Former model agent closely tied with Jeffrey Epstein, is found dead

Jean-Luc Brunel, founder of MC2 Model Management, has been found dead in a Paris prison. The disgraced model scout, who had a widely documented history of supplying girls to convicted billionaire sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, committed suicide whilst awaiting trial for rape charges.

The news was first reported by agency France Presse and later confirmed to Bloomberg News.

Brunel had a prominent career and is credited with discovering several top models, including Christy Turlington, Sharon Stone, and Milla Jovovich. He founded Karin Models of America in 1995 but was plagued by reports of abuse as early as the late eighties in a documentary that appeared on 60 Minutes. He was later banned from his modeling agency in Europe, which was dissolved in 2019.

In the same year it was revealed that Brunel was among those named in court documents from a civil suit by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who last week received an undisclosed settlement from Prince Andrew, against Ghislaine Maxwell. In the documents Giuffre alleges she was sexually trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to several high-profile individuals, including Brunel, while she was underage in the early 2000s.

“His decision was not guided by guilt but by a deep sense of injustice,” lawyers Christophe Ingrain, Mathias Chichportiche and Marianne Abgrall said in a statement to Bloomberg. “Jean-Luc Brunel has never stopped claiming his innocence. He has multiplied his efforts to prove it.”