What actual year was Sasha (William) Riley born?
Executive summary
The available reporting does not establish a definitive birth year for the individual referred to as “Sasha (William) Riley”; sources diverge and at least one authoritative record appears to refer to a different person. Several news outlets reporting on the viral “Sasha/Sascha Riley” audio identify 1977 as the year associated with Riley’s adoption or background [1] [2], while a Reno obituary lists a Sasha Elise Riley born March 25, 1978 — a record that, on its face, appears to be for a different person and therefore cannot be taken as proof of the audio subject’s birth year [3].
1. What the mainstream coverage says about “Sasha/Sascha” and 1977
Multiple articles covering the viral audio identify or repeat a detail that Riley was “adopted in 1977,” which many outlets and summaries treat as an anchor for the subject’s age or era of birth [1] [2]. Those pieces are reporting on an account that circulated on social platforms and Substack and present the 1977 adoption detail without clear public records or court confirmations attached in the pieces themselves [4] [1]. The reporting explicitly frames the audio and biographical claims as unverified, noting that the recordings are widely shared but that the allegations within remain uncorroborated [4] [1].
2. The Reno obituary that complicates the picture: 1978, but likely a different person
A local obituary in the Reno Journal-Gazette names “Sasha Elise Riley” and gives a birthdate — March 25, 1978 — and a death in 2022, presenting a specific, verifiable civic record for a person named Sasha Riley [3]. That obituary is a primary record for that named individual but says nothing about the allegations, the viral audio, or an alternate name like William; because the obituary subject is “Sasha Elise Riley” and survived by family details inconsistent with the anonymous viral subject, treating the obituary as proof that the audio subject was born in 1978 would be methodologically unsafe without further corroboration linking the two identities [3].
3. Name variants, identity confusion, and the “William” element
The packet of reporting gathered around the audio shows inconsistent name spellings and identifiers — Sasha, Sascha, Sascha Barros Reily — and news outlets urge caution, asking whether the story “adds up” and calling for corroboration [5] [6]. None of the provided sources explicitly connects the name “William” to the viral audio subject or supplies a reliable public-record birth year tied to a “William Riley” alias in this context, so there is no sourcing in the set that establishes a “William” birthdate [4] [1] [5].
4. How to interpret these competing data points
Given the materials provided, the only explicit year attached to a Sasha Riley in public records is 1978 in the Reno obituary, but that record appears to document a different individual named Sasha Elise Riley who died in 2022 and therefore cannot be confidently equated with the alleged Epstein-survivor audio subject without additional evidence [3]. By contrast, multiple news summaries of the viral audio suggest “1977” as the adoption or background year for the audio subject — a detail reported by Times Now and Hindustan Times — but these reports present that detail without independent public-record corroboration in the pieces provided [1] [2].
5. Conclusion: what can be stated with confidence
It cannot be stated with confidence from the supplied reporting what year “Sasha (William) Riley” was actually born. The available sources point to two different years for people named Sasha Riley — one civic record indicating 1978 for Sasha Elise Riley (likely a different person) [3], and multiple news reports repeating a 1977 adoption detail about the viral audio subject without independent corroboration in those reports [1] [2]. None of the provided sources documents a birth year for a “William Riley” connected to the Sasha/Sascha audio, and journalists covering the tapes explicitly call for corroboration and verification [5].