Tag: new mexico

Human Remains Found Near Guthrie Home Create New Mystery, Fail to Solve Current One

A new find near the Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie did nothing to clarify the mystery of her disappearance, but instead added a new one.

Human remains were found about five miles from the Tucson home from which Guthrie disappeared on Feb. 1, according to the New York Post.

A bone was discovered by a livestreamer who was conducting a search of the area.

Tucson police acted quickly to tamp down any speculation the bone could belong to the 84-year-old mother of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie.

“This will be a prehistoric anthropological investigation,” Tucson Police Department said, according to KVOA-TV.

Police said the bone was at least 50 years old, and there is no criminal investigation forthcoming.

The University of Arizona’s Anthropology Department is assisting the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner in ascertaining details about the bone.

The Post noted that Native American artifacts have been found in the area where the bone was found.

This week, FBI Director Kash Patel criticized the way the Pima County Sheriff’s Office conducted the early stages of the investigation into Guthrie’s disappearance

“For four days we were kept out of the investigation,” Patel said on Sean Hannity’s podcast, according to ABC News.

“The first 48 hours of anyone’s disappearance are the most critical,” he said.

Patel criticized Pima County Chris Nanos for sending DNA samples to a private lab instead of the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.

“We have Quantico, best lab in the world,” Patel said.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Office pushed back on both criticisms.

“Sheriff Nanos responded to the scene the night of the incident, providing immediate local leadership and oversight. A member of the FBI Task Force was also notified and present at that scene working alongside our personnel. The FBI was promptly notified by both our department and the Guthrie family. While the FBI Director was not on scene, coordination with the Bureau began without delay,” it said in a statement.

Decisions about processing evidence “were made on scene based on operational needs,” the statement said.

“The laboratory utilized by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI Laboratory in Quantico have worked in close partnership from the outset and continue to collaborate in the analysis of evidence,” the statement said.

“We remain committed to a thorough, coordinated, and fact-based investigation and will continue working closely with our federal partners as the process moves forward,” the statement said.

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DOJ Sues New Mexico and Albuquerque Over Laws Blocking Federal Immigration Enforcement

The United States has filed a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction against the State of New Mexico, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, the City of Albuquerque, and Albuquerque Mayor Timothy Keller, alleging that the implementation of House Bill 9 (HB9), entitled the “Immigrant Safety Act,” and Albuquerque City Ordinance O-26-15, entitled the “Safer Community Places Ordinance (SCPO),” infringes on federal immigration enforcement authority.

Through HB9, the State of New Mexico is trying to abolish decades of long-standing, voluntary partnerships between local governments and federal authorities that are essential for enforcing immigration laws and keeping the federal immigration system running as Congress intended.

“New Mexico is attempting to regulate immigration policy, something the federal government is clearly and uniquely empowered by the Constitution to do,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Our filings seek to halt the state’s unconstitutional actions by preserving cooperation between federal, state, and local law enforcement and allowing federal immigration officials to enforce the law.”

Both HB9 and the SCPO seek to block federal agents from using any local government property to carry out their work. Additionally, by unlawfully requiring private businesses to tip off illegal aliens about immigration enforcement activities, the SCPO attempts to harbor and shield illegal aliens from detection by federal immigration authorities and poses an obstacle to the enforcement of federal immigration law.

“The State of New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque seek to intentionally obstruct federal law enforcement by preventing cooperation between local governments and the federal government,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison for the District of New Mexico. “HB9 and the SCPO unlawfully interfere with federal immigration enforcement, illegally discriminate against federal operations, and violate constitutional protections regarding contracts and federal supremacy. Additionally, by barring public entities from participating in federal immigration detention in New Mexico, HB9 jeopardizes nearly 300 jobs and the economy of Otero County. Our lawsuit asks the court to declare these laws invalid and issue an immediate injunction to stop them from being enforced.”

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New Mexico’s Meta Trial Opens with Judge Wary of State’s Broad Surveillance Demands

A New Mexico judge spent his first morning of the Meta remedies trial signaling that he doesn’t plan to become “a one-person legislator, judge and executive branch enforcer,” and the privacy stakes of that reluctance run deeper than the child safety framing suggests.

The bench trial opened Monday in Santa Fe before First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid, the second phase of a case that already produced a $375 million jury verdict against Meta in March.
State prosecutors now want the judge to rewrite how Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp operate inside New Mexico, with a remedy list that reaches well past algorithm tweaks into the architecture of identity verification and encrypted messaging itself.

Before opening statements, Biedscheid told both sides he held “some concerns” about the New Mexico Department of Justice’s proposals. “I’m probably not the easiest sell on an idea where I would become a one-person legislature, judge and executive branch enforcer of administrative code provisions,” he said.

The warning lands at a moment when several of the state’s requested fixes look like permanent surveillance infrastructure dressed up as protection. It start with age verification. The state wants Meta ordered to confirm the age of every New Mexico user, an obligation that cannot be met by asking people to type a birth year.

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New Mexico Police Question Epstein’s Zorro Ranch Staff About Former Prince Andrew’s Visits

New Mexico’s Zorro Ranch probe is looking into visits by a fallen British Royal.

Disgraced former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has lost all his Royal titles and privileges over his decades-long association with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their sex trafficking ring.

But, as bad as his situation has become, there may be more trouble incoming for him, not only with the UK police investigating him for ‘gross misconduct in public office’, but in the US state of New Mexico, too.

First reported by the Mirror and picked up by dozens of other outlets, it has emerged that staff who worked for Jeffrey Epstein at his shady Zorro Ranch have been questioned about Andrew’s visits.

The Sun reported:

“More than a dozen former employees of the ranch are said to have been quizzed by cops working for the state’s Department of Justice. […] The housekeepers, ranch hands and managers have been asked who stayed at the New Mexico property and what they saw while employed there. Shamed Andrew’s visits were at the top of the list for investigators, it is understood.”

“A source told the publication: ‘The staff have been asked about guests to the property. It includes the former prince who stayed at the ranch. Detectives are trying to build up a picture of what he, Epstein and others did while at Zorro’.”

Andrew reportedly visited Zorro Ranch on several occasions.

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Meta raises specter of shutting down service to New Mexico in legal clash over child safety

Meta is raising the prospect of shutting down its social media services in New Mexico in response to a push by state prosecutors for fundamental changes to the company’s platforms, including Instagram, to protect the mental health and safety of children.

The possibility emerged amid legal gamesmanship in the runup to a bench trial next week on allegations that Meta poses a public nuisance. It’s the second phase of a case that already resulted in $375 million in civil penalties on a jury’s determination that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Prosecutors are asking the court to order a series of changes to child accounts on social media aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.

Meta executives have emphasized that the company continuously improves child safety and addresses compulsive social media use. The company says its being singled out among hundreds of apps that teens use.

In a court filing unsealed Thursday, Meta said it was unfeasible for the company to meet a proposed requirement for 99% accuracy in verifying that child users are at least 13 years old, among other demands.

“As a practical matter, this requirement effectively requires Meta to shut down its services — for all users in the state — or else comply with impossible obligations,” Meta said in the filing.

Such a shutdown across a population of 2.1 million residents in New Mexico could silence personal communication on Meta’s immensely popular platforms, which also include Facebook and WhatsApp, and also impact their use for commercial advertising.

By withdrawing from New Mexico, Meta would satisfy any concerns about harm to children, but the message could appear intentionally hostile and might lead to unintended consequences, said Eric Goldman, codirector of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

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An Arsenal of Guns Were Stolen From Epstein’s Zorro Ranch Back in 2018, but Staff Would Not Cooperate With Police Investigation

No cooperation with the cops was the norm.

During the absolute deluge of DOJ-released information about the Jeffrey Epstein trafficking ring that we’ve had access to, plenty of information concerned his many properties: his Manhattan townhouse, his Palm Beach mansion, and of course, his ‘Pedophile Island’ of Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands.

The property less talked about, until now, was the New Mexico ‘Zorro’ Ranch – but now, more and more information is coming to light – to the point where New Mexico police raided the property, looking for the bodies of two young women reportedly buried in the desert after getting killed during a rough sex session.

And yesterday (28), it was reported that ‘dozens of guns were reportedly stolen from Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch back in 2018’ a year before he was arrested.

Not only that, but also that Epstein’s staff refused to cooperate when police tried to investigate.

The New York Post reported:

“Much of the 32-weapon arsenal was stolen from a ‘very large gun safe’ in a garage at the pedo’s mysterious New Mexico property, while some were also snatched from two other buildings on the grounds in August 2018, a New Mexico State Police report obtained by the Santa Fe New Mexican showed.

The buildings had apparently been broken into, with at least one window smashed in the garage. Tire tracks were also found cutting across the desert grounds and leading to a slashed-open fence.”

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Sickening new claims about men being gang raped and women killed in ‘sex games’ at Epstein’s Zorro ranch come to light in new documentary

Sickening new claims about men being gang raped and women killed in ‘sex games’ at Jeffrey Epstein‘s secluded New Mexico ranch have emerged in a new documentary.

A 60 Minutes Australia interview with Epstein survivors and investigators has unveiled some of the alleged abuse that occurred at the pedophile financier’s sprawling Zorro Ranch in Stanley, about 30 miles south of Santa Fe.

The FBI received a tip from a Zorro Ranch staffer in 2019 claiming two foreign girls had been buried on the estate, Democrat congresswoman Melanie Stansbury said.

The pair had ‘died by strangulation during rough, fetish sex,’ the tip stated, adding that their alleged burial was ordered by Epstein. 

Stansbury, who has reviewed the Epstein files and is leading the charge for justice, further claimed that men were drugged and raped at the ranch.

It is not the first time the lawmaker has alleged that men or young boys were being assaulted and trafficked by Epstein.

‘A man actually claims that he met Jeffrey Epstein, was brought to the ranch, he was drugged and he describes in detail a scene in which multiple young men were raped at the ranch in front of him after he was drugged,’ Stansbury told the documentary.

She added that Jeffrey Epstein was a ‘serial abuser’ and a ‘super predator.’

Chauntae Davies, who says she was abused across multiple Epstein properties from 2001 to 2005, told the documentary that Zorro Ranch was the ‘scariest’ of all.

She recalled how she would sit in her bedroom at the property like a ‘mouse in a trap’ as she waited for someone to knock on her door and say: ‘Jeffrey is ready for his massage now.’

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Ghislaine Maxwell’s Father Sold Bugged Israeli Software to Two Nuclear Weapons Labs in New Mexico. Then His Daughter Led Jeffrey Epstein to Purchase a Ranch Located Halfway Between Them.

In 1985, a British media mogul walked into Sandia National Laboratories — one of the most sensitive nuclear weapons facilities in the United States — and signed a contract to install surveillance software that federal investigators would later allege was engineered to spy on its own users.

In 1993, a convicted sex offender purchased a ranch at the precise geographic midpoint between that facility and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the other crown jewel of American nuclear weapons research. He equipped that ranch with an industrial-sized spy-grade private microwave communications link running directly to a relay tower at Sandia Crest.

In 2023, a Texas family with documented ties to Russian officials and the Trump White House purchased that ranch, terminated most of its federal communications licenses — but kept the microwave link to Sandia Crest running, in the dead man’s company name.

The British media mogul was Robert Maxwell. His daughter is Ghislaine Maxwell. The sex offender was Jeffrey Epstein. The Texas family is Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines.

These documented facts are all drawn from federal court records, FCC license filings, FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the Epstein files, congressional testimony, published investigative reporting, and this reporter’s own review of primary sources.

What follows is a chronological account of what the records show — and of what New Mexico journalism and law enforcement has failed, for forty years, to ask.

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Meta ordered to pay $375 MILLION for not protecting minors from predators online

A jury has found that Meta failed to protect children from sexual predators as well as misled users, and the tech giant has been ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties.

A New Mexico jury found in the landmark case that Meta misled users about the platform’s safety and did not protect children being exploited, thereby violating the state’s laws. The jury made the decision after there were testimonies from witnesses over the course of six weeks. Witnesses included ex-executives from Meta, teachers, as well as online safety experts, per the New York Post.

The prosecutors in the state argued that Meta had hidden the extent to which the platform endangered children with the threat of sexual predators using the social media platform to target minors. Facebook and Instagram failed to enforce their policies of those under 13 not having profiles and algorithms allegedly made it easier to target minors for sex trafficking and harassment.

“The safety issues that you’ve heard about in this case, weren’t mistakes,” New Mexico attorney Linda Singer said on Monday. “They were a product of a corporate philosophy that chose growth and engagement over children’s safety. And young people in this state and around the country have borne the cost.”

Meta has vowed to appeal to the ruling in the case. “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online,” a spokesman said in a statement in response to the verdict.

The attorneys for New Mexico had been seeking $2 billion in penalties against Meta, significantly more than what was given as a penalty to Meta. The case was brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. In closing arguments, Meta attorney Kevin Huff said of the case, “Meta has built innovative, automated tools to protect people. Meta has 40,000 people working to make its apps as safe as possible.”

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Rocket scientist and Air Force general linked to UFOs vanish under similar strange circumstances five months apart

A retired Air Force general known in UFO circles has gone missing during a hike in New Mexico, just months after a former colleague disappeared in a nearly identical case. 

US Major General William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen on the morning of February 27 as he left his Albuquerque home with only a backpack, wallet and .38-caliber revolver for a trail run, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.

Sources previously told The New York Post that McCasland was a ‘gatekeeper’ and ‘participant’ in the UFO community.

His disappearance has only fueled speculation around the disappearance of 60-year-old Monica Reza, who had worked on a rocket project overseen by McCasland, who also went missing in June 2025. 

In a chillingly similar case, Reza was last seen hiking in a California forest with a colleague, smiling and waving moments before she ‘vanished off the face of the earth,’ according to NewsNation. 

For months, authorities and volunteers have combed the area using every resource at their disposal, but the aerospace engineer remains missing without a trace. 

At a recent press conference, Sheriff John Allen said a Silver Alert was issued for McCasland after reports of a ‘mental fog’ in the months before his disappearance, adding that he had no other known health problems. 

Yet despite an intensive search involving drones, helicopters, ground crews and K-9 units, the avid outdoorsman – and any trace of his belongings – also remains missing. 

‘Let me be straight. We’ve had a lot of tips, and we will go through every tip. But there are some tips with some outlandish theories, conspiracy theories,’ the sheriff said.

‘We will look into everything, but we are trying as a law enforcement agency and entity,’ he added.

The general’s wife, Susan McCasland, posted on Facebook to set the record straight amid what she described as ‘misinformation’ about her husband’s disappearance. 

‘It is true that Neil had a brief association with the UFO community,’ she wrote. ‘This connection is not a reason for someone to abduct Neil.

‘Though at this point with absolutely no sign of him, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported.’

Just nine months ago, Reza – known professionally as Monica Jacinto at Aerojet Rocketdyne as a material scientist – was last seen hiking on the popular Mount Waterman Trail in the Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles. 

Like McCasland, she loved hiking. She was just 30ft behind the man she was with when she vanished on what was described as a ‘normal day,’ according to NewsNation.

‘He turned around, next thing you know, she was just completely gone,’ the outlet reported.

‘Rescue teams spent days looking for her, but actually never recovered her body.’

Reza worked for Aerojet Rocketdyne, a high-profile company funded for years by NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory, according to SpaceNews.

In the 1990s, she engineered a nickel-based superalloy that could survive extreme oxygen environments without added weight – technology that helped create the AR1 engine, set to replace Russian RD-180 engines on United Launch Alliance rockets. 

Her patented invention brought her into McCasland’s sphere, as he oversaw the Air Force group that funded early-2000s research on advanced materials for reusable spacecraft and weapons systems. 

McCasland’s Air Force biography reveals he oversaw advanced materials as director of the Space Vehicle Directorate’s materials wing and commanded the Phillips Research Site at Kirtland Air Force Base from 2001 to 2004.

His roles ultimately had a direct connection to Reza’s highly successful research. 

The general had also led research at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which Marik Von Rennenkampff, a former Obama-era national security analyst, described as ‘where all the super-secret research happens,’ CNN reported. 

On the day he vanished, McCasland spoke with a repair person at his home at 10am, while his wife left around an hour later for a medical appointment, the sheriff’s office said. 

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