The sad story of at least two girls killed during rough sex sessions at Jeffrey Epstein’s remote New Mexico ranch is closer to being told, following a massive police swoop on the 7,500 acre property.
For years talk of the deaths has swirled around Zorro Ranch in the tiny town of Stanley, 30 miles south of the state capital, Santa Fe – but the identities of the girls have never been known.
Now law enforcement is confident it can find the bodies if they exist and put names to the dead girls.
Agents from the state Department of Justice along with police and the local sheriff’s office started the search on Monday and continued into Tuesday.
The investigation is running in parallel to a ‘truth commission’ that was unanimously set up by local lawmakers last month to try to find out exactly what went on at Zorro.
‘We have heard years of allegations and rumors about Epstein’s activities in New Mexico, but unfortunately, federal investigations have failed to put together an official record,’ said State Representative Andrea Romero, who led the fight to establish the commission, and is one of its four members.
‘With this truth commission, we can finally fill in the gaps by investigating the failures that led to the horrific allegations of abuse and crime at Zorro Ranch, so we can learn from them and prevent such atrocities from taking place in our state going forward.’
The operation began just the day after hundreds of protesters gathered at the ranch, now renamed Rancho de San Rafael by its new owner
Jeffrey Epstein’s sprawling Zorro Ranch, where he was seen in a photo released by the Department of Justice, has long been the subject of intrigue due to allegations that it was the site of human experimentation and the killing of trafficked women
Epstein bought Zorro in 1993 from former New Mexico governor Bruce King
They went there as a show of support to victims of sexual abuse on International Women’s Day.
New Mexico Department of Justice spokesman Lauren Rodriguez said the owners, the family of Texas real estate baron Don Huffines, had granted access for the search, which is understood to include the entire property and public land surrounding it.
Huffines has said he plans to turn it into a Christian retreat.
Epstein bought the property from former New Mexico governor Bruce King in 1993. Following his 2019 death in a New York prison cell, the property went on sale for $23.1 million. It was later reduced to $18 million.
Agents from the state Department of Justice along with state police and the local sheriff’s office started the search on Monday and continued into Tuesday.
Epstein’s sprawling New Mexico ranch has long been reported to have served as one of his private playgrounds for sexual abuse and trafficking – but the disturbing new allegations suggest something even more sinister unfolded behind its gates.
The Daily Mail can also reveal that new witnesses – both men and women – are now claiming the disgraced financier also used the secluded compound to conduct nonconsensual medical procedures to advance his alleged interest in selective breeding.
‘We have people coming forward saying they were drugged, had sex organs and sperm harvested from their bodies, and woke up around medical equipment not knowing where they were or what happened to them,’ Romero told the Daily Mail.
Epstein, who died in 2019, reportedly discussed plans to use the home as a base to inseminate multiple women and produce his own enhanced bloodline
Danny Wilson, the brother of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, spoke at the protest held outside Zorro Ranch on Sunday, International Women’s Day
The protest was held to draw attention to sex abuse that allegedly went on inside Zorro Ranch when it was owned by Epstein
Armed security guards watched the protest from inside the Zorro Ranch property
Romero is one of several lawmakers now calling for a state ‘truth commission’ to investigate potential sexual and medical abuses on the isolated ranch in Stanley, 40 miles south of the state capital Santa Fe.
As far-fetched as they may sound, the chilling accounts of human experimentation echo long-circulating claims about Epstein’s obsession with eugenics and his desire to engineer genetically ‘superior’ children.
Before his suicide in 2019, the convicted pedophile reportedly openly discussed plans to use his 8,000-acre Zorro Ranch as a base to inseminate multiple women and produce his own enhanced bloodline.
Though there is no evidence that his sci-fi scheme came to fruition, the recent surge of tips flooding state officials’ inboxes has sparked calls for a sweeping investigation into what really happened on the property.
‘It’s so dark and perplexing, and I know that if you mention this to someone, it sounds very conspiratorial,’ Romero said. ‘But we need to get down to the truth of what really happened here in our own backyard.’
Epstein bought Zorro Ranch in 1993 from Bruce King, a former three-time New Mexico governor.
The 13 square miles of high desert include a 26,700-square foot luxury hacienda, guest lodges and staff dwellings, several outbuildings, a firehouse, horse stables, a seven-bay heated garage, a greenhouse to grow fresh produce, a cattle grazing operation and private air strip, hangar and helipad.
Epstein owned the property until his death in a New York federal prison. His estate listed it in 2021 for $27.5 million.
That price was later dropped to $18 million and the ranch sold for an undisclosed price in 2023 to a limited liability corporation that renamed the property the San Rafael Ranch, but whose owner is shrouded in secrecy.
‘It’s really nobody’s business,’ Claudia Mardel, a New Mexico real estate agent and self-professed ‘animal communicator’ who works for the new owner and claims to be bound by a confidentiality agreement, told the Daily Mail.
Epstein used Zorro Ranch as an isolated getaway and playground for VIP guests who were able to come and go more discreetly than they could even to Little St James, his private Caribbean island off St Thomas.
Civil filings claim that the compound hosted the former Prince Andrew, who was accused by Virginia Giuffre who produced photographs and written statements showing she visited the compound during the time she was trafficked as a teenager between 2000 and 2002.
There have been unverified claims by contractors and journalists that Bill Clinton and other prominent figures also spent time on the property, although the former president denied he was there in his deposition before Congress last month.
The entrance to the massive compound, which is 30 miles south of Santa Fe
Epstein’s sprawling estate in Stanley, New Mexico, now renamed Rancho de San Rafael, was one of several properties he is said to have used to lure and abuse girls
The secluded property is said to have served as a playground for his VIP guests
An interior shot of the main house on Zorro Ranch
The plans show that Epstein’s master bedroom takes up most of the first floor, where there were also two relatively small en-suite bedrooms and a fourth ‘staff bedroom’
The three-level main house spanned 30,000 square feet with four bedrooms, a living room, library (above) and gourmet kitchen
New Mexico state Representative Andrea Romero is one of several lawmakers now calling for a sweeping investigation into what really happened at Zorro Ranch, following a recent influx of tips
Maria Farmer has said she and her younger sister Annie visited Zorro Ranch in 1996 under the guise of an art commission.
Maria alleged she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who in 2021 was found guilty of child sex trafficking and is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison.
Annie has said she was 15 when flown to the property and directed by Epstein and Maxwell ‘to take off all her clothes and get on a massage table.’
Several lawsuits by anonymous ‘Jane Doe’ plaintiffs also allege sexual abuse at Zorro Ranch.
Epstein did not spend as much time at the compound as at his properties in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands.
Renee Burns told the Daily Mail that she could ‘count on one hand’ the number of times she saw him during her stint as a maid there between 2005 and 2010.
Although her boss hosted plenty of young women, she said they appeared to be older than 18 and ‘there by their own decision’.
If sexual abuse or medical procedures were taking place on the on the property, as some have alleged, she didn’t see it.
Sisters Maria (left) and Annie Farmer visited Zorro Ranch in 1996 under the guise of an art commission. Both have claimed to have been abused by the pedophile when they were teens
Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson was previously named by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre as one of the men Epstein trafficked her to. Richardson died in 2023
‘I knew he was a narcissist and a terrible person,’ Burns said, describing how Epstein acted imperiously around her and ordered her to write notes rather than speaking directly to him
‘I was to be seen and not heard. I ironed the sheets, made the beds, rinsed their toothbrushes.
‘I never saw him having sex with anybody, never saw him naked, never saw anything I’d consider illegal. But then again, I wasn’t in every nook and cranny of the place.’
Because lawmakers have yet to look into these new allegations – and to protect the identities of whistleblowers – it is unclear how or to what extent potential victims were invaded medically. By several accounts, prosecutors in New Mexico did not investigate Epstein as vigorously as their counterparts in New York and Florida.
He was never charged with crimes in the state and was not even required to register there as a sex offender.
Epstein apparently saw the sprawling compound not just as a vacation home and pedophile playpen, but also a place to advance his interest in eugenics, the largely discredited belief that the human race can be improved by selective breeding.
A 2019 New York Times investigation detailed his scheme to ‘use his New Mexico ranch as a base where up to 20 women at a time would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies’.
Epstein’s vision for a baby-making factory connected to his interest in transhumanism, the controversial idea of ‘improving’ the human gene pool through genetic manipulation.
The 8,000-acre ranch is now at the center of disturbing allegations from witness who claim the pedophile had conducted nonconsensual medical procedures as part of his twisted eugenics plot
Epstein owned the property until his death in 2019. His estate listed it for sale in 2021 for $27.5 million
He reportedly was inspired by the ‘Repository for Germinal Choice,’ a sperm bank from the 1980s that claimed to stock supplies from Nobel Prize winners.
The financier apparently discussed the plan on multiple occasions in the early 2000s, including with people the Times described as ‘two award-winning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals.’
‘The idea struck all three as far-fetched and disturbing,’ the paper reported.
Representative Romero, a lawyer, agrees that the scheme sounds ‘too crazy to be true,’ but said it cannot be ignored now that members of the public have come forward with accounts of mysterious medical procedures and experiments on the compound.
One, she said, is a now-adult woman who claims her sex organs were medically experimented on at Zorro as a toddler.
The tips have come since late October, when Romero and other state lawmakers announced plans for a ‘truth commission’ to investigate Epstein’s pattern of predatory behavior and control over women at Zorro Ranch during his decades of ownership.
As proposed, the state would allocate $2.5 million to gather testimony, document abuses on the ranch and make recommendations ‘for institutional reform, reparations’ and how to prevent similar ‘oversight gaps’ in other ‘remote, high-wealth enclaves’ in New Mexico.
If approved, as expected, the commission would be composed of two Democratic and two Republican House members plus a fifth nonpartisan member, potentially a retired judge. It would begin its yearlong investigation in April 2026.
Since plans for the commission were announced in late October, Romero said she and her colleagues have received 25 to 30 tips and first-hand accounts of abuses on the ranch.
‘We have this massive international story in New Mexico and all these potential conspiracies, horrible things that have happened there.
‘We don’t know what’s fact from fiction, but owe it to the people of our state to sort through these threads of information and get answers,’ the Santa Fe Democrat said.
Republican state Representative Andrea Reeb, a former district attorney with a record of prosecuting crimes against children, has agreed to sit on the commission.
‘Zorro Ranch has given New Mexico a black eye. We as a state haven’t been aggressive enough on figuring out what happened there,’ she said.
‘My main interest is to see if we can bring justice to some of the victims.’
One of the four bedrooms inside the sprawling property
There have been unverified claims by contractors and journalists that Bill Clinton and other prominent figures also spent time on the property
Reeb and others in state government acknowledge that the inquiry is a political minefield.
The late Bill Richardson, New Mexico’s former Democratic governor, US energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations, is said to have visited the compound and was linked to Epstein socially, through campaign contributions and an accuser’s testimony. He denied any wrongdoing and died in 2023.
There are also widespread suspicions that Gary King, New Mexico’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015 — when allegations against Epstein were mounting — avoided investigating the politically connected financier who had bought the ranch from his family. King could not be reached for comment.
The ‘truth commission’ is expected to have subpoena power, which state officials said they hope to use to determine the identity of the ranch’s new owners and to question Karen and Brice Gordon, who ran the compound for Epstein.
‘We need to see what they know,’ Romero said.
The Gordons are said to have fled the ranch and the country, possibly going to New Zealand, after Epstein’s death.
Several former ranch employees describe the couple as efficient managers who treated their workers well.
‘If I were them, I’d disappear, too,’ Burns said. ‘Nobody wants to be associated with the ranch and that scumbag who owned it.’
‘You wonder what happened to them, what they knew, whether they can be found,’ added Manolito Royal, who spent 17 years doing maintenance work on the property.
During that time, he observed what he described as a steady flow of guests he was told were models, and was encouraged not to inquire about what they were doing there.
Asked to share the names of prominent male guests on the compound, he said, ‘I plead the Fifth.’
‘It’s hard to say what’s behind the door when you haven’t opened it.’
Although Royal welcomes the ‘truth commission’ and its inquiry into what took place on the property, he said, ‘I’m kinda surprised it’s taken so long.’
‘I wish it would have came out when he was, you know, alive,’ he said of Epstein.
Talking about Zorro Ranch ‘still makes me shake,’ he admitted even more than a decade after leaving his job there because mounting allegations against his boss bothered him.
‘Being associated with somebody like that, I’d just as soon get this past me.’
