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New Mexico’s Department of Justice said the state is investigating an allegation, which emerged from documents released by the US Department of Justice, that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ordered the bodies of two foreign girls buried outside his remote New Mexico ranch.
The state’s Department of Justice spokesperson Lauren Rodriguez said on Wednesday (US time) that it had requested an unredacted copy of a 2019 email from the US Justice Department that contained the allegation.
The US Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
“We are actively investigating this allegation and are conducting a broader review in light of the latest release from the US Department of Justice,” Rodriguez said in an emailed response to queries about the case.
A day earlier, New Mexico’s legislature launched the first comprehensive investigation into accusations that Epstein sexually abused girls and women at the Zorro Ranch, 48 kilometres south of Santa Fe, for more than two decades.
In 2019, after Epstein’s death, a woman identified as Jane Doe said in court that he had molested her at Zorro Ranch in 2004 when she was 15. The woman recalled feeling small and powerless, describing how he had laid her on the floor so she was confronted by all the framed photographs on his dresser of him smiling with wealthy celebrities and politicians.
Pressure from Congressional Democrats to uncover Epstein’s crimes has become a major political challenge for US President Donald Trump.
The redacted email, contained in the latest release of Epstein-related documents, had been sent a few months after Epstein’s death to Eddy Aragon, a New Mexico radio show host who had discussed the Zorro Ranch on his program.
The sender, claiming to be a former Zorro Ranch employee, requested payment of one bitcoin in return for videos that the email said had been taken from Epstein’s house and showed the financier having sex with minors.
Aragon said in a phone interview that he believed the email to be legitimate and immediately forwarded it to the FBI.
He said he did not receive any payment from or have any further contact with the sender, although he recently tried to respond for the first time, but the address was no longer in service.
The redacted email to Aragon said two foreign girls had been buried on Epstein’s orders “somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro” and that the two had died “by strangulation during rough, fetish sex”.
A 2021 FBI report, also contained in the latest Epstein file release, said Aragon visited an FBI office to report the email, which offered seven videos of sexual abuse and the location of two foreign girls buried on Zorro Ranch in return for one bitcoin.
A Reuters search of other documents among the Department of Justice’s disclosures did not find any other references to the allegations in the redacted email or what investigators made of its claims.
The Justice Department warned last year that some of the files it disclosed from its investigation of Epstein “contain untrue and sensationalist claims”, and that they include anonymous accusations that investigators did not corroborate, or in some cases determined to be false.
In an interview this week, New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said her office had found the redacted email during a recent search of the latest Epstein file release.
Garcia, in a February 10 letter to the US Justice Department and a statement, called on federal and state justice officials to fully investigate “deeply disturbing” allegations of criminality at the ranch and state lands adjacent to it.
“People deserve to know the truth about what happened on Epstein’s ranch and are looking to leaders for answers,” Garcia Richard said in a statement.
Richard cancelled grazing leases held by the ranch in 2019 after her office was denied access to inspect the nearly five square kilometres around the site that Epstein had leased since 1993.
The property was sold by Epstein’s estate in 2023, with proceeds going to creditors, to the family of Don Huffines, a Republican running for Texas state comptroller.
In a social media post, Huffines said the property has been renamed San Rafael Ranch after a saint associated with healing and that his family plans to operate a Christian retreat there.
A spokesperson for Huffines has said that the owners have never been approached by local, state or federal law enforcement requesting access to the ranch and if they do, full co-operation will be granted.
Ranch appears in files many times
There are thousands of references to the ranch in the documents released by federal authorities.
New Mexico’s Democratic former governor, Bill Richardson, was among the guests to have visited the ranch.
Following one of the early investigations into the disgraced financier, Richardson donated $US50,000 ($71,000) in 2006 election campaign contributions from Epstein to charity.
Emails and schedules recently released by federal authorities also show that a long list of entrepreneurs, actors and scientists were invited to the ranch over the years, including Woody Allen, Robert Redford, Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito and Peter Thiel.
Reuters, AP
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