The picture linking Prince Andrew with his sex abuse accuser is genuine, the photographer who copied it says.
The snap of the Duke of York with his arm wrapped around a then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre’s waist as Ghislaine Maxwell looked on is said to have been taken on March 10, 2001.
It was the night the now 39-year-old claims was the first time she was forced to sleep with the prince on the orders of his pal, Jeffrey Epstein. The sex took place, she has testified, in convicted teen sex trafficker Maxwell’s London home.
In a prison interview last week, Ghislaine, 61, called the photo “fake” and said she had “no memory of them meeting.”
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Peter Macdiarmid/LNP)Now the photographer who copied it, Australian Michael Thomas, has provided images showing the developer’s markings and timeline on the back.
“It was a normal 6×4 inch print that you would have got from any developer at the time,” Mr Thomas said.
“It looked like it was 10 years old. It wasn’t crisp because it had been developed in 2001.”
The photographer snapped almost 40 shots of the picture – then, crucially, flipped it over and captured three images of its reverse with his camera.
A date stamp on the flip side showed it was developed at a Florida Walgreens One Hour Photo outlet on March 13, 2001, close to where Ms Giuffre lived.
“For Ghislaine Maxwell to come out and say it was fake is ridiculous,” Mr Thomas said.
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Zuma Press/PA Images)The snapper said he kept copies he took of the photo in 2011 on a hard drive in his home office near Queenstown in New Zealand. Upon checking his archives of photos, he discovered he had taken three separate shots of the back of the picture, showing the date it was developed.
He added: “I’d like this all to be put to bed. Hopefully, people can stop dealing in conspiracies.”
In 2019, the Duke said: “You can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked because it’s a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. I have simply no recollection of the photograph ever being taken.”
Andrew has vehemently denied Ms Giuffre’s allegations he slept with her in London and two other times.
It was reported Andrew is ready to launch a £80million civil lawsuit against Ms Giuffre if she repeats sex claims against him in her upcoming memoir.
He has retained top LA lawyers Andrew Brettler and Blair Berk for an attempt to get his accuser to retract any claims.
