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When Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on 6 July 2019 for sex trafficking teenagers, New York federal prosecutors said the ultra-wealthy predator “exploited and abused dozens of underage girls” in Manhattan and Palm Beach “among other locations”.
One of those other locations was the late financier’s sprawling New Mexico property. Epstein’s so-called Zorro Ranch came into sharper relief after his 10 August 2019 death in jail awaiting trial, with criminal and civil proceedings revealing that numerous alleged abuses unfolded there. But Zorro Ranch did not receive the same scrutiny as Epstein’s other properties: an 8 February Guardian investigation revealed that federal authorities apparently never searched the property.
The US Department of Justice’s recent disclosure of some 3m investigative documents under Congress’s Epstein Files Transparency Act has renewed attention on Zorro Ranch. Now, officials in New Mexico are investigating Epstein’s activities there: the attorney general announced the state would reopen their 2019 investigation put on hold at federal prosecutors’ request, and state legislators established a “truth commission” to look into past activity at Epstein’s ranch.
But veteran attorneys contend that investigating Epstein’s New Mexico activities nearly seven years after his arrest presents numerous logistical challenges. While the delay has all but certainly thwarted this important investigative avenue, the attorneys said, there are still multiple avenues authorities could pursue to try to get justice.
“A search warrant would have to be based on information that’s not stale. Somebody couldn’t come in and say: ‘Hey, seven years ago, something happened, and I just got around to telling you,’” said John Day, a New Mexico defense attorney and former prosecutor. “Now, it would have to be: ‘Well, we just uncovered something about a crime that occurred seven years ago that we didn’t know about until now.”
If authorities presented a judge with an adequate reason why information just surfaced, Day said, “then it’s very likely that they could get a search warrant if they can articulate facts about a crime, even if it’s an old crime, but it can’t be stale information”.
Even if a search did happen, the delay likely means “the value of anything that they can find would be minimal”, Day said. “You don’t know what has happened between the time Epstein was last there and the time the new people bought it, so that’s a problem.”
With the ranch potentially being fruitless as a source of evidence, Day said, authorities would likely start with “the human side” – finding ranch employees, contractors, “anybody local” who might have had some contact with Zorro. This could also include culling local news reports about parties held at Zorro to potentially yield more names, and examine entries in Epstein’s address book related to New Mexico – including women listed under “massage”.
Kate Mangels, a partner with firm Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir, also noted that searching Zorro now would likely be a non-starter. “Certainly, the obvious answer is that it’s better to search closer in time,” Mangels said. “Particularly given that the property has changed hands, it’s unlikely that they would find any forensic evidence.”
That said, searching Zorro now could potentially bolster victims’ accounts.
“If the layout of the house hasn’t changed, and they’re saying: ‘I have a recollection of someone coming through the bathroom door on the left side of the room,’ and the search demonstrates that that’s where it is, it gives more credence to that testimony of that victim,” Mangels said.
While important, that might be the limit of Zorro’s utility at this point. If evidence were found, and led to a prosecution, defense attorneys will argue that it shouldn’t be included because of this delay.
“It may be hard to use those things other than maybe a structural description of the house,” Mangels said. “Those details are not evidence of a crime, but when you’re dealing with a victim’s testimony and there isn’t other evidence, any corroboration can be helpful to prove that.”
It’s unclear how any potential search could unfold. The new owner of Zorro Ranch, Texas comptroller candidate Don Huffines, said he would cooperate with authorities, according to the New York Times. The Guardian did not receive a response to an email and call to contact information listed on Huffines’ campaign page.
This lack of investigative activity on Zorro Ranch potentially takes on more urgency as newly disclosed Epstein files raise the specter of even darker crimes. Local radio host Eddy Aragon in 2019 received an email from an unknown person alleging that two young women had been buried at the ranch and asked for “1 bitcoin” in exchange for the information.
Aragon, who said he had been discussing the ranch on his radio show at the time, told the Guardian in an interview on 4 February that he apprised federal authorities.
“I took it very seriously,” Aragon said. “I forwarded it to the FBI.”
The recently disclosed documents do include an FBI report dated October 2021 that included the email Aragon had received. Aragon, the report said, contacted federal authorities on 25 November 2019, “to report an email he received offering 7 videos of sexual abuse and the location of two foreign girls buried on Zorro Ranch”.
The delay also emphasizes missed opportunities identified by local authorities years ago.
“In spring 2019, our office investigated activity in New Mexico that was still viable for prosecution, including contact with multiple victims,” said Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general when Epstein was arrested.
“During that time, the US attorney’s office in New York asked us to pause any further state investigation or prosecution related to Epstein, informing us that they were already conducting an active multijurisdictional prosecution,” Balderas said. “We shared all our reports and interviews to ensure they had all investigative leads and respected their request to refrain from further parallel investigation. We kept the matter open, investigated Epstein’s land leases, and continued offering our legal resources to the DoJ for further prosecution.”
“They did not share information or evidence with us, as the relationship was a one-way street,” he also said.
While New Mexico authorities stepped back from an active investigation to make way for federal investigators, a December 2019 email revealed that a federal prosecutor told an attorney for one of Epstein’s estate co-executors that they had “not searched the New Mexico property”. Balderas also said that his office had asked federal authorities “to use any available asset forfeiture tools to seize the ranch” in 2020.
Asked for comment on specifics about potential delay-related roadblocks, the New Mexico attorney general’s office said: “We expect to have additional information to share about our investigation as it continues to progress,” a spokesperson for the state attorney general said. A representative for the truth commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an op-ed on Friday, the New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez said: “We will work in close coordination with federal and local law enforcement partners, as well as with the Epstein Truth Commission recently established by the New Mexico Legislature, which has its own independent mandate to investigate these matters on behalf of the public.”
He also recognized there are “real obstacles” ahead but that “we will follow the evidence wherever it leads and leave no credible question unexplored.”
The office of Stephanie Garcia Richard, New Mexico’s state land commissioner, provided some more details about what has occurred in recent weeks. A spokesperson for Garcia Richard told the Guardian this week that an investigator from New Mexico’s department of justice interviewed her and some land office leadership to learn more about how agricultural leases work, such as the leases Epstein’s ranch held for more than 25 years before she cancelled them in 2019.
The spokesperson added that the New Mexico department of justice sent a letter to the US Department of Justice requesting another version of the email that suggested two girls may have been buried at Zorro Ranch. New Mexico’s DoJ has requested access to the portion of state land that is not landlocked, and Garcia Richard’s office has granted it.
Garcia Richard is “encouraged to see the New Mexico DoJ taking these proactive steps and remains ready to help however possible”, the spokesperson added.
