Legal disclaimer: This article is based solely on documents released in the federal EFTA (Electronic Filing and Text Archive) production, made public through litigation, supplemented by the archive's entity index. All facts are drawn from those documents. This article does not assert guilt, wrongdoing, or criminal conduct on the part of any individual. Language such as "documents indicate," "records show," and "alleged" reflects the evidentiary basis and does not constitute a legal conclusion. Minors are not identified in this reporting.
Sarah Kellen appears in 145 records in the InvArchives entity index, most concentrated in a single federal case file: the 2007–2008 investigation of Jeffrey Epstein by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. Grand jury testimony, a 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement, a 2010 civil complaint, and a 2006 trust document together describe Kellen as Epstein's scheduler — and, according to allegations in a federal civil complaint, as someone who personally brought young women and girls into the house. Kellen was never criminally charged. The documents in this archive explain why.
Get the full documents delivered to your inbox — subscribe to the InvArchives newsletter.
On March 18, 2008, an FBI special agent working "Operation Leap Year" — the bureau's investigation of Epstein — testified before a federal grand jury in West Palm Beach. The transcript, preserved in the archive as Grand Jury Testimony of FBI Special Agent, Operation Leap Year, lists Kellen alongside Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova as a subject of the inquiry.
Asked about Kellen's role, the agent testified that "Sarah Kellen's primary role was to schedule" young women identified in the case only as "Jane Does" to come to Epstein's Palm Beach home for massages. The agent went on to describe a specific instance in which Kellen "took Jane Doe Number Two from the kitchen and took her upstairs for the massage that was to be performed for Mr. Epstein." The testimony recounts this pattern across multiple Jane Does named in the case, describing Kellen as the person who scheduled their visits and, on multiple occasions, brought them into the house.
None of the individuals referred to as Jane Does in the grand jury record are identified by name in this archive or in this article.
The investigation ended not with an indictment but with a controversial deal. The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement between the U.S. Attorney's Office and Jeffrey Epstein states that, in exchange for Epstein's guilty plea in state court, "the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova."
The agreement repeats this language in multiple places across its five pages, each time naming Kellen first among the four women. It is this document — kept sealed for over a decade — that closed off any federal criminal exposure for Kellen arising from the Operation Leap Year investigation. A federal district judge later found that the government had violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act by finalizing the NPA without conferring with Epstein's victims; that finding is recounted in the Eleventh Circuit's opinion in In re Wild, which describes the district court as having "determined that government had violated CVRA" before the case was ultimately dismissed following Epstein's death.
Because the NPA only bound federal prosecutors, Epstein's accusers were still able to sue civilly. In September 2010, a plaintiff identified only as "M.J." filed suit directly against both Epstein and Kellen in the Southern District of Florida. The complaint, preserved as M.J. v. Epstein and Kellen, Complaint (Case No. 9:10-cv-81111-WPD), alleges that Kellen — described in the filing as "Epstein's top assistant" — served as "his scheduler and a recruiter/procurer of the girls."
The complaint alleges a specific sequence: that in the summer of 2002, the plaintiff, then a minor, was brought to Epstein's Palm Beach house; that she "was greeted by Epstein's top assistant, Defendant Sarah Kellen"; and that Kellen "escorted Plaintiff upstairs to Defendant Jeffrey Epstein's large bathroom, where Defendant Kellen set up the massage table and showed Plaintiff different massage lotions to use," before leaving her alone in the room. The complaint states that, "upon information and belief," Kellen "remain[ed] employed by Defendant Epstein" as of the 2010 filing date. These are civil allegations, not adjudicated findings, and the complaint's characterizations of Kellen's conduct and intent are contested claims rather than established facts.
Kellen's name also surfaces in Epstein's private financial planning. A trust agreement dated December 27, 2006, and preserved in the archive as the Butterfly Trust Agreement, created a Virgin Islands trust whose trustees — Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn — held "complete and uncontrolled discretion" to distribute income or principal "to any one or more persons then living from a class consisting of SARAH L. KELLEN, NADA MARCINKOVA and GHISLAINE N. MAXWELL."
The document does not disclose why Epstein structured the trust this way or whether any distributions were ever made to Kellen. It does establish that, as of late 2006, Epstein placed her in the same discretionary beneficiary class as Maxwell and Marcinkova — two of the other women most frequently named alongside him in the archive.
Kellen's name resurfaced more than a decade later, when federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York tried Ghislaine Maxwell. A government filing preserved in the archive as the Government's Omnibus Memorandum, United States v. Maxwell references the scope of the 2007 NPA and the "co-conspirators" it named, including Kellen, as prosecutors litigated how much of the earlier Florida record could be used at Maxwell's trial. The filing illustrates how the protections extended to Kellen in 2007 continued to shape Epstein-related litigation more than a decade later.
Across the documents reviewed for this article, one fact remains constant: despite grand jury testimony describing her scheduling role, despite being named explicitly in the federal Non-Prosecution Agreement, and despite being sued civilly, Sarah Kellen has not been criminally charged in connection with the Epstein investigation. The Non-Prosecution Agreement is the direct reason why federal charges were foreclosed. Whether the underlying allegations against her were ever otherwise tested — in a criminal court, under a reasonable-doubt standard, with the right to confront evidence — is a question the documents in this archive do not answer.
The 145 records naming Sarah Kellen in the InvArchives index trace a single, consistent role across a decade of Epstein-related litigation: scheduler, and, according to grand jury testimony and a civil complaint, the person who brought young women and girls into Epstein's home. The 2007 Non-Prosecution Agreement — negotiated in secret and later found by a federal judge to have violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act in the way it was concealed from victims — is the reason no criminal case against her ever followed.
Cited Documents
Share this investigation