Ben Mueller’s assignment for his journalism class was to tell a news story—any news story—in the form of an extended Instagram slideshow. So when the high school senior got home on the afternoon of February 10, 2026, he grabbed a snack, went upstairs to his room, and settled in to work. After allowing himself a few minutes of procrastination—scouting prospective college campuses on Google Earth—Mueller navigated over to the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library portal and clicked through the page asking whether he was 18 or older (he was, just barely).

Then he began poking around for ideas in the 3 million pages of Epstein files that had been added 11 days earlier. Mueller really liked working in his bedroom, with its beanbag chair and view of people strolling and biking along one of Marin County, California’s sun-dappled waterways. Having lived his whole life in one of the wealthiest parts of America, Mueller couldn’t help thinking his area probably had some ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

“I think it’s very difficult to get an immense amount of money without—this is my opinion—without doing something a little shady,” Mueller says. So he sat on his bedroom floor and spent the next five hours combing the federal database for links to the towns and cities of Marin. He found thousands.

Most of them were trivial (Epstein liked to shop online at Restoration Hardware, headquartered in nearby Corte Madera). But a few things stood out: a 2014 art gala in Sausalito that Epstein helped promote; a meeting with Woody Allen in Tiburon; and—above all—a 2013 email exchange between Epstein and a woman from a modeling agency called Mill Valley Connection. “Regarding Hannah, my Austrian model,” the woman wrote in one particularly chilling message, “we can come and see you this evening if you are interested, and in that case let me know how I can get my fees.” Two days later, on February 12, Mueller posted his story to the Instagram feed of the Redwood Bark, his school’s student-run publication.

It was a carousel-style slideshow pitched at readers across the county. “Which Marin towns were mentioned in the Epstein files?” the first panel reads. “Scroll to see how many times your town was mentioned.” Rather than quote from the most alarming document he’d found, Mueller kept his descriptions fairly general and brief: “Mill Valley was mentioned in the context of providing models to Epstein from a woman named Gisele Attias Bonnouvrier.” More than 4,000 people liked the story.

The comments filled up with praise: “This is the kind of journalism we need.” “Higher quality reporting than local outlets.” “High schoolers doing better reporting than national news.” “Didn’t think I’d be following a random CA HS newspaper in 2026 for their breaking reporting but here we are.” As Mueller watched the numbers climb, he felt excited but also a little perplexed. “I didn’t really think I was doing groundbreaking journalism,” he says. “I was just like, this is another piece of homework that I have to do today, and I’ve just got to get it done—but also be thorough, because people are going to see it on the internet.” About a week and a half later, Mueller was home sick with a light fever and cough when the phone rang.