Reports suggest a Kiwi couple managed the notorious ranch. Photo / AP
Reports suggest a Kiwi couple managed the notorious ranch. Photo / AP
A couple from New Zealand were responsible for managing convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's sprawling New Mexico property, dubbed the "baby making ranch", reports suggest.
The bombshell claim was made in a radio interview by an anonymous contractor who worked at the ranch until 2006.
He told Albuquerque radio stationowner Eddy Aragon: "It's reasonably secure, some cameras, six or seven people [working there]. There was a ranch manager, a couple, who did the business operations.
"They were from New Zealand, husband and wife, [and] handled the management of the ranch. They were living at the front, not at the ranch. No one lived in the Epstein home apart from Jeffrey and his entourage."
The 10,000 acre Zorro Ranch was used by Epstein to entertain his VIP guests, with the disgraced financier allegedly filming the sordid activities via a series of security cameras, reports the Daily Mail.
The former contractor claimed that the ranch featured a 92sq m underground strip-club, an eight-person party shower and "weird lamps and sculptures of a sexual nature".
He also claimed that the estate was named Zorro Ranch in honour of the fictional masked character, saying: "The Zorro thing was a fetish thing for Zorro the character."
The revelation comes as two correctional officers responsible for guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself were charged with falsifying prison records.
Guards Toval Noel and Michael Thomas were accused in a grand jury indictment of neglecting their duties by failing to check on Epstein for nearly eight hours, and of fabricating log entries to show they had been making checks every 30 minutes, as required.
This Monday, July 8, 2019 photo shows Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch in Stanley, New Mexico. Photo / AP
Prosecutors allege that instead of making their required rounds, the two guards sat at their desks, browsed the internet and walked around the unit's common area. During one two-hour period, the indictment said, both appeared to have been asleep.
The charges against the officers are the first in connection with the wealthy financier's death in August at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, where he had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The city's medical examiner ruled Epstein's death a suicide. Prosecutors said surveillance cameras confirmed that no one else entered the area in which he was housed.
"As alleged, the defendants had a duty to ensure the safety and security of federal inmates in their care at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Instead, they repeatedly failed to conduct mandated checks on inmates, and lied on official forms to hide their dereliction," US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said.
A message left with union officials representing the guards wasn't immediately returned.
Epstein's death was a major embarrassment for the US Bureau of Prisons.
The cell where he died was in a high-security unit, famous for having held terrorists and drug cartel kingpins. Epstein's death, though, revealed the jail was suffering from problems including chronic staffing shortages that led to mandatory overtime for guards day after day and other staff being pressed into service as correctional officers.
