Epstein survivor says it’s not too late to expose what happened at his New Mexico ranch
“Until we are heard, until survivors are heard and believed, then I don’t think there will ever be justice,” Benavidez, 52, said in a recent interview, the first since the Justice Department in January released millions of documents that drew renewed attention to Epstein’s activities at the ranch and missed opportunities to investigate them.
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The revelations, including an unsubstantiated anonymous claim that two “foreign girls” died during sex and were secretly buried on the property, prompted state authorities to launch new investigations this year — a criminal case led by the New Mexico Department of Justice and a “truth commission” led by the state Legislature.
Benavidez said she would gladly tell investigators what she endured. Even though Epstein is long dead and his main accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is in prison, Benavidez says more people need to be held accountable.
“I don’t think it’s too late for the truth to come out about the people who were involved, who helped him and who turned a blind eye to his crimes,” Benavidez said. She has not shared any names publicly.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he was determined to finish an investigation that should have been done years ago. His office raided the ranch in March, the first time law enforcement had done so. And he promised to give survivors a safe place to share their experiences.
“We’re going to do everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened there, follow every lead, no matter how uncomfortable it is or how long it takes, and most importantly, we have to center victims’ voices in this process,” Torrez told NBC News.
New Mexico has long been treated as a hidden card in the Epstein saga, although allegations of abuse there date back almost as far as those in Florida and New York.
He bought the ranch in 1993 and visited there several times a year, often accompanied by girls or young women. In 2008, he pleaded guilty in Florida to paying underage girls for sex and reached a deal with prosecutors that spared him a lengthy prison sentence and ended a broader federal investigation that included New Mexico. In 2019, federal authorities in New York arrested him on a new set of charges that did not mention New Mexico. The New Mexico attorney general’s office opened its own investigation into Epstein that year, but halted it at the request of New York prosecutors, ultimately sending the file to them.
Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, who led the 2019 investigation, said he expected New York prosecutors to share evidence that could be used to charge Epstein with state crimes, but he heard nothing from them — neither after Epstein was found dead in a jail cell in August 2019, nor after securing Maxwell’s conviction in December 2021.
Like the sweetheart deal struck two decades ago in Florida, the missed opportunities in New Mexico represent “a black eye in the justice system,” Balderas said. “Not everyone’s cases are reviewed the same way, and sometimes law enforcement and prosecutors don’t do a good job of sharing information and working together to get a conviction. »
Torrez said he has asked the Justice Department for unredacted copies of documents in the Epstein files that mention Zorro Ranch. The Justice Department said it welcomed the new investigation and stood ready to assist.
Benavidez, a New Mexico native, first came to the ranch in late 1999, when she was a newly licensed 22-year-old massage therapist. She said she was first hired to massage Maxwell, then Epstein. She remembered the beauty of the landscape as she drove to the ranch, which seemed intimidating and isolating. In an FBI interview, she described passing through security and driving down a winding dirt road to a mansion where she descended into a basement massage room, walking past photos of topless women.
At first, Benavidez said, Epstein and Maxwell seemed like rich, eccentric people with powerful connections who paid big money and could help him find more opportunities. Her impression darkened as Epstein’s massages became aggressively sexual; Benavidez said he raped her. Ashamed and afraid, she said nothing. When she tried to refuse requests to return, Epstein’s staff pushed her until she relented.
Benavidez said that for a while she thought she was the only one being mistreated at the ranch. “When I would go there and see all these girls that I thought were Victoria’s Secret models, there was no way he was going to do that to them,” she said.
It lasted two years. She stopped going to the ranch when Epstein asked her to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but the abuse haunted her and sent her drifting. For a long time, she blamed herself.
She kept the assaults a secret until Epstein’s arrest in 2019, when more victims began speaking out publicly. When she came forward, she met many more people, including five “sister survivors” who she leans on for support. “They helped me carry the weight of this very heavy issue. Without them, I couldn’t do this,” Benavidez said.
