The US Department of Justice’s recent disclosure of some 3m investigative documents under Congress’s Epstein Files Transparency Act has renewed attention on Zorro Ranch. Now, officials in New Mexico are investigating Epstein’s activities there: the attorney general announced the state would reopen their 2019 investigation put on hold at federal prosecutors’ request, and state legislators established a “truth commission” to look into past activity at Epstein’s ranch.
But veteran attorneys contend that investigating Epstein’s New Mexico activities nearly seven years after his arrest presents numerous logistical challenges. While the delay has all but certainly thwarted this important investigative avenue, the attorneys said, there are still multiple avenues authorities could pursue to try to get justice.
“A search warrant would have to be based on information that’s not stale. Somebody couldn’t come in and say: ‘Hey, seven years ago, something happened, and I just got around to telling you,’” said John Day, a New Mexico defense attorney and former prosecutor. “Now, it would have to be: ‘Well, we just uncovered something about a crime that occurred seven years ago that we didn’t know about until now.”
If authorities presented a judge with an adequate reason why information just surfaced, Day said, “then it’s very likely that they could get a search warrant if they can articulate facts about a crime, even if it’s an old crime, but it can’t be stale information”.
Even if a search did happen, the delay likely means “the value of anything that they can find would be minimal”, Day said. “You don’t know what has happened between the time Epstein was last there and the time the new people bought it, so that’s a problem.”
With the ranch potentially being fruitless as a source of evidence, Day said, authorities would likely start with “the human side” – finding ranch employees, contractors, “anybody local” who might have had some contact with Zorro. This could also include culling local news reports about parties held at Zorro to potentially yield more names, and examine entries in Epstein’s address book related to New Mexico – including women listed under “massage”.
