Joseph Recarey

The 2005 Investigation

In March 2005, Palm Beach Police Detective Joseph Recarey was assigned to investigate a complaint from the family of a 14-year-old girl who had visited Jeffrey Epstein’s estate on El Brillo Way and been paid to give him a massage.

What began as a single complaint rapidly expanded into a major investigation. Recarey methodically worked through victim referral networks, identifying one victim after another. By the time the investigation was referred to the FBI in 2006, Recarey had identified dozens of young women — most of them teenagers at the time of abuse — who had visited Epstein’s property.

The evidence he assembled included victim accounts, physical evidence from Epstein’s home, phone records, and documentation of the cash payment system through which existing victims were paid to recruit new girls.

Federal Referral and NPA

Recarey cooperated with the FBI’s subsequent federal investigation. He later stated publicly that the case built by Palm Beach police and the FBI was strong — strong enough to support charges far more serious than the single state solicitation count Epstein had originally faced, and far more serious than the two state charges in the 2008 NPA.

He became openly critical of the NPA and of how the federal investigation was resolved, describing it as a failure of the justice system that he found personally and professionally difficult to accept.

Death

Joseph Recarey died on May 25, 2018, at the age of 47, from a heart attack. He died seven months before the Miami Herald published the “Perversion of Justice” series — and more than a year before Epstein’s 2019 arrest. He never saw Epstein face federal charges.

His investigative work is foundational to the entire legal record of the Epstein case. Victims and advocates have frequently cited him as a law enforcement officer who did everything right — only to see the justice system fail.