The Governor's Ranch

On October 6, 2009, a pilot named Larry Eugene Morrison sat for a sworn deposition. Morrison had flown for Jeffrey Epstein for years — Gulfstream IIs, Boeing 727s, the fleet that moved people between Palm Beach, New York, the Virgin Islands, and New Mexico. When the questioning turned to Zorro Ranch, Epstein's 10,000-acre property outside Stanley, New Mexico, Morrison was asked a direct question.1

"Have you ever met Governor Bill Richardson?"

"I saw him," Morrison said. "He was at Ranch Central. He had been invited for dinner, or something, at the main house and they were coming down to get him."1

Morrison was not at the dinner. He was at Ranch Central — the staff area several miles from the main house. He saw Bill Richardson arrive. He saw someone escort Richardson toward the main house. And that was all. But sworn testimony does not need to be dramatic to be devastating. It places the sitting Governor of New Mexico at a convicted sex trafficker's ranch, by name, under oath.

Richardson was never investigated. He died on August 28, 2023.2

The Ranch

Zorro Ranch was not one of Epstein's better-known properties. It lacked the notoriety of the Palm Beach mansion, the Manhattan townhouse, or Little St. James island. But for New Mexico politics, it was the most consequential.

The property was built on land that had previously been associated with former Governor Bruce King — Richardson's predecessor in the New Mexico governor's mansion. Epstein purchased and developed it into a sprawling compound: the main house on a hilltop, Ranch Central below for staff and pilots, and thousands of acres of high-desert isolation between the property and the nearest town.1

Bill Richardson served as Governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011. Before that, he had been a U.S. Congressman representing New Mexico's 3rd district for fourteen years and served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton. He ran for president in 2008 and was nominated by President Obama to be Secretary of Commerce before withdrawing amid an unrelated federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations in his administration.3

He was, in other words, the most powerful political figure in New Mexico for decades — and he was a guest at Epstein's ranch during the years when victims were being brought there.

The Money

Epstein did not simply host Richardson. He funded him.

Campaign finance records show that Epstein donated more than $100,000 to Richardson's political campaigns through the Zorro Trust — a shell entity named after the ranch itself.4 The donations flowed through a corporate vehicle rather than from Epstein personally, a pattern consistent with how Epstein structured financial relationships to obscure the source.5

The Zorro Trust was not a charitable foundation or a political action committee. It was a private trust controlled by Epstein, managed by his longtime attorneys Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn — the same men who would later serve as executors of his estate and defendants in four simultaneous civil lawsuits filed by trafficking survivors.6

The financial relationship between Epstein and Richardson was not hidden — it appeared in public campaign filings. But it was structured through an entity whose name would mean nothing to anyone who did not know about Epstein's New Mexico property. The donations looked like support from a trust. They were, in practice, payments from a sex trafficker to a sitting governor — routed through the same ranch where victims were abused.

The Scheduler

The relationship between Richardson and Epstein was not casual or incidental. It was managed.

Emails from Lesley Groff — Epstein's scheduler who for eighteen years booked victims' flights, arranged their visas, and coordinated the logistics of the trafficking operation — show ongoing coordination with Richardson's office.7 Groff was not scheduling policy meetings. She was the same person who arranged a South African victim's passport and airline tickets to bring her to New York for abuse. The fact that she also coordinated with a governor's office reveals how deeply Epstein's legitimate and criminal operations were intertwined.

In August 2010, an email from Janis Hartley — Richardson's Deputy Chief of Staff — coordinated ranch visits with Epstein's operation.8 This was not a one-time dinner invitation. It was an ongoing institutional relationship, managed through official channels, between a governor's office and a man who was by then a registered sex offender.

Richardson's first term as governor began in 2003. Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state charges in 2008 and registered as a sex offender. Richardson continued in office until 2011. The scheduling coordination documented in the emails spans this period — including after Epstein's conviction. A sitting governor's office was actively coordinating visits with a registered sex offender's ranch.

The Victim

In 2004, a South African woman identified in court documents as "Juliette" was taken to Zorro Ranch by Epstein. She had been recruited in Cape Town two years earlier, when Epstein was traveling with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker on his Boeing 727. At the ranch, Epstein abused her again.9

During this visit, Epstein introduced Juliette to "another important government official" — a figure the complaint distinguishes from the former president she had encountered in Cape Town. The word "another" in paragraph 50 of the complaint explicitly marks this as a different person.9

The sitting Governor of New Mexico in 2004 was Bill Richardson.

The complaint does not name Richardson. The identification rests on the convergence of evidence: Morrison's sworn testimony placing Richardson at the ranch, the campaign finance records documenting the financial relationship, the scheduling emails showing ongoing coordination, and the fact that Richardson was the most prominent New Mexico government official during the period described.147

No law enforcement agency has confirmed or denied that Richardson is the official referenced in paragraph 50. But the convergence of independent evidence streams — a pilot's deposition, campaign filings, scheduling emails, and a victim's complaint — all point to the same conclusion.

"He had been invited for dinner, or something, at the main house and they were coming down to get him."

The Silence

In 2007, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida signed a Non-Prosecution Agreement with Epstein that included blanket immunity for unnamed "potential co-conspirators."10 The NPA was negotiated in secret, kept from victims in violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act, and drafted broadly enough to cover anyone who participated in or benefited from the trafficking operation.

Whether the NPA's immunity provision covers political associates who visited the ranch and accepted campaign donations — as distinct from those who directly participated in trafficking — has never been legally tested. The provision was written to prevent exactly that kind of testing.

Richardson was nominated by President Obama to serve as Secretary of Commerce in December 2008. He withdrew his nomination on January 4, 2009, citing an unrelated federal grand jury investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving a California company that had done business with New Mexico.3 That investigation was later closed without charges.

But the withdrawal occurred four months after Epstein's guilty plea and sex offender registration. Richardson's financial ties to Epstein through the Zorro Trust were on the public record. No reporting at the time connected the Commerce Secretary withdrawal to the Epstein relationship — the pay-to-play investigation provided sufficient explanation. Whether anyone in the vetting process examined the Zorro Trust donations is unknown.

Bill Richardson died on August 28, 2023, at the age of 75. He was in Massachusetts at the time, having recently returned from a trip to North Korea where he had negotiated the release of a U.S. Army private. The obituaries described a distinguished career in diplomacy, energy policy, and governance.2

None mentioned Zorro Ranch.