The first allegations were made long before Jeffrey Epstein’s death in the summer of 2019. At the Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, one of the New Yorker’s many properties, girls and young women were raped by Epstein and offered to his acquaintances for forced sex. Annie Farmer told FBI investigators in 2006 that she had visited the remote ranch south of Santa Fe in the mid-1990s. Epstein crawled into bed with the then 16-year-old student and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell fondled her breasts. Former student Johanna Sjoberg testified in a civil lawsuit in 2015 that she had been forced to give sexual massages at the Zorro Ranch ten years earlier. According to the New York Times, Epstein also suggested that he impregnate her on the estate in order to leave “his DNA to the human race.” Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who committed suicide last year, testified at Maxwell’s libel trial more than a decade ago that she flew to New Mexico in 2001 to serve as a “sex slave” for Epstein’s entourage.
Epstein admitted to sexually abusing a minor
However, there were no investigations into the alleged crimes behind the ranch’s pasture fences. Previous Florida judicial investigations into Epstein’s activities at his properties in Palm Beach, the Caribbean, New York, Paris and New Mexico ended abruptly in 2008 with a strikingly benign settlement. Epstein admitted to sexually abusing a minor. In return, the public prosecutor’s office opted for a short prison sentence followed by house arrest in Palm Beach. There were no further investigations, including those into the attacks on the Zorro Ranch. After the so-called Epstein files were opened at the end of January, the legal authorities in New Mexico have now unexpectedly announced an investigation. “We will investigate Zorro Ranch,” Attorney General Raúl Torrez wrote on social media. A spokeswoman for the newly founded, non-partisan so-called Epstein Truth Commission promised not only to investigate suspicions of human trafficking. Allegations from an anonymous email in 2019 that Epstein and his accomplices had buried the bodies of “two foreign girls” in the desert near the ranch would also be investigated, as would the fact that the New Yorker was not registered as a sex offender in New Mexico as required even after his conviction in Florida.
Observers blame Epstein’s connections to politicians in the southwestern state for decades of turning a blind eye. The New Yorker, who was arrested in July 2019 and discovered hanging in a Manhattan jail cell a few weeks later, bought the Zorro Ranch in 1993 from then New Mexico Governor Bruce King. Over the next few years, Epstein built a 2,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial-style house on a hill, erected horse stables and built a runway for his private jets. The government in Santa Fe also leased almost 500 hectares of pasture land to the former math teacher. The contract expired seven years ago when the land commission realized that Epstein had leased the area not for livestock but to protect his privacy, including allegations of sex crimes. As “The Santa Fe New Mexican” researched, the New Yorker had repeatedly donated to the election campaigns of local politicians. Among others, the late Governor King’s son, Gary King, was supported by Epstein in his attempt to become attorney general in New Mexico. He is also said to have helped Jim Baca, chairman of the land commission, get re-elected in 2006.
Epstein allegedly had a particularly close relationship with the former governor, representative and energy secretary of the Clinton administration, Bill Richardson, who died in 2023. He not only donated five-figure sums to Democratic campaigns. As alleged victim Roberts Giuffre argued in her defamation trial against Maxwell, Epstein is also said to have forced the then minor to have sex with Richardson at the Zorro Ranch more than 20 years ago. In her memoirs, “Nobody’s Girl,” published in October after the American’s suicide, she repeated the allegations. The Epstein Truth Commission is now supposed to clarify what Roberts Giuffre and at least ten other women went through at the Zorro Ranch. A few weeks ago the property, which has since been sold, was searched for the first time. More than 20 years after evidence of rape and abuse, the first report on Epstein’s Zorro Ranch is scheduled for the end of July.
