The Ranch, the Prince, and the Bizarre Hunt for Buried Bodies
Barrels of ink have been expended in writing lurid, unsubstantiated tales involving Epstein's island and sprawling New York mansion. But his ranch in New Mexico gets little attention.
Epstein’s Zorro Ranch lay in the high desert of central New Mexico, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe, surrounded by endless horizons of sagebrush, juniper, and low, sunburned mesas. He bought the property in 1993 from former New Mexico governor Bruce King, acquiring it through a web of trust entities that kept his direct involvement largely concealed for years. The purchase marked the beginning of his efforts to turn this isolated stretch of land into a self-contained and highly private estate.
Epstein had long shown an interest in the area. In a 2019 interview conducted by Steve Bannon, he stated that he became interested in New Mexico as an investor after 1990, when he learned that many scientists who had previously worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory were working at private spin-off firms doing pure and applied research, such as the Santa Fe Institute.
Epstein controlled the property through a shell company called Zorro Trust, later renamed Cypress, Inc.
The ranch spanned thousands of acres – reports vary between roughly 7,500 and 10,000 – making it a domain unto itself. At its heart stood a vast, hacienda-style mansion, often cited as being between 26,000 and 30,000 square feet. Built in the stucco-and-adobe tradition of the region, its cream-colored walls and terracotta roofs rose in sharp relief against the open blue sky. The main house, not completed until later 1999/early 2000, formed a wide U-shape around inner courtyards, with shaded porticoes, fountains, and terraces that looked out toward distant mountain ridges. From above, the estate seemed less like a single dwelling than a small compound – a deliberate echo of the Spanish colonial architecture that still defines much of northern New Mexico.
North of the Zorro Ranch is the Cerro Pelon Ranch, owned by fashion designer Tom Ford, where various films have been shot.
Beyond the main house stretched a small constellation of auxiliary buildings: guesthouses, staff quarters, a fire station, and a sprawling heated garage with multiple bays. There was a large swimming pool, stables, and fenced pastureland dotted with cattle. A short private airstrip and hangar, visible in aerial photographs, allowed for discreet arrivals by plane or helicopter. One peculiar detail noted by visitors and investigators alike was the presence of an antique railroad car on a short section of track – a personal curiosity whose purpose was never publicly explained.
Inside, the main residence reflected a blend of Southwestern motifs and conspicuous luxury. Reports and estate photographs describe wide, echoing halls; cavernous living spaces; and suites large enough to feel like apartments in their own right. Stone fireplaces, heavy wood beams, and arched windows gave the rooms a stylised regional character, but the scale – designed for entertaining or isolation – remained distinctly out of proportion with the understated local ranch culture. Courtyards opened into tiled patios, and the large pool glittered behind the house like a mirage in the desert heat.
Prince Andrew
In her unpublished memoir, The Billionaire’s Playboy Club, Virginia Giuffre, who is confirmed as having visited the ranch, wrote:
“I enjoyed spending time at his ranch, being it was my favourite of all of his residences. He had a lavish Mediterranean-looking castle on top of a hill that overlooked his extensive 7,500 acres of property. It has an indoor pool, gym, and all the trimmings of extravagance I could only imagine. I had a great time on the quad bikes. Sarah and I often got scolded for tipping one over going too fast or trying to go up a steep hill, but we knew those weren’t the things he cared about, so it wouldn’t matter. My favourite of it all was his little town with its own fire station and truck, stables full of horses, and little cottages where the housekeepers and ranch hands lived. On my own time I would take one of the quad bikes down to the stables and saddle up on one of his beautiful horses and go for a ride in the open terrain. It was coming up to the end of a very cold winter, and it still had the snow-covered mountaintops and brisk air that I loved to take in during my many trail rides. I have been an experienced horse rider since my childhood and could honestly pinpoint some of the best memories of my life being on the back of a horse.”
Continuing to write of the ranch in her unpublished memoir, Giuffre made the shocking allegation that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sent her there to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor:
“Two days later I was gone again, beckoned to be in Santa Fe. Ghislaine only told me that I was to meet someone there, not sure of whom that was. It wasn’t my place to ask questions. As far as I knew it could be anyone, and I had no choice but to be compliant to their needs. It was the middle of the day when I arrived at the airport. One of the ranch hands came to pick me up in a big work truck that smelled like dirt and sweat, but I didn’t mind, that’s what I loved about the ranch. When we arrived at the mansion my guest was already there waiting for me. I couldn’t wipe the look off my face as he turned around from the bookshelf that he was standing at. ‘Hello’, that same old cheesy grin greeted me once again. It was his highness, Prince Andrew, and what a sight. He wrapped his arms around my waist and greeted me like an old friend. I hugged him back, rolling my eyes at the same time, already dreading what lay in store over the next couple of days. My job was to entertain him endlessly, whether that meant having to bestow him my body during an erotic massage or simply take him horseback riding. For the next couple of days, he was to be my only concern, but he wasn’t. I called in checking on TJ a few times a day, not wanting to be a nag but just hoping he hadn’t had any thoughts about relapsing. He was doing great, even applying for a couple of jobs. Being reassured by him made my time away less complicated and, thankfully with the help of my ever- ready Xanax, I was able to cope with the ordeal. The mansion was completely empty save a couple of maids who also cooked our dinners for us, and a couple bodyguards that we hardly even saw at all. The time dragged by slowly for me as I was counting down the hours until I flew away again, anywhere but here I thought. It wasn’t easy meeting the sexual desires of these strange men, the Prince being one of them. He loved my feet and even licked in between my toes. Then there was the lack of passion in the intimacy we shared, to him I was just another girl and to me he was just another job. Not the right reasons to be together, but I thought in this world, and to these monsters, there didn’t need to be a reason. To them it’s nothing but a re-enactment of their personal fantasies. To me it was a living nightmare.”
Surprisingly, Virginia Giuffre’s vivid account of having sex with Prince Andrew in New Mexico has largely been glossed over by the media.
And for good reason.
It was a complete lie.
During her 2016 court hearing, when questioned by one of Ghislaine’s lawyers, she casually acknowledged that she had never spent any time with Andrew in New Mexico at all, meaning that the above story in her memoir is, ultimately, a sinister fabrication.
Giuffre would go on to change her story yet again, this time claiming that her alleged “third encounter” with Andrew was on Jeffrey’s private island. During this visit, she claimed, she and Andrew participated in an “open-air” orgy with nine other young women. But not a single girl has ever come forward to corroborate her claim, and it was later revealed that Giuffre had originally claimed that Jean-Luc Brunel, not Andrew, was at the unlikely orgy.
The Baby Farm Allegation
Though unproven, the New York Times wrote the following in a 2019 article:
On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies, according to two award-winning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals, all of whom Mr. Epstein told about it.
It was not a secret. The adviser, for example, said he was told about the plans not only by Mr. Epstein, at a gathering at his Manhattan townhouse, but also by at least one prominent member of the business community. One of the scientists said Mr. Epstein divulged his idea in 2001 at a dinner at the same townhouse; the other recalled Mr. Epstein discussing it with him at a 2006 conference that he hosted in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.
The idea struck all three as far-fetched and disturbing. There is no indication that it would have been against the law.
Once, at a dinner at Mr. Epstein’s mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mr. Lanier said he talked to a scientist who told him that Mr. Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe. Mr. Lanier said the scientist identified herself as working at NASA, but he did not remember her name.
According to Mr. Lanier, the NASA scientist said Mr. Epstein had based his idea for a baby ranch on accounts of the Repository for Germinal Choice, which was to be stocked with the sperm of Nobel laureates who wanted to strengthen the human gene pool. (Only one Nobel Prize winner has acknowledged contributing sperm to it. The repository discontinued operations in 1999.)
Mr. Lanier, the virtual-reality creator and author, said he had the impression that Mr. Epstein was using the dinner parties — where some guests were attractive women with impressive academic credentials — to screen candidates to bear Mr. Epstein’s children.
Buried Bodies
Following Epstein’s death, the Zorro ranch was sold in 2023, and is now owned by the family of Republican politician Don Huffines.
New Mexico’s Department of Justice announced last week that, bowing to press and public pressure, it is examining an allegation arising from documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ordered the burial of two foreign girls outside his secluded New Mexico ranch.
Lauren Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice, said the agency has requested an unredacted version of a 2019 email containing the claim from federal authorities. “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,” Rodriguez said in an emailed statement responding to questions about the matter.
The allegation the move is based on, however, is an email sent by an anonymous individual in what appears to be a scam.
The redacted 2019 email had been sent a few months after Epstein’s death to Eddy Aragon, a New Mexico radio show host who had discussed the Zorro Ranch on his program.
The sender, claiming, without proof, to be a former Zorro Ranch employee, requested payment of one bitcoin (worth thousands of dollars) in return for videos that the email said had been taken from Epstein’s house and showed the financier having sex with minors.
No payment was made, no videos ever materialised, and though the email was forwarded to the FBI, no evidence was found to suggest the sender’s claim was genuine.
This follows a similar pattern of individuals trying to financially exploit the Epstein scandal by claiming to possess explicit video footage of Epstein. Sarah Ransome, a prominent Epstein accuser, previously asked a national newspaper to pay her a large upfront fee for sex tapes that, she claimed, starred Epstein, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Richard Branson. After being refused an upfront fee without proof that the tapes were real, she began to make a series of bizarre excuses before ultimately admitting that she had lied and no such tapes existed.
In another case, John Mark Dougan, a former Florida police officer who was fired from the force, moved to Russia, and began working for the Kremlin disseminating anti-west ‘fake news’, managed to get a large number of people to pay a subscription fee to his website on the promise that he’d soon release CCTV footage from Epstein’s home. Dougan was later exposed as a scammer, a screenshot he eventually released being revealed to have been taken from a popular pornography website, depicting two consensual adults with no connection to the Epstein case.