Virginia Giuffre's former boyfriend has come forward with new, detailed claims about her fear and emotional distress following an alleged sexual encounter with Prince Andrew when she was 17, saying she called him "shaking with fear" and terrified she could be "killed like Diana."
Tony Figueroa, 43, said the call came in March 2001, just hours after Giuffre was allegedly trafficked to the British royal by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Maxwell's London home. "I remember that call clearly. She was terrified. Her voice was shaking the whole time," Figueroa told The Sun on Sunday from his home in Atlanta, Georgia. "I was also absolutely terrified something would happen to her. We talked about the death of Diana. This man was so powerful, he was literally a prince."
Giuffre, who died by suicide in April at the age of 41, allegedly told Figueroa she "didn't want to do it" but felt powerless to refuse. "When she called, she told me, 'I don't know what I could have done - what can I do? He's a prince! This is one of the richest, most powerful families in the world,'" Figueroa said. "She was shaking with fear."
Figueroa said he now believes Andrew should "accept that he played a role in Giuffre's despair," adding, "Because those were the times she was most scared."
The claims come as renewed attention falls on Andrew's connection to Epstein's sex-trafficking network. The prince, the second son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, has consistently denied all allegations and insisted that a widely circulated photograph of him with Giuffre-taken in Maxwell's London townhouse-is a fake. Figueroa dismissed that defense, saying he personally saw the photo after Giuffre developed it in Florida. "I held the photograph in my hands," he said. "She was going through all the pictures, and she showed it to me. It was just in there with the rest."
Figueroa said Andrew's loss of royal titles was a superficial punishment. "So he's not a duke anymore? Wow, is that it? Where is she at right now? Yeah, that's not any kind of justice," he told RadarOnline.com, adding that Giuffre had long expressed fear about the prince's power and influence.
Andrew's ties to Epstein have been a source of controversy for years. Despite claiming to have cut off contact with the disgraced financier, emails later showed he continued to correspond with Epstein, writing, "We are in this together" and "hope to play some more soon." The prince was stripped of his royal and military titles following his disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, which Figueroa called "a car crash." "Entitled rich people are all the same," he said.
Figueroa also reflected on his own entanglement with Epstein's world. As a teenager, he said he accepted $200 for introducing girls from his school to Epstein - a decision that "still haunts" him. "I have nightmares," he said. "I have a son just a couple of years younger than I was when all this happened."
He recalled meeting Epstein at his Palm Beach mansion after Giuffre introduced them. "He came across just like a normal dude," Figueroa said, adding that Epstein funded the couple's lifestyle, paying for their car and apartment. "I didn't want to believe anything that would tarnish what I thought of Virginia," he said.
According to Figueroa, Epstein and Maxwell once asked Giuffre to carry their child while she and Figueroa were trying for a baby of their own. Later, Epstein sent her to Thailand to train as a masseuse; they spoke daily until she suddenly stopped answering his calls. "Then one day she stopped answering my calls," he said, describing the period when Giuffre met her future husband, Robert Giuffre.
Giuffre's posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, released last week, details years of abuse under Epstein and Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
