Mother of 5 helped convict Ghislaine Maxwell, dies of overdose: âIt started with Epstein,â family says

A woman whose testimony was key to the criminal sex trafficking conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell has died of a drug overdose, authorities confirmed.

Carolyn Andriano, a 36-year-old mother of five, was found dead at a hotel in Palm Beach County, her mother, Dorothy Groenert, told the Miami Herald. Although her death was discovered on Mary 23, it was not made public until this week in a report by the Daily Beast.

Groenert, however, disputes the coroner’s findings, questioning the thoroughness of the investigation by West Palm Beach police.

The Herald was unsuccessful in obtaining the police and coroner’s report on Monday.

But Andriano’s longtime attorney, Jack Scarola, said he was confident in the findings related to her death.

“A distraught mother is responding emotionally. I’m very sure she is undergoing such a significant grief reaction,” Scarola said.

“Carolyn was having a very difficult time following her experience in New York,” Scarola said, referring to Andriano’s testimony against Maxwell in federal court in Manhattan at Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial in December 2021. He said she continued to have drug problems after the trial.

“It is known that Carolyn’s experiences with Jeffrey Epstein had an enormous impact on her life and clearly was the cause of her tragic death,” he said.

Andriano is not the only Epstein victim who died as a result of addiction. In 2018, Leigh “Skye” Patrick was found dead of an accidental drug overdose in another Florida motel. Patrick had also been abused by Epstein when she was 16.

My sister suffered tremendously,’ Patrick’s twin sister Selby told the DailyMail.com in a 2019 story. “And it started with Epstein. Something happened in her when she met him that got her out of control.

‘She struggled with addiction since the time she met that guy. She went to rehab several times. She fought hard, but she eventually succumbed to the addiction. We miss her. “

Scarola said after the trial ended, Andriano and her husband, John Pitts, moved to North Carolina to start over. He was not sure why she was in Palm Beach at the time of her death, but several sources said she was still in the throes of addition and had come to Palm Beach for treatment. She was staying at the DoubleTree Hotel with her husband and children at the time of her death, the sources said.

During Maxwell’s trial, Andriano, who was only identified by her first name, said she was first brought to Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion when she was 14. At the time, she had dropped out of middle school and had a difficult childhood. She testified that an older relative sexually abused her when she was 4 and that her mother was an alcoholic. By that time, she was already experimenting with drugs.

She was introduced to Epstein and Maxwell by Virginia Giuffre, another Epstein victim.

Andriano testified that she returned to Epstein’s home more than 100 times in order to be paid money, which she used to buy drugs.

She tearfully described the trauma she suffered in the years since, saying she was diagnosed as being schizophrenic and lived in fear that her children would be kidnapped.

Andriano told the jury that Maxwell and another Epstein associate would summon her two or three times a week to visit Epstein, a New York financier who died in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.

“Something sexual happened every single time,” she said during trial.

Upon questioning by Maxwell’s lawyers, Andriano said she had received $2.8 million in compensation from Epstein’s estate as part of a compensation fund set up for victims.

“But,” she emphasized, “No money will fix what happened to me.”

She was among four victims who testified at Maxwell’s trial. Maxwell, 61, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on trafficking charges. She is serving her sentence at the federal women’s prison in Tallahassee while she appeals her conviction.