House Oversight — Estate records
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Jackson, a senior journalist at Maxwell's Daily Mirror, says he saw Ghislaine shredding documents aboard her father's yacht shortly after his death. The Maxwells denied this, but Jackson has never retracted his version. Whatever her impulses were after Maxwell died, one thing cannot be disputed: Ghislaine was heartbroken. One friend described her as 'catatonic' with grief. Rupert Fairfax said: 'She worshipped him. He was not just her father, he was her hero. Then, as well as having to cope with losing him, she had to cope with everything people were saying about him.' Maxwell's death came when Ghislaine was getting over the break-up of her four-year romance with Count Gianfranco Cicogna, a member of the Ciga hotels clan. The dashing and urbane Cicogna was credited by Ghislaine's friends with helping her shake off the frumpy image she had at Oxford. 'He told her what to wear, where to get her hair cut — everything,' said one. With her father dead and Cicogna gone, Ghislaine turned up in New York, the town she was to conquer. She rented a one-bedroom flat on the Upper East Side and began to reinvent herself. She was far from destitute. Her father had bought her a pretty mewshouse in South Kensington which, in 1992, was valued at £500,000. She also had a trust fund that provided her with £80,000 a year, at that time more than the prime minister earned. And she was a knockout, with deadly charm and, perhaps most importantly, a bulging Filofax. In London, she had suffered for her father's crimes. One estimate of the money missing from his companies was £727 million. In New York she was a celebrity, with an address book full of the names of rich and famous friends. Robert Maxwell was a determined soldier, ruthless and,b3i. his own admission, an unflinching killer. His daughter, in whose dark beauty the old tyrant can still be discerned, was not about to succumb to guilt by association. She hit the phone. Soon, she was being seen at all […]