In the high desert between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, down a two-lane road on the edge of a fading AM radio signal, sits what used to be Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch — 7,500 acres of isolation that survivors say became a perfect stage for abuse and a decades-long failure of justice.
Sold to Epstein in 1993 by New Mexico’s former governor and renamed “Zorro,” the vast property included a 26,000-square-foot mansion, staff cottages, horse facilities, and miles of land where, as one survivor put it, “there’s nowhere to go.”
Local radio host Eddy Aragon, who has covered the Epstein story for years, recalls an unsigned email that landed in his inbox after Epstein’s death — a tip that mentioned two women allegedly buried in the hills outside the ranch after “rough fetish sex” went wrong.
He turned the email over to the FBI, detailing its claims, but says he never heard back again. By that time Epstein was already dead in federal custody, and despite sweeping searches of his properties in Manhattan, Florida, and the Caribbean, federal investigators claimed they had “no probable cause” to search Zorro Ranch. In New Mexico, the land that might hold answers was effectively left untouched.
Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas opened his own investigation into Epstein in 2019, only to be asked by the Southern District of New York to stand down and stop interviewing some of the same survivors federal prosecutors were targeting.
At first, he says, that kind of coordination made sense — you let the office with “the bigger hammer” take the lead. But then, communication from the feds largely went dark, and the evidence he expected to flow back to New Mexico never came.
Balderas ultimately learned about the burial tip and other details not through direct cooperation, but when the Justice Department began releasing portions of its Epstein files years later. He now calls the handling of the case “embarrassing and appalling,” saying he believes “the first cover-up was in 2019 with me.”
For survivors tied to Zorro Ranch, the place is not a mystery in theory, but a wound in their real lives.
At least ten girls and young women say they were groomed or assaulted there, including Annie Farmer, who was 16 when Epstein flew her to New Mexico in 1996 under the guise of an opportunity to volunteer overseas. Instead, she found herself alone at the ranch with a predator who crawled into bed with her, forcing her to flee to a bathroom to escape.
Another survivor,Shanti Davies, has said publicly that she was raped twice at the ranch, while a Jane Doe testified that Epstein sexually assaulted her with a vibrator there when she was just 15, leaving her feeling “so small and powerless.”
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