With Beth Hundsdorfer of Capitol News Illinois
Edwardsville — A man wearing a sandwich board protesting outside of the Edwardsville courthouse last month revived sleeping worries and anxieties Madison County Judge Andrew Carruthers had hoped to leave in the past.
That single protester’s sign put on display what Carruthers already knew.
His name is in the Epstein files because he once represented Epstein on a collection matter more than a dozen years ago.
In the three million documents that contained horrific descriptions of child sexual abuse, photographs and videos released in January by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the disgraced child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, there were legal filings signed by then-fledgling associate Carruthers.
“I was assigned to serve as local counsel for attorneys in another jurisdiction seeking to enforce a civil money judgment for their client who, at the time, was completely unknown to us, just as he was unknown to most of the country 13 years ago,” Carruthers said in a statement he provided after speaking with reporters.
It all began in 2013 with a collection matter, a foreign judgment for $250,000 that Epstein won in the U.S. Virgin Islands that had laid around for a couple of years. It was the result of a contract dispute over unfinished or subpar work at Little St. James, Epstein’s private island, as well as Epstein’s New York City townhouse.
