The New Mexico Department of Justice said Wednesday that it is investigating a claim, which emerged from documents released by the United States Department of Justice, that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ordered the bodies of two foreign girls to be buried on the outskirts of his isolated ranch in New Mexico.
New Mexico Department of Justice spokeswoman Lauren Rodriguez said the agency asked the U.S. Department of Justice for a full copy of a 2019 email containing the allegation.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
“We are actively investigating this allegation and conducting a broader review in light of the latest advisory from the U.S. Department of Justice,” Rodriguez said in an emailed response to questions about the case.
A day earlier, the New Mexico legislature launched the first comprehensive investigation into allegations that Epstein sexually abused girls and women at Rancho Zorro, 30 miles south of Santa Fe, for more than two decades.
to reveal Epstein’s crimes became a big deal.
The 2019 email, with excerpts censored and contained in , was sent a few months after Epstein’s death to Eddy Aragon, a New Mexico radio show host who had discussed Rancho Zorro on his show.
The sender, claiming to be a former ranch employee, requested payment of one bitcoin in exchange for videos that, according to the email, had been obtained at Epstein’s home and showed the financier having sexual relations with minors.
In a telephone interview, Aragon said he believed the email was legitimate and immediately forwarded it to the FBI. He said he had not received any payment or had any other contact with the sender, although he recently tried to respond for the first time, but the address was no longer working.
The email sent to Aragon, with excerpts censored, said that two foreign girls had been buried on Epstein’s orders “somewhere in the hills near Zorro” and that the two died “strangled during rough, fetishistic sex.”
A 2021 FBI report, also included in the latest release of Epstein’s files, states that Aragon visited an FBI office to report the email, which offered seven videos of sexual abuse and the location of two foreign girls buried at Zorro Ranch in exchange for one bitcoin.
A Reuters search of other documents released by the Justice Department found no other references to the allegations contained in the redacted email, nor to what investigators concluded about those allegations.
The Justice Department warned last year that some of the files released in its investigation into Epstein , including anonymous accusations that investigators have not corroborated or, in some cases, determined to be false.
In an interview Wednesday, New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said her office found the email with the censored information during a recent search of the most recently released files on Epstein.
In a Feb. 10 letter to the U.S. Department of Justice and statement, Garcia Richard called on federal and state law enforcement authorities to fully investigate allegations of criminality at Epstein’s ranch and adjacent state lands.
In 1993, Epstein leased about 503 acres of state land surrounding the ranch. Garcia canceled the leases in September 2019 after his office determined that Epstein did not use the land for ranching or farming, but rather as a buffer area to ensure privacy around his ranch.
