Disgraced former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 on five counts of sex trafficking in relation to the late Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring. Her trial and conviction resulted in renewed interested in Ghislaine and, by extension, her family.
It turns out the Maxwell family tree has quite a few skeletons. Chief among them is the mysterious death of Ghislaine's father, media mogul Robert Maxwell, who died in November 1991.
Robert Maxwell was born in the village of Slatinské Doly, which is in present-day Ukraine. He lost his parents and four siblings at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, but he was able to escape the same fate by moving to France to be part of the French Foreign Legion.
After the Nazis took over France, Robert was moved to England and joined the British army while using the name Ivan du Maurier. He met and married Elisabeth Meynard in 1944 and was ultimately discharged from the army at the rank of captain.
Following the war, he moved up through the business world and began purchasing companies. The first company he bought was Pergamon Press, and in 1981 he saved the British Printing Corporation from bankruptcy by purchasing it. After selling the paper back to its owners, he bought the Mirror Group Newspapers in 1984.
November 4, 1991, kicked off dramatically as Robert and his son Kevin reportedly had a huge fight. Kevin later explained that the fight was about a meeting the two needed to get ready for; Kevin was angry that his father had chosen to go sailing that day instead.
Robert's body was pulled from the water the next day. Eventually, the details of what happened before the discovery of his body emerged, but the overall picture is still unclear. While the official cause of death was a heart attack that happened while Robert was near the railing of the yacht, three different doctors couldn't really agree on whether or not that was true.
Roy Glenslade, a former editor who worked for Robert, later told The Guardian that the man was likely up to no good. He explained, "He was a man who could not face the ignominy of jail, of being shown to be a liar and a thief. And he very much knew that was coming. So I am a suicide theorist. I believe Maxwell threw himself off."
The loss of her father seemed to hit Ghislaine the hardest. A photographer who worked with Robert told The Guardian, "She was really devastated. If you look through the Maxwell files, he would take her to events: Elton John’s birthday, football matches. She was always there, clinging on to him. She called him 'My Daddy' all the time."
