Almost 30 years before Jeffrey Epstein's demise, Ghislaine Maxwell was caught up in another shocking mystery: the death of her father, press baron Robert Maxwell. He fell from his £15m yacht, Lady Ghislaine, off the Canary Islands on 5 November 1991, aged 68. Speculation still surrounds his death, with theories of suicide, accident, or murder by Mossad.
Roy Greenslade, a former editor of Maxwell's Daily Mirror, believes it was suicide: 'He was a man who could not face the ignominy of jail, of being shown to be a liar and a thief.' But Ken Lennox, then the Mirror's senior photographer, who saw Maxwell's naked corpse, is convinced it was an accident: 'He used to get up at night and pee over the stern. He weighed about 22 stone. The railings were wire. I think he lost his balance.'
Maxwell rose from Czechoslovakian refugee to media mogul, owning Mirror Group Newspapers, the New York Daily News, and football clubs. After his death, a £460m hole was discovered in his companies' pension funds, which he had illegally raided to prop up his collapsing empire. His reputation shifted from hero to robber.
Lennox was dispatched to help Maxwell's widow, Betty, as she flew to the Canary Islands. Mid-flight, he was asked to identify the body. 'There was Maxwell, completely naked, lying on a table. He looked as if he was still alive,' Lennox recalls. An inquest recorded death by heart attack and accidental drowning, but conspiracy theories persist.
