Jeffrey Epstein’s private emails show the support and advice the disgraced financier got in his “hour of terror.”

When investigators were closing in on Jeffrey Epstein, he thought about saying sorry. Merrie Spaeth, a sought-after crisis strategist who once served as the director of media relations for Ronald Reagan’s White House, helped him pick his words.

She sent Epstein three versions of a public apology in February 2008, according to emails obtained by Bloomberg News. The first was meek: “As a child growing up, I was taught to apologize,” it read. “I fervently hope it will be acceptable for me to simply offer to the community my apologies for associating with young women who turned out to be under the age of eighteen.” The second, at just 33 words, offered little more than a “wish to apologize” and a vow to “conduct myself appropriately in the future.” The third, elegiac and cultured, opened with ideas from philosopher William James about the “hour of terror and the hour of satiety.” It described the “substantial” rewards Epstein had reaped by chasing the American dream, evoked introspection—“I’ve been forced to ask myself what’s important”— and culminated in a “public and heartfelt apology.”