The Huge San Cristobal Ranch Shared 2 Miles of Fence Line with Epstein's Zorro Ranch. He Had Their Modem Number. He Asked Them to Share Costs of a Secret Communications Network. Who Owned It?
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PLEASE NOTE: I wrote a short, hard-news version of the main findings from this essay, for those who prefer that mode of transmission:
For everyone else, I offer this, the longer version:
I find stories when I’m not looking for them. Take this one, for example. The San Cristobal Ranch story I’m about to write, I mean. I was researching a different story altogether when it just sort of showed up, waving from across the fence line like a demented rodeo cowboy. Hey! You there! Look at me! And, yes, I know many of you call what I do “investigating,” but that word reminds me of cartoon dogs in trench coats, and the Pink Panther theme music. Researching isn’t really the right word either. What I do is obsess. I obsess on things. Puzzles. I like puzzles. And I’m one of those people who will lose days of sleep to finish one. The problem with the Zorro Ranch puzzle — well, one of the many problems with it — is that every time I snap one piece into place, three new joints appear in that piece. It’s a puzzle that grows exponentially, every time you think you’ve solved it.
I was looking at the lumps. The Zorro Ranch lumps. Rows and rows of them. About ten feet long, six feet wide. Located at the most southwestern edges of the property. Far from the houses. Far from everything. Lumps. Or were they holes? Maybe mounds. Maybe concave. I couldn’t tell, because sometimes structures on the ground, when viewed in satellite images, start to seem like they were painted by M.C. Escher — like stairs that go both up and down at the same time, except these were lumps that could have been bulging out of the ground towards the sky, of they could have been scooped out depressions in the earth. Graves already filled in, or graves just opened, if you will. It was hard to tell.
It was also, I realized, irresponsible to assume them graves at all, even if witnesses had told authorities they had seen “foreign girls,” likely children, killed at Zorro Ranch during “rough fetish sex.”
An anonymous email — now part of the DOJ Epstein files, document EFTA00067072 — sent to New Mexico radio host Eddy Aragon in November 2019 by someone claiming to be a former Zorro Ranch employee described two foreign girls strangled to death during “rough fetish sex” on the property, their bodies buried in the hills on Epstein’s orders. Aragon forwarded it to the FBI. For years, nothing happened.
That’s too gentle a description for what is described in that email — rough fetish sex. No. Rough and fetish and sex all imply consent. Just a bit of fun, got carried away, sorry! NO. What happened was brutal. The brutal rape and murder of children, by monstrous men the world continues to protect.
I suppose a thing like this might seem painted by M.C. Escher, to a psychopath, or the cop taking the witness statement, or to the traditional journalists who, when they cover the story at all, write it the way the cops did. Oops, she accidentally died during rough fetish sex. That’s the mound. When I squint, though? I see the grave. The children were raped to death by men who enjoyed it.
Anyway. I wanted to write about the mounds — and I did, a bit, last week. Asking for help figuring out what they are. Some of you have said dump truck loads from ground-clearing. Others have said ancient Puebloan ruins. Still looking into it.
And it was whilst doing that, whilst looking into it, that I decided to look at neighboring ranches to see if they had anything like those lumps. My assumption, which turned out to be dead wrong, of course, was that the other people with ranches around there were real ranchers. And real ranchers with real ranches, if they had these kinds of mounds, might render Epstein’s mounds harmless, a dead end. So I went to the Santa Fe County Assessor’s parcel-location tool and started to search, foot by foot. The images are better on that site than any other I’ve seen. Clearer. Crisp.
As I searched, red-eyed, sleepless, running on coffee, I found no other mounds. What I found instead were the names of the owners of the properties that shared fence line with Zorro Ranch. What I found, however, were Jeffrey Epstein’s next-door neighbors. And we all need to talk about them. Hard.
I knew about one of them already. The King family. You might have heard about them. Here, in fact. I wrote about them. Bruce King was the governor of New Mexico when Epstein bought Zorro Ranch from him back in 1993. It wasn’t called Zorro Ranch then, of course, because Epstein is the one who named his ranch after a fictional vigilante who pretends to be a high-society dude. Or was it the other way around? Hard to tell with people who live double lives which is the real life. Probably both. Probably neither. Lumps and graves, both.
At any rate, Epstein bought a portion of a bigger ranch owned by Bruce King in 1993. King kept the rest of it. He’s dead now, like Epstein, but his kids still own the leftover ranch, portions of which share fence line with Zorro Ranch. And Zorro Ranch still exists, except it’s called San Rafael Ranch now and it’s owned by Texas millioniares and Trump allies, Mary Catherine and Donald Huffines. Donald Huffines is running to be Texas States Comptroller as we speak. I’ve written about him and his wife, too. MAGA, Moscow-adjacent, definitely in the Trump inner circle. Their son Russel works in the Trump adminstration right now.
Anyway. Back to San Cristobal.
I also knew about the state-owned land tracts bordering Zorro Ranch that Epstein was leasing to graze cattle he didn’t own. Epstein was not a cowboy. But he pretended he was, so he could control those parts of the fence line around Zorro that belonged to the state of New Mexico. And New Mexico, being New Mexico, just let him.
What I did not know anything about at all until very recently was the San Cristobal Ranch. The one I mentioned ages and ages ago, at the top of this piece. So I looked into it.
I started by putting the term “San Cristobal” into the search bar for the Epstein files on the Dept. of Justice website. This returned just 11 results.
Before I get to those results, I want to remind you about a piece of art I wrote about here a few weeks ago. If you haven’t read that piece, please do.
To recap: On US Highway 285 — the road that runs south from Santa Fe through the nuclear corridor of New Mexico, past Lamy, past Stanley, past the turnoff for Zorro Ranch — there is an abandoned Standard Oil gas station. I found it the way I find a lot of things: by accident, while doing something else entirely. I was looking at the topography of the area on Google Maps when I noticed a label someone had placed on that abandoned station. It said: HIDDEN ART. So I looked.
On the exterior walls, an artist named Robert Harkness left behind a mural. It stopped me cold, for a bunch of reasons I wrote about in detail in two earlier pieces. One of those reasons is that the mural appears to contain a map — a rendering of the Zorro Ranch area and its surroundings.
Three figures stand in it, each holding a shovel. The figures, lifted from a famous depression-era chain gang photo, have been altered to bear a striking resemblance to Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, and Jeffrey Epstein. Someone has strung a wire along the old stencil, landing only on Donald J. Trump’s initials.
I believe each shovel tip points to a specific location on the map. One of the shovels point to public lands. One to Zorro Ranch. And, no, this is not fantastical. Harkness went to design college, and would have known, from art history courses, that artists have often left clues and maps in their works. That is, after all, the basis of the novel The Davinci Code.
One shovel tip points to a spot that falls on the section of San Cristobal Ranch in the area that shares a fence line with Zorro Ranch.
I don't know what Robert Harkness knew about Zorro Ranch and Jeffrey Epstein, if anything. He worked as assistant art director for Playboy right out of college. He was recruited to that job. Just as he was later recruited to be the art director at Outside magazine in Santa Fe. The owner of Outside, back then, also has a ranch in the same corridor as Zorro and San Cristobal.
What I can tell you FOR SURE is that shortly after he produced this artwork on the abandoned gas station, Harkness died of what his obituary describes as “fentanyl poisoning.” Not overdose, folks. Poisoning. His foundation website says he put his trust in people he shouldn’t have.
But back to those emails.
Six of them were the same email chain, broken off at various places. Four of them were the same “little black book” pages, sometimes fully redacted, sometimes not fully redacted. One email was unrelated to San Cristobal Ranch in New Mexico, and pertained instead to San Cristobal, Puerto Rico. So, two. Two results, in the end, in the files: an email chain, and a black book entry.
They are both significant. I’m sure some Maga Guy Out There is going to read this and his cognitive dissonance will drive him to tell me no, they’re not, and you’re not even that hot you fat old hag. So let me preemptively respond by saying Why algorithm does this man exist in my orbit just please God tell me why.
Let’s start with Epstein’s little black book. It’s somewhat normal to have one’s neighbor’s contact information in your address book. I will give you that. Especially if you live in a far-flung rural spot such as the ones occupied by the Zorro Ranch and its neighbors. So, naturally, there is an entry for the San Cristobal Ranch.
What is not somewhat normal at all is to also have the modem number for your neighbor’s ranch listed among that contact information. You do not use your neighbor’s modem, generally. Or at least I don’t. Because I’m not an asshole. But Epstein had the modem number for San Cristobal Ranch in his black book. He does not have the modem number for anyone or anything else that I can find in the black book.
Curious, right?
But when you read the email chain, it become less curious and more Holy Shit Are You Fucking Kidding Me Right Now.
The email chain is from March 2016. In a nutshell, it’s Jeffrey Epstein freaking out about how they need a new and far more powerful private internet communications situation at Zorro Ranch. And they need it now.
Zorro’s ranch manager, Brice Gordon, tells Epstein he’s contacted someone named Vito at San Cristobal Ranch and is waiting to hear back “regarding the sharing of the build out cost at that location.” Epstein’s longtime accountant, Rich Kahn, is copied.
Epstein, who is usually reserved in his emails, is markedly not reserved here. He writes: “please push. dont wait , call again.”
After that, Gordon contacts his counterpart, Jermaine Ruan, at Epstein’s Little St. James island to ask for the specifications for the microwave radio communications system they have been using there.
From that point, as I documented in a piece two weeks ago, Gordon oversees the construction of a massive private microwave radio communications structure at Zorro Ranch, one that the contractor who helps to install it describes as very expensive and of military/industrial size and quality.
It is unclear from the emails whether Vito ever got back to Gordon, and whether San Cristobal Ranch did, indeed, share in the build out cost.
What is clear from publicly available FCC records, however, is that the system was built and licensed, and that the Huffines (the new owners of the ranch), while they discontinued several OTHER FCC licenses for the ranch, kept THIS one alive with two licences, a bi-drectional system. And they kept it in the original name, Zorro Development Corp., with its original manager, Brice Gordon. It is operating as you read this.
Let’s consider what all of this means, in the context of what was happening in Epstein’s life at that moment in time.
In March 2016, the FBI and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are ramping up their Epstein investigations. Epstein knows, from his past conviction in 2008, that New York, Florida and even the U.S. Virgin Islands have law enforcement organizations that historically have not been reluctant to investigate him.
I believe this is the moment he realizes he has to move the technological center of whatever kompromat blackmail operation he’s been running, off the island, and replicate it at the ranch. Why? Because New Mexico has been extremely lenient with and loyal to Epstein, and he has likely decided the best shot he has of concealing evidence and continuing operations lies there.
Epstein did not need money. He did not NEED to borrow San Cristobal’s modem. Nor did he need to partner with them on building a new industrial/military grade microwave communications network. He was a notoriously private man, running what is increasingly thought to have been a pedophile ring that gathered photo and video evidence (cameras in nearly every room, according to survivors and FBI) of powerful people involved in criminal acts of rape with children and young women, so those powerful people could be controlled through blackmail. This would mean Epstein was providing his kompromat to someone else. He was not the one doing the blackmailing and controlling. He was the one collecting the goods with which to do those things. And the people above him in this network probably had a lot to lose if the whole truth about it came out. I think Epstein was under orders to lock it all down, in New Mexico, before the shit hit the fan.
I can’t PROVE this. Of course I can’t. But I can connect plausible dots in a plot line based on available evidence.
This all would seem to indicate that the owner or owners of San Cristobal Ranch were perhaps aware of what Epstein was doing. Certainly after his conviction and prison time in Florida in 2008 and 2009, his next-door neighbors, with whom he shared a modem and to whom he turned in 2016 to share costs of a new communications build out, would have known exactly who he was.
Which all led me to want to know: Who owned the San Cristobal Ranch?
The answer is a guy named Henry Singleton.
And what I found out about this guy (named Henry Singleton) is both fascinating and terrifying.
Tell y’all more in part two of this article, tomorrow.
I’ve already babbled long enough for one day.
I offer these posts freely, but your support is necessary and appreciated. Please subscribe, paid if you’re able, and share my work if it moves you. You may also leave a one-time or recurring tip in any amount. Thank you! A.
PLEASE, never stop babbling, it’s one of the few lifelines to sane and rational thinking that remain
Really appreciate your work on this, thank you, Alisa! Something comes to mind as I look at the image you shared - I wonder if there are LiDAR images of these tracts of land. In other states (I don’t know about NM), LiDAR can be used to monitor land and its changes over time. For instance, it can be used by state Departments of Natural Resources to monitor waterways and map needed conservation interventions. Might be a potential resource if NM does this?