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Join Date: Feb 2011
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Epstein-Andrew Released From Custody For Now -Investigations Continue
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor Leaves Aylsham Police Station After He Was Released From Custody Late on Thursday
From partying with topless women in Phuket to his trips to Paedo Island, how Andrews reckless and greed fuelled friendship with Epstein ultimately destroyed him
MailOnline 20 FEB 2026
Andrew Hides in the back of a car after Release
....in Phuket
Wood Farm occupies a special place in the lives of the Royal Family. It was where Prince Philip retired after giving up public duties and when the Queen joined him it was where they liked to reminisce, poring over old family photographs.
How unbearably poignant such a scene appears today. The shock over Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has stripped the farmhouse of its bucolic charm so beloved of his mother and father and plunged the monarchy into a crisis from which it may never recover.
For centuries it has withstood scandal and insurrection, regicide and abdication and yet survived. It has done so thanks to a combination of pragmatic adjustments and with the exception of the briefest of blips, public devotion. But this feels different and dangerously so.
In the 40 years I have covered the Royal Family, there have been other moments when the foundations of the institution seemed in peril the loss of Diana when our bottomless sorrow over her needless death was, rightly or wrongly, so very nearly overwhelmed by rage at what was seen as the Royal Familys cold indifference towards the princess.
Then it was the failure to lower a flag at halfmast over Buckingham Palace or address the anguish of a public who wanted a visible sign of royal willingness to assuage the nations grief. Instead, they saw reluctance.
Earlier still, the annus horribilis when dismay at three failed royal marriages was supercharged by the conflagration of Windsor Castle and who was to pay for its repairs us or the non taxpaying Windsors raised awkward questions.
But the affair of the ex-prince Andrew is of a different scale. Its unsavoury allegations involving money, sex and his abandonment of patriotism, have permeated every crack of the royal fabric, overshadowing good intentions, obliterating hard-won reputations and somehow trapping the family in an endless cycle of sleaze. With it too has gone public sympathy.
It is now quite likely that however long or short, the Kings reign will be remembered for one thing and one thing only Andrew and how he dealt with him.
Epstein was accused for the first time in March 2005, when a 14-year-old girl at a police station in Palm Beach, Florida, reports a serious sexual assault
During a four-day visit to New York in December 2010, Andrew stays at Epsteins home in Manhattan
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