It was September 2017 and doctor Melanie Walker’s work with Bill Gates was coming to an end. For more than a decade, Walker worked at the Gates Foundation and then in the billionaire’s private office. In the summer of 2017, the relationship between Walker and Gates turned sexual, according to people familiar with the matter. Walker planned his exit.
She turned to one of her closest confidants, a mentor who had supported and guided her for nearly three decades: Jeffrey Epstein.
“With bg. Just say I told Jeffrey everything – everything,” Epstein wrote in a text message. Walker responded that she was “concerned that he will immediately retaliate against me.”
When Gates appears before Congress this week, he will have to answer about these exchanges contained in the files released by the Justice Department. The mysterious role played by Walker, who maintained close ties to both men, must be examined for the first time.
The Seattle doctor is one of several figures who were part of Epstein’s circle. She claimed to have been introduced to Epstein by Donald Trump in the 1990s. She established a close relationship with Britain’s Prince Andrew and was a long-time partner of Steven Sinofsky, a former Microsoft executive who also had connections to Epstein.
However, she may have been more relevant as one of the people who helped Epstein insert himself into Gates’ world after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution of a minor. This occurred from his position at the Microsoft co-founder’s philanthropic foundation and then in his private office.
The Gates Foundation has launched its own investigation into his connections to Epstein, led by the law firm WilmerHale, according to people familiar with the case. Investigators questioned Walker and the nature of his relationship with Gates.
Compared to other Epstein associates, Walker, now 54 and a professor at UW Medicine, has largely remained off the public radar, although her name and some messages from Epstein’s files have appeared in news reports.
His low profile was kept, in part, with the help of his lawyer, who asked the Justice Department to withhold his name from the files. She did not allege sexual abuse by Epstein and did not file complaints against his estate; the lawyer requested name suppression on the basis that Epstein introduced her to two professional contacts who she rejected after they made sexual advances.
Although his name is withheld, people familiar with the matter have identified his correspondence and described his interactions with Gates and Epstein. Over time, Walker’s relationship with Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, became strained, documents show. Still, she appeared loyal to Epstein, a longtime friend and benefactor, until his death in 2019.
In a statement, Walker’s attorney, David Fleissig, described her as “a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein” who had a prior history of abuse and later endured “a coercive relationship that lasted decades and ended only with his death. Furthermore, she chooses not to comment at this time.”
A spokesperson for Gates said he had “no knowledge of the nature of the relationship between Walker and Epstein, their shared motives, or the details of their history together.”
“Correspondence between Epstein and Walker reveals that Epstein actively encouraged Walker to pursue a sexual relationship with Gates,” Gates’ spokesperson said.
In the summer of 2017, Walker confided in Epstein about encounters he had had with Gates. At the time, she had left the foundation, but remained on a short-term consulting contract in his private office, where she pitched ideas for Gates to support. She left the private practice later that year.
“The relationship between Walker and Gates was consensual and ended amicably,” the spokesperson said. “Walker continued to contact Gates periodically for years afterward.”
Gates has publicly expressed regret over his contacts with Epstein, which he said were a mistake and did not involve illicit conduct. “Gates has never had an inappropriate relationship with any employee of the Gates Foundation or Gates Ventures, and no complaints alleging otherwise have ever been filed,” the spokesperson added.
Great admiration
Melanie Starnes, as she was known at the time, grew up in Laredo, Texas, the daughter of an Air Force veteran. Walker told several people that he met Epstein and Trump at the Plaza Hotel in the early 1990s, after graduating with honors from the University of Texas. (In a 2018 email introducing a neurosurgeon to Epstein, she wrote: “I’ve known Jeffrey for 28 years and this is no joke — Donald Trump introduced us.”)
Initially, Epstein and Walker discussed the possibility of her modeling for Victoria’s Secret. But when they talked, he changed course, according to what Walker told people. Forget about modeling, he advised. Instead, she should pursue medicine.
She did so and they stayed in touch. Records show she listed an address in a New York apartment building at 301 East 66th Street, the same building where Epstein controlled several units in which he housed associates and victims. Epstein also named her his “scientific advisor.”
Walker developed a relationship with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Prince Andrew, after an introduction by Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell. In a 2003 interview with the Mail on Sunday, Walker gave an idea of this relationship, telling the British tabloid that the then prince called her “Mel”, “Dork” and “smarty pants”, and that they talked mainly about science and medicine.
In the early 2000s, she lived with Sinofsky, then a top executive at Microsoft, in Seattle, after meeting him at a technology dinner that was also attended by Prince Andrew. In 2006, Walker began working at the Gates Foundation. At the time, the organization looked more like a fast-growing startup than the global healthcare giant it would become.
It was at the foundation that she became close to Boris Nikolic, a Harvard-trained immunologist who was Gates’s chief scientific advisor. In 2009, upon learning that Nikolic would take a position in Gates’ private office, she took him to lunch and gave what amounted to an introduction to Epstein, according to Nikolic. “I had never heard of Jeffrey Epstein before this,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
During the lunch, Walker praised Epstein as the man who set her on the path to medicine, he said, and downplayed the 2008 conviction. Nikolic said he met Epstein for the first time that December.
In an October 2009 email to Epstein, she suggested that he put her in charge of his foundation and informed that Nikolic would start working fully with Gates, information she described as confidential. “He will want to know if he can trust you and how much he can tell you,” she wrote of Nikolic. “I think it just takes time.”
Years later, Epstein would help Nikolic negotiate his 2013 separation from Gates’ private office. (It was a service Epstein also provided to Sinofsky when he left Microsoft in 2012, Justice Department files show.) A spokesman for Sinofsky declined to comment. Nikolic, who exchanged hundreds of messages with Epstein, said he deeply regrets his interactions with him and that Epstein was a “master manipulator.”
There are other indications in Justice Department files of Walker endorsing Epstein to people in the Gates Foundation circle. In September 2010, for example, she emailed Alex Friedman, who had recently stepped down as the foundation’s chief financial officer, praising Epstein and joking that she could attest to “a total of 20 years of bad behavior” on his part. Friedman responded, noting that he had heard Walker speak of Epstein “always with great admiration.”
Friedman told the Journal that she had never heard of Epstein before Walker mentioned him and interpreted the remark in the email as an “ironic” reference to someone she had known for a long time.
Very discreet
For Epstein, Gates was the ultimate prize. Access to one of the richest men in the world, with his deep-pocketed foundation and unparalleled convening power in global health, would give Epstein the legitimacy he sought after his 2008 conviction.
In January 2011, Epstein planned to meet with Gates. Before the meeting, Walker emailed Gates to prepare him, calling Epstein “one of my closest friends.” She discussed his views on global poverty and credited Epstein with her decision to pursue medicine.
She conveyed Epstein’s personal philosophy as “only do what makes you happy.” He added: “The most beautiful people in the world are around Jeffrey. He’s very discreet. Just saying…”
Gates said he met with Epstein several times between 2011 and 2014, including at his New York residence, to discuss philanthropy. Epstein tried unsuccessfully to convince Gates to create a global donor fund with JPMorgan and uncovered some of the billionaire’s extramarital affairs.
Around 2013, Walker left the Gates Foundation for the World Bank through an assignment, which meant the foundation continued to pay his salary. She became a senior advisor to President Jim Yong Kim.
In August 2014, Walker sent Gates what appeared to be a warning about Epstein: Gates should maintain “a healthy distance from anything of a personal nature” when dealing with Epstein.
Epstein, she wrote, had “incredible human specimens” at his disposal, but warned of consequences that she had seen “happen to very powerful people over the years.” She also noted that Epstein tries to appeal to the “weaknesses or inclinations” of his targets.
As Epstein tried to move forward with Gates, he faced resistance from the Microsoft co-founder’s wife, who — after a night at the Manhattan residence — said she never wanted to see him again. Walker also seemed to arouse the displeasure of French Gates, who was co-president of the foundation.
In several messages to Epstein, Walker complained of hostility on her part. “Melinda is taking action against me through fndn channels. I need to get out as soon as possible,” she wrote in an exchange of texts with Epstein in September 2014. A spokeswoman for French Gates declined to comment.
Blue dress
In January 2017, Justice Department files show that Epstein crudely asked whether Walker had had sex with Gates. No, she responded, describing instead how they “went crazy at the whiteboard” while Gates’ team waited outside the door.
“We had about 3 minutes at the beginning to take a deep breath and just be there,” she wrote, adding that Gates complained “about being too old and I said he was still a little too young for me.”
That year, Walker left the foundation and entered Gates’ private office. It was around this time that their relationship became sexual, and in messages to Epstein she described some of her encounters with Gates.