Thirteen days after Jeffrey Epstein's arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, a retired New Mexico State police officer called the FBI with a warning: a newly constructed barn on Epstein's 7,600-acre Zorro Ranch didn't look right. It had a chimney, a garage door resembling a sally port, and no apparent ranching purpose. The officer believed an incinerator could be hidden inside. Evidence, he feared, could be destroyed.
The FBI logged the call on July 19, 2019. The officer, whose name was redacted, had patrolled the area around the ranch for 15 years and knew the property well. He described an extensive security infrastructure, including cameras, sally ports, and other measures that seemed far beyond what any ranch would require.
Now, years later, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has reopened the investigation into what happened at Zorro Ranch. The decision came after his office reviewed information recently released by the U.S. Justice Department.
According to the Daily Mail, the FBI report paints a picture of a property designed to keep people out and keep secrets in. The retired officer told agents that an old 1970s mobile home had been placed directly behind the suspicious barn, which he believed violated Santa Fe County regulations. Every detail he flagged pointed in one direction: someone was taking precautions that had nothing to do with livestock.
"[Redacted name] explained that the barn that was constructed doesn't look like a barn you would use for ranching."
Epstein purchased the property in 1993 from Bruce King, a former three-time New Mexico governor. What began as 13 square miles of high desert eventually became a 26,700-square-foot luxury estate with a seven-bay heated garage. After Epstein's death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, the estate listed the ranch for $27.5 million in 2021, later dropped the price to $18 million, and ultimately sold it in 2023 for an undisclosed sum. The new owners, operating through an LLC, renamed it "San Rafael Ranch."
A name change doesn't erase what happened there.
The barn wasn't the only warning. On November 21, 2019, an email titled "Confidential: Jeffrey Epstein" was sent to a man named Eddy Aragon and later forwarded to the FBI. The sender, whose name was redacted, claimed to have worked at Zorro Ranch. The message opened with a tone that suggested someone unburdening themselves of dangerous knowledge:
"Edward. This is sensitive, so it will be the first and last email depending on your discretion."
"You can choose to take it or trash it but this comes from a person that has been there and seen it all, as a former staff at the Zorro."
The sender claimed to have taken material from Epstein's home as "insurance in case of future litigation." Then the email turned darker. The former worker alleged that somewhere in the hills outside Zorro Ranch, two foreign girls were buried "on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G," believed to be Ghislaine Maxwell. Both, the sender claimed, died by strangulation during sexual violence.
These are unverified allegations from a single anonymous source. They have not been independently confirmed. But they were serious enough to be forwarded to the FBI, and the question that matters now is what the Bureau did with them.
The sender demanded one Bitcoin for further cooperation. Whether that payment was ever made or whether the FBI pursued the lead at all remains unknown from the available records.
New Mexico's initial investigation into Zorro Ranch was closed in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors in New York. That decision looks worse with every new document that surfaces. The latest tranche of Epstein files was released on January 30, and the contents apparently gave Attorney General Torrez enough reason to reopen the case.
The New Mexico Department of Justice announced that special agents and prosecutors will seek immediate access to the complete, unredacted federal case file. They intend to work with other law enforcement partners and a new truth commission established by state lawmakers to examine activities at the ranch.
"As with any potential criminal matter, we will follow the facts wherever they lead, carefully evaluate jurisdictional considerations, and take appropriate investigative action, including the collection and preservation of any relevant evidence that remains available."
That last clause is doing a lot of work. "Evidence that remains available" is a careful way of acknowledging that years of delay may have cost them exactly what the retired officer warned about: destroyed evidence.
Garcia Richard issued a statement capturing the public frustration:
"People deserve to know the truth about what happened on Epstein's ranch and are looking to leaders for answers."
The ranch was not merely a place of suspicion. It was a place of documented harm. A woman identified as Jane Doe said in court that Epstein molested her at Zorro Ranch in 2004, when she was 15. She recalled feeling small and powerless, describing being laid on the floor and seeing framed photographs around her. Civil findings also produced photographs and written statements showing Virginia Giuffre visited the compound, with trafficking alleged to have occurred between 2000 and 2002.
These are real people, not abstractions in a document dump. Every year that passed between the FBI receiving these warnings and anyone acting on them is a year that accountability was deferred.
The Epstein case has become a masterclass in institutional failure dressed up as institutional process. Federal prosecutors asked New Mexico to close its case. The FBI received a detailed warning about a suspicious structure that could destroy evidence and, as far as public records show, took no visible action. An anonymous email alleging buried bodies was forwarded to the Bureau. Epstein died in federal custody under circumstances that have never been satisfactorily explained. And for years, the powerful people who visited his properties faced no meaningful scrutiny.
In Washington, D.C., members of Congress are still working to lift the veil with more testimony from powerful people. Earlier Thursday, British police arrested former Prince Andrew on suspicion of misconduct in public office related to his links to Epstein. Andrew, who was accused by Virginia Giuffre of sexual abuse on three occasions, has always denied her claims.
Documents released as part of the Epstein files revealed he intended to leave his Zorro estate to Karyna Shuliak, his Belarusian girlfriend. The ranch has been sold. The barn still stands, presumably. The chimney that the retired officer flagged in 2019 has had six years to do whatever it was built to do.
Every institution that touched this case had the information it needed to act. Not one acted fast enough. The question has never been whether the system failed. The question is whether it was designed to.