For three decades, a lodge in the woods by the lake here has stood as a vestige of Jeffrey Epstein’s time at Interlochen, the prestigious arts school and camp in northern Michigan where he came as a teenage bassoonist and returned as a celebrated donor.
Years before he was convicted as a sex offender, Mr. Epstein directed more than $400,000 to Interlochen. Much of it was spent to build the Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge. Records released by the U.S. Department of Justice and the school indicate he stayed there on some of his visits to Interlochen in the 1990s and the year 2000.
It was during those visits, amid the winding paths and practice huts, and the students competing to excel, that Mr. Epstein is said to have met two of the earliest victims of his grooming and abuse.
After Mr. Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida of a sex offense involving a minor, Interlochen cut all ties with him, renamed the building and removed a plaque that acknowledged his role. Now it is preparing to demolish the lodge in coming days as it works to shed any connection to Mr. Epstein, who used his philanthropy 30 years ago to help gain access to two young girls whose tuition he paid.
“It has taken on a negative association that is not reflective of our values,” said Maureen Oleson, a spokeswoman.
There have been no reports of abuse by Mr. Epstein occurring at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, as it is formally known. The school has emphasized that no one reported conduct of this sort during the time when it accepted money from Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges in New York. His last gift was in 2003.
But the Justice Department records reveal the extent of efforts Interlochen took in the 1990s to please an important donor and how Mr. Epstein wielded his checkbook and interest in the arts to fashion an aura of respectability. Some of the documents show that at one point in 2020, prosecutors asked the school for years of financial records as they examined whether Mr. Epstein had groomed other girls by paying their tuition. They found no other cases.
A visit to the school last month illustrated how much it has done since to separate itself from that past.
Interlochen’s security practices and visitor protocols have been overhauled, though officials say those changes are not a direct result of Mr. Epstein’s legacy. Some 240 cameras have been installed around its 1,200-acre campus and a law firm has been hired to evaluate reports of past sexual misconduct by former faculty and staff members.
“I don’t want to attribute everything to Epstein,” the school’s president, Trey Devey, said of the improvements. “Certainly we have to be even more vigilant as a result of Epstein.”
School officials say the continuing flow of applications from sterling candidates indicates that Interlochen’s reputation has not suffered serious harm. But they do not deny that the affiliation with Mr. Epstein has had an impact.
“The association with Epstein conflates the most vile individual with something that’s extremely beautiful and important,” Mr. Devey said. “It’s challenging to have an association with this person who is so evil.”
An Arts Incubator in the Woods
In the spring here, amid the towering pines as the loon calls echo over the lakes, it is difficult to imagine how Interlochen, lauded but intense, could be associated with anything more damaging than bruised egos. Founded in the 1920s, the center is both a year-round boarding school for teenage prodigies and a summer camp. Each week, starting in late June, 1,500 students, some as young as 8, travel from around the world to live in lakeside lodges and to fill the air with verses from Shakespeare or melodies from Mozart or Liszt.
Alumni describe it as a magical place, alive with extraordinarily talented, ambitious young people who are encouraged to pursue their dreams in music, dance, the visual arts or creative writing. Many go on to play for great orchestras. Some become famous. Josh Groban, Chappell Roan and Da’Vine Joy Randolph all spent time at Interlochen.
Though it has eased up in recent years, the camp remains a place of structure and discipline. The bugle wake-up calls for campers begin at 6:30 a.m. They stride the grounds in uniforms. High school musicians can expect a full schedule of rehearsals, classes and practice that does not end most days until 5 p.m. Driven to be their best, by the camp and by themselves, some former students describe an atmosphere of intensity. (The school said it now employed five counselors who focus on issues such as mental health.)
“The camp was (and still is) boot camp for creative kids,” Rachel Friedman, a former student, wrote in a 2019 book, “And Then We Grew Up.”
Cortnee Langlie, a professional musician who attended the boarding school as a theater major in the 1990s, said she was among some students who were harassed by other students and teachers. She faulted the school for a lack of oversight.
“Public humiliation was ritualized,” she said in a statement.
Many other alumni, though, remember Interlochen fondly as the sort of place where one might watch visiting stars perform at the Kresge Auditorium and then walk home through the twilight, bidding farewell to companions at the “date gate,” which separated the boys’ housing from the girls’.
Mr. Epstein was a 14-year-old from New York in 1967 when he attended the camp on a scholarship. Gavin Ferriby, who was a camper that summer, remembered in an interview that “Eppy” could be “funny and occasionally curt.” In a blog post in 2023, Mr. Ferriby wrote, “He did not seem mildly threatening, just mildly eccentric.”
An Alumnus With Assets
Mr. Epstein, who managed the assets of wealthy clients, began donating to Interlochen in 1990 and held fund-raising events for the school, including a 1997 cocktail party at his home to honor Mike Wallace, the “60 Minutes” journalist who was an Interlochen alumnus. One year, he helped pay for Interlochen musicians to perform at the Atlanta Olympics. In 1992, he flew Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, on his jet to perform on campus.
The giving included $200,000 to build the campus lodge that bore his name and was created to house visitors and parents. Rental income from the three-bedroom structure — designed with input from Mr. Epstein —- was to be directed to the Jeffrey Epstein Scholarship Fund.
“When awards are made Interlochen will notify you, with respect to the recipients,” Timothy J. Ambrose, who was then the vice president of institutional advancement, wrote in 1994. “The recipients will also be asked to communicate with the donor. If you would like to meet the students, we will help arrange a meeting on campus as well.”
After the structure was completed, Mr. Ambrose wrote to express gratitude. “It is a remarkable place,” he said in a letter from 1994.
Interlochen said the scholarship fund was never created, but income from the lodge did go into the center’s general fund, which financed some scholarships. In an interview, Mr. Ambrose said that, at the time, Mr. Epstein appeared to be just a generous donor.
“There was no way to know,” he said.
In 1993, Mr. Epstein was named to the school’s President’s Club, which meant he could, among other things, help in “identifying prospective students.” And for two weeks every summer, under the terms of the gift he made to the school, he could stay at the lodge. Mr. Ambrose told investigators that Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime companion, would call to arrange visits and request supplies for the lodge, such as freshly squeezed orange juice and whole-grain bread. On one occasion Mr. Ambrose said she told him they were bringing a masseuse.
The lodge was only a few minutes’ walk from the campus center, called the Mall, and its small shops, like the Melody Freeze where students bought snacks. It was there in 1994 that Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell met a 13-year-old vocalist sitting on a bench with her friends, eating ice cream.
Ms. Maxwell was walking “a cute little Yorkie,” the woman would later recall in court.
“The rest of my friends, my classmates, left, and I was there by myself,” said the woman, who testified anonymously at Ms. Maxwell’s trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2021. “And I sat on the bench still eating my ice cream, and the man sat across from me.”
The lawsuit she filed in 2020 against Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein’s estate contained her depiction of what occurred next. “Epstein bragged to her about being a patron of the arts and giving scholarships to talented young artists,” according to the court papers. “Epstein and Maxwell probed her at length about her background, family situation and where she lived.”
“It’s shocking to think of Epstein at the Melody Freeze,” said Sarah Ruhl, a playwright, essayist and poet who attended Interlochen in the 1980s and early 1990s. “I just feel like a great pool of slime shivers went down my spine because it was such a sweet place.”
A Generous New Friend
The young woman who met Mr. Epstein while eating ice cream at Interlochen described in court years later how he lured her into his orbit. When she had returned to Florida in the fall of 1994, Mr. Epstein invited both her and her mother to his Palm Beach home and began supplying the family with money and gifts.
The financial help came in handy. The girl had recently lost her father, a conductor and composer, from leukemia and home life was difficult.
The first sexual encounter soon followed when Mr. Epstein one day led her to his pool house where he pulled her on top of him and masturbated, she later testified. She was 14 and said it was the beginning of years of sexual demands and, she outlined in court papers, an act of rape. Still, she said, she told no one, not even her mother.
Mr. Epstein paid for her to return to Interlochen the next two summers. She later flew on his jet to visit him at his New Mexico ranch or his home in New York, and she recalled in court papers that he introduced her once to Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump, once friendly with Mr. Epstein, has said he knew nothing about Mr. Epstein abusing underage girls.
The young woman’s mother later told investigators that she grew concerned about the extent of Mr. Epstein’s interest in her daughter. She recounted speaking with an Interlochen receptionist, who told her, “He is trustworthy around the kids and there is no need to worry.”
The school said that it could find no mention of the call in its records and that it would have been placed years before Mr. Epstein was identified as a sex offender.
Mr. Epstein later paid for her to attend a private high school in New York and put her and her mother up in an apartment. But she moved to Los Angeles in 1999 for an acting career, and eventually broke off contact, she said.
In 2020, after Mr. Epstein’s death, the woman sued his estate and Ms. Maxwell anonymously and won a $5 million settlement.
The following year, while testifying in Manhattan at the trial that led to Ms. Maxwell’s conviction on sex trafficking and other charges, she described how her experience with them had affected her.
“How do you navigate a healthy relationship with a broken compass?,” she told the court. “I didn’t even understand what real love is supposed to look like. It ruined my self-esteem, my self-worth, I don’t know how men were supposed to treat me and how I was supposed to reciprocate.”
She declined, through her lawyer, to comment further.
A second former Interlochen camper who said she was groomed by Mr. Epstein also described meeting him in 1997 on the Mall. She was 14 and standing beside a decorative wishing well and he and Ms. Maxwell were again walking their dog, the woman, who requested anonymity, said in an interview. She recalled being invited to Mr. Epstein’s lodge where she was given cake and how, after subsequent conversations, Mr. Epstein agreed to pay her tuition for camp the following year.
“You clearly have made one young lady extremely happy,” Mr. Ambrose said in a 1997 note. “She is a talented musician and we look forward to her return next summer.” Mr. Epstein paid for two years of her attendance at boarding school at Interlochen and, later, her tuition at music school in New York where she regularly visited his townhouse.
She said that Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell often wielded the threat of withdrawing financial support as a weapon and that she was dropped by them around 2003 after she refused to attend a meeting with a prominent person in New York. She was forced to pay her music school fees. She described an encounter with Mr. Epstein where he asked her to massage his feet, but declined to elaborate further on her interactions with Mr. Epstein.
Lingering Questions
Though the Epstein lodge was renamed after Green Lake more than a decade ago, it remained something of a place of morbid curiosity. Last month, the Interlochen board decided that the cabin, which had been left empty since March, should come down.
The timing of the demolition has not been announced and the school has yet to decide what will take its place.
“Interlochen’s executive team and board are currently involved in a master planning process that looks at all areas of campus — the former Green Lake Lodge site will be included as part of that larger review,” said Ms. Oleson, the spokeswoman.
Also underway is the investigation by an outside law firm into allegations of past sexual misconduct at the boarding school. The review was prompted when a former student came forward in 2024 with a complaint from the 1970s and the school said other alumni “have shared sobering accounts with lifelong and lasting impacts.”
The outside firm is also looking into the school’s experience with Mr. Epstein. Its report is due this summer.
Under protocols introduced over the past decade or so, no donor or other adult visitor is allowed to be with a student unescorted. Students are told how to register their concerns about inappropriate behavior — there is a form — and they can do so anonymously. Everyone on staff is obliged to report any worries.
“We are relying on a network of our employees to be our eyes and ears,” said Ned Hartwick, director of campus safety.
At lunch recently at the school, students described a safe, enriching, collaborative place where they could realize their creative potential.
Until recently, Interlochen had also faced efforts by state legislators to look further at the school’s interactions with Mr. Epstein. The bipartisan resolution had 45 co-signers but failed to gain further traction.
Mr. Devey characterized the proposal by the lawmakers as unfair and outdated.
“There is this frozen-in-time perception of Interlochen from 30 years ago,” he said, “when we have made countless changes over the ensuing years.”
Graham Bowley is an investigative reporter covering the world of culture for The Times.
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