Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime friend, sometimes-girlfriend and alleged pimp of Jeffrey Epstein was arrested yesterday in New Hampshire and charged in a six-count indictment that includes two charges of perjury. She faces life in prison.

All of the people who were sweating it out during Epstein’s short-lived stint in prison might be sweating even harder now. By all accounts it was Maxwell who opened the doors to the A-list on both sides of the Atlantic, including Prince Andrew.

The property where she was arrested was bought in December, through an LLC established a month prior, an arrangement that concealed Maxwell’s involvement. According to the Daily Mail, “The only individual listed in public documents as having any involvement in Granite Reality is Jeffrey Roberts, an attorney whose firm, Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP, is based in the same Boston building.” In some ways this raises even more questions: If she feared arrest, why did she buy the New Hampshire property and then move there? Did a deal fall through?

The arrest comes on the heels of renewed interest in the Epstein case thanks to the four-part Netflix documentary and a new book by Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper, A Convenient Death. The book comes to the conclusion that murder can’t be ruled out as the cause of Epstein’s death, which ironically is Ghislaine’s own position on her father’s mysterious death.

In some ways the Maxwell arrest is an even more welcome development given the fact that recent narratives about Epstein have tended to drift away from speculation about his relationships with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and the complicity of his friends and benefactors, toward a more conventional MeToo sort of story about the impunity of rich and powerful abusers of women. That’s not to dismiss the latter; it’s certainly an important part of the story. But there is more to it than that.

Crucially, the way the 2008 plea arrangement is told in the Netflix series is flawed. It was certainly a bad deal for the government to make, but it belongs to the class of mistakes in which informant arrangements are ill-chosen or abused by the informant, not just a simple story of a rich guy throwing around his money and influence to get off. Epstein provided the FBI with information as part of the 2008 plea deal, and there’s every reason to think that was offered because he was already working with some other agency—per Alex Acosta’s comment that he was told not to touch Epstein because he “belonged to intelligence.” Many of the victims have told their stories. Now it’s time to find out how much the government—and perhaps not just the U.S. government—knew about.

The arrest is also a good moment to revisit some of the claims of Laura Goldman, a friend of Ghislaine and someone who has become a go-to source for reporters seeking info about her state of mind, motivations and even whereabouts. Goldman is a somewhat problematic figure in her own right, having been deemed a fugitive by the FBI at one point.

In March, Goldman tweeted that Ghislaine was “also a victim” in the Epstein saga, and she is heavily interviewed for the Goodman and Halper book. They quote her saying, “I guess she kept thinking if she brought one more girl, did one more thing, that he would marry her … She really thought that he would marry her in the end. She always, always, always believed that.”

“Those comments have been misunderstood,” Goldman told TAC when asked if Maxwell’s arrest had led her to revisit her victimhood. “I absolutely have no problem with Ghislaine Maxwell being punished or going to prison for the crimes she committed. However, she was also a victim of Jeffrey Epstein. He manipulated her just as he manipulated Leslie Wexner, Alan Dershowitz, Glenn Dubin etc. If they couldn’t get away from him, why do we expect Ghislaine can?”

Whatever the merits of any of that, Maxwell is certainly not the only person connected to Epstein who has recently tried to distance themself from him. Les Wexner for example claims that Epstein stole tens of millions of dollars, and therefore is a victim too. At a minimum, journalists should take these sort of claims with some serious skepticism.

The big questions that remain about the arrest and charges are whether it happened because negotiations over a cooperation agreement broke down, and how the recent firing of the SDNY U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman is related, if at all, to any of this. It would be a disappointing outcome if Ghislaine Maxwell goes to prison but we don’t find out anything more about the likely espionage connections involved in the Epstein saga.