sexual battery investigation involving Jeffrey Epstein… [in which] sworn taped statements were taken from five victims and seventeen witnesses concerning massages and unlawful sexual activity that took place at the residence of Jeffrey Epstein 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach' (EFTA01308488). The PBPD obtained State Attorney's Office investigative subpoenas to T-Mobile, Cingular Wireless / National Compliance Center, and BellSouth for subscriber and toll records on telephone lines associated with Epstein and his recruiters (EFTA01333477, EFTA01334113, EFTA02728515, EFTA01721087); served grand-jury-style search-warrant material on the El Brillo Way residence; and inventoried physical evidence by 'PROP' number, including audio cassettes, VHS interview tapes, voicemails, photographs, and CDs seized from the property (EFTA01250973, EFTA00276489, EFTA00279452).

In May 2006, Chief Reiter referred the case to the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office under State Attorney Barry E. Krischer with a recommendation that Epstein be charged with multiple felony sex offenses against minors. The State Attorney's Office instead convened a grand jury that returned a single state charge of solicitation of prostitution. Reiter, in protest, formally requested in a 2006 letter to Krischer that the matter be referred to federal authorities; Reiter's contemporaneous letter to Krischer is preserved as Exhibit 5 to the 2021 Palm Beach Post public-records litigation appendix at EFTA02733081. The PBPD then forwarded its complete case file to the FBI's West Palm Beach Resident Agency, where it was opened as FBI case 31E-MM-108062 (Operation Leap Year). PBPD's evidence inventories — 'PBPD CASE #05-368 / PROP #05-1024' — were re-cataloged into the federal file (EFTA00276489, EFTA00279452).

The PBPD investigation's record continues to surface in later proceedings: Recarey was deposed in 2010 and Reiter in November 2009 in connection with civil litigation against Epstein (their depositions appear as appendices to EFTA02733081, the Palm Beach Post v. Aronberg public-records suit seeking release of the 2006 grand jury record); the Probable Cause Affidavit was re-filed as a 2019 SDNY exhibit (EFTA01308488); and PBPD case-report excerpts and evidence receipts were reproduced as composite exhibits in the 2015 Giuffre v. Maxwell defamation case in the Southern District of New York (EFTA02778764, EFTA02797638, captioned Case 1:15-cv-07433-LAP). The November 2020 DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility report on the federal handling of Epstein — itself an appendix to the Palm Beach Post case — reconstructs the PBPD-to-DOJ referral chain that began with case 05-368.

The corpus carries 132 EFTA-stamped documents and 203 emails linked to PBPD case 05-368, drawn from DOJ's January 2026 EFTA release (datasets 4, 9, 10, 11, 12), the House Oversight production (DS99 / DOJ-OGR), and exhibits filed under protective order in SDNY (the 'SDNY_GM' Bates range). The sample is dominated by the working investigative file: the multi-hundred-page CMS301L-format Palm Beach Police Department Incident Report bearing case number 1-05-000368 (EFTA00007157, EFTA01692161, EFTA00176235, EFTA00181807) listing 358 El Brillo Way as the location and itemizing victims, witnesses, recruiters, and detective narratives; OCVAN Unit 'Case Reports' from the predicate Maxwell/PBA-college intelligence file 2002-10 (EFTA00077923, EFTA01244849, EFTA01334281), which recount the December 2001 West Palm Beach intelligence tip about an English woman recruiting young women from Palm Beach Atlantic University to answer phones at the El Brillo Way residence and the 2002 trash-pull operation that recovered 'list of female names titled "People that I want you to meet"' along with massage directories, phone bills, and nude photographs; the Probable Cause Affidavit listing the 'Unlawful Sexual Activity with a Minor' and 'Lewd and Lascivious Molestation' counts the PBPD recommended (EFTA01308488); the Case 05-368 Evidence/PROP inventory tying physical media to specific seizure numbers, including the 'Epstein Tapes—MM10-05-368' interview cassettes (EFTA01250973, EFTA00276489, EFTA00279452); arrest and notice-to-appear paperwork (EFTA01333100); investigative subpoenas to T-Mobile (EFTA01333477), Cingular (EFTA01334095, EFTA01334113, EFTA02728515) and the State Attorney 05.625 subpoena (EFTA01721087); the PBPD Special Investigations Unit fax-activity log of December 2005–January 2006 outbound calls to subpoena-compliance offices (EFTA01262375); and CDR/billing returns for 561-prefix Palm Beach numbers tied to the Epstein residence (EFTA02855330, EFTA00260438).

Multiple FBI 'FOI/PA Deleted Page Information Sheets' filed in the corpus catalog hundreds of withheld pages from the PBPD-derived file (EFTA00790273 — 356 deleted pages; DOJ-OGR-00028888 — 258 deleted pages from civil action 17-cv-03956), under exemptions b3, b6, b7C, b7D, and b7E. The corpus also reflects the case's later-life applications: the 100-page 'Public Records Request No.: 17-295' production at DOJ-OGR-00031309 and the 89-page DOJ-OGR-00032286 incident-report extract are 2017 PBPD public-records releases produced by the Town of Palm Beach in response to Florida open-records requests; EFTA02733081 is the 710-page April 22, 2021 appendix in CA Florida Holdings, LLC (Palm Beach Post) v. Aronberg & Bock (50-2019-CA-014681-XXXX-MB) bundling Recarey's 2010 deposition, Reiter's November 23, 2009 deposition, the November 2020 DOJ-OPR report, the Reiter→Krischer letter, the 2006 state indictment, and the federal NPA. Composite exhibits of the PBPD file were also docketed in Giuffre v. Maxwell, 15-cv-07433 (S.D.N.Y.), at EFTA02778764 (Document 21-6, December 10, 2015) and EFTA02797638 (Document 173-7, May 27, 2016). The corpus does not contain the full sworn statements of the five victims who gave taped interviews to PBPD, the unsealed 2006 grand jury transcripts, or Recarey's case-agent notes — those materials remain partially withheld under Florida grand-jury secrecy and federal FOIA exemption pages cataloged in the deleted-page indices.