He was born to a groundskeeper and a school aide in a middle-class neighborhood in Coney Island. He never finished college. He had no credentials, no pedigree, no obvious path to power. So how did Jeffrey Epstein end up with a Manhattan mansion, a private island, a Boeing 727, and the phone numbers of presidents and princes? In part one of this three-part series, we trace the early life of one of the most prolific predators in modern history, from his surprisingly ordinary Brooklyn upbringing to the elite Manhattan school where the behavior started, through the Wall Street firm that handed him the keys to the ultra-wealthy, all the way to the private island locals had already nicknamed "Pedophile Island." This isn't just a story about a monster. It's a story about a system. The networks that protected him, the institutions that looked the other w ...