Until now, the public's visualizations of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal have largely centered on his Caribbean Island and his seven-story New York townhouse, but a new setting is poised to take greater prominence, as the New Mexico legislature just launched a wide-ranging investigation into what took place at Epstein's "Zorro Ranch" about 30 miles south of Santa Fe. One line of inquiry focuses on a redacted email in the DOJ files alleging that two "foreign girls" were buried on the property.   

“He was basically doing anything he wanted in this state without any accountability whatsoever,” New Mexico state Representative Andrea Romero, a Democrat who co-sponsored the probe, told NBC News. She said there's no indication that the FBI ever searched the property. 

With a $2.5 million budget approved by unanimous vote of the legislature, a "truth commission" of Democrats and Republicans will head up the probe into potential criminal activity on the 7,600-acre property that features both a 26,700-square-foot mansion and guest houses. Legislators are urging victims to come forward, but multiple accusations of sexual misconduct at the ranch have already been made. For example: 

• Annie Farmer, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial, said Maxwell gave her a nude massage there when Farmer was 16 years old -- and that, the next morning, Epstein entered her bed and "pressed his body" into hers. 

• A victim identifed as "Jane" testified that she was taken to the ranch and abused when she was only 14 years old. “I just remember someone, at one point, just came into [my] room and said: ‘Jeffrey wants to see you,’ and then escorted me to see him.”

• The late Virginia Giuffre claimed to have been abused at the ranch, and that Epstein partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell instructed her to "massage" former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson there -- with "massage" mutually understood to mean sexual intimacy. 

• A Santa Fe massage therapist accused Epstein of sexually abusing her at the ranch. 

The most disturbing but least-substantiated claim was made anonymously -- an email in the possession of the DOJ said two females were buried in the hills near the ranch.  Last week, the New Mexico Chief of Criminal Affairs asked the DOJ to give his department "immediate access to a complete, unredacted version of file EFTA01250229" along with forensic information associated with the email and any DOJ documents associated with it.  

According to the Albuquerque Journal, the email was sent to a local radio host in 2019, written by someone claiming to be a former worker at the ranch. The author claimed that Epstein and Maxwell ordered the bodies of two foreign girls to buried in the hills. The girls were said to have been killed "by strangulation during rough fetish sex."     

The probe is expected to look beyond the wrongdoing of Epstein and Maxwell, with the potential to identify other participants in devious activities -- and those who looked the other way. “Many of the survivors had experiences in New Mexico, and as we’ve learned, there were local politicians and other people that were aware of what was happening in New Mexico,” said Sigrid McCawley, an attorney whose firm has represented hundreds of Epstein accusers. 

Epstein bought the property in 1993 and owned it until he died in a New York prison cell. In 2023, Epstein's estate sold the ranch to the family of Don Huffines, a former Texas state senator and current Republican candidate for state comptroller. The property has been renamed San Rafael Ranch, and the Huffines family says it plans to transform the ranch into a Christian retreat.

They may want to start with an exorcism.