New Mexico Is Searching Epstein’s Ranch Because the Feds Never Did
By Rachel Hurley Updated
Cadaver dogs were walking the hills of Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.
Until this week, the 7,600-acre property outside Santa Fe had never been searched in a criminal investigation, as far as New Mexico’s land commissioner knows. Not partially searched. Not searched and cleared. In the entire time Epstein owned it - from 1993 until his death in federal custody in 2019 - and in the years since, no criminal investigation had searched the ground until this week. Victims testified that abuse happened there.
Annie Farmer said she was assaulted at the ranch as a teenager in the 1990s. Flight records put powerful people in New Mexico. And when New Mexico investigators looked into it in 2018 and 2019, federal prosecutors in New York asked them to stand down. They dropped it.
What changed is a 2019 email that was sitting in federal files for six years. It was sent to a local radio host by someone claiming to be a former ranch employee. It said that two foreign girls were buried somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, on Epstein’s orders. Anonymous. Unverified. The New Mexico AG has said so plainly - there will be “real obstacles” after this much time. But it’s not clear it was ever investigated at all, which is its own answer to a question nobody officially asked.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez reopened the criminal investigation last month. The state House passed a bipartisan truth commission with subpoena power. And state police, the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office, and fire and rescue showed up with the dogs.
The ranch isn’t Epstein’s anymore - it sold in 2023, quietly, through an LLC, for an undisclosed price. It took public records requests to find out the buyer was Don Huffines, a Texas businessman and former state senator currently running for Texas Comptroller. He renamed it San Rafael Ranch and announced plans to turn it into a Christian retreat. His family says they’re cooperating fully with the search, and by all accounts they are.
Whether investigators find anything is genuinely unknown. The NM AG said as much himself. What isn’t unknown is that the property sat untouched while the federal case was active, that New York prosecutors got the state to shut down its own inquiry in 2019, and that an email describing buried bodies spent six years in a federal filing cabinet.
Sources- Reuters - New Mexico investigators search Epstein’s former ranch
- TIME - Epstein Zorro Ranch investigation search
- CNN - Epstein Zorro Ranch search New Mexico
- TMZ - Zorro Ranch investigated for dead bodies
- Scripps News - NM official seeks search near Epstein ranch
- The Center Square - Huffines property background
- Raul Torrez - New Mexico will not let the Epstein investigation fade
- Santa Fe New Mexican - Weeks after Epstein’s death, FBI said they lacked evidence to search New Mexico ranch
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said the ranch sold for around $12 million - the price was never disclosed. It also said New York prosecutors shut down New Mexico’s inquiry before it got started, when the state had been investigating since late 2018 and stood down at their request in 2019.
Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - that the ranch had never been searched before this week is New Mexico’s land commissioner’s account - and the line on the buried-girls email now says it’s not clear whether it was ever investigated.