The Show for May 5, 2025: Epstein's New Mexico ranch, at-home chemo and more

Jeffrey Epstein's island and New York apartment have been highly scrutinized as his crimes have become clear. Now his New Mexico ranch is the subject of a statewide “truth commission.” Plus, the effort to allow more cancer patients to get their chemotherapy treatments at home.

Transcript

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I'm Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up, why an attorney thinks the judge who ruled against the state Water Department in a case about housing got it right.

MARK BRODIE: And the great stuff transfer is happening from boomers to their kids. How to spot the best thrifting finds.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren will face off against a slew of candidates in the race for the tribe’s presidency in November: 15 challengers to be exact.

Nygren took the tribe by storm when he beat out incumbent Jonathan Nez four years ago. But since, he has faced mounting scrutiny over allegations of ethics violations and misuse of public funds. So, it was after much speculation that he officially announced he would run again last March with his signature black open crown hat as a prop.

BUU NYGREN: Now I’ll be tossing my hat into the race for Navajo Nation President. Let’s keep building on the momentum that we’ve built so far. Keep moving forward. Wólibee Yideeskạ́ạ́góó.

LAUREN GILGER: But he’ll have some real competition, and here to talk about it all is our own Gabriel Pietrorazio, who covers Indigenous affairs here at KJZZ. Good morning, Gabe.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Good morning, Lauren.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. So President Nygren has found himself in the hot seat quite a bit since coming into office as kind of a changemaker candidate, this businessman outsider kind of candidate. What was he accused of here?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Essentially he was accused of misusing public funds and using basically the treasury to pay for things that shouldn’t be allowed to do so through his former chief of staff, Patrick Sandoval.

And there were ethics complaints filed by a special prosecutor based out of Albuquerque, and that is still ongoing. That’s a pending matter, legal matter ... that’s working its way through Window Rock and the courts there.

And President Nygren’s challengers are using that as political leverage essentially to help bolster their primary candidacy bids in this race ahead of July.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. We’ll talk about that more in a moment, but that special prosecutor you mentioned called for basically his immediate resignation. As you said, that’s still working its way through the courts, but the council is also trying to oust him. Was it surprising, you think, Gabe, that he decided to run again?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: I had a lot of discussions with President Nygren over the last year-plus, and it would come up from time to time, and it wasn’t ever certain either way. I think there was that opportunity to leave the door open, so to speak, for a bid. And I think it was a bit surprising to some that he would run again.

But there are still a number of his supporters on the reservation, specifically who are supporting him and trying to keep moving forward, as his new slogan focuses on, for this time around as opposed to four years ago.

LAUREN GILGER: Moving forward. All right. OK, so let’s talk about some of these challengers, Gabe. Sixteen candidates is a whole lot of candidates, but there are some standouts, it sounds like, in these challengers.

Tell us about one of these kind of notable people on the ballot here, or who maybe will be on the ballot, who seems to be kind of taking no names. He’s really going after Nygren. His name is Justin Jones. Tell us about him.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: That’s right, Justin Jones. A bit of background: He’s from Rough Rock, which is in northeastern Arizona, just north of Ganado, south of Kayenta. He was actually an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm vet, served in the Marines, and he got his J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law.

And he’s been really focused on fundamental law, which is a guiding principle in Navajo law essentially that dictates how the Diné people kind of engage with government and each other. And so he’s looking at a lot of these concerns within the current administration, and he claims that there’s corruption at every corner of Window Rock. That’s one of his talking points on the campaign trail. Making stops here in Scottsdale all the way to Albuquerque, making a lot of time interfacing with different Navajo peoples living both on and off the reservation ahead of the primary.

And one of the things — we talk about politicians and their star-making moments — this was his moment, essentially, was when the invoices that we were talking about earlier were released by the House speaker, Crystalyne Curley, who chairs the Navajo Nation Council as part of the ousting effort against Nygren. Where there were about two dozen or so invoices for charges that shouldn’t be applied effectively to the administration. And one of them detailed an argument that President Nygren had with his wife that made viral waves, so to speak, on social media.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. And here he is talking a little bit about that.

JUSTIN JONES: To get out of town because the president was sick of her [bleep]. President needed to get away for his expenses and travel. If the Navajo Nation is going to pay us $3,000, maybe some of us we need to intentionally get in an argument with our wives.

LAUREN GILGER: Hmm. All right. So let’s talk then, Gabe, about the current speaker of the Navajo Nation Council who you just mentioned, Crystalyne Curley. She’s also running.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: That’s right. And I would say she’s probably been the most vocal opponent within the government. She’s not, obviously, part of the Nygren administration, but has been the most vocal in the ousting efforts. There’s no blood lost between both her and Nygren, and I think she’s trying to represent that in her bid as she talked about recently during her campaign announcement as well.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, let’s hear that.

CRYSTALYNE CURLEY: I recognize that many of our Navajo people feel disengaged and dissatisfied. And more than ever, our people want to be heard. Our people want to have a seat at the table when it comes to decisions that affect all of us. Our people need a leader in the office of the president who will bring people together, not divide us.

LAUREN GILGER: Gabe, there has never been a woman president of the Navajo Nation, right? Will that kind of play into her campaign?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: I think it certainly has an edge. We had talked before about Richelle Montoya, who was the vice president under Nygren, who accused him of sexual harassment. That was later found not to be the case by a special investigator. There was a possibility that Montoya would step up to become the first, and that’s not happening at this point in time, so it clears the way for Curley to possibly take that moniker.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. So, Gabe, how do these elections work on the Navajo Nation? This is a sovereign nation. They will have a primary in July, a general election at the same time as the rest of the general elections on Nov. 3. But they don’t have, like, political parties, right?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: That’s correct. The candidates themselves would essentially ascribe to a party, they can in their respective states whether they live in Arizona or Utah or New Mexico, depending on what part of Navajo Nation you’re in. But as it pertains as a candidate running for Navajo government, there are no official parties.

You can kind of tell based on their political affiliations where their leanings are. We saw that, the kind of the meshing of political ideologies when Jonathan Nez ran with Myron Lizer, who’s also running in this race. He is an outwardly Republican Trump supporter who aligned with Jonathan Nez, who’s a Democrat running now for Congress.

So, we saw that previously, and that’s essentially how this works is that each of the candidates will run on their own, and then after the primary occurs, they will then have a period of time to pick their vice presidential partners, running mates essentially, to create a ticket. And the top two of the 16 will be in the general election.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So last 30 seconds then, Gabe. What do we know about Nygren’s popularity after these accusations, the impact of this kind of scandal? Like, do you think we’re going to have a real race here?

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: I think it’s going to be competitive. I think the numbers show that only two of those 16 candidates will move forward. With every additional person on the ballot — and you’ll be able to see all of those names on our website here from The Show — that it takes out some of the lead that could be accrued in the primary. So I think this field is really large, and it’ll be as competitive, I think, as ever at this time for this race.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. We’ll watch and see. KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio joining us. Gabe, thanks so much.

GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: A couple of weeks ago, we brought you a conversation with Kathleen Ferris from ASU's Kyl Center for Water Policy. We were talking about a recent court ruling that found the State Department of Water Resources illegally changed how it evaluates whether there's enough groundwater to approve new housing in certain parts of the Valley. Ferris disagreed with the ruling.

KATHLEEN FERRIS: What's more important? Is a water supply for the home—for the homes that are already here, for the people that are already here, for the investments that have already been made, more important than building new homes? I would say yes.

MARK BRODIE: The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona by the Goldwater Institute. The Phoenix Business Journal reports ADWR says the moratorium stopped about 20 applications for certifications of assured water supply. That equates to nearly 13,000 lots in the Phoenix active management area. Jon Riches is Goldwater's vice president for litigation. He stopped by the studio earlier to talk about the case, and we started with why he thinks the judge got it right.

JON RICHES: So, this case really isn't principally about water policy. It's really about who should be making decisions in the state on issues of critical statewide concern, including the stewardship of our natural resources and affordable housing. Should those decisions be made by an unelected bureaucrat at the Department of Water Resources, or should it be made by our elected lawmakers? And really more importantly, how should those decisions be made? Should they be made by agency fiat, or should they be made through a lawful process? And what the court got absolutely right is that what the agency did here was unlawful. They did not follow the protocol for how these policies should be made, and they implemented them in a way that is contrary to Arizona law.

MARK BRODIE: The actual policy though, wasn't it—it was made by the governor, right, who is elected, you know, getting the data from the Department of Water Resources who presumably would know better than any legislator or, you know, governor or other elected folks? Like, they are the experts in this field. Is it a problem for them to provide the governor with data and then the governor to make a decision, okay, we're going to do this or we're going to do that?

JON RICHES: Absolutely. I mean, as your listeners know, as we all learned in civics from seventh grade, the legislature makes the law, not the governor. The governor enforces the law. And what the governor did here through an administrative agency was try to create a whole new law out of whole cloth that not only was contrary to state statute, but was in no—no way specifically authorized by the legislature. So this is, you know, ultimately, it's a separation of powers issue, and the Department of Water Resources has to follow the law like any other agency in this state.

MARK BRODIE: What did ADWR and the governor do that is not allowed under the Groundwater Management Act, which is what they were talking about using here in terms of requiring an assured 100-year water supply before new—new buildings are built?

JON RICHES: So the way assured water supply has always been applied under state law is that if a home builder can prove there's sufficient groundwater for 100 years for the proposed use of the development, then a certificate has to be granted. What the department did is it took this proposed use standard and flipped it on its head and said, no, we're no longer going to make an assessment based on the proposed use; we're going to impose a new, broad standard called unmet demand, where if a hypothetical well drops below a certain level in the East Valley, that means there's insufficient groundwater for new housing development in the West Valley. And that's contrary to law, there's no authorization for that, and, you know, frankly, that's not only unlawful, but it's dangerous and bad policy.

MARK BRODIE: Are you concerned about the idea of building new homes without necessarily enough water for them or for the other people who already live here?

JON RICHES: So that's just the thing: there is sufficient groundwater for new homes to be built. This case isn't about a binary choice between existing users and new homes, okay? There's a couple reasons why that's the case. One, the model that the agency was using didn't actually protect existing users. All it does is place hypothetical wells 96 years down the road and determines what's going to happen with them. But more importantly, it's totally arbitrary. Home developers are the only use that are required to replenish their groundwater. So no amount of water that home builders are using is taken away from some existing user because they have to put it back in the ground through their replenishment obligation. That's a critical point because it also shows how completely arbitrary this rule was. If a chip manufacturer, for example, wanted to build a new factory and use a lot of water, they don't have to get a 100-year water supply, they certainly don't have to replenish the groundwater the way home builders do. So even if you were to accept the department's proposition that the Groundwater Management Act was supposed to do something that it wasn't, they simply didn't achieve that goal with this rule here.

MARK BRODIE: So I know you said this lawsuit was mostly about sort of rulemaking and procedural stuff, not necessarily about water. But there's a lot of data suggesting that we are pumping more groundwater in Arizona now than we have in the past and it's not being replenished. It takes a long time to be replenished and it's not happening at the same rate at which we are pumping it. What are you hearing in terms of, or what do you think about the idea of maybe it's not a bad idea to sort of pause all the—all the development, maybe not just homes, but chip manufacturers and every kind of development, and really look at what the groundwater situation is and then decide, okay, we should put this here, maybe we shouldn't put that over there?

JON RICHES: Whatever the policy merits are to how groundwater should be allocated in this state, that policy decision should not be made by an unelected bureaucrat within the Department of Water Resources. That policy decision should be made by our elected lawmakers in the legislature through the lawmaking process. And what you had here was a bureaucrat who imposed a massively consequential statewide rule that affects how our natural resources are allocated, that affects affordable housing in this state in a way that is—that is not permissible under state law. If they want to see a change in the policy, they have a remedy, and that's to go to our legislature. Now, think about exactly what this rule did. We have a housing shortage in this state and we have an affordable housing problem. And the way to solve that is by to introduce new supply of housing. What the department here said is, nope, we are not going to allow any new homes in the areas that are most affordable and that are fastest growing. That's an extraordinary policy, that's a dangerous policy, and if that policy is going to be put in place, it can't be done by the whim of a bureaucrat.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have a sense of how many homes developers were planning to build or are now planning to build, assuming that this ruling stays in effect, in the areas of Buckeye and Queen Creek?

JON RICHES: I don't have a precise number for you as I sit here today, but it's what the demand is, right? The supply will come on to meet the demand. And what we know is that there's a housing shortage in Arizona; we need new homes. If you're a young family moving to this state and you're looking to get into your first home, you are faced with a very difficult problem in Arizona. And that problem was compounded by the department's decision here. Fortunately, that decision was undone because it was—it was originally done in an unlawful way.

MARK BRODIE: How would you like policymakers to be thinking about sort of this balance between do we have enough water and do we and can we have enough housing?

JON RICHES: The way every other difficult decision, policy decision is made, and that is through the the legislative, thoughtful, deliberative process where all parties have a stake in it, where the public is heard, where lawmakers determine what the trade-offs are. Policy at its worst is policy that's handed down by fiat.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have reason to believe that the houses that will be built there will in fact be affordable?

JON RICHES: Well, this is the fastest growing and one of the most affordable areas of the Valley. You know, we're not talking about central Phoenix here. This is Queen Creek and Buckeye, where there's the space to build and where the housing is more affordable.

MARK BRODIE: That is Jon Riches, vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute. Jon, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

JON RICHES: Thanks so much, Mark. Appreciate it.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I'm Lauren Gilger. Coming up, according to one expert, we're about to be in a golden age of thrifting.

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Baby boomers, for one, were kind of one of the first generations to really start collecting. But also baby boomers inherited a lot of pieces from their parents or, like, mid-century modern furniture, for instance, that is now very, very valuable and collectible and some of the younger generations are after.

LAUREN GILGER: What you should look out for and the forthcoming great stuff transfer.

MARK BRODIE: But first, Mayo Clinic researchers have published data showing the cancer patients can safely get chemotherapy treatment away from hospitals and clinics in their homes instead. The study looked at Mayo's Cancer Care Beyond Walls program and included 93 chemo infusions to 10 patients at home. Researchers say those patients did not experience any infections or reactions. I spoke about this earlier with two of the researchers who worked on this study. Dr. Roxana Dronca is a medical oncologist and site director for Mayo Clinic's Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida. Dr. Cheryl Willman is a cancer genome scientist and enterprise director of Mayo Clinic's Comprehensive Cancer Center in Arizona, Minnesota, and Florida. I started the conversation by asking Dr. Dronca how common it is that cancer patients who are taking IV chemotherapy can do so in a non-clinical setting.

ROXANA DRONCA: Cancer Care Beyond Walls really was built to address needs, cancer patients' needs and a persistent challenge, I would say, in cancer care, which is the fact that the burden of access and the logistics of cancer care is often more difficult for patients than the disease itself.

So Cancer Care Beyond Walls was really built to wrap up care around the patient rather than building care around institutions, which has been the historical way to treat patients.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Willman, what does it entail to get chemotherapy at home?

CHERYL WILLMAN: Well, Mark, you need a safe system. So one of the most important things about delivering care at home, as Dr. Dronca said, is it dramatically reduces the strain and what we call financial toxicity for our cancer patients. Having to travel back and forth from work or home to a treatment facility repeatedly for care.

Some of our first patients, our first patients did that 36 times driving three hours each way to get to our Jacksonville site. People miss work, they miss their lives, they miss their children, they miss their families. So the idea that we could deliver a large fraction of patient care in the home environment is wonderful and the program in its early stages is very successful.

The challenge is we have to assure, as you're indicating or suggesting, that that care at home is the same as care we would give in every facility, meaning safe, tolerable by the patient, and that we're ready for any emergency situation. So that requires 24/7 virtual monitoring by an advanced practice nurse or healthcare provider to the care team on the ground that we send to the home: wearable devices, remote monitoring of the patient and their healthcare needs, and the ability to mount an emergency response to that home rapidly if needed.

We also have to have immediate, real-time connection between the team on the ground and the team in what we call our command center. And importantly, all of this information and data is being fed to that patient's electronic medical record in real time, so there are no gaps.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Dronca, is there sort of a technological component to this? It sounds like what Dr. Willman is saying that there is, but I wonder if for some patients that might even itself be a bit of a challenge depending on the internet connection at home or their ability to have Wi-Fi or maybe even their comfort with using technology.

ROXANA DRONCA: Those are all very valid points. So we have actually thought about all of this. Patients get a technology pack in the home and they actually get training when that is installed. The technology is very user-friendly. For patients who may have difficulty with internet connection, we actually provide a backup internet router that is allowing them to connect and also have had some packages that provide also cellular services for hotspots.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Willman, do patients also need another human where they are? Like, are you having patients inserting their own IVs here?

CHERYL WILLMAN: No, Mark, we don't. We do send a healthcare team, a sort of a traveling healthcare team to the patient's home to facilitate with perhaps injecting a drug into a port or setting up a chemo line or even overseeing an oral medication.

So there is a trained healthcare provider entering the home as we're doing this care. The nice thing about that is that can be a local care team, and so the patient is never alone. Often, though, a family member can assist and help.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Willman, what is the cost of this? Like, it sounds like there's a lot involved in allowing a patient to do this not in a clinical setting. So I'm curious, like, what is the cost for somebody to have chemotherapy at home versus in a clinic or a hospital or something like that?

CHERYL WILLMAN: So, Mark, this is a major challenge of the project, and I'll say a little bit about it. So the cost to deliver care in the home right now is about the same as the cost of delivering care as if you're being treated in an infusion center. It's our goal over time to continue to adapt the toolkit and the model to reduce that cost.

Interestingly, though, the insurers who we're working with, like Blue Cross Blue Shield in Florida, Florida Blue, Blue Cross in North Dakota, and other insurers we're talking to, are holding our current reimbursement cost harmless — in other words, we're being reimbursed in the home for what we would be reimbursed in the care facility.

But one of the really important pieces of data we're collecting are, what's the cost reduction by keeping a patient in the home and precluding the need to come to an ER, come into a hospital setting? We're catching events really early in the home when we can intervene more rapidly. So what we're actually doing, if you think about it, is from the beginning of a patient's treatment to the end, we're reducing, we believe, their total healthcare cost significantly through treatment in the home and a much more 24/7 monitoring of their conditions.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Dronca, are there some patients for whom maybe this is not the right approach, or certain types of cancers even, maybe where the treatment is better suited for a clinical setting, or is this something that pretty much any cancer patient could in theory use?

ROXANA DRONCA: No, I would agree that we have to select patients very well. And the way we actually approach this initially was to choose the drugs that we felt were safe to be done in the home. So we chose drugs that are safe in terms of having a lower rate of infusion reaction, also drugs that are stable for transport for at least 24 hours. Patients also have to be tolerating the first one to two cycles of treatment in the clinic without any unexpected reactions to really be good candidates for this program.

But at least a third to 40% of cancer patients actually are on maintenance chemotherapy or immunotherapies or biologicals that really are easy and safe to administer, so we really feel there is a large patient population that can benefit from this program.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Willman, I mean, Dr. Dronca mentioned that this could be a pretty sizable percentage at some point of cancer patients who would be well-suited for this and could in theory do this.

Do you see that as sort of the future of cancer treatment, at least as far as chemo goes, that patients maybe don't have to go to a clinic or a hospital, they can really just sort of do it from their couch?

CHERYL WILLMAN: Mark, that's exactly what I think. And people ask me to give a percentage of the care that I see transferring to home. So clearly we will be doing surgery or external beam radiation therapy still in clinic and hospital settings. Some intensive types of chemotherapy we'll still want to do in a hospital setting.

But I would guess as much as 70% of the current immunotherapies and chemotherapies that we give today could be done in the home setting. Our process has been to let that patient try the first few therapies in the hospital or clinic setting so we can monitor toxicity, make sure they're tolerating the drug well, and then let them take the next several treatments at home.

But if you think about any cancer patient taking treatment every three to six weeks, to be able to do even a half of those treatments at home versus facility would be a dramatic impact on their lives.

MARK BRODIE: There's been so much talk about telemedicine and, you know, getting medical care and treatments outside of the traditional clinical setting or doctor's office setting. Do you see this as sort of a way to test out other kinds of medications or other kinds of treatments that people traditionally have gotten in a clinical setting that might also be used at home instead?

ROXANA DRONCA: I definitely see this, I see this as a potential, you know, template for other chronic illnesses where patients need to have treatment administered over a long period of time. I think once the infrastructure is established, you know, just like telemedicine started during the pandemic, I think this is now being integrated in our, you know, way of living and delivering care.

So I definitely think this platform can go outside of cancer and serving patients who have other type of illnesses that may potentially benefit from, from this framework.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Roxana Dronca is a medical oncologist and site director for Mayo Clinic's Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida. Dr. Cheryl Willman is a hematopathologist and enterprise director of Mayo Clinic's Comprehensive Cancer Center nationwide.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I'm Lauren Gilger. Jeffrey Epstein's famous island and his New York townhouse have been the subject of a lot of scrutiny as his crimes have become clear. But he also owned a sprawling New Mexico ranch that was roughly the size of 11 Central Parks. But it was never raided by federal authorities even as his other properties were. And now there has been something of a reckoning in New Mexico about that lack of scrutiny of Epstein's history there, according to our next guest. Clara Bates has been covering it all for the Santa Fe New Mexican, and I spoke with her more about it.

CLARA BATES: There are two parallel investigations. The Truth Commission is through the Legislature. It’s a panel of two Democrats and two Republicans. There’s also the state attorney general, who reopened a criminal investigation and actually has gone out to the ranch to begin searching.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. And tell us what this panel is after, what kind of power do they have? Like, do they have subpoena power? Can they use state funds to really take some action here?

CLARA BATES: Yes, they have a $2 million budget for this year and they do have subpoena power. They can compel witness testimony, which of course all reporters wish we had. So it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of information they can gather.

They have just recently hired a legal team in the last few days, so they’re really just getting started now. They’re required to produce a report by the end of July and then a final one by the end of the year. So it’s a bit of a crunch, but I know they’ve been accepting tips and hearing from some victims already.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. And what about the attorney general’s investigation that’s also happening? What is the AG doing at this point?

CLARA BATES: Right. They announced they were reopening this criminal investigation that they briefly had open around the time of Epstein’s death. The Attorney General’s Office closed it on the urging of federal prosecutors, who said that they were sort of taking care of it.

Of course, now we know that that didn’t result in the seizure of evidence at the ranch. And so the state attorney general is kind of backtracking to try to fill in some of those gaps to the extent possible. Of course, it was almost seven years ago now that Epstein died.

But they are looking into potential criminal activity that happened there. They’re being pretty tight-lipped about it all. But we do know that in March they spent two days, I think it was, searching the property.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And tell us about that search. Your reporting on this was really interesting about the tactics they used. We know how they went about this and what maybe they were after.

CLARA BATES: Yeah, it might be important context to know that in the U.S. Department of Justice files released earlier this year, there was this unverified anonymous tip that alleged the bodies of two girls were buried in the hills outside of Zorro Ranch.

And so, of course, we don’t know if that’s true, but it’s been taken seriously by some of the authorities here. And part of the March search of the ranch included four cadaver dogs. And I learned through a records request that they searched outside the mansion and kind of at a pit, a few other places.

We don’t know from the records I got whether they found anything. The current ranch owner told me it’s his understanding they didn’t. But we know that they had those dogs. I think they also have said they used drones, that kind of thing, to finally initiate this search.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. And tell us about the current owner of this ranch. Your reporting on this was really interesting about, you know, the identity had been hidden until you broke that story.

CLARA BATES: Yeah, it might be important context to know that it wasn’t publicly known who the owner is until I broke that story earlier this year. It’s Texas politician and businessman Don Huffines. He bought the ranch in 2023, but his identity had been hidden because state law allows for anonymous property ownership through LLCs here. So it wasn’t listed in state records or anything like that. It required a bit of digging.

But since we broke that news in February, he said that all along he has planned to convert the ranch into a Christian retreat, and that that is ongoing. I think he said he wanted to turn a place of darkness into a place of light.

So we’ve written that he hasn’t formally taken steps to do that yet — for instance, applying for permits with the county, things like that — but he has assured us that’s his plan. So we’ll definitely keep an eye on what that might look like going forward.

LAUREN GILGER: Is he cooperating with investigators?

CLARA BATES: Yes, all along he has said he’s been willing to cooperate with investigators and no one reached out to him before these two investigations emerged earlier this year. So actually the two-day search I mentioned at the ranch in March, the State Attorney General’s Office and law enforcement working with them didn’t need a warrant, a search warrant. They just got cooperation, you know, they got the agreement with the current owners of the ranch.

And so they have been very cooperative so far. And like I said, they’ve, they’ve reiterated that there isn’t anything there anymore, or at least that’s what the current owners have said, that law enforcement hasn’t yet found any evidence there.

LAUREN GILGER: Epstein was not a registered sex offender in the state of New Mexico, I understand. Do we know why not? Like, it sounds like he spent a good amount of time there, and he was in other states.

CLARA BATES: It’s my understanding that the victim included in Epstein’s plea agreement in Florida was 17 years old, and at the time, New Mexico didn’t consider that to qualify to be put on the sex offender registry. I think you had to be 16 or under as a victim at that point. The law has since changed, but at that point, those are the records I’ve seen: that the victim was 17, and so he didn’t need to be put on the registry.

But of course, that meant there was less oversight in those years after his Florida conviction because he didn’t have to follow the same requirements that he did in places like New York and Florida.

LAUREN GILGER: Let me ask you lastly, Clara, about questions that have been raised here about potential corruption among public officials in New Mexico. You’ve reported that Epstein may have exploited some land leases, asked for tax reductions, things like that.

CLARA BATES: Yes. He leased public land ostensibly for grazing, but it seems like from the records I’ve gotten and reading through the Justice Department files as well, it was ultimately for a tax break that he was interested in that. It’s also possible he was interested in the privacy of having access to thousands more acres of public land.

But he was no humble New Mexico rancher. He kind of had a few other ranchers bring dozens of cattle, and it was a rather small operation. His predecessor had, I think, 300 cattle.

So that’s something sort of interesting. There are a lot of connections between Epstein and some elites in the state. Unfortunately, many of them are no longer with us, and so it’s hard to know how much information either of these investigations will come up with.

But I mentioned he bought the ranch from a former governor. We’ve written about his many meetings with a different former governor, Bill Richardson. He was also close to this Nobel laureate in physics, Murray Gell-Mann, who worked in the Santa Fe Institute here.

So he had these ties to the state. He wasn’t kind of just parachuting in and leaving. And so potentially we’ll get more information about those connections and whether they resulted in anything meaningful and his being treated differently than others here. But as of now, we don’t know a whole lot.

LAUREN GILGER: We’ll leave it there. Clara Bates, reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican, joining us. Clara, thank you for your reporting here. I appreciate it.

CLARA BATES: Thanks for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning. It's The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I'm Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I'm Lauren Gilger. We are about to enter a thrifting golden age. That's according to our next guest. Thrifting expert and author of Big Thrift Energy, Virginia Chamlee. You've probably heard about the great wealth transfer on the horizon, in which an estimated $80 to $120 trillion in assets is about to be passed down from the Silent Generation and baby boomers to millennials and Gen X. But the thrifting golden age is about more than money. These generations are also passing down an avalanche of stuff: furniture, silverware, clothes, keepsakes, collections, and cooking ware. I spoke with Chamlee more about it.

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: We are seeing what a lot of experts are calling the silver tsunami. All of these baby boomers are aging and they're moving and they're downsizing, and that means they are releasing really their lifetimes' worth of stuff — furniture and art and household goods and collectibles. And that's kind of all going to end up in the secondary market, so thrift stores and estate sales.

LAUREN GILGER: Are thrift stores, antique shops, Goodwill — are they ready for this?

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: I don't know. I mean, people don't realize how much stuff thrift stores are inundated with as is. Some of them get, I read a stat once, some of them get as many as 40,000 donations a week, and obviously that includes things like single items of clothing or a single sock or something. But you know, a lot of people donate kind of what's really trash to thrift stores. So I don't know that they're ready, but it's happening.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s happening. And it sounds like baby boomers were in particular like a generation, maybe one of the first generations that really acquired a lot of stuff, and they think about their stuff a little differently than we might.

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Absolutely. I mean, baby boomers, for one, were kind of one of the first generations to really start collecting, right? So collectibles, dinnerware, silver, china — these are things that maybe the younger generations aren't really as accustomed to buying or accumulating. But also baby boomers inherited a lot of pieces from their parents or, like, mid-century modern furniture, for instance. That is now very, very valuable and collectible and more rare and some of the younger generations are after. And at the time when baby boomers got it, you know, it was just kind of like, "Oh, my parents gave me this old chair," kind of a thing.

LAUREN GILGER: All that Lane furniture, right? OK. What are you expecting to see a lot of as this great stuff transfer happens? What are you on the lookout for?

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Well, I think well-made furniture is a really big one. And this is something that I am hopeful that we can get the younger generation to appreciate. You know, a lot of millennials and Gen Z are more accustomed to buying fast furniture. So pieces that you might have to build yourself or pieces that are made overseas and don't really hold up as well.

A lot of the furniture baby boomers have, it holds up. But it's also a lot bigger. I think one of the problems we're probably going to run into is that there are some things that baby boomers have that just aren't necessarily useful anymore. So I'm thinking about TV cabinets in particular. I think we all remember those from when we were young, like in the 1990s, everybody had a TV cabinet. And now, you know, TVs don't really go in a cabinet anymore, and they're flat screens and they're bigger and they're mounted on the wall.

So things like that, I think, might be an issue. But there are other things like, I mean, silver is a really great example. Obviously, you know, we've seen a big silver boom in 2025 and 2026 just for the material itself. But I think also some of the younger generations are kind of getting more into, like, hosting and using things like silver for everyday rather than just special occasions. So I think that's one thing that we might see a lot more of.

Also dishware — Pyrex, CorningWare — and some of that stuff is really, really valuable. I was actually looking at eBay sold listings earlier, and there are some pieces that, you know, have gone for $3,500. I think I saw a Pyrex that sold recently, like a casserole dish $3,500 earlier this month on eBay. So, you know, some of this stuff, it might seem like kind of nothing, but if you know what you're looking for, you might kind of luck out.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s amazing. OK, so let's talk about what we should be looking for and how we can luck out, right? Like, there are tactics to identifying something that is high quality that might be worth something. A lot of it is just sort of learning, but this is kind of what you do, right? So give us your top-line advice. How do we decide or understand or learn what's high quality, what going to be worth something?

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Well, I think the best way is just to inundate your brain with makers and design styles. So I spend a lot of time going on websites like 1stDibs and Chairish, not even to shop but just to, like, look. And also eBay, of course. You know, just get an idea for some of those things you see at the thrift stores. And maybe focus on one category, like let's say dinnerware. Just learn everything you can about Pyrex and fill your brain with it. And then when you go to the thrift store and you see it, you'll sort of know what it is without having to take out your phone and open up Google Lens.

There's also things like, I think abstract art and vintage art is something that I, as a vintage seller, have sold a lot of, particularly if it's framed. And that's something you can sell on, you know, eBay or a more high-end website like Chairish.

And sometimes it's about the maker, so it's about familiarizing yourself with that. But also just does it look kind of trendy? Does it look like somebody might buy it now? Then it's probably a worthy buy, you know, even if it's not necessarily by someone, by a listed artist or an important artist.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so say like your parents move out of their big old house or downsize or your parents pass away, you've got, you know, a lot of stuff to take care of. What do you think is like the best approach to, as a family, sort of addressing what's valuable maybe i n like a nostalgic way versus what might be valuable in a monetary way?

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Yeah, well, I think estate sale companies can be hugely helpful for this, because that's their job and they can kind of sort through everything. And I know from personal experience, oftentimes when a family member dies, you initially feel like, OK, we are going to go through every single piece in this house and really take out the good stuff. And by like day five, you're kind of like, OK, I cannot do this anymore. ...

It's a lot of stuff. We all have so much stuff and people don't realize it. And I think hiring outside help, an organizing company, an estate sale company, someone that will sort of take out those nostalgic pieces just so you don't miss them. You know, certainly I think if they collected wedding china or if there's any sort of trophies from work or sports or, you know, children's art, things like that, certainly you want to keep that for nostalgic purposes.

And then, you know, if you're looking for pieces that you don't want to just maybe donate and you're hoping to get some money for it, definitely always check for makers' marks and signatures. Whether it's furniture and you're sort of looking underneath a piece or if it's silver and you're looking for some of those markings or those brands.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it’s familiarizing yourself with some of those brands, yeah. OK, so I have to ask you before we let you go, because you're known for this. Like, what are some of the best finds that you have come across? I mean, you're a pro at this, right? [LAUGHS]

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Probably my best find ever is my trunk. I have a really incredible Goyard trunk that I got at a thrift store for $95 ... and I have since been offered $30,000 for it from an auction house. So I said no.

LAUREN GILGER: You said no!

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: I said no. I just joke that I'll be the old woman who lived in her trunk one day. But it was an auction house that offered me $30,000, so I assume they would turn around and maybe sell it for more, so it kind of scares me. But you know, everything has a price. Maybe if there's a listener who wants to give me like $60,000 for it, we can talk.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. All right. All right. She’s up for grabs here. That is Virginia Chamlee, the author of "Big Thrift Energy," thrifting expert, joining us to talk about the great stuff transfer. Virginia, thank you so much for coming on The Show. I appreciate it.

VIRGINIA CHAMLEE: Thank you so much.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show's podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban. Our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.