Epstein Data Wiki

Cyril E. King Airport and the Virgin Islands Port Authority

20 min read

AirportCyril E. King Airport, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
LandlordVirgin Islands Port Authority, which its own tender describes as “a semi-autonomous agency that owns and manages the two airports and the majority of the public seaports in the United States Virgin Islands”1
PremisesThe middle bay of the General Aviation Hangar, 3,600 square feet, and 580 square feet of unimproved land for a fuel truck2
LesseeThomas World Air, LLC23
Governing Board approvalsJuly 20, 2011 for the hangar bay; August 17, 2011 for the fuel truck land2
Rent approved$12.00 per square foot per year for the bay, increasing every three years; $3,000 a year for the fuel truck land2
PossessionSeptember 1, 2011, with rent expected to commence October 1, 20114
LeaseA Hangar Facility Lease Agreement with the Port Authority dated June 19, 2012, as the lessee described it in 20173

This page is about one thing: how a company of Jeffrey Epstein’s obtained and held space at Cyril E. King Airport on St. Thomas, the airport that serves the islands he owned, and what the Virgin Islands Port Authority file shows about the way that was done. It is not a survey of airports, and it does not cover the aircraft, the crews or the flight records, which are on Epstein’s flight department. The arrest at Teterboro Airport in July 2019 is on United States v. Epstein.

The airport and its landlord

Cyril E. King Airport is owned and operated by the Virgin Islands Port Authority. A Port Authority tender of October 10, 2014 for a general aviation hangar expansion describes the Authority as “a semi-autonomous agency” created in 1969, governed by a nine-member Governing Board with day-to-day management under an executive director, which owns and manages the territory’s two airports and most of its public seaports.1 The same tender records that because the airport uses federal airport funds “all FAA requirements are also in effect,” that the development would fall within the jurisdiction of “various governmental entities including, but not limited to, the VI Department of Planning and Natural Resources (DPNR) and the Federal Aviation Administration,” and that any resulting agreement would be subject to the approval of the Authority’s board, the Governor of the Virgin Islands and the FAA.5

The tender states the Authority’s reason for building: “The Airport lacks sufficient hangar space to meet demand.”5 It sets out the existing General Aviation Hangar as approximately 18,000 square feet, built in 1988, with three bays, two of about 7,200 square feet each and a third of about 3,600 square feet.6 That third bay, matching the 3,600 square feet of the Middle Bay lease described below, is the premises this page is about.

The applications, 2010 to 2011

Walter L. Challenger, Jr., the Port Authority’s property management officer, writing on May 12, 2011 to Cecile de Jongh (identified in a later JPMorgan Chase pleading as the territory’s then-First Lady7), set out the sequence of applications Thomas World Air, LLC had by then made. The company had applied on January 22, 2010 for 7,200 square feet of vacated space at the General Aviation hangar, with a $150 application fee that the Authority did not redeem, because it did not act on the application. On October 18, 2010 the Authority accepted and deposited a further application fee from the company for “prospective space to construct a hangar” at the airport, an application that had not yet been processed. By May 2011 the company had a third application in play, for the 3,600 square foot bay, and wished to keep the earlier two active, one for land on which to build a hangar and one for an area to serve its own fuel.8 The exchange had begun the previous day with de Jongh telling the Authority that her messenger “just returned to the office with the $150.00 application fee” after being told a fee was already held, and that “We paid a fee each time we submitted an application so I believe we should pay a fee once more for this application.”8

De Jongh forwarded the reply to Epstein, who answered the same day: “lets just give them the money”.8

The hangar-construction application had a separate life. On December 1, 2010 Dale Gregory, the Authority’s director of engineering, wrote to de Jongh that he had asked the Authority’s consultant, URS, “to look into the possibility of placing a hanger in the position requested adjacent to the GA apron at the Cyril E. King Airport,” that the consultant believed approval could be obtained if it carried out the work in its proposal, and that the result would be “a placement of the hanger that is consistent with our development plan and a site that is acceptable to the FAA.” He asked whether he should tell the consultant to proceed.9 De Jongh forwarded that to Epstein on December 8, 2010 as “the proposal from VIPA,” and Epstein replied in a single word: “approved”.10 On July 8, 2011 the Authority wrote to the company’s Virgin Islands counsel, Maria Hodge, that it was preparing to address a request to lease 13,200 square feet of land on which to build a hangar, that a study of possible sites had been done and one option selected, that the hangar as presented was in fact 13,407.5 square feet, and that an apron, a bridge and a connector would be needed to reach the taxiway, none of which the Authority would build and all of which the company would have to pay for.11

The bay was let to another operator. On May 6, 2011 de Jongh sent the Authority a letter of interest in the space “currently occupied by Air Center and it is our understanding that they do not intend to renew their lease,” saying she would send a signed hard copy the following Monday and file a formal application with the customary fee.12 The letter itself, on Thomas World Air letterhead and dated May 6, 2011, asks to lease 3,600 square feet described as “currently the Air Center hangar space” for “cargo, storage and warehouse related activities, maintenance and hangarage of aircraft, and offices incidental to the foregoing purposes”; the copy in the released files is unsigned above the manager’s typed name.13 On May 9 the Authority acknowledged “receipt of the request from Thomas World Air, LLC (“TWA”) for future space at the Middle Bay, General Aviation hangar,” noting that “the premises is presently under lease to Air Center Helicopters, Inc. We have not been informed by Air Center of its intentions regards the space.”14 Epstein forwarded that acknowledgement the same morning to Larry Visoski, whom the header of that message identifies by an account handle and not by name.14 Later on May 9 Denise Mills, the Authority’s director of property management, advised that Air Center had in fact sent its notice of renewal the previous week.15

Approval and terms

On June 10, 2011 Challenger told de Jongh that the application for “the soon-to-be-returned Air Center Helicopters, Inc.’s (Middle Bay) space” was being prepared for the Governing Board’s July 2011 meeting, and that if the board approved it the Authority would “anticipate a steady transitioning of the premises in time for when Air Center vacates” on an anticipated date of August 31, 2011. The same letter reports that a site for the self-fuelling tanker had still not been identified, and refers to the company’s “third active application” for space on which to construct a hangar.16

By a letter of August 24, 2011 to Hodge, the Authority’s executive director, Kenn Hobson, set out two board decisions. At its meeting of July 20, 2011 the Governing Board “approved your client, Thomas World Air, LLC’s (TWA) request to lease the middle bay of the General Aviation Hangar at the Cyril E. King Airport, St. Thomas, VI, consisting of 3,600 square feet,” for five years with a three-year option, at an initial annual rate of $12.00 per square foot rising every three years, the space being “currently under lease to another entity and … expected to be available after September 1, 2011.” At its meeting of August 17, 2011 the board approved a lease of 580 square feet of unimproved land in the general aviation area for a 5,000 gallon fuel truck, for five years only, at $3,000 a year. That approval carried three conditions: that the company “may only self-fuel to aircraft and/or helicopter(s) it owns and that is/are registered to the company,” that all construction costs for the fuel truck parking and containment area were to be borne by the company, and that the fuelling pad, containment area and truck be permitted and certified by the local and federal agencies regulating such operations.2

Whether any aircraft was ever registered to the company, as the first condition required, is addressed in an FAA law enforcement liaison’s account of the aircraft register, prepared for the FBI in a thread of September 29, 2021: closing his inventory of ten aircraft he had just traced, he wrote, “No other aircraft registered to or indexed to Hyperion Inc/LLC, Plan D LLC, Ossa Properties Inc. or Jeffrey Epstein / Ghislaine Maxwell / Thomas World Air LLC / Freedom Air Petroleum LLC / NES LLC / Maple, Inc. / Nautilus Inc.”17 That is the close of an inventory, not a general survey of Epstein’s property, and it does not mean he owned no aircraft; see Epstein’s flight department.

Possession, badges and the lease

On September 1, 2011 Challenger sent the Authority’s police chief a copy of the approval letter “for tenancy at the former Air Center Helicopters’ Inc. Middle Bay, General Aviation Hangar,” said that “[a] proposed lease agreement is in process,” and asked for assistance as Larry Visoski, the company’s director of operations, and other staff came to the police office about identification badges. The company, he wrote, “desires to start to work ASAP on cleaning and refurbishing the hangar bay.”18

On September 20, 2011, asked by de Jongh where the lease had got to, Challenger answered that the Authority had revised its standard leases including the one for the general aviation hangar premises “recently approved to TWA. LLC,” that counsel was signing off on them and the proposed lease would then be drafted, that “TWA, LLC was given possession of the premises 09/01/2011,” that the premises “was leased ‘as is’,” that the Authority awaited Visoski’s return of a construction and alteration application, and that “With TWA, LLC in possession, the rent commencement date will be October 1, 2011.”4

On November 1, 2011, two months after TWA took possession of the hangar bay and a month after the rent commencement date, the company’s manager, Jeanne Brennan, swore an affidavit for FirstBank Puerto Rico stating that Jeffrey Epstein was and had been, from the date of the company’s organization, its sole member; that she had been its manager since January 22, 2010, the date of the company’s first hangar application, above; and that the company “never did any business of any kind” from its organization “through the date of this statement,” and was “a holding company, which was not and is not intended to be used for any type of business.”19

A draft lease circulated inside Epstein’s office in January 2012, forwarded by his lawyer Darren Indyke under the subject “Draft proposed lease VIPA/TWA,LLC - 3600 s/f hangar space - CEKA” with an attachment named for December 16, 2011. The covering message inside it, of that December date, says Challenger “wanted you to review the ROUGH draft of proposed lease for TWA”.20 On July 17, 2012 Indyke forwarded a document attached as “Thomas_World_Air_Lease_2012.pdf” with the instruction “Please print and file in the Hangar Lease file.”21 Neither the draft nor the executed instrument is among the returns of the searches described below; what fixes the lease’s date is the lessee’s own recital of it five years later.

Access, 2017

On March 24, 2017 a member of Epstein’s office wrote to him that the Port Authority had made changes at Cyril E. King Airport in response to an incident the previous month which had affected all of its tenants, including Thomas World Air, and attached for his approval a memorandum of understanding for airport operations area access that the Authority had drafted and signed and that lessees were expected to sign, together with a draft letter to the Authority’s police chief requesting a key to the general aviation parking gate, which gives access to the company’s hangar from the street side of the airport. Indyke had reviewed both. Visoski would sign them on Epstein’s approval. Epstein replied: “ok”.22

The letter that went out that day is on Thomas World Air letterhead over Visoski’s typed name and describes the company as “Lessee under that certain Hangar Facility Lease Agreement with the Virgin Islands Port Authority, dated June 19, 2012, with respect to the premises known as Cyril E. King Airport.” It asks for a key to the general aviation parking gate to be used by Visoski, his co-pilot David Rodgers, and three named men who serve as drivers and assistants.3 A second letter, of August 18, 2017, over the typed name of the company’s manager, Jeanne Brennan, asks the same police chief for escort privileges for one of those drivers, whose existing aviation identification badge allowed ramp access for himself only, so that he could escort contractors on the ramp side to repair the company’s equipment in Visoski’s absence; the badge number is redacted.23 The March letter and the August letter are two different requests, not two copies of one; both are typed and unsigned in the copies released.

What one court filing says about the airport

In the Virgin Islands government’s suit against JPMorgan Chase, the bank’s opposition to a motion to strike its affirmative defences argues, under a heading reading “USVI officials knew of and facilitated Epstein’s crimes,” that “to get to Epstein’s island, the victims needed to fly to and from the airport” run by the Port Authority, “where Epstein leased hangar space,” citing Exhibits 106 and 107; the exhibit numbers print in the clear and it is the page references inside them that are redacted. A footnote to it says that “employees at the airport noticed the young women he traveled with” and quotes one article, which the pleading does not name, quoting a former air traffic controller at a local airstrip whose island name is blacked out saying “[m]y colleagues and I definitely talked about how we didn’t understand how this guy was still allowed to be around children,” and a current airstrip employee adding that “it was like he was flaunting it.”24

That is a party’s pleading rather than a finding, and the quotations in it are drawn from that one article, quoted by the bank, in support of a defence the plaintiff government was moving to strike. The record cited here ends with the bank’s opposition; this page does not report how, or whether, the court resolved the motion. The bank’s own account of what it knew and when is on JPMorgan Chase.

What the law office file indexes do and do not show

Three runs in the released files are a law office’s indexes of its own filing cabinets: headed lists of folder tabs, one line to an item, under drawer and box headings, with no letterhead, no recitals and no signature.252627 Each of them carries a heading reading “Four Star Aviation, Inc.” followed by two items, “Lease Agreement VI Port Authority and Four Star Aviation, Inc. Cyril E. King Airport” and a second lease agreement with the same two parties; a third entry elsewhere in the same family names a lease between the Port Authority and that firm at Henry H. Rohlsen Airport on St. Croix, listed among the papers of a proposed acquisition of Execujet Flight Services / Hairoun Aviation Services, a fixed-base operator at Cyril E. King Airport per the tender cited below, together with its own Port Authority leasehold.2526 Those lines name leases between the Port Authority and that company. They are not leases of Epstein’s, they do not say that any aircraft of his was hangared under them, and the agreements themselves are not in the runs that list them.

Two of the same indexes list, separately and under their own heading, “Thomas World Air LLC Lease of Space at Cyril E. King Airport,” with folder tabs for a letter of intent to lease, a Port Authority lease application, articles of organization, an operating agreement, a “Resignation of Darren Indyke as Manager” and a Port Authority letter of February 8, 2010 about an application for space.2526

What was searched

A phrase search of the released files for “Four Star Aviation” returns five pages across three runs; all five were read, and every one is a line in one of those file indexes. A search for “hangar” together with the airport’s name returns 63 pages across 27 runs; one page of each of the 27 was read, and they are the correspondence and the board letter set out above. A search for “Hangar Facility Lease” returns two pages, both of them the 2017 letters that recite the instrument. A search for “Thomas World Air” returns 297 pages across 139 runs, of which the pages read for this page are the ones cited here.

Epstein’s flight department; Cecile de Jongh; Darren Indyke; Jeanne Brennan; Little Saint James; JPMorgan Chase; United States v. Epstein.

Footnotes

  1. Virgin Islands Port Authority, Request for Proposals: General Aviation Hangar Expansion and/or Maintenance Building Relocation and Renovation, Cyril E. King Airport, Oct 10, 2014. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01116037 pp. 1, 5. ↩ ↩2

  2. Kenn Hobson, Executive Director, Virgin Islands Port Authority, to Maria Hodge, counsel for Thomas World Air, LLC, Aug 24, 2011. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01080421 pp. 1–2. No number printed on the instrument is reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Thomas World Air, LLC to the Port Authority police chief, Mar 24, 2017. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00585067 p. 1. The three drivers and assistants are private individuals and are not named here, and no number printed on the letter is reproduced. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Walter Challenger, Port Authority property management officer, to Cecile de Jongh, “RE: TWA, LLC Lease,” Sept 20, 2011. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00427239 p. 2. No number printed on the instrument is reproduced here. ↩ ↩2

  5. Same tender, Sections 4.00 and 5.00. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01116037 pp. 5–7. ↩ ↩2

  6. Same tender, Section 6.00, Premises Information. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01116037 p. 7. ↩

  7. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.’s Opposition to USVI’s Motion to Strike Affirmative Defenses (cited in full below), describing her as “First Lady de Jongh.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02807570 p. 8. ↩

  8. Walter L. Challenger, Jr., Port Authority property management officer, to Cecile de Jongh, “TWA Applications & Application Fees,” May 12, 2011, with her message of May 11 quoted beneath it and Epstein’s reply above it. His header is stamped in coordinated universal time. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00911254 pp. 1-2. No number printed on the instrument is reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Dale Gregory, Port Authority director of engineering, to Cecile de Jongh, “FW: Hangar Planning Services,” Dec 1, 2010, quoted inside the same December 8, 2010 email in which Epstein replied “approved,” cited immediately below. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00899246 p. 1. ↩

  10. Cecile de Jongh to Jeffrey Epstein, Dec 8, 2010, 10:29 a.m., and his reply timed eight minutes later in the same rendering; the message header is stamped in coordinated universal time. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00899246 p. 1. ↩

  11. Denise M. Mills, Port Authority director of property management, to Maria Hodge, counsel for Thomas World Air, LLC, July 8, 2011, received stamp July 12, 2011. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01123625 p. 1. ↩

  12. Cecile de Jongh to the Port Authority, May 6, 2011, forwarding a letter of interest. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01152858 p. 1. ↩

  13. Thomas World Air, LLC to the Port Authority, May 6, 2011. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01110790 pp. 1–2. The signature line on the copy in the released files is blank; the covering message, de Jongh’s note of the same date cited immediately above, says a signed hard copy would follow. ↩

  14. Walter Challenger, Port Authority property management officer, to Cecile de Jongh, “TWA interest Middle Bay - GA Hangar,” May 9, 2011, forwarded by de Jongh and then by Epstein the same day. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00910862 p. 1. Epstein’s covering header is stamped 14:38:46 in coordinated universal time, which is 10:38 a.m. in the zone of the message it forwards, whose own stamp reads 8:11:46 a.m. EDT. All three pages of that document were rendered at 300 dpi for this note: the header gives his recipient by an account handle, and neither Visoski’s name nor any role for him appears anywhere on them. The identification rests on two further documents, each read at 300 dpi: the same handle stands beside Visoski’s name in the clear in the header of an unrelated message of Aug 19, 2011, https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00720430 p. 1; and ninety seconds after this forward, by the explicit offsets carried in both headers, Epstein wrote in the same thread to the same handle, “Larry call rod directly,” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00910865 p. 1. No address printed on any of them is reproduced here. ↩ ↩2

  15. Denise Mills, Port Authority director of property management, to Cecile de Jongh, May 9, 2011: Air Center Helicopter “sent VIPA its notice of renewal early last week, but due to the Carnival leave, we’ve only received it this morning.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01864113 p. 3. ↩

  16. Walter Challenger, Port Authority property management officer, to Cecile de Jongh, “Updates,” June 10, 2011, forwarded to Epstein on June 11. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02035978 pp. 1-2. ↩

  17. Federal Aviation Administration law enforcement liaison to the FBI, aircraft registration history, in a thread of September 29, 2021. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00021666 p. 6. ↩

  18. Walter Challenger, Port Authority property management officer, to the Authority’s police chief, “TWA, LLC’s tenant approval Middle Bay GA Hangar - ID/badges process assistance,” Sept 1, 2011, forwarded by Cecile de Jongh to Larry Visoski, copying Epstein. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00918916 p. 1. Rendered at 300 dpi: the letter carries both the name and the role in the clear, “The Director of Operations of TWA, LLC, Larry Visoski, along with other staff of the company (pilots, etc) will visit your office regards badges/ID process.” ↩

  19. Jeanne Brennan, “Affidavit Re Not Doing Business,” sworn Nov 1, 2011, for FirstBank Puerto Rico. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01268970 p. 47 (a second copy at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01269100 p. 13). ↩

  20. Darren Indyke, forwarding “Draft proposed lease VIPA/TWA,LLC - 3600 s/f hangar space - CEKA,” Jan 18, 2012, attachment named for Dec 16, 2011, enclosing Challenger’s covering message of that date. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00421274 p. 1. No address or number printed on the instrument is reproduced here. ↩

  21. Darren Indyke, forwarding “Thomas World Air Lease 2012,” July 17, 2012, attachment “Thomas_World_Air_Lease_2012.pdf.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00408563 p. 1. ↩

  22. An Epstein office staff member to Jeffrey Epstein, “Virgin Islands Port Authority General Aviation Access,” Mar 24, 2017, and his reply. Paraphrased rather than quoted: the print itself carries transmission damage that breaks words mid-way. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02654635 p. 1. Rendered at 300 dpi: the message names the signatory only as “Larry”; the request to the police chief that it encloses is over Lawrence Visoski’s typed name, cited immediately below. ↩

  23. Thomas World Air, LLC to the Port Authority police chief, Aug 18, 2017. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00799380 p. 1. ↩

  24. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.’s Opposition to USVI’s Motion to Strike Affirmative Defenses, Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., No. 22-cv-10904 (JSR) (S.D.N.Y.), Document 157, filed May 23, 2023. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02807570 pp. 1, 16–17. ↩

  25. Law office file index, drawer and box listing. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00299850 pp. 7–8. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  26. Law office file index, a second run of the same family. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00298036 pp. 4–5. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  27. Law office file index, a third run of the same family. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00300480 p. 16. ↩

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