The New Mexico State Department of Justice said Wednesday it is investigating an allegation that the bodies of two underage girls were buried outside his remote New Mexico ranch, according to documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice. The late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein ordered the burial of two foreign girls outside his remote New Mexico ranch.
New Mexico Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Rodriguez said they had requested an unabridged copy of an email from 2019 from the U.S. Department of Justice. The allegation was contained in a document released by the Justice Department.
The US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declined to comment.
"We are actively investigating the allegations. We are conducting a detailed review of the allegations in light of the recent release of documents by the U.S. Department of Justice," Rodriguez said in an email when asked about the case.
The matter came a day after the New Mexico Legislature launched a full-scale investigation into allegations that Epstein sexually abused women and girls for more than two decades at his Zorro Ranch, located 30 miles south of Santa Fe.
This pressure from Democratic lawmakers to expose Epstein's crimes has now become a major political challenge for President Donald Trump.
The 2019 email was found in recently released Epstein-related documents by the US Department of Justice. The email was sent to New Mexico radio host Eddie Aragon, a few months after Epstein's death, who discussed Zorro Ranch on his show.
The sender of the email, claiming to be a former employee of Zorro Ranch, demanded a bitcoin in exchange for some videos. The emails he sent claimed to be from Epstein's home showed a financier engaging in sexual acts with underage girls.
Aragon said in a telephone interview that he believed the email to be genuine and immediately forwarded it to the FBI. Host Aragon claims he did not pay the sender or have any further contact with him.
However, the radio host said that he recently tried to reply to the email for the first time, but the email address was no longer active.
The email sent to Aragon stated that two foreign teenage girls were buried "somewhere in the mountains outside Zorro Ranch" at Epstein's orders. The email also claimed that the two died of "asphyxiation during a reckless and perverted sexual act."
A 2021 FBI investigation report, included in the latest version of the Epstein file, said Aragon went to the FBI office and reported the email. The sender of the email offered to provide seven sexual assault videos and information on the whereabouts of two foreign teenage girls buried outside the Zorro Ranch in exchange for a bitcoin.
Reuters has reviewed other Justice Department documents and found no further information about the allegations in these emails or how much truth investigators have found in these claims.
The Justice Department warned last year that some of the files released from the Epstein investigation contained "false and sensational claims." Some of these included anonymous allegations that investigators could not substantiate or, in some cases, were proven false.
In an interview on Wednesday, New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said that her office staff recently found the email while searching for the latest version of the Epstein file.
In a letter and statement to the US Department of Justice on February 10, Garcia Richard called on federal and state justice officials to fully investigate allegations of crimes committed on Epstein's ranch and surrounding public lands.
Epstein leased about 1,243 acres of government land surrounding the ranch in 1993. Garcia canceled that lease in September 2019 because, his office confirmed, Epstein was not using the land for livestock or farming. Instead, he was using it as a cover to protect the privacy of his ranch.
Epstein died in a New York prison in August 2019. At the time, prison authorities ruled his death a suicide.
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