A former employee of the federal prison housing Ghislaine Maxwell has gone public about the “disgusting” revelations she says she found in the convicted sex trafficker’s private emails.
Noella Turnage, who was fired from her job at Federal Prison Camp Bryan for leaking Maxwell’s private emails, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday that she was alarmed to see the lengths the prison went to in catering to Maxwell’s needs.
“Well Erin, what I think it’s important to understand is, I never actually laid eyes on Maxwell. Everything I knew about what happened with her was from the content of those emails, which is what she was sending home to friends, to family, so on and so forth,” Turnage said on Erin Burnett OutFront.
“What I can tell you is that the things that were being done for her were not common for any of the other inmates, not even the other high-profile inmates,” she added.
Before Turnage, who worked at the prison for six years, appeared on the segment, Burnett shared how, according to a current inmate at the facility, Maxwell had been provided with “bottled waters and clamshell meals delivered to her room.”
Burnett also highlighted how a leaked email revealed that Maxwell told her brother that her conditions in prison made her feel “like I have dropped through Alice in Wonderlands (sic) looking glass.”
“The two main things for me were the visit that was arranged for her, because what wasn’t very highly publicized about that was the lengths they went to to provide a private visit for Maxwell actually caused visitation to be shut down for the rest of the inmates that weekend,” said Turnage, who worked as a nurse before she was moved to the prison’s mailroom. “They were not able to see their families that Saturday to make way for Maxwell to see her visitors.”
“There was also the warden’s personal handling of her mail, which may not sound like a big deal to some people, but the other inmates in... that prison, Erin, they have a hard time getting out their regular mail, much less anything needed for court filings and things such as that,” she continued.
“So for them to go out of the way to make sure Maxwell had that, that opportunity, was pretty disgusting to me,” she added.
“‘I believe they will provide some water/coffee and snack - you will not go without anything after flying all the way from the UK...’” Maxwell is said to have written in an email to her brother, leaked by Turnage. “‘Also you will arrive at the front like everyone else but there will be a coned off area for you - only you will go there - they will be waiting for you from 8am.”'
Turnage told Burnett that other inmates and their visitors only have access to “overpriced vending machines.”
Asked further about Maxwell’s cozy relationship with the warden, Turnage said that kind of access is “highly unusual.”
“Pretty much the only time you see the warden talk to inmates there is, they can approach her at what we call ‘mainline,’ which is kind of when they’re on their way back and forth from the chow hall,” Turnage said. “They, for the most part, do not have direct access to the warden, and certainly not at their convenience.”
Maxwell, sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, was moved to the prison in Bryan in 2025 after meeting with officials from Donald Trump’s Justice Department. Her transfer to the cushy, minimum-security facility sparked outrage from some prison officials and victims’ families who sounded the alarm over the sex offender’s perceived preferential treatment.
But her transfer was only the beginning: More recently, Maxwell has sought to leverage her position in the Epstein files controversy to score a pardon, offering to testify on the late sex trafficker’s co-conspirators in exchange for clemency.
