**Who I Am**
My name is Karina Shuliak. I was born in Minsk, Belarus, into a very ordinary family. I dreamed of studying dentistry outside my country, but we had no money, no connections, no realistic opportunities. In 2010, I arrived in New York, not yet 20 years old. I say it clearly now: my presence in America was not a coincidence. It was because of him. I entered his life before I turned 20, and I know he didn't allow anyone into his private circle unless he needed them or saw something specific in them.
**The First Meeting**
I met him for the first time at a mutual friend's apartment in Manhattan. That night, he said something to me I will never forget: "You are in the right place, with the person who can change your life." And he did. He helped me get into Columbia University to study dentistry and paid for everything: tuition, housing, daily expenses, even training labs. Then he helped me obtain legal residency, and later, American citizenship. But that's not the important story.
**Why Did He Do It?**
The important part is *why* he did all that. Frankly, it's difficult for me to mention what he asked of me and what we did, but I will talk about everything. These details aren't to explain my relationship with him, but to understand that he didn't take a single step without a reason. He didn't get close to anyone unless they served an arrangement in his private life.
**The Relationship: Trust and Function**
Starting in 2011, his presence in my day became a fixed part. He would call me regularly, ask me to accompany him on specific trips, and sometimes change his schedule just so I would be present. That relationship wasn't just emotional; it was practical too. He wanted someone he could trust with matters he didn't discuss with his employees. Over time, the nature of the people around him became clear to me, as did how his treatment of them changed based on what he knew about them. I didn't understand the full picture at first, but during the following years, especially between 2014 and 2018, it became clear that part of his life wasn't public, and that influential people were connected to him through relationships he didn't want documented. I'm not saying this as analysis; these are the years I lived with him: the trips, the calls, the money transfers, the people who appeared and disappeared, and the behavior that grew more tense the closer it got to his travel dates to the Virgin Islands.
**The Island: The First Test**
A few months after being in New York, I began to understand why he wanted me close. He never said it directly—he never said the important things outright. He made you understand through the people he placed around you and the places he allowed or forbade you from entering. In 2012, he asked me for the first time to accompany him to the Virgin Islands, now known as Epstein's islands. That wasn't a romantic invitation; it was a test. There on the island, I saw the wonder. I saw the true shape of his life. Not the houses, nor the planes, nor the staff, but the people who entered and left without anyone recording their names, the conversations that stopped as soon as a new person entered the room, and the disasters that happened everywhere inside that damned island. You can't imagine the depravity of what was happening there. What has come out now and what the US Department of Justice has published from his files represents only a very small part of the volume of crimes and scandals I witnessed on that island.
**The Guests**
As for the guests, that's another story. The guests were from all over the world, of all races and nationalities. They weren't from one place or one background. They were a strange and noticeable mix: Americans, Africans, Latinos, Spanish, Russians, Europeans from more than one region, even from the Far East. And among them were Arabs, yes, and even Indians. What united them wasn't language, color, or passport, but something much deeper. And the strangest, perhaps the most weighty, thing is that most of these people, after a few years, became today's holders of influence in sensitive and impactful positions within their countries, names traded on a global level. Some were already known, but others had nothing notable—no authority, no name, no real weight. And yet, when you look at them today, you find the roles have reversed, and those without influence suddenly became key figures in equations much larger than themselves.
**What I Saw**
The first time I went to the island, I wasn't prepared for what I saw. I thought I was going to a resort, but from the first moment, I understood this place was unlike anything I had ever known. At night, the island transformed into another world. The guests, who seemed respectable and calm during the day, acted in a way that made you doubt if they were even human. No boundaries, no restrictions, nothing forbidden. And I was the youngest among them, the weakest in language, the farthest from my family and country. I was forced to appear normal, to smile when I didn't want to, to stay calm even when I felt like running towards the sea and disappearing. I was seeing things for the first time in my life, things that would make any twenty-year-old girl break down. But I told myself: stay silent, pretend you understand, or you will be crushed.
**The Bizarre Normalcy**
The strange thing was that everyone around him acted as if these scenes were normal. As if their bodies had grown accustomed to this world. What they were doing had no relation to humanity. And at one point—and I'm not afraid to say this—I began to believe that some of them felt no guilt, no fear, not even humanity. As if they were ghosts wearing human faces. In those moments, I would look at him. He wasn't bothered. He didn't comment. He just watched, as if he wanted to see my first reaction. Would I run? Would I scream? Would I refuse? But I didn't. That wasn't an available option. I was alone with no support, no lawyer, no family, and all I had was to show him that I could endure, that I wouldn't break down in front of him. And unfortunately, I got used to it. I got used to it to the point that I began to see what happened as part of my new life.
**The Truth I Never Told**
But the truth I never told anyone before is that I wasn't as strong as everyone thought. I was afraid every single day. Afraid that if I said one word, the door would close behind me and I'd never get out. Afraid I would become part of the things I was seeing. And even more afraid that anyone would know I was afraid. And when I say now that I was trapped, I'm not exaggerating. I was trapped by people a hundred times stronger than me, in a world that could have swallowed me silently without anyone asking about me. And that's precisely what made me stay—not because I agreed, but because I didn't have the luxury of refusal.
**Deeper Layers**
There are things even today I don't know how to explain. I thought I had seen the extreme of what a human could see, but the island was hiding other layers, deeper, stranger, and darker.
The thing that most puzzled and shocked me was the *type* of guests. The place wasn't limited to men of influence only. Personalities you wouldn't expect to see in a place like this would arrive: scientists, artists, politicians, and even people with severe physical disabilities. I always asked myself: what drives a person who can barely move to come here? And no one answered.
I remember once seeing a man sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by aides. It was clear he was in a physical condition that hardly allowed him to do anything, yet they treated him as if he were the most precious guest. I didn't understand why. I stopped asking, but something inside me said his presence wasn't for entertainment, but for something much more important—something no one wanted known.
**The Children**
Stranger than all of that was the presence of children on the island. They would appear only at specific moments, only in the company of specific people, and then disappear for long hours. I sometimes met one little girl in particular. I would see her in the corridors holding the hand of a much older woman, seeming afraid of everything. When I would smile at her, she would shrink back as if she had learned that a smile wasn't something safe here.
**Hidden Authority**
The moment that made me tremble the most was when I saw a group of men sitting around a disabled man, talking to him as if *he* were the one in charge, not Jeffrey. The atmosphere was charged in a way I didn't understand, but I felt that man, despite his disability, possessed real power there—a power unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. It was only in those moments that I understood the island wasn't a place for pleasure. It was a hub, a meeting point for people who never gather in public, a space where matters were managed that could never be discussed in government meetings or official offices. And that was the strangest thing I saw there: not what was happening, but the people who were part of it—people you couldn't imagine being together in the same place unless there was something bigger, something no one wanted to say out loud.
**Before Prison**
Before he entered prison, he never changed. He lived on the island in the same way: the same rituals, the same depravity, the same atrocities. Even though he was receiving calls from very important people—people who don't usually speak in that tone—who were warning him, hinting that the protection he considered a red line was no longer what it was, he acted as if he didn't hear. He spoke to them with a cold, strange indifference, as if he possessed something that gave him a confidence no one else had. For me, it was clear the matter wasn't about scandals or money. It was much bigger than that. It was about an entire network moving around him, a network he no longer trusted anyone in. But despite all these signals, he didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He didn't change anything about his life or the depravity and dirty things happening on the island, as if convinced the threats were just words that would never turn into action.
**Until the Day of His Arrest**
Until the day of his arrest came. I remember the moment they told me. I froze because I knew his downfall wasn't the result of a journalistic investigation or a new complaint, but the result of a decision made by people who were closer to him than any newspaper or court. But the bigger shock wasn't his arrest.
**His Call**
It was his call. After only 48 hours, one of his lawyers contacted me and said, "Jeffrey asked for you. He doesn't want to talk to anyone but you." I didn't understand. He has people with influence far beyond the country's borders, people who appeared with him in photos with presidents and kings, so why me? But when I spoke to him on the phone, I understood everything without him saying a single word. His voice was weak, hesitant, afraid in a way I had never seen in his life. And he didn't tell me why he chose me. But I felt he wanted someone who wouldn't betray him, someone who wasn't part of his network and wasn't expecting a position, money, or protection from him. I felt he was trying to cling to the last thread he knew wouldn't break.
**Hours Before His Death**
And just hours before his death, he called me again. His voice was completely different from the first call. Calm in a way that didn't resemble a man collapsing, nor someone preparing to end his life. He said one sentence to me before he started talking: "I don't want a lawyer, and I don't want any leaks. I just want you to listen." Then he fell silent. A silence so deep I felt I could hear the breath of a besieged man. But not besieged by the law—by people he knew well.
**His Last Words**
He said to me: "I'm not afraid of prison. The real fear is of what awaits me outside." That sentence specifically, I didn't understand in the moment, but it was the beginning of what he would say next.
He began talking to me about the last days inside the cell. He said they moved him between multiple rooms for no clear reason, that the guards changed suddenly, and that two new faces were watching him in a way he didn't understand. He said, "I'm not under anyone's protection now, and I know exactly what that means."
He didn't talk about money or secrets, as everyone thinks. He talked about people—people he knew couldn't tolerate him coming out alive. I asked him, "Do you feel like someone wants to kill you?" He didn't answer yes or no. He just said, "There are people who, if I talk, won't stay alive. And there are people who, if I fall, will fall with me." He said it in this strange duality, from which I understood one thing: he was between two choices, neither of which offered him the ability to survive.
At the end of the call, he was calmer than at the beginning, as if he had made an internal decision. Less than ten hours later, his death was announced.
**Why Me?**
To this day, I don't believe the official narrative about his death. Not because he was strong or because he was afraid, but because the man who spoke to me in that last call was not a man saying goodbye to life. He was a person who knew his end had been written for him, and he hadn't written it himself.
**The Unexplained**
There is one thing to this day I don't have a complete explanation for: Why me? Why did he bequeath a large portion of his wealth to me?
I haven't received anything yet, and I don't know if I ever will, as everything is still tied up in cases, compensations, and files that haven't been closed. But what I know well is this: he didn't do it as a reward for me, nor out of emotional motivation, nor because I was the closest to him, as some repeat. I am convinced the reason is completely different.
**The Real Reason**In the last months before his arrest, it was clear he no longer trusted anyone who had been around him. The men who spent hours with him on the island disappeared. The big names that had surrounded him for decades began dealing with him as if he were a burden to be disposed of.
And I was the only person who wasn't part of that influence network. I didn't benefit from him politically or financially, nor did I participate in anything linking me to them. That's why I think he wrote my name for one reason: so that none of those who were implicated with him would benefit after his death. Not because I'm important, but simply because I have no relation to them. And he knew that my name's presence would prevent many from accessing what they believed was their right.
**My Life Today**
Today, my life resembles nothing of what I lived with him. I am far from the island, far from everything that happened there, and I'm just trying to follow what the investigators ask of me. I don't live in a mansion, I don't own a plane, I don't own millions of dollars. I live like any ordinary person, perhaps even simpler than that.
All that remains with me from those years is not wealth, nor influence, nor protection, but just this question: **Why me? And what did he want to prevent after his death?**