An interim report published by New Mexico state lawmakers highlights preliminary evidence of sex abuse, grooming and sex trafficking, including of minors, at convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in Santa Fe County.
The report was released by a bipartisan Truth Commission after a several months-long investigation into alleged crimes that occurred at the ranch. Its comprised of Democrat state Reps. Andrea Romero (chair) and Marianna Anaya and Republican state Reps. William Hall and Andrea Reeb.
The report was released on the same day New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued the Department of Justice for interfering “with New Mexico’s sovereign authority to investigate and prosecute crimes committed within its borders,” The Center Square reported.
The commission also says the DOJ and several U.S. attorneys won’t comply with subpoenas to help New Mexico bring sex offenders to justice, The Center Square reported.
Both Torrez and the commission launched investigations into Zorro Ranch in February, The Center Square reported. They did so after Congress enacted the Epstein Files Transparency Act requiring the DOJ to release all files in its possession related to Epstein.
Thousands of files, including duplicates, mention the Zorro Ranch. Epstein’s Virgin Islands company, Cypress, Inc., purchased the property from New Mexico’s former three-time Democratic Gov. Bruce King in 1993. Epstein was involved with the ranch until his death in 2019. In 2023, his estate sold the property to former Republican Texas Sen. Don Huffines.
More than 1,000 people, including young girls, were reportedly sex trafficked on the ranch over 25 years, according to the AG’s lawsuit. During the first Trump administration and Biden administration border crises an unknown number of people, including children, were trafficked in New Mexico, The Center Square reported.
The commission doesn’t address these cases, only a handful of claims it says it had access to from partial FBI reports released in the Epstein Files.
The report states that FBI and federal court records “establish that minors were brought to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch and abused there,” including a minor groomed there “in 1996, starting with an unsolicited topless massage.” One case describes a victim “being flown to the ranch at age 15 in 2004 and sexually molested ‘for many hours.’ These are separate incidents involving different victims, spanning at least eight years,” the report explains.
“Positive identification of survivors has been hampered by DOJ’s refusal to release unredacted copies of court and other records,” the commission adds.
There are “certainly additional survivors who fell prey to Epstein in New Mexico. Indeed, the Commission has counted at least 30 other individuals who potentially were abused by Epstein in New Mexico,” the report states.
The commission reviewed partial FBI reports about women and girls abused at Zorro Ranch between 1996 and 2012, including one who is now deceased. Because the DOJ won’t release additional information, the commission says, “too little is known about these individuals at this point to confirm necessary facts – some may be witnesses to abuse, but not survivors of it. Others may be facilitators of Epstein’s abuse, and some may be both survivors and facilitators. The investigation continues with a focus on positively identifying and questioning these witnesses.”
The report refers to a partially released 2006 FBI interview with Jane Doe 1, a minor who was flown to New Mexico where she was sexually abused. The interview relates to a Florida case in which Epstein was convicted in 2008 on child prostitution charges after taking a controversial plea deal. He served 18 months in prison. Multiple women then came forward alleging he sexually assaulted and trafficked them and sued. In 2019, Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges but didn’t stand trial because of his death.
Jane Doe 1 is believed to be a minor referred to in a case prosecuted in the Southern District of New York, the report states. She was sexually abused by Epstein and his coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in New York, Florida and New Mexico. Maxwell was convicted on multiple charges in 2021 and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The report cites a massage therapist in the New York case who claims she massaged three girls and two older men at the Epstein Ranch. It also cites a sex trafficked survivor who describes the abuse she suffered as a 15-year-old girl at Zorro Ranch in 2004.
It also cites a Jane Doe 4 who claims she was sexually abused at the ranch and was “trafficked to New Mexico to have sex with Bill Richardson.” Richardson, New Mexico’s former Democratic governor, denied any wrongdoing in 2019. He died in 2023.
It also cites Jane Doe 5 who claims she was taken to the ranch between 2007 and 2010 and “coerced there to have sex with Epstein and his friends.”
It also cites two emails released in the Epstein files that include information the commission says it can’t verify because the DOJ won’t provide additional information. One is an email sent in 2019 by someone claiming to be a former Zorro Ranch staffer who alleged “two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G” and demanded 1 bitcoin for a USB drive allegedly containing video footage.
“Documentation, if any, as to whether the FBI investigated the underlying claims is not available,” the report states.
Another is a 2020 email sent by someone who claims “to have trespassed on the ranch and found ‘grave-like plots’ that appeared to have been excavated.”
A March search of the Huffines property involved cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar and investigators couldn’t confirm the presence of human remains, the report states.
Truth Commission members say they want to amend state laws to eliminate the statute of limitations to prosecute human and sex trafficking and close a loophole related to sex offender registration, among other measures.
The commission is still calling for survivors to come forward. Its investigation is ongoing.
