New Mexico's Department of Justice announced an active investigation on Wednesday into an allegation contained in a 2019 email that surfaced in a recent release of documents by the U.S. Department of Justice. The email alleges that Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in 2019, ordered the burial of two foreign girls in the hills outside his Zorro Ranch.
A New Mexico Department of Justice spokesperson, Lauren Rodriguez, said the state has asked the U.S. Justice Department for an unredacted version of the 2019 email. Rodriguez added in an emailed reply to inquiries that "We are actively investigating this allegation and are conducting a broader review in light of the latest release from the U.S. Department of Justice." The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the FBI declined to comment.
Details of the allegation were first made public in the redacted email included in the latest batch of files the U.S. Department of Justice disclosed in connection with its probe into Epstein. The email, which was sent a few months after Epstein's death, was addressed to Eddy Aragon, a New Mexico radio host who had discussed the Zorro Ranch on his program. The sender, who identified themself as a former employee of the Zorro Ranch, offered videos purportedly taken from Epstein's house that allegedly depicted the financier having sex with minors, and requested payment of one bitcoin in exchange.
Aragon has said he believed the message was genuine and forwarded it to the FBI. He told reporters he did not pay the sender and had no further contact, although he recently attempted to respond and found the email address no longer functional. According to the redacted text, the sender claimed that two foreign girls had been buried on Epstein's orders "somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro" and that the two had died "by strangulation during rough, fetish sex."
A 2021 FBI report included among the released files says Aragon visited an FBI office to report the email, which purported to offer seven videos of sexual abuse and the location of two foreign girls buried on Zorro Ranch in return for one bitcoin.
New Mexico state officials are pursuing additional information from federal counterparts as they review the documents. Stephanie Garcia Richard, New Mexico's State Land Commissioner, said in an interview on Wednesday that her office located the redacted email during a recent search of the DOJ file release. In a February 10 letter to the U.S. Justice Department and in a public statement, Garcia Richard urged both federal and state law enforcement to conduct full investigations into allegations of criminal conduct on Epstein's ranch and on adjacent state lands.
Epstein had leased approximately 1,243 acres of state land around the ranch in 1993. Garcia Richard's office canceled those leases in September 2019 after determining the land was not being used for ranching or agriculture but rather as a privacy buffer surrounding the property.
Epstein died in a New York jail in August 2019; his death was ruled a suicide.
The recent disclosures by the U.S. Justice Department include a range of material, but the department has cautioned that some of the files contain "untrue and sensationalist claims." The Justice Department's earlier notice on the matter stated that the released documents include anonymous accusations that investigators did not corroborate and, in some cases, determined to be false. A Reuters review of other documents in the Justice Department release did not locate further references to the specific allegations asserted in the redacted email or conclusions by investigators about them.
Separately, New Mexico's legislature has initiated what authorities describe as the first comprehensive inquiry into allegations that Epstein sexually abused girls and women at Zorro Ranch, located roughly 30 miles (48 km) south of Santa Fe, over a period spanning more than two decades. That legislative scrutiny has been framed in media accounts as a significant political pressure point for Democratic lawmakers seeking to expose the scope of Epstein's alleged conduct, a development identified in reporting as presenting a major political challenge for President Donald Trump.
State officials say they are coordinating follow-up actions as they await unredacted material from federal sources. At this stage, investigators have publicly described the matter as an active probe focused on a specific allegation that emerged from the document release, alongside a broader review of related materials. Where the inquiry will lead depends on what, if any, corroborative evidence is produced by federal records or gathered by state investigators.
The inquiry in New Mexico adds a state-level investigative layer to the broader set of disclosures and inquiries that have surrounded Epstein's activities and properties since his death.