I had followed Epstein as far back as the early 2000's before his first conviction and there were rumors about him doing exactly what the current day "conspiracy theories" stated even back then. Not to say that is what happened. What we can say is that there was probably some very powereful people involved. There had been extensive effort to cover up even the tunnels on the island with concrete.

Personally I believe that Epstein was more of a middle man to the operation and Maxwell is more important.