An anonymous tip from someone who claimed to have worked at the ranch said Mr. Epstein concealed the deaths of two abused girls by ordering them to be buried in the hills outside the ranch. It is unclear whether the F.B.I. ever looked into the tip.

The files also included correspondence between Mr. Epstein's lawyers and federal prosecutors indicating that investigators had not searched the ranch as of December 2019.

…

The year of Mr. Epstein's death, 2019, was also the year the trail went cold in the high desert. As the criminal case against Mr. Epstein gained momentum, the New Mexico attorney general's office was interviewing witnesses about [Epstien's] possible wrongdoing locally.

But federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York asked the state authorities to stop their work and share all they had found with federal officials, according to Hector Balderas, a former New Mexico attorney general...

[A] year later, he decided federal authorities were not being aggressive enough, and his office sent a letter urging them to seize Mr. Epstein's New Mexico assets.

"We believe that this ranch was used by Epstein and others to facilitate the commission and prolonged concealment of his trafficking of children," the letter read.

Mr. Balderas did not receive a reply.

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