NXIVM | Laying the Foundation | 2

This episode contains descriptions and details that some listeners might find disturbing.

Listener discretion is advised.

It's March 2017 in Clifton Park, New York, a small town outside of Albany.

Sarah Edmondson, age 39, enters a cookie cutter suburban home along with her best friend, Lauren Salzman.

For years, she and Lauren have been as close as two people can be.

Lauren was Sarah's maid of honor and his godmother to her son.

But their bond is about to be put to the test.

Lauren leads Sarah into a bedroom and sits her down.

It's finally time for Sarah's initiation into Dominus Obsequius Sororium, or DOS, a secret society within Nxivm, the self-improvement business they both worked for.

A couple of years ago, Lauren pitched the group to Sarah as an exclusive sorority, like the Freemasons, but for women.

She promised that it will make all of Sarah's dreams come true.

Sarah trusts her friend, but she can't help feeling uneasy about this whole thing.

Everything about DOS is so secretive that it's hard to know exactly what she's getting herself into.

She tries to voice her concerns one last time, but Lauren silences her with a wave of her hand.

Remember, she tells Sarah, you swore a vow of obedience to me.

I'm your master now.

Trust me.

That doesn't do much to calm Sarah down.

She can already feel her heart beating faster and faster the longer she sits here.

Then Lauren tells her that part of the initiation is getting a small tattoo.

That really freaks her out.

Sarah doesn't have any tattoos and she doesn't want one.

But when she says this, Lauren's expression heartens.

Seeing that Sarah stood up, Lauren locks the door.

She tells her that she can't weasel her way out of this.

She's always looking for a back door to escape her obligations.

And that bad habit ends today.

Sarah sits back down.

She does always do that.

It's something she dislikes about herself.

And she spent countless Nxivm counseling sessions trying to be better.

And Lauren knows that about her.

So taking a deep breath, Sarah nods.

She'll go through with the initiation.

With that, Lauren's face returns to normal.

Her brutal gaze replaced by her usual sunny grin.

With the air of explaining a fun game, she pulls a blindfold from her pocket and tells Sarah to put it on.

Sarah lifts the fabric up to her face, but Lauren stops her.

Not so fast, she says.

First, you have to strip.

Get totally naked.

Fear wells up again, and Sarah's face grows hot.

But she holds her tongue and slips off her clothes.

Once Sarah has the blindfold on, Lauren leads her into another room and tells her to sit on the floor.

Sarah listens as a few more women are brought in after her.

By the sounds of it, there are four of them all together.

Once they're all gathered, Lauren tells them that they can remove their blindfolds.

Sarah recognizes the others.

She doesn't know them well, but they've all crossed paths in Nxivm at one time or another.

None of them look excited to be here, naked and sitting cross-legged on the carpet.

Not wanting to stare, Sarah casts her eyes around the room.

There isn't much to see.

Lauren has them arranged in a semicircle facing a slick white door.

A massage table stands off to one side.

Overall there's an eerie sense of foreboding in the room.

At least Sarah imagines there is.

None of them knows what's coming next.

A couple of the other women are shaking.

For a moment they sit there in awkward silence covering themselves with their hands.

When Lauren comes back in she scolds them.

They are grown women about to enter a sacred sisterhood.

She tells them to get over their body issues and relax.

It's just a tattoo.

Awkward giggles ease the tension a bit after that.

When Lauren seems satisfied that she has control of her subjects, she swings open the white door to invite in Dr.

Danielle Roberts.

A thin, strong looking brunette, Dr.

Roberts is wearing gloves and holding some kind of medical device Sarah's never seen before.

It looks like a large EpiPen attached to an electrical cord.

Sarah was anticipating a tattoo artist, not a doctor.

She scans the room again, looking for tiny colored vials of ink, but she can't see anything like what she thinks someone would need to give a person a tattoo.

That's when the panic starts to come back.

Dr.

Roberts plugs the mysterious device in and they all wait while the tip grows red hot.

Sarah's eyes widen.

Whatever that is, it's not a tattoo gun.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

After a childhood spent caring for his sickly mother, Keith Raniere was estranged from most kids his own age.

He couldn't relate to them, and for years he felt different.

But he knew he was special, better than everyone else.

He was smarter, an unparalleled genius, maybe even a god.

Other people were in his peers, they were his playthings.

And he devoted himself to proving he was better than them.

In particular, he loved how easily he could manipulate women by telling them what they wanted to hear, convincing them that they were broken and that he alone could fix them.

As an adult, Keith used his unique talents to launch a successful multi-level marketing company called Consumers Byline.

Customers bought memberships that were supposed to earn them bulk-rate discounts on merchandise.

They also earned commissions by roping in new members.

And all of the money trickled slowly up to Keith.

But providing the services he had promised was too much effort for Keith.

And by the early 90s, law enforcement agencies in multiple states were accusing him of running a pyramid scheme.

That wasn't ideal.

But Keith was a master of reinvention, and he refused to stay down for long.

Besides, selling physical products was gauche.

He figured he could sell something more valuable than objects.

By the turn of the century, he'd launched a new company that would not only bring Keith vast sums of money, it would also give him access to vulnerable people in search of ways to improve themselves.

They'd willingly share their deepest secrets and insecurities, and Keith would use that insight to control them all.

This is episode two in our four-part series on Nxivm, Laying the Foundation.

It's 1994 in Clifton Park, New York, a year after Tony Natale reconciled with her boyfriend turned stalker Keith Raniere.

Now 35, Tony stands outside her home and sips her morning coffee.

The quiet tree-lined street is bathed in orange light.

A child laughs in the backyard of a neighboring house.

This kind of peaceful suburban life is what she's always wanted.

But despite the nice house, the family-friendly neighborhood and the strong coffee, things are far from perfect.

After three years together, 34-year-old Keith Raniere has gone from the love of her life to a leech.

Things started going downhill about 12 months ago, when Keith's company Consumers Byline went out of business.

Attorneys in 22 states had launched investigations, with some calling it a pyramid scheme.

After years of sleepless nights, Keith ended the New York investigation by paying a $40,000 fine.

But he refused to admit any wrongdoing, and by that stage, the various legal battles had drained the company's resources, and it was forced to close.

Luckily for Keith, once Consumers Byline shuttered, the other states dropped their cases against him.

Since then, Keith has become a layabout.

He sleeps all day and spends his nights sitting around just thinking.

When Tony tries to get him to contribute to the household, to wash a dish or take the trash out, he throws a tantrum.

It's maddening.

He's not doing anything, she points out.

Why can't he help out?

But Keith scoffs and claims that Tony just doesn't understand what he's doing.

She can't comprehend the kind of deep, super genius level reflection he's engaged in.

Tony's lip curls as she downs the last sip of her coffee.

She tells herself not to be negative, to be grateful for the sunrise and the life she leads.

Despite everything, she still believes Keith's one of the smartest men in the world.

So she forces a smile and heads inside, ready to start her day.

To her surprise, she finds Keith waiting for her at the kitchen table.

He's usually still asleep at this hour, so Tony's on her guard when he says he has something to tell her.

For context, conversations with Keith always go one of two ways.

Either he makes you feel like a superhero or the scum of the earth.

Thankfully, he's in a good mood this morning.

After all that thinking, he's finally had an idea.

When Tony sits down, Keith tells her he wants to launch a new company called National Health Network.

In concept, it's a lot like Consumers Byline.

Customers will pay a monthly membership in exchange for a wholesale discount on vitamins and health supplements.

Plus, members will get commission for every new customer they recruit for the club.

Yes, essentially it's another multi-level marketing business, but this time it's for vitamins.

The main difference from Consumers Byline is that instead of only filing mail orders, National Health Network will have an actual brick-and-mortar store for customers to shop.

It's a small change, but one that should go a long way to making the business seem more legitimate.

Tony purses her lips slightly while Keith talks.

She recognizes this idea because it's the one she told him about months ago.

Now he's making it sound like he came up with it himself.

But she pushes the annoyance aside.

It's a relief to at last see Keith engaging with something.

Plus, he wants her to take the lead on this new venture.

So even if he's going to take credit for the whole plan, Tony's still excited to get going.

This won't be a repeat of what happened with Consumers Byline.

Everything will be above board.

She'll follow the law and create a stable business that isn't just an outlet for Keith's oversized ego.

This time, things will be different.

Despite Tony's grand plans, National Health Network isn't as different as she hopes.

Keith hates deferring to Tony and goes around her at every opportunity to meddle with the business.

The truth is, he never really intended for her to be in charge.

It's just that his settlement with the state of New York banned him from, quote, promoting, offering or granting participation in a chain distribution scheme, unquote, for life.

In other words, he's no longer legally allowed to operate a multi-level marketing business.

That's why he puts Tony in charge, why it's her name on all the paperwork.

Now, she knows this, but she has faith that Keith will respect her authority anyway.

She believes that he believes in her.

So when he starts interfering with the business, it stings.

But even with Keith's interference, NHN's flagship store in Clifton Park does pretty well at first, as does the attached vegetarian restaurant.

But as Tony tries to capitalize on that success and open more locations, sales of new memberships start to dry up.

The dwindling sales and the upfront investment of building additional stores put a lot of strain on the company's finances.

To make matters worse, Keith's making Tony's personal life a living hell.

Each and every night, he demands sex from her on his schedule.

If she refuses, he rapes her.

It gets so bad that she starts sleeping locked in the bedroom closet, surrounded by a barricade of pillows and cushions.

When Keith's not with her, Tony knows that he's with three other women who form his inner circle.

Pam Caffritz, Dawn Morrison and Kristen Keefe.

They seem like drones to Tony, completely in Keith's thrall.

For a while, she managed to convince herself that they were only close friends, but now she's starting to have doubts.

By 1997, about three years after she and Keith started National Health Network, Tony's at the end of her rope.

That's when she meets 43-year-old Nancy Saltzman.

Nancy starts out as a customer, but she quickly cozies up to Tony.

She is a life coach, which is still a fairly new concept at the moment.

She says she wants to help her new friend out.

So Tony arranges a coaching session with Nancy, where she ends up telling her about the problem she's having with Keith.

After hearing about his erratic, abusive behavior, Nancy tells Tony that Keith sounds like a psychopath.

But she doesn't tell her to leave the relationship, not immediately.

Instead, she suggests Tony needs more coaching sessions from her to navigate the fraught relationship.

While Tony thinks about Nancy's suggestion, she brings the whole thing up with Keith.

She is a bit worried about how he might react to her airing their problems out to someone else.

But to her surprise, he is in support of the whole thing.

It's a relief, and Tony feels more optimistic about her second session with Nancy.

But when she shows up for the appointment, things get weird.

Nancy's opinion of Keith has seemingly shifted overnight.

She tells Tony that Keith is deeper than she realizes, and after reflecting on their first discussion, she now believes all of Tony's problems go back to her experience of being sexually abused as a child.

Tony's so shocked she doesn't know what to say.

And when she thinks about it, she doesn't even remember telling Nancy about her history of abuse.

And there's a reason for that.

It's because she didn't.

It turns out Keith Raniere has already gotten a Nancy Salzman.

After Tony told him about her, Keith tracked Nancy down.

And unlike his girlfriend, Keith could instantly see Nancy for what she really is.

A peddler of snake oil.

She's not a licensed therapist.

She's just a former nurse who took a hypnosis course and uses pseudo-scientific techniques on her clients.

Of course, that doesn't sour Keith's opinion.

Over quite the opposite, actually, he sees potential.

Nancy's exactly the kind of business partner he's been searching for.

Someone who has no qualms about making money off the backs of the vulnerable.

He's always wanted to be a guru and he feels sure that she's his ticket into that racket.

So he met with Nancy in private.

And over the course of a few hours, he won her over.

He told her that the two of them could do great things together.

The same line he's used on other women in his life.

First though, he needed Nancy's help with Tony.

If she could convince Tony that he only wants the best for her, then he'd know he could trust her.

Then he promised he had a plan that would make them both a lot of money.

Tony Natale has no idea about any of this.

All she knows is that her life coach has suddenly flipped the script, and that gets her thinking.

Her relationship is blowing up, and her business is circling the drain.

Maybe she really is the problem.

By this stage, Keith's losing interest in National Health Network, so he leaves Tony to sort out that mess on her own.

But instead of moping around like he did when consumers byline went belly up, he teams up with Nancy Salzman to lay the foundation of another venture.

In 1998, the two of them create the Executive Success Program, or ESP.

Basically, Keith and Nancy plan to recruit students by promising them a set of psychological and personal development techniques that will help them achieve their goals.

They'll make budding filmmakers into Oscar winners.

They'll tell amateur athletes that the courses can help them become professionals.

They convince businessmen that they have the keys to the boardroom.

No matter the dream, ESP can help you make it reality.

Yeah, so some of their self-improvement tools are inspired by things Keith's heard about Scientology, while others are derived from something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP.

Essentially, that's a pseudoscientific approach to therapy that was developed in the 1970s.

The way the actual business will work is that Keith and Nancy will charge for introductory courses, hook in students, then charge them for additional classes after that.

Eventually, a student will be allowed to become a certified teacher and start leading their own seminars, with the lion's share of the income going to ESP.

Once again, it's a really similar structure to a multi-level marketing company.

But because it sells self-improvement techniques rather than physical merchandise, it's not legally classified as such.

So Keith is in the clear.

It's also the perfect setup for him, because he gets to be admired by wealthy clients.

For most of 1998, he works on developing the ritualistic side of ESP to elevate it from the standard self-help program.

And while he polishes up the initial pitch to bring people in, Nancy experiments with the neuro-linguistic programming techniques they'll use on people.

And Tony Natale becomes her unwitting guinea pig.

Between February and October of 1998, Nancy meets with Tony for regular psychological consultations.

Nancy's very careful to use the term coaching since she isn't a licensed mental health professional.

But in practice, these meetings are essentially amateur therapy.

She spends hours each day dissecting Tony's traumas with the refining new NLP techniques.

Sometimes Tony feels a sense of relief after these sessions, as if she's turned a corner in her life.

The feeling of becoming a better person is intoxicating, and it's fueled by Keith's praise.

Both he and Nancy promise her that one day they'll reach a breakthrough and they'll do it together.

Then everything will fall into place and Tony will become the woman she's destined to be, the perfect mother, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect person.

So even when it's draining, she grits her teeth and pushes through.

She recounts her abuse to Nancy, spills her feelings about her relationship with Keith and confesses her deepest, darkest anxieties.

Throughout the experience, Tony comes to depend on Nancy's validation.

She loves Nancy as a friend and trusts her as a guide.

Because of Nancy's influence and psychological abuse, Tony stays with Keith and he continues sexually abusing her, while she blames herself.

It's a truly sadistic arrangement.

But from Keith's perspective, everything's working exactly as he intended.

With Tony as a test subject, he's creating a system for manipulating vulnerable women.

And by October of 1998, he's decided that the system is ready for a proper field test.

It's time for the executive success program to start reeling in paying customers.

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It's October 1998 at a bland office building in Clifton Park, New York.

A small crop of students has turned out for the pilot course of the Executive Success Program.

Many of them know 38-year-old Keith Raniere personally, including Tony Natale and the other women in his inner circle, Pam K.

Fritz, Dawn Morrison and Kristen Keefe.

A few others are referrals, excited at the prospect of improving their business skills.

They've paid thousands of dollars to take these classes, but the promised reward will be priceless.

Self-actualization.

Keith enters the room with a practice confidence.

Years of working as the chief salesman at Consumers Byline and National Health Network have given him a relaxed charisma.

He doesn't rush a spiel or shy away from making grand promises.

He tells his students that the techniques he and Nancy Salzman have developed are designed to bring out their best selves.

But, he says, realizing their potential will require a lot of patient and expensive work.

After that, Nancy passes out a stack of papers to each student, official looking handouts that lay out the core of the executive success program curriculum.

First, they need to learn the rules.

ESP emphasizes hierarchy and respect.

Like martial artists, students in the lower ranks are expected to bow to their superiors.

They are told to stand whenever a higher ranked person enters the room.

There are also special ways to give a proper handshake depending on one's level.

Finally, everyone wears a color-coded sash to denote their status.

Again, like the colored belts in karate.

It goes without saying, of course, Keith begins at the highest rank.

He is to be addressed as the Vanguard, a title he borrowed from a video game he loves.

He even takes a page from history's most infamous dictators and makes his picture an object of reverence.

His photo hangs on the wall at every ESP course so that all students will know who's number one.

Nancy is just below Keith in the hierarchy at a rank called Prefect.

Any students who advance through the course far enough can be promoted to a level called Proctor, then Senior Proctor.

It's all formal, rigid and stilted.

No one will ever be on the same ranks as Keith and Nancy though.

Once they've gone over the structure, Keith launches into the first few exercises with the class.

And they're really basic, like grade school basic.

The students are asked to list professions where the workers wear uniforms, like police officers, firefighters, athletes and so on.

And then they're told to list some settings where people are addressed by their title, like in the army or a hospital.

Keith watches as his new students play along.

They think about these established, respected institutions where people use titles and wear clothes to denote their ranks.

This is no different from that, he says.

When he's sure they're on board with that idea, and with the idea that he's their superior, he proceeds to the next phase.

The rest of the introductory class is spent reciting the 12-point mission statement Keith came up with, which is essentially a short list of affirmations about success.

These include such hits as I pledge to ethically control as much of the money, wealth and resources of the world as possible within my success plan.

Establishing the rules, then reciting the mission statements is, no joke, all the students do in the introductory class.

A few hours are spent outlining ESP's arcane rules and practices, then things wrap up with empty promises of fortune.

The next few sessions Keith assures them will explore the importance of body language and goal setting.

After that, the next level of courses will require initiates to fork over more cash.

Hearing this, plenty of the students are eager to write out a check.

It's likely that the sunk cost fallacy is playing a role here.

People have already spent thousands, and they're desperate for it to pay off.

But they're also drawn in by Keith, who seems like a genius.

The rigid system of ranks and protocols makes ESPs seem like a polished, deep thought out organization.

And if they want to learn more about it, about themselves, they'll just have to keep coming.

After the initial lessons, later seminars go into more detail about how Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman see the world.

Or at least, how they want their students to view it.

An important part of that world view involves dividing society into two groups of people.

There are producers and there are parasites.

Basically, this recycles the typical givers and takers rhetoric that we've all probably heard at one time or another.

In Keith's case, it seems to be inspired by ideas put forth by one of his favorite authors, Ayn Rand.

He excitedly leads his students along this train of thought.

A perfect world, according to him, would be filled with producers rather than parasites.

ESP, he says, makes people into producers.

Once he's gone over that, he starts laying out advice for how recruits can change their mindsets, better navigate their personal relationships, and manifest success.

The course is supposed to help people improve themselves professionally and socially.

Yet Keith routinely spices up his lectures with references to Eastern mysticism, and his beliefs in reincarnation, spiritual visions, and destiny.

Some of these concepts, Keith cautions, may lead critics to label executive success program as a cult.

But that's just ridiculous, he says, because ESP is not a religion.

And on the surface, he's right.

None of ESP's introductory materials call for any kind of worship.

But in practice, Keith is treated as an absolute authority, like a prophet, like a god among men.

And whatever he might say, Keith has definitely taken a page out of the cult leader's playbook, when he sets out to isolate his followers from people outside the group.

Borrowing the term from Scientology, he labels outsiders suppressives, and says that a successful ESP student is one who cuts suppressives out of their life.

In fact, Scientology influences many of the company's teachings.

For example, in some of their courses, participants break into groups and share their deepest secrets with one another.

This gives Keith and his cronies insight into his students' insecurities, and potential leverage to use against them later.

Tony Natale takes several of these early courses.

She genuinely believes that they're providing her with tools for success, but she doesn't enjoy them nearly as much as the other women in Keith's inner circle seem to.

One problem she has is Keith's repeated references to sex and molestation.

On multiple occasions, he finds ways to talk about childhood abuse, always staring her right in the eyes as he does so.

In particular, he takes issue with the word molestation.

He asks his students to consider what that means, making them question what qualifies as sexual abuse.

In the same vein, he and Nancy debate the rationality of age of consent laws and hypothetical situations where, in their words, abuse may not actually be that bad.

In one class, Nancy tells the room that some children are fine with being abused until they grow up and are told that their experience was not the norm.

That's when they start experiencing negative effects, she says.

And in those cases, isn't it really society that's abusing them?

It's hard to understand how these discussions further ESP's supposed goals of professional self-improvement.

Instead, these discussions seem intended to make students doubt their own instincts about sexual abuse.

That's certainly how it feels to Tony.

And as she sits through these classes, she recognizes veiled references to her own experiences with abuse, things she thought would be kept private.

She hears Keith and Nancy recycle the same platitudes they fed her during coaching sessions.

And she realizes that her conversations with Nancy have formed the foundation of ESP's programs.

The kicker is, the longer Tony's involved in ESP, and the more coaching sessions she endures, the less successful she becomes.

By 1999, National Health Network is seriously over-leveraged.

Tony's expanded her operation to three stores and is in the process of building a fourth when things come crashing down.

Contractors hit her with delays, and a business partner backs out of a deal at the last minute.

On top of that, Keith recently read a book about the evils of taxation and pressures her to cheat the IRS by paying salespeople under the table.

When the money finally runs out, Tony has no choice but to seek out a loan.

She figures she needs about $50,000 to keep things going.

That would be almost 100 grand today.

But she knows a bank won't help her out, so she turns to Nancy instead.

Despite their occasional differences, Tony still thinks of Nancy as her friend, and knows full well that she's been raking in cash from ESP's courses.

Nancy's happy to lend her some money, but they'll be conditioned, she says.

And, they come directly from Keith.

The first is that Tony has to agree to even longer private coaching sessions with Nancy every week.

Tony's already devoting most of her non-working hours to ESP meetings, but she reluctantly agrees.

Anything to keep from going under.

The second condition is that Tony has to refer to Keith exclusively as Vanguard.

That's a bridge too far for Tony.

It's laughable.

Keith has been her boyfriend for nearly eight years.

She refuses to call him Vanguard like she's one of his students.

She just won't do it.

And eventually, Nancy agrees to give her the 50 grand anyway.

It keeps National Health Network afloat for the time being, but Tony's problems are far from over.

Lately, Keith has been growing distant.

He's spending more time outside of the house, devoted to building up ESP.

As far as Tony's concern, that's a good thing.

Pretty much everything at NHN is in her name, and it's freeing to finally be able to run her business without his meddling.

She's even considering leaving him for good but has trouble making the final split.

That being said, Keith's behavior by this point is intolerable.

One day, in April of 1999, Tony calls Keith from the office and asks him to move the laundry to the drier, except for her black sweater which will shrink if it's machine dried.

Keith agrees and hangs up.

But when Tony gets home, lo and behold, her sweater's in the drier.

It's unwearable.

And when she rightfully blames Keith, he loses it.

He corners Tony in the laundry room and screams, screams in her face.

He refuses to take responsibility insisting she never told him not to dry her sweater.

When she yells back, he foams at the mouth.

He's the smartest man in the world, he says.

He has an IQ of 240 and he's never wrong.

In sense that she dare question him, he demands that Tony apologize.

And when she refuses, he storms out of the house.

That spat finally spells the end of their relationship.

Keith moves out of Tony's home and keeps his distance at first.

But he soon decides that he's not done with her.

And just like the last time she tried to leave, he deploys all the women in his inner circle to guilt Tony into taking him back.

Tony ignores it all though.

Even when she comes home to find someone has broken into her house, remove Keith's stuff and some of her jewelry.

Finally, three weeks after the breakup, Keith shows himself again.

He barges into the NHN offices, glaring daggers at Tony.

But the only thing he says to her is, the next time I see you, you'll either be dead or in jail.

Then he storms off.

Not long after that, Tony goes into work and finds the place in chaos.

One of her employees has sent out a scathing email to all of their customers, accusing Tony of being a traitor.

The email claims that Keith Raniere is the true philosophical founder of NHN and that Tony has denied him the ownership stake in the business he deserves.

The email then calls on all the customers to cancel their memberships and stop doing business with the company.

Tony rushes to send a follow-up email to contain the fallout, but she can't.

Her hard drives are corrupted.

All her customer data is gone, wiped forever.

The business she's been building for years is no more.

It's a crushing blow, but if that's the price to get Keith Raniere out of her life for good, she considers it well worth it.

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It's March 27th in the year 2000.

Keith Raniere, now 40 years old, watches as a couple dozen of his executive success program students squeeze into a one-story brick building in Albany, New York.

The place used to be Nancy Salzman's hypnotherapy office, but now it's wholly devoted to spreading Keith's ideology.

As his eyes roam the room, Keith clocks an attractive woman around his age.

He recognizes her as a former client of Nancy's.

Barbara Boucher is a financial planner who never stops working.

She's enrolled in her first ESP class to try and learn how to manage the stress in her life.

But she's going to get even more than she bargained for.

Ever since Tony left him, Keith's been looking for a woman to take her place is what he calls his primary consort.

Upon seeing Barbara, he decides that she'll do just fine.

Before the class starts, Keith walks right up to Barbara and strikes up a conversation.

He's already heard a lot about her from Nancy, but he doesn't let on that he's got the inside scoop.

He keeps the tone casual and light, steering the topics to make it sound like they have shared interests.

Then he whips out his signature flirtation technique, giving her a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrug.

That's when he starts laying it on thick.

He tells Barbara that he's got an indescribable, metaphysical feeling about her.

Something's telling him that she's the protagonist of the novel Dagny Taggart, in the flesh.

Like Dagny, Barbara has the power to change the world, he says.

She's not the first woman he's fed that line to.

Barbara accepts the book, but Keith can tell from her reaction that he's come on a bit too strong.

So he backs off and jumps into leading the class.

This is a three-week seminar, after all.

He can afford to play the long game.

Throughout their sessions, Keith continues to try and manipulate Barbara through intermediaries.

He tells the members of his inner circle that he has a feeling about Barbara, that she's destined to be a member of his family.

To that end, he plants Pam Kaifritz and Kristen Keith in the class to act on his behalf.

When the students break into small groups for activities, Pam and Kristen always end up alongside Barbara.

They talk up Keith like he's the second coming of Christ.

A couple of weeks into the intensive, Pam and Kristen take things up a notch.

They describe the strange, mystical visions they've started having recently.

Visions of Barbara and Keith walking hand in hand, leading the planet to a more evolved society.

They both claim to have the same spiritual certainty that Barbara will become Keith's companion and help him change the future.

This definitely puts Barbara off a little, but she takes it in stride.

She likes Pan and Kristen, even if they are a bit odd.

And she thinks Keith is a smart guy, though she doesn't have any romantic interest in him.

Keith watches this exchange from a distance, careful not to reveal the smirk playing on his lips.

This is what he loves the most, making other people dance like marionettes.

It's almost too easy, given that he's such a genius.

He's confident that Barbara will eventually do what he wants, just like everyone else.

And if she doesn't, she'll pay the consequences.

Keith doesn't make another move until the course is almost over.

By that stage, he feels certain that Barbara's on the hook.

So when the time is right, he corners her in private.

In his experience, the best way to win a woman's heart is to make a grand romantic statement, to disarm her with a blunt confession.

So, he tells Barbara that he's having visions just like Kristen and Pan.

He tells her all four of them are connected.

What's more, in his dreams, he and Barbara have a beautiful golden child together.

To Keith's absolute shock, Barbara does not fall for this shtick.

She just politely rebuffs his advances and returns to her life as a financial planner.

She found the ESP course helpful but she's not going to leave her life behind based on some visions.

But then, in the weeks after the seminars, she finds herself reconsidering.

She's recently been through a divorce and thinks joining a new community might not be so bad.

The people in ESP were supportive and seemed to be building something positive, so maybe it is worth waiting further in.

Plus, the company offers her 10% of the course fee for every new member she recruits.

She decides to take another course and convinces 7 of her friends to come along.

That's as good as a 70% off coupon.

Barbara has even more fun in this second class, and she really throws herself into the recruitment aspect of the business.

She has a talent for cold calling and starts making good money growing ESP's ranks as a side hustle.

In no time, she reaches the rank of proctor, which means she can lead her own classes.

At that stage, she quits her job and goes all in on ESP, even bringing many of her wealthy former clients into the fold.

And that doesn't just make her more money, it makes Keith redouble his efforts to win her over.

From his perspective, things are going even better than he hoped.

He tells Pam and Kristen to keep up the pressure on Barbara.

They stay close to her and continue to pepper their conversations with suggestions that she would be a great companion for Keith.

Of course, they're careful not to reveal their own existing romances with him.

Keith told them that Barbara has jealousy problems, just like Tony did.

So they have to be discreet.

Finally, after months, Barbara softens on Keith.

He's smart, he's successful, and he makes her feel so good about herself.

So, the two of them finally start dating.

Right away, though, she notices that he spends an awful lot of time with other women.

But she doesn't really question it.

Keith seems devoted to her, and the other women never express any romantic or physical affection for him.

There's clearly a line there.

And besides, Keith's a middle-aged nerd who looks like Rick Moranis.

He's charming, but he's not a heartthrob, so Barbara knows she's got nothing to worry about.

In other words, everything's proceeding according to Keith's design.

ESP's growth surges thanks to Barbara's wealthy contacts, which is great.

But being in a normal, romantic relationship with her isn't enough for him.

Not after the way Tony betrayed him.

He needs to make sure Barbara won't leave him, under any circumstances.

But he doesn't want to flatter her and give her an ego.

He needs to do the opposite.

So instead of telling her she's the reincarnation of someone like the Buddha or Joan of Arc, he convinces Barbara that she's actually Reinhard Heydrich, an architect of the Holocaust.

And now, he says, this life is her chance to undo some of the cataclysmic damage her soul has done in the past.

It's a hell of a big swing, but you know what?

Barbara buys it.

Or at least she doesn't push back.

The months of manipulation and guilt trips from Keith and his lackeys have warped Barbara's worldview.

She's no longer sure what's true and what's not.

The only thing she's certain of is that Keith loves her and that if she ever tries to challenge any of his claims, it triggers an onslaught of personal attacks.

The only way she can guarantee peace is to do what he asks and to agree that she must be hydric, just as he says.

That's when Keith knows he's got her.

If she didn't make a run for it with that, she ain't going nowhere.

So he takes things even further.

He explains that he's a higher being.

And that means he needs sex constantly, or else spiritual energy will consume him and he'll die.

So one way Barbara can repent for her Nazi past is to channel her sexual energy into him whenever he needs it.

There are absolutely no depths Keith Raniere won't sink to in order to play with his victim's minds.

The more taboo and disturbing the tactic, the more it excites him.

Since he was a teenager, he's been obsessed with proving that he's smarter than everyone else.

And with using his intelligence to dominate the people around him.

He's not just a man, he's the vanguard.

And this is only the beginning of his dominion.

From Airship, this is episode two in our series on Keith Raniere and Nxivm.

On the next episode, after rebranding ESP to Nxivm, Keith suffers a setback that threatens to devastate his budding empire.

We use many different sources while preparing this episode.

One we particularly recommend is Don't Call It A Cult, the shocking story of Keith Raniere and the women of Nxivm by Sarah Berman.

This episode contains reenactments and dramatized details.

And while in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Christian Peraga.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Terrell Wells, managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callen, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham.