The son of two senior Norwegian diplomats who were heavily implicated in the Epstein files has committed suicide, according to lawyers for the family.
Edward Juul Rod-Larsen, 25, was found dead in Oslo three days after French and Norwegian police opened a joint investigation into his parents, Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen.
The married couple, who played a decisive role in brokering the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and Palestine, are facing allegations of corruption after it emerged that Epstein had helped them buy a luxury apartment and left $5 million to each of their two children in his will.
The pair have denied criminal wrongdoing but acknowledged that they had extensive contact with Epstein.
Norway has been shaken by the revelations that Epstein, a hugely influential American financier who was convicted of numerous sexual offences against children and died in 2019, had cultivated friendships not only with Rod-Larsen andJuulbut also with the crown princess,Mette Marit.
Edward Juul Rod-Larsen had himself been frequently featured in the Norwegian media reports on the scandal, which noted not only that he had allegedly been a beneficiary of Epstein’s will but also that his parents had taken him to the paedophile’s private Caribbean island while he was still a child.
Thomas Skjelbred and John Christian Elden, lawyers representing the family, warned against “irresponsible and undignified” conjecture about what had led him to commit suicide.
However, they said the past few days had been “extremely demanding” for him and his relatives, not least because of the torrent of adverse press coverage.
“This tragedy does not stand alone,” Skjelbred and Elden wrote in an article for ABC Nyheter, a Norwegian news website.
“It stands in the shadow of a public spotlight that has been going for months and long since ceased to be critical, becoming instead suspicious, speculative and at times boundless — a spotlight that has not only affected two parents, but has also involuntarily drawn their children into the relentless machinery of the public eye.”
The lawyers complained that legitimate scrutiny of their clients had often slipped into “character assassination” and they had fallen victim to a “collective lack of empathy”.
“The parents need peace now: peace to grieve, peace to look after themselves, peace to take care of the loved ones who are left behind,” they wrote. “This must outweigh the hearings, the investigations and the need for new news lines and new reports. This is not a demand for eternal silence. It is an appeal for decency now.”
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