{"id":204126,"date":"2026-03-15T04:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T04:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/how-epstein-lured-girls-to-his-zorro-ranch-and-kept-authorities-away-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T04:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T04:52:12","slug":"how-epstein-lured-girls-to-his-zorro-ranch-and-kept-authorities-away-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/how-epstein-lured-girls-to-his-zorro-ranch-and-kept-authorities-away-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"How Epstein lured girls to his Zorro Ranch and kept authorities away – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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At least 10 women and girls say they were groomed at what was once Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.
To girls without much money who needed help with college or a career, visiting Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s 10,000-acre New Mexico ranch felt like being treated to an exclusive resort.
Flown in from around the country to the gated compound, they rode horses across a mesa dotted with ancient rock carvings. They posed for pictures at Epstein\u2019s 26,700-square-foot mansion. They hiked, swam, shopped and watched movies.
Hanging out with a wealthy middle-aged man was weird, but Epstein made the girls feel special. He asked about their goals, offered advice and handed them cash. And then the trips turned dark.
Epstein touched their thighs, had them strip for a massage or attacked them with a sex toy, and the girls grew confused and frightened. Alone, far from home and surrounded by photographs of Epstein with celebrities and politicians \u2014 some of whom had visited the ranch \u2014 they believed there was nothing they could do to stop him.
One victim, 15 at the time, jumped on an ATV the day after Epstein assaulted her and went racing across the property with another young guest and crashed into a tree. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d the other girl said, the victim later recalled. \u201cNo one gets in trouble for anything here.\u201d
The victims eventually understood that Epstein had used money and power to exploit them for sex. Starting in 2006, they began to come forward \u2014 not just the girls, but women as well. At least 10 have alleged that starting in the mid-1990s, Epstein groomed or abused them at the ranch, according to an NBC News review of court testimony, lawsuits and other records. Half were teenagers when Epstein harmed them.
Yet to this day, no one has fully accounted for the crimes committed at Zorro Ranch, a failure that confounds victims, local officials and the public. Decades of missed chances allowed the ranch to escape scrutiny, prolonging its secrets and delaying justice for the girls Epstein brought there.
The lost opportunities span the nearly two decades since Epstein was first caught paying underage girls for sex in Florida and cut a sweetheart deal that spared him serious prison time, according to a review of federal and state records, police reports and interviews with current and former officials. The 2008 agreement ended a federal investigation that found at least one allegation of abuse in New Mexico, where weak sex offender laws allowed Epstein to avoid registering with local authorities. The state didn\u2019t make human trafficking a crime until 2008, which left one less pathway to prosecution.
New Mexico authorities didn\u2019t open their first investigation into Epstein until 2019, after the statutes of limitations had expired for some crimes. That investigation was shut down at the urging of federal authorities in New York, who were building their own multistate case but left the ranch largely unexamined.
Only now, with revelations about the ranch turning up in the Department of Justice\u2019s newly released Epstein files \u2014 including an unverified tip that two \u201cforeign girls\u201d died during sex and were secretly buried on the property \u2014 are state officials promising to finally figure out what happened out there in the high desert. Two fresh investigations have been launched: one by the New Mexico Department of Justice, and one by a truth commission of four state lawmakers. On Monday, state authorities conducted the first ever search of the ranch \u2014 six years after Epstein died.
Epstein\u2019s victims and their relatives say the scrutiny is long overdue.
\u201cI ask the FBI and local law enforcement to continue uncovering the evil abuse and trafficking that took place on Zorro Ranch, and hold all those involved, who turned a blind eye, fully accountable,\u201d Rachel Benavidez, a massage therapist who was abused at the ranch during visits starting in 2000, told NBC News in a statement.
But after so many years and with a new owner redeveloping the property into a Christian retreat, it\u2019s not clear that the state will be able to make up for the lost time.
The ranch still elicits a sense of shame for New Mexicans who drive by on Highway 41. Locals have erected a memorial outside the entrance, laying flowers, hammering crosses in the ground and hanging protest signs demanding justice.
\u201cWe need to find out what happened,\u201d said Lou Gibney, 65, a semiretired construction worker who lives outside Albuquerque. \u201cIt\u2019s incumbent upon our nation to get to the bottom of all this stuff one way or another and find out what the truth is \u2014 regardless of where the chips fall.\u201d
Epstein\u2019s New Mexico ranch has been overshadowed by his other real estate holdings, such as his seven-story Manhattan townhouse or his private island in the Caribbean, but in some ways it was more lavish and more secluded: acres of grassland, a wide-open sky, mountains in the distance.
One of his victims, Virginia Giuffre, compared the ranch to Disneyland, writing in her memoir about \u201cmanicured grounds and gurgling fountains, a tennis court, and a grass airstrip and hangar.\u201d She wrote that the property \u201chad its own miniature town that housed his servants and groundskeepers.\u201d Epstein called the main house his \u201ccastle,\u201d she wrote.
Giuffre, who took her own life last year, lived in \u201ctwo worlds\u201d at the ranch, finding solace in the outdoors while also enduring unspeakable abuse, her family said. \u201cShe took all the beauty she could from it, but there was a lot going on behind closed doors that was horrific,\u201d her brother Sky Roberts said in an interview.
Epstein purchased the land in 1993 from the family of the sitting governor, Bruce King. He also acquired grazing leases from the state that gave him control over a wider expanse \u2014 as well as additional privacy, with the closest neighbors miles away and the nearest city, Santa Fe, 30 miles to the north.
\u201cI think New Mexico is the prettiest, most spectacular state by a long shot,\u201d Epstein told The Albuquerque Tribune in 1995. His plans to build the biggest house in Santa Fe County made headlines that year, although he told the newspaper, \u201cIt\u2019s just a normal home.\u201d
After buying the land, Epstein moved quickly to transform it, building on cliffs overlooking a ravine. The dozens of structures included a vintage rail caboose, a log cabin, a yurt, a firehouse and buildings made to look like a Western film set. He named the property Zorro Ranch, an apparent nod to the partially masked fictional swashbuckler who kept a double identity.
Over the nearly 30 years that Epstein owned the ranch, he would visit about five or six times a year, his longtime pilot, Larry Visoski, later testified<\/a> in federal court.
As with his other properties, Epstein used the ranch to host and court celebrity friends and public figures. His guests there included filmmaker Woody Allen<\/a> and linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky<\/a>, and the newly released files show Epstein unsuccessfully urging others to visit \u2014 including tech billionaire Elon Musk and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. None of those four have been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
Epstein told associates that he wanted the ranch to be the site of a large eugenics experiment, in which women would be inseminated with his sperm and give birth to his babies, The New York Times<\/a> reported in 2019. There\u2019s no evidence that ever happened. One of his accusers, Johanna Sjoberg, a college student who visited the ranch in 2005, said in a deposition that Epstein asked her to be the mother of his child, which she did not agree to.
The ranch was so sprawling that Epstein\u2019s employees had trouble maintaining the property, especially because he was absent most of the year, according to newly released documents. They complained of staff shortages, turnover and employee conflicts. In a resignation email<\/a> from 2012, sent by someone whose name is redacted, an employee wrote about being \u201ctired, sick of, frustrated and exhausted from trying to take care of this Ranch\u201d and receiving \u201cdisrespect\u201d from co-workers. \u201cThey can have their wish and rule your Ranch without me,\u201d the employee wrote.
Within three years of Epstein buying the ranch, victims say it became another site of his abuses.
\u201cIt was this giant ranch sort of in the middle of nowhere. And it seemed very empty on the interior, meaning there wasn\u2019t really any other people around,\u201d one of Epstein\u2019s teenage victims later testified, using the pseudonym \u201cJane.\u201d She had met Epstein at a summer camp in Michigan and testified in 2021 at the federal trial of Epstein\u2019s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein had a slightly different pitch for each girl or woman he wanted to bring to New Mexico depending on what she seemed to need most \u2014 money, a parent, a job, connections to the art world, a getaway.
Annie Farmer was a 16-year-old from Arizona worried about money for college when she met Epstein through her older sister, who worked for him. Epstein paid to fly her to his ranch in 1996<\/a>; she saw him as a philanthropist and believed the purpose of the trip was to join other college hopefuls and finalize plans for a summer volunteer opportunity in Thailand. Instead, she found herself alone at the massive ranch, far from anyone she knew, afraid of what would happen if she didn\u2019t comply with Epstein\u2019s demands.
Epstein and Maxwell took Farmer shopping for what she said were \u201cvery expensive\u201d cowboy boots, according to Farmer\u2019s testimony<\/a> at Maxwell\u2019s trial. Then, Farmer said, they went to a movie, where he caressed her hand and touched her thigh. Later, she said, she was pressured into giving Epstein a foot massage, which led to Maxwell giving a massage in which she touched Farmer\u2019s breasts. The next morning, Farmer said, Epstein crawled into bed with her and pressed his body against hers in an attempt to cuddle. Farmer said she escaped to the bathroom, then hid there until the moment passed.
In 2004, Epstein enticed a 15-year-old girl \u2014 known publicly by the pseudonym Jane Doe 15 \u2014 to visit the ranch as part of a trip to Las Vegas to see a magic show with her sister and other girls. She recalled Epstein telling them they could do whatever they wanted \u2014 ride the horses and ATVs, use the pool and hot tub.
Then Epstein summoned her to his room, where he assaulted her with a vibrator, she said.
\u201cI remember feeling so small and powerless, especially after he positioned me by laying me on his floor so that I was confronted by all the framed photographs on his dresser of him smiling with wealthy celebrities and politicians,\u201d Jane Doe 15 later recalled in court.
She also recalled feeling both abandoned and reliant on Epstein, like she \u201ccould die out there and no one would care.\u201d
Another target was a 15-year-old aspiring violin player in Texas who met an associate of Epstein\u2019s at a shopping mall near the New Mexico border. The associate \u2014 unnamed in court records \u2014 told her that a nearby rich man would pay to hear her play the violin, according to her testimony at a court hearing.
\u201cEpstein targeted and took advantage of me, a young girl, whose mother had recently died a horrific death and whose family structure had deteriorated,\u201d she said.
Giuffre, who met Epstein in Florida, said in a deposition that he once sent her to New Mexico to have sex with politician Bill Richardson. Richardson, who has since died, called the allegation \u201ccompletely false<\/a>.\u201d Richardson, who was the state\u2019s governor from 2003 to 2011, confirmed<\/a> visiting the ranch, and the recently released Justice Department files show that Richardson and Epstein remained in touch long after Epstein\u2019s crimes became public. In 2016, Richardson asked to have dinner with Epstein in New York, according to emails between their assistants.
The women did not speak about their abuse for years because, they have said, Epstein used money and threats to keep them silent. If they told, he warned of financial, reputational or physical harm.
But eventually, some of the women did speak to law enforcement. In 2006, Farmer told an FBI agent investigating allegations against Epstein in Florida about her trip to New Mexico with Epstein and Maxwell a decade earlier. The FBI agent, who was based in Florida, wrote a report based on the interview.
The FBI continued to \u201cdevelop witnesses and victims from across the United States,\u201d according to an agency memo. That included at least one interview with someone associated with Epstein in New Mexico in early 2007.
But the information about Zorro Ranch went nowhere: After two years of investigation and plea negotiations, Alex Acosta, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, agreed in 2008 to let Epstein plead guilty to state charges and avoid a federal case, in a deal later criticized<\/a> by a Justice Department watchdog as reflecting \u201cpoor judgment.\u201d (Acosta has said that prosecutors opted for a plea deal because they were concerned it would be difficult to secure a conviction at trial.)
The investigation into possible New Mexico crimes ended.
In 2009, Epstein completed his Florida jail term and, as part of his plea agreement there, began the process of registering as a sex offender in the places he lived. In New Mexico, the state Department of Public Safety notified Epstein by letter that he needed to register with the local sheriff.
But a month later, after a detective met Epstein at his ranch, the state said in a second letter that he did not have to register after all. Because Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to misconduct with a victim over the age of 16, which is the age of consent in New Mexico, authorities determined he had not committed a child sex offense that required registration, according to a later Justice Department review. Epstein also had sexual contact with a 14-year-old victim, according to a report that her mother made to police in Palm Beach<\/a>, Florida, but that wasn\u2019t included in the plea deal and so didn\u2019t matter for the New Mexico sex offender registry.
That meant Epstein didn\u2019t have to check in with New Mexico police and didn\u2019t have his name placed on an online list. The Justice Department review later determined that Epstein\u2019s lawyers \u201cthoroughly researched\u201d how the deal would affect Epstein\u2019s sex offender registration in other states, but prosecutors \u201cfailed to anticipate\u201d that Epstein would escape the sex-offender registry in New Mexico.
Epstein continued to host scientists, celebrities and tech executives at his ranch \u2014 and continued to bring at least one victim. A woman who called herself Priscilla Doe said in a lawsuit years later that Epstein took her to New Mexico repeatedly from 2007 to 2010, using wealth and threats to coerce her into having sex with him and his friends.
Priscilla Doe said that when she met Epstein in New York, she was a poor aspiring ballet dancer in her early 20s who needed cash to pay her mother\u2019s rent. Epstein repeatedly told her \u201cthat her opportunities were endless as long as she complied with his dictates but that he could take it all away from her if she did not,\u201d according to her suit.
Epstein\u2019s lease of state land shows how little scrutiny he received from New Mexico, even after he became notorious. State officials have broad discretion to decide who gets to lease public lands, but for decades they renewed Epstein\u2019s lease of 1,200 acres without complaint, even though his stated purpose, cattle grazing, was later deemed dubious by state authorities.
With time, more victims came forward. Giuffre said she flew around the world, including to New Mexico in 2001, as Epstein\u2019s sex slave. Sjoberg, the college student whom Epstein repeatedly pressured into sexual massages, said she too had been taken to the ranch. But the allegations did not catch the public\u2019s attention, or law enforcement\u2019s, until 2018, when the Miami Herald published an expose<\/a> about the plea deal in Florida.
The news prompted federal authorities in New York to launch a new investigation, and the New Mexico Attorney General\u2019s Office began to examine the ranch on its own.
State investigators spoke to victims and built what they thought was a promising case, Hector Balderas, who was New Mexico\u2019s attorney general at the time, told NBC News in a recent interview. His investigation spanned multiple states and identified potential suspects in addition to Epstein and Maxwell, he said. He declined to share specifics. \u201cWe had taken statements involving child sex trafficking and we had obtained corroborating records that confirmed an illicit enterprise,\u201d Balderas said.
But when federal prosecutors in New York heard about the New Mexico effort, they urged the attorney general\u2019s office to stand down, arguing that the state investigation might interfere with their work, Balderas said. His team agreed and briefed the New York prosecutors on its work. The New York prosecutors in turn promised to share any information they gathered about state crimes committed in New Mexico.
New York authorities arrested Epstein in July 2019 on charges of trafficking underage girls, but the indictment did not mention New Mexico. The only time the ranch came up was at a bail hearing in which Annie Farmer testified that Epstein had flown her to New Mexico and was \u201cinappropriate\u201d with her.
The next month, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, ending the New York case. FBI officials in Washington, D.C., pressed agents in New York about plans to search the ranch. \u201cCan you let me know the reasons we have not gone out there yet?\u201d FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich wrote William Sweeney, the assistant director in charge of the New York office.
The request was passed to an agent who wrote: \u201cAt this time we don\u2019t have PC for a search of the NM residence,\u201d using an abbreviation for probable cause. He said agents did not believe there was anything of value left at the ranch.
Before closing the New York case, a judge allowed several victims to give statements about what they\u2019d been through. The group included Jane Doe 15, who described being assaulted by Epstein at the ranch. \u201cWhat I remember most vividly was him explaining to me how beneficial the experience was for me and how much he was helping me to grow,\u201d she said. \u201cYikes.\u201d
A few days later, newly elected New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard held a news conference in which she tore up the ranch\u2019s lease. \u201cThis land was no doubt used to protect the privacy of Epstein and his co-conspirators,\u201d Garcia Richard said.
The New Mexico Attorney General\u2019s Office sent its case file to New York prosecutors in mid-September with a letter saying the material could be used in the potential prosecution of Epstein\u2019s co-conspirators. \u201cEpstein\u2019s death should not be the end of this criminal inquiry,\u201d Chief Deputy Attorney General Clara Moran wrote.
Federal prosecutors went after Maxwell, charging her in June 2020 with helping Epstein groom and abuse underage girls. The indictment focused on New York, though it mentioned Farmer\u2019s 1996 experience at the ranch to show Maxwell and Epstein\u2019s pattern of behavior. Maxwell was found guilty of conspiracy and sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
New Mexico authorities, meanwhile, waited for a response from New York. In July 2020, Balderas\u2019 office sent a follow-up letter asking federal authorities to seize the ranch in hopes that the proceeds could be used to help Epstein\u2019s victims. Again, Balderas said, his team got no reply. He left office in 2022 without bringing a case against anyone at the ranch, and today he blames the federal prosecutors.
\u201cThey essentially gutted our ability to aggressively seek justice for victims,\u201d Balderas said.
The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI did not respond to questions from NBC News.
In January, the Justice Department released millions of pages of documents related to its Epstein investigations, and within them were more revelations about the ranch: its visitors, its victims and new claims about other potential crimes.
The most troubling was a tip emailed to Eddy Aragon, a New Mexico radio host, in September 2019, after Epstein\u2019s death. The writer said two bodies were buried somewhere at the ranch. Aragon forwarded the email to the FBI.
The claim, allegedly from a former ranch employee, included no date or names and no potential site of the alleged burials on a ranch that is 12 times the size of New York\u2019s Central Park.
It\u2019s not clear whether the FBI investigated the tip. Aragon said he never heard from the bureau.
\u201cThey could have done something years and years and years ago for these victims,\u201d Aragon said.
The new disclosures lit a fire in New Mexico, and officials pledged a new effort to determine what exactly happened at Zorro Ranch.
\u201cWe had a government that failed to follow up,\u201d said U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat whose district includes the ranch.
Garcia Richard, the land commissioner, sent a letter to state and federal authorities asking them to investigate the burials claim \u2014 or clarify whether it had already been examined \u2014 and repeated her 2019 invitation to search the state lands.
\u201cThere\u2019s more there,\u201d Garcia Richard said. \u201cA lot has been left out or fallen into the cracks.\u201d
She and other officials say they hope that the New Mexico Department of Justice\u2019s new investigation and the new truth commission will expose the full story of what happened at the ranch, determine whether anyone else can be prosecuted and change state laws to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.
Zorro Ranch is now owned by Don Huffines, a Texas businessman and politician who bought it from Epstein\u2019s estate in 2023. Last month he announced plans<\/a> to turn it into a Christian retreat and said he had renamed it San Rafael Ranch. He said he would grant access to any law enforcement agency that wanted to visit the property. A spokesperson for Huffines, the Republican nominee for Texas comptroller, a statewide office, said in a statement that he has been \u201cfully cooperating with the New Mexico DOJ to organize a thorough and legitimate investigation into any possible wrongdoing by the property\u2019s former owner.\u201d
Regulators ordered Huffines to stop construction at the site in January, and state authorities searched it<\/a> for the first time on Monday. It is not clear if anything meaningful was found.
The day before the search, Giuffre\u2019s brother Sky Roberts and his wife, Amanda Roberts, who live in Colorado, drove to the ranch, joining local officials and residents to rebuild a roadside memorial that had been taken down days earlier. Giuffre rarely mentioned the ranch to them, explaining that she did not want \u201cthis evil\u201d to touch them, her brother said.
For the first time, Sky and Amanda Roberts saw the beauty and isolation that Giuffre wrote of. They wept, but also felt her comforting presence. They hoped they were giving her soul some peace. And they vowed to keep fighting for answers.
\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about singular abuse,\u201d Amanda said. \u201cIt all ties in with a systemic failure and how people in power use systems and governments to get away with whatever they want.\u201d
Jon Schuppe is an enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
David Ingram is a tech reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeAt least 10 women and girls say they were groomed at what was once Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.To girls without much money who needed help with college or a career, visiting Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s 10,000-acre New Mexico ranch felt like being treated to an exclusive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-204126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}