Colorado connections in Justice Department’s database

At least two of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims had ties to Colorado, including one woman who was living in a tent with her dog in Durango when Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019.

“She is currently refusing any housin (sic). She has a dog and she is unwilling to leave him for any reason. She is living in a tent near the river in (redacted). As of right now, that is where she wants to be,” a member of the FBI’s Victim Services Division wrote in a Sept. 13, 2019, email included in a trove of documents newly released by the U.S. Department of Justice.

That woman would be escorted the following month by a caseworker to the Durango airport so she could fly to Miami, where she was scheduled to attend an FBI briefing for Epstein’s victims after he died. The FBI employees exchanging emails about her were concerned about her well-being, saying the woman had no money, had been sober for a year and was traveling with a temporary paper identification card from Colorado that did not include a picture.

“I’m slightly concerned that Florida will be a trigger for her although she’s been working through that fairly well and seems determined,” an FBI employee wrote on Oct. 12, 2019.

The woman, identified only by the initials ML, appears to be one of many victims who were sexually assaulted and trafficked — often as teenagers — by Epstein.

Since last year, the Justice Department has uploaded millions of documents, photographs and videos to its publicly searchable Epstein Library database, adding nearly 3 million more documents and thousands of pictures and videos on Jan. 30. The latest release came after Congress in November mandated it under pressure from the public and as speculation swirls around Epstein’s connections to President Donald Trump and other prominent people.

JS searched the word “Colorado” in the files to get a sampling of Epstein’s ties to the state. The Post reviewed 1,518 documents, including emails, text messages, pictures and court filings. The Post also ran the names of prominent Coloradoans through the database.

Kimbal Musk, a Boulder restaurateur and Elon Musk’s brother, was referenced scores of times, including in email exchanges with Epstein and his friends about women and parties. Musk has not responded to The Post’s requests for comment.

Other Coloradans were mentioned because they were lawyers representing Epstein’s associates in business or criminal matters, or because Epstein’s associates were seeking to meet them for business or political purposes.

Searching the documents is difficult for a number of reasons, including Epstein’s voluminous misspellings and grammatical errors.

The files are heavily redacted, making it difficult at times to understand who is communicating with whom and to paint a complete picture of a particular conversation, such as an email exchange in 2013 between Bella Klein, one of Epstein’s accountants, and two other people as they tried to determine who had been with Epstein in Aspen on April 15 of that year. One person replied, “I did not go to Aspen. Hope this helps.” But the two other people’s names were redacted, and the purpose of the trip was never discussed.

Many documents are duplicated for no apparent reason. The files also include documents that are of no relevance to Epstein’s crimes, such as emailed advertisements, newsletters and real estate listings.

Victims’ Colorado ties

At least two women who were prostituted and abused by Epstein and his clients had Colorado connections.

Epstein traveled to Aspen over the years, and a recently unsealed grand jury indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida over the abuse of 13 girls lists a July 4, 2004, flight from Aspen to Palm Beach as evidence in that case. The names of people with Epstein on that flight were redacted.

In addition to the woman living in a tent, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an Epstein victim who became an outspoken advocate for sex trafficking survivors, lived in Colorado at some points during her adult life.

Giuffre is one of the accusers who said she was sexually abused by Britain’s former Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his royal title in the wake of the Epstein scandal. Giuffre died by suicide in 2025, but her brother and sister-in-law, who live in El Paso County, have continued to push for justice on her behalf.

Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, hired a Denver law firm to assist in her criminal defense. She frequently wired thousands of dollars from the Wells Fargo bank at 1700 Broadway to pay her legal fees.

However, that firm — Haddon Morgan and Foreman P.C. — sued Maxwell, her brother, Kevin Maxwell, and her husband, Scott Borgerson, in 2022, alleging she failed to pay $878,000 for their work.

The firm received a $986,644.03 default judgment against the Maxwells in December 2022.

Efforts to reach the firm’s representatives were unsuccessful, and it is unclear whether the debt was paid.

Preferred destination for the jet set

The Epstein files paint a picture of how Colorado is a preferred destination for the jet set as they travel across the country for business and recreation, and how wealthy and powerful people network with each other, either through financial investments, real estate, business retreats or philanthropy.

For example, Barbro Ehnbom, a Swedish-American businesswoman, at least three times invited Epstein to fundraisers on behalf of U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat. There was nothing in the Justice Department files that indicated Epstein ever responded to those invitations.

In her emails to Epstein, Ehnbom praised DeGette’s interest in science and her role as a congresswoman.

In a 2011 email exchange between Ehnbom and Epstein, she asked Epstein if he planned to be in New York for an upcoming “Stem Cell gala” and, if so, asked if he would be interested in meeting DeGette.

“She is one of the few people in congress who who has a scientific agenda and she is good person — want to meet her?” Ehnbom wrote.

Epstein did not mention DeGette in his reply: “Im still in paris„ who is the brazilian„ and where is my swedish wife?”

Jack Stelzner, a spokesman for DeGette, said the Denver congresswoman met Ehnbom through her work on biomedical research. DeGette was unaware of who Ehnbom was inviting to fundraisers, including Epstein, he said.

“Congresswoman DeGette was not aware of her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” Stelzner said. “Jeffrey Epstein did not attend any of those fundraisers.”

In multiple emails and text messages, Esptein and his associates discussed their Colorado vacations and how they loved visiting the mountains.

His staff also occasionally booked vacations for people, but it is unclear who was traveling, such as a December 2015 ski trip to Aspen for unidentified girls — as they were referred to in an email — who were staying in a lodge and taking lessons.

The horror within the Epstein saga is what happened to the teenage girls and young women who were trapped in his sex-trafficking ring.

Epstein’s 2019 indictment for a sex-trafficking conspiracy said he recruited girls as young as 14 to have sex acts with him at his homes in Manhattan, Palm Beach, Florida, and other locations. He paid them hundreds of dollars in cash and often paid them to introduce him to friends.

Pursuit of justice

The files provide a picture of what the victims’ lives were like in the fallout of Epstein’s crimes and as they struggled to cope with what had happened.

In 2015, Guiffre, one of Epstein’s most vocal accusers, was followed by British media inside a southern Colorado Walmart and needed the store’s security to help her leave through a back door. And when she and her family returned to their home in Penrose, they found their back door open.

“They had been taking high security precautions, so that seemed very unusual,” Guiffre’s lawyers wrote in an email to U.S. attorneys. “Brad and I believe that this may be Epstein (or his associates) signaling that VR should not talk.”