What did Epstein’s pilot Lawrence Visoski Jr. testify about who was on the Lolita Express and the nature of those flights?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Lawrence “Larry” Visoski Jr., Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime pilot, told jurors that over roughly three decades he flew Epstein and numerous high‑profile passengers on two jets — naming former presidents, royals, senators and celebrities among those he recognized — yet he testified he never observed sexual activity aboard those flights and that passenger records were not consistently kept [1][2][3]. His account described frequent, routine travel to Epstein properties and painted the aircraft as a transport and “recreational vehicle,” while also exposing gaps in what a pilot could reliably see from the cockpit [4][3][2].
1. Who Visoski said flew on the Lolita Express
Visoski recounted a long roster of famous people he remembered seeing board Epstein’s Boeing 727 and other aircraft, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Kevin Spacey, Bill Gates and a range of senators and cultural figures, telling the court he had personally flown many of those people on Epstein’s planes [5][6][7][8].
2. How he described the nature and frequency of the flights
He testified that he piloted Epstein’s jets for roughly 1,000 trips between 1991 and 2019 and that the planes shuttled passengers between Epstein’s properties — trips that were frequent enough that the 727 was sometimes described in testimony and reporting as a “recreational vehicle” and nicknamed the “Lolita Express” by the media [1][2][9][3].
3. What Visoski said he did and did not see aboard the planes
Under questioning, Visoski told jurors he stayed in the cockpit most of the time and that he never witnessed sexual acts on the aircraft nor saw women he believed to be underage performing sex acts while he was aboard, and he said he had never seen Epstein and Maxwell display overtly romantic physical affection such as kissing or holding hands [4][2][10].
4. Limits of his knowledge and record‑keeping practices
Visoski acknowledged that logging passenger names on domestic flights “was not a priority” and that tinted windows, the cockpit’s position and the way cars approached the plane sometimes prevented him from identifying every passenger, a limitation prosecutors and defense both noted when placing weight on his recollections [3][2][9].
5. Prosecution use and defense benefit: competing interpretations of the testimony
Although called as a government witness, segments of Visoski’s testimony — especially that he never saw sex acts and that he could not always identify passengers — were highlighted by Maxwell’s defense as exculpatory, while prosecutors used his logs and memory of travel patterns to map Epstein’s movements and Maxwell’s role as “Number 2” in the household’s operations, demonstrating how the same testimony was read in opposing ways [4][3][2].
6. What the testimony does—and does not—prove about wrongdoing on flights
Visoski’s statements establish that many prominent people flew on Epstein’s planes and that he personally did not observe sexual activity during flights, but his testimony does not prove that sexual abuse never occurred aboard those aircraft because he admitted observational and record‑keeping limits; reporting and flight logs assembled by others have been used to corroborate passenger lists but do not, by themselves, resolve questions about conduct on particular flights [1][8][3].
7. Broader context and lingering questions
The pilot’s testimony fed public curiosity about who rode Epstein’s jets and helped produce compiled passenger lists reported by outlets, yet it also underscored the evidentiary gap between presence on a flight and participation in criminal conduct — a distinction repeatedly noted in coverage and raised by both media and defense advocates as important to avoid conflating mere travel with guilt [1][11][12].