Court documents just unsealed show that an international model who committed suicide by jumping from the balcony of her Wall Street apartment building had flown on convicted sex offender Jeffry Epstein’s jet when she was a teen.
Model Ruslana Korshunova — who modeled for Vera Wang, DKNY, and a number of other high-profile brands — died on June 28, 2008 at the age of 21. Police ruled the death a suicide and there was evidence that she had sliced through a protective screen on her balcony and pushed through it to jump to her death from her ninth-floor New York financial district apartment.
Now, the recently unsealed documents concerning the Jeffrey Epstein case reveals that Korshunova had taken at least one flight on Epstein’s infamous “Lolita Express” on June 7, 2006, when she was 18 years old, the New York Post reported.
Top model who killed herself flew on Epstein’s private jet https://t.co/HYZu4vYRvN pic.twitter.com/kX1QWVhwmW
— New York Post (@nypost) January 5, 2024
The model’s trip on the jet occurred a few weeks before Epstein was arrested for sexual misconduct in 2006. He was later convicted of having sex with underage girls.
Korshunova was listed as a passenger on the June 2006 flight along with Epstein, his bodyguard Igor Zinoviev, personal chef Lance Calloway, assistant Sarah Kellen, a woman named Stephanie Tidwell, and an unidentified former UFC fighter.
It is unknown what happened to the young would-be model once she got to Epstein’s private Caribbean island. Young girls are rumored to have been exploited by dozens of rich and famous personalities there.
The model left no note and didn’t appear to have told anyone that she felt suicidal ahead of her death, but investigators did find that she had been working with a group to help her deal with repressed memories and past trauma. The nature of that trauma was never determined.
She had mentioned to friends that she was homesick and was thinking of quitting the modeling business and had been losing weight in the weeks before her death.
she's really pretty... #ruslanakorshunov pic.twitter.com/PrYBNrm1
— 𝓐 👑 (@mynameisapreL) December 31, 2011
Artem Perchenok, who met with Korshunova hours before she died, said that the model kept her problems “bottled up,” and added, “When a job would go bad, she’d take it out on herself.”
Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, the woman at the center of the 2015 court case from which the documents now being unsealed originated, says she does not recall seeing Korshunova on the island.
#RuslanaKorshunov (July2,1987-June28,2008)Kazakhstani model of Russian descent.Died after falling from ninth-floor balcony of her apartment. pic.twitter.com/fUMUwZomio
— NoT🖤ForgotteN (@the_memorypage) January 28, 2017
“I am sorry to hear the news of Ruslana, and my condolences are with her family and friends,” Giuffre wrote in response to a 2011 email from her attorney asking about Korshunova.
“I can say that I have never had any meetings with her, sorry not to be of any help there,” Giuffre concluded.
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