Mystery Epstein friend who boasted of threatening women with a knife named in new report

The New York Times has identified the author of a shocking letter in Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book that stumped reporters for nearly a year after conducting "nearly two dozen interviews" with Epstein's childhood friends.

The House Oversight Committee publicly released Epstein’s 50th birthday book last September, revealing countless disturbing messages, including one believed to be from President Donald Trump. While Trump’s alleged letter drew outsized media attention, another letter also raised eyebrows.

“We picked up girls on beach – went out on boat. I tell them with knife in my hand to take suits off,” the letter reads, which was signed with the name “Neutral,” leading outlets to describe the author with the vague descriptor of Epstein’s “friend.”

However, after the Times spoke with close to two dozen of Epstein’s childhood friends, the outlet learned that “Neutral” was the nickname of Jeff Nier, a business owner and former U.S. Coast Guard merchant mariner who died earlier this year.

“Known as Neutral, Jeff Nier was ‘a fun party guy,’ according to his obituary, an athlete and fisherman who hung out on the beach and was five years Epstein’s senior,” the Times’ report reads. “Epstein’s childhood friends disagree about the extent of Nier’s influence, but the stream-of-consciousness anecdotes in his letter laughingly depict the two of them pursuing women and girls in a sexually threatening and degrading way.”

Nier’s letter included other disturbing anecdotes involving minor girls.

“The letter goes on to mention the two of them setting fire to a hotel room in a Catskills resort; riding in Nier’s father’s Cadillac with ‘two very young girls probably just 17’; and bringing an unnamed girl ‘up to your mothers house’ and making her remove her top ‘so we could touch her boobs,’” the Times’ report reads.

“Nier didn’t specify when any of these incidents took place, but [Epstein’s brother] Mark Epstein said Jeffrey met Nier a couple of years after high school.”

According to his obituary, Nier was a New York City native and founded a roofing company. His obituary also explicitly names Mark Epstein as an “amazing friend” of Nier’s family.