The first time Kathryn Comolli laid eyes on Ghislaine Maxwell was when the convicted sex trafficker was about to enter the isolation unit at Tallahassee prison in the autumn of 2022.
‘She was just standing there in an orange jumpsuit and orange flip flops, with handcuffs behind her back and a guard on both sides. She was looking down at the ground, tense and angry.
She had just been strip-searched, which involves squatting naked and coughing because they don’t want any contraband [concealed on the person],’ says Comolli, who for more than three months slept a few feet away from Maxwell at the notorious Florida jail.
‘I heard some female inmates shouting: ‘Here comes Maxwell. Here comes that big money b**ch.’ I thought to myself: ‘Oh my God, there she is. What is she doing here in this hell-hole?’ But Maxwell stayed cool, calm and collected. That was the way she was. Her golden rule seemed to be that she would keep herself to herself.’
They first saw each other in the isolation unit shortly after Comolli arrived at Tallahassee. Maxwell, 63, had already been at the prison for a few months – but had to spend a night in the unit as punishment for talking to the media without permission from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
‘It was the only interview she ever did and she got in trouble for it,’ says Comolli, referring to Maxwell’s 2023 appearance on Talk TV‘s Jeremy Kyle Live in which the disgraced British socialite said she wished she had ‘never met’ the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Comolli spent 15 days in isolation after being transferred from Federal Prison Camp Marianna in Florida, where she had been found with a mobile phone.
After completing the time, she was taken by guards to B South Dormitory and assigned a bunk near Maxwell’s.
Maxwell is keen on keeping fit behind bars. Pictured: Ghislaine Maxwell running laps on the track of FCI Tallahassee on November 6, 2022
Kathryn Comolli (pictured) was Maxwell’s ex-cellmate – she says the pair first saw each other in the isolation unit shortly after Comolli arrived at Tallahassee prison
Both women slept on their respective bottom bunks.
B South was a horseshoe-shaped room made up of sleeping cubes, divided by shoulder-height concrete walls. There were 140 inmates in the dormitory. Each section had two bunk beds with lockers in the middle but ‘no privacy whatsoever’.
Comolli, 44, was serving six years for ‘conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine’. After her arrest in September 2020, she served two years of her sentence at Tallahassee and was released last August.
‘While most of us would watch TV, cook noodles, listen to the radio or play cards, Maxwell just laid on her bed reading.
‘It was hot and sweaty and any time it rained, we’d have to take maxi pads [sanitary towels] and put them in the cracks in the ceiling so we didn’t get wet,’ says Comolli.
‘There were just four toilets for 140 of us and they were always getting blocked. We’d put a garbage bag over them and just wait until somebody got round to fixing them – anywhere from a week to a month.’
Comolli says it was common knowledge among inmates that Maxwell didn’t aim to serve her full 20-year sentence and instead had hoped to get a pardon from then US President Joe Biden in exchange for information about Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
‘I heard her tell another inmate that she had dirt on Trump and that it was going to get her a pardon from Biden. I guess Biden’s camp just didn’t want to go down that route.’
Maxwell was moved to Prison Camp Bryan – the federal prison system’s equivalent of a country club – after receiving death threats from fellow inmates at FCI Tallahassee
There is still talk of a pardon. Last week, Maxwell was moved to Camp Bryan, a minimum security prison in Texas, where there are no perimeter walls or wire fences. Her move came after she met and was questioned by Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanche.
‘I believe Maxwell made a deal with the devil to get that transfer out of Tallahassee,’ says Comolli. Life in the Tallahassee prison is markedly different from that of Camp Bryan.
‘Breakfast would be a scoop of bran flakes and a carton of milk, which was usually frozen. Sometimes you’d get half a frozen pancake,’ says Comolli.
‘Lunch could be two pieces of bread and a slice of salami or some potatoes, and dinner could be mouldy lettuce, expired tomatoes and lots of beans and rice.’
With such unappealing food on offer, Comolli says inmates would often cook ‘prison soup’ in the dormitory by pouring hot water into an empty crisp packet or lunch box and adding noodles, crushed corn chips, pickles and cheese.
But Maxwell never did this. ‘She had particular habits,’ says Comolli. ‘For example, she didn’t let anyone wash her clothes and she cleaned her own cubicle.
‘She claimed to be allergic to the dye in the prison blanket so she was given special white hospital blankets. You could tell which was Maxwell’s bed because of the white blankets. She was the only one in the whole prison who had white blankets.
‘Maxwell didn’t ask for anything from other inmates because she worked out that if you did, there was usually a favour attached to it. There’s a price tag on everything in prison.’
The first time Kathryn Comolli laid eyes on Ghislaine Maxwell (pictured) was when the convicted sex trafficker was about to enter the isolation unit at Tallahassee prison in the autumn of 2022
Comolli says Maxwell did befriend one fellow prisoner, a doctor, who would follow her everywhere and joined Maxwell for meals. ‘My own first real conversation with her was when I asked to borrow her prized New York Times Sunday edition.
‘I said: ‘Hey, can I check out your New York Times?’ and she replied: ‘Yes but everybody else always wants to read it so you’ll have to wait – but it won’t be a problem.’
Comolli says she never saw Maxwell being disrespected by other inmates and that the former socialite – who was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire and Oxford University – was able to converse in four languages. ‘There were fights and verbal and physical altercations happened all the time, but she never got involved.’
Maxwell received ‘ungodly amounts of mail with stacks of daily letters. But under prison regulations, all letters – including envelopes – are photocopied before distribution so that inmates can’t use drug-laced paper for smoking or consumption’.
Comolli also saw Maxwell passing the time by working as a clerk at the law library in the prison’s education building. She worked there three to five days a week.
‘She was smart and knew the law well. She helped people with legal stuff and won respect from inmates for this. But she would not let anyone take advantage of her.
Of Maxwell’s perceived persona, Comolli says: ‘The evil pimp? I never saw that. I just saw a person trying to get through each day like the rest of us. She was active in her Jewish faith and took that seriously. She had a Torah and participated in the Sabbath.
‘She was a participant in all Jewish activities.’
Comolli says it was common knowledge among inmates that Maxwell didn’t aim to serve her full 20-year sentence and instead had hoped to get a pardon from then US President Joe Biden in exchange for information about Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election
Comolli joined Maxwell’s twice-weekly yoga and pilates classes for several months. Around a dozen inmates would head to a corner of the yard with prison mats that Maxwell had secured for them.
‘She was in phenomenal shape, running up to five miles every day in the yard,’ says Comolli.
‘She could outrun pretty much anybody. Whenever she would be walking back from the track and someone would holler out: ‘Hey Maxwell, come here!’ she would ignore them. She was good at ignoring people. Then sometimes she would be in a playful mood and she’d grab a basketball and start dribbling around the court and shooting hoops. She is very athletic.’
But, even after Maxwell had been exercising, Comolli says she never saw her take a shower like other inmates and instead ‘would just go straight to her bunk’.
‘I’m assuming she didn’t want to put herself in a vulnerable position. I never saw her alone in the bathroom. She was on her guard 24/7.
‘One day, she got her hair cut and took her hair with her rather than sweeping it up. I guessed she didn’t want anything of hers that could possibly be sold or exploited.’
Last month, Maxwell’s brother Ian claimed that his sister feared for her safety in Tallahassee with ‘serious staff shortages and more dangerous higher risk-category prisoners now being admitted to the prison’.
But Comolli says there were no serious issues between Maxwell and other inmates, besides some name-calling.
Last month, Maxwell’s brother Ian claimed that his sister feared for her safety in Tallahassee with ‘serious staff shortages and more dangerous higher risk-category prisoners now being admitted to the prison’
‘Some girls would call her the ‘p*ssy peddler’ behind her back. And they got mad when paparazzi helicopters flew over the compound and everyone would have to lock down. People would just scream out obscenities but no one ever got in her face about anything.
‘The thing that bothered inmates the most was her hygiene – not washing her bedding properly and for some reason she never wore socks. She would run for miles and then put her sweaty trainers under the bed. That was the only complaint anyone really had.’
Conversely, the only time Comolli heard Maxwell complain was when it came to the actions of the prison guards.
‘I asked my bunkee one time: ‘Why do the guards hate her so much and why do they tiptoe around her?’ And she said that Maxwell would file grievances if the guards were not doing their job correctly.
‘It was as if she was policing the police. She gave them a lot of grief. She knew her rights and knew the handbook of the BOP. She stayed on top of them and the guards didn’t like that.
‘She kept filling out the forms and, by the end, the guards knew not to mess with her.’
Comolli says one privilege Maxwell was afforded was daily access to a meeting room with a long table and a private phone line that is not recorded, in order to call her attorney.
‘She was in there anywhere from an hour to two hours at a time. I’m assuming she was calling London because you can’t make international calls from the payphone.’
During Comolli’s time at Tallahassee, Maxwell was moved to D Dorm, known among inmates as the ‘honour dorm’ because you were in a cubicle by yourself instead of sharing with three other women.
Comolli says a friend, who is still at Tallahassee, told her that Maxwell’s move last week has sparked anger among sex offenders, as federal guidelines would ordinarily bar an inmate serving 20 years for sex trafficking from a minimum security prison.
‘I spoke to my bunkee two days ago and she said the sex offenders are about to start a riot. They feel that Maxwell has been given special treatment.
‘My friend said that any time the news comes on and Maxwell’s on the screen, they start booing and throwing things at the TV.
‘Tallahassee definitely has a situation on its hands. I think they thought they were going to get rid of the headache by getting rid of Maxwell, but really they have created a bigger headache.’
Comolli grew up in a stable family in the state of Georgia. She attended a Catholic school and enjoyed playing football and horse-riding. Her life began to spiral out of control when her then fiance tried to kill himself – and she started self-medicating with prescription drugs.
She moved to Florida and was drawn into its opioid epidemic. After returning to Georgia, she was briefly incarcerated when police found drugs in her car.
Following her release, she was contacted by an inmate on Facebook who asked her to courier methamphetamine.
For this, she was arrested in September 2020 and sentenced to six years in prison in March 2022.
Today, she works at a hotel in Georgia and says she has turned her life around. She has also started to campaign for changes in the judicial system, based around ‘greater public understanding, dignity, fairness and reform’, she says.
She remembers her last conversation with Maxwell.
‘It was in the law library. I wanted to file a Freedom of Information application to see my federal file and she gave me some advice. I wouldn’t say I got close to her during my time at Tallahassee – but that was Maxwell’s strategy. She refused to get close to anyone.’
