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Crime Story: Episode 2- Josh Bloch

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm Kathleen Goldhar. This is a crime story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

JOSH BLOCH: She said to me at first, people have been branded. And then a couple of days later, she said, I'm one of those people.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It was August of 2017 when my friend and colleague Josh Bloch walked into my office to tell me about a crazy story that he'd heard over his summer vacation. At the time, we were both producers at the CBC current affairs program The Current. He had just returned from a trip to Hornby Island in British Columbia and had run into an old friend, an old friend that told him that she had just left a cult. The name of that cult was NXIVM.

SOUNDCLIP

KEITH RANIERI: ESP NXIVM is a methodology that allows people to optimize their experience and behavior.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Josh and I began to dig into the story, and the more we dug, the bigger it got. The result of our investigation was a podcast called Escaping NXIVM. Josh, welcome to Crime Story.

JOSH BLOCH: Thanks for having me.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So when you walked into my office that day, what did you know about NXIVM?

JOSH BLOCH: I knew like, not a whole lot. I had known for over a decade that Sarah was involved in some kind of, like, self-help group. I thought it was kind of like landmark. And then I ran into her on Hornby Island, and she was like a month, as you know, a month out of NXIVM. And it was actually kind of difficult to understand what she was saying. There's so much jargon, there's so much. And she was also processing what was happening and still didn't quite have a narrative yet. So I knew that she was involved in something that was really scary and had gotten bad enough that she had to leave. I knew that she was frightened and had actually good reason to be frightened because I did know that people who had come out and spoken out against NXIVM, they had gone after them and they ended up in court, ended up having their lives destroyed by NXIVM. But, you know, I remember coming to you and saying, I think this is a story. There's something here. I know that the Bronfmans are involved. I know that, like there's there's some celebrities involved. And we were working at this current affairs program, and you and I was kind of like, well, do we have her on the show? And and I think we both realized pretty quickly that there was no way to explain the story easily. First of all, it wasn't a commonly known story. So the amount of work you'd have to do to actually get the audience up to speed to understand what Sarah was talking about just wouldn't work on A Current Affair show at that moment on an interview show. So, you know, I was still trying to kind of process the bits and pieces that was there. But definitely my journalistic spidey sense is and I think yours too, were like, this is big. We got to do something with this.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Oh, I just remember you coming in and every day we would talk and I would be like, But can you remind me who, w ho's that again? And where was this? And right there were all these, like you said, all this jargon and all these levels and all this craziness that went into it. But did you know that she had been branded? I can't remember if we knew at that point that she had been branded.

JOSH BLOCH: I so when so we were both on this small Golf island in British Columbia, Hornby Island, and we actually ran each other a few times over the course of this week. And the first time she kind of said, I've left this group, you know, we're we're we've gone to the New York Times. We're trying to. She said to me at first, people have been branded. And then a couple of days later, she said, I'm one of those people. And then I was like, holy cow. And she did. I mean, I didn't see it. But she then then it kind of dawned on me that this is serious. It's that, you know, the extent of it is to do with physical harm, not just psychological harm.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I had never heard of anybody being, I mean, obviously horrible, horrible stories of the slave trade. You write about stuff like that, but like modern day us, the people that we knew, it was insane to think that somebody had been branded. And I remember you and I trying to even figure out how that happened.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Like, was it a pen or was it a like a stamp?

JOSH BLOCH: I don't think she told me right away then.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I don't think so.

JOSH BLOCH: But it was only certainly once the New York Times article came out. But I think we actually interviewed her before that time or we had talked to her before that time. And then she started to describe that it wasn't this five second kind of searing of the skin. It was this 45 minute ceremony where she was being held down with a cauterizing pen and having that's a very, very painful symbol burned into her body.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And the symbol ended up being the initials of Keith Ranieri.

JOSH BLOCH: That's right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So who was Keith? What what did we find out about Keith?

JOSH BLOCH: So, I mean, Keith Ranieri is well, you know, there's the public facing side of Keith Ranieri, and then there was actually who he was. So Keith Ranieri kind of espoused the mythology about him as that he was this enlightened figure who has was exceptionally intelligent. He claimed he could could speak in full sentences at the age of one and read fluently eight or two with the piano prodigy, judo prodigy, and was this like incredibly intelligent person. And then also he had the story of like discovering that he was an enlightened being at the age of 13. So he had these kind of two things about him. I was super smart. And by the way, I'm like really enlightened and everyone should follow me. So he had kind of this classic guru leader quality about him.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: He was in the world record books for being the smartest man.

JOSH BLOCH: One of the wild things is that he actually like it wasn't like a lot of it felt like it was who he but then it turns out in 1989 that US the Australian Guinness Book of World Records listed him as one of the smartest men in the world. And this becomes like this huge calling card for him. And like everything he was involved in before NXIVM still had this quality around it that people would congregate around him and kind of gravitate towards him and he would lead them towards like financial success and personal success. And then eventually he lands on this this idea of building NXIVM. So he's like really like the public facing side of him as this super rational, scientific, you know, kind of high achieving person that can help you realize their dreams of. Yes. Well, we discovered this other side of him, which didn't quite match up with that. And in fact, like it is, wild, as you get closer to him, you start to realize he had theories that people were, you know, his inner circle and NXIVM were reincarnated Nazis and that and people bought that. And he was like, don't tell anyone because we were into the science world right now. Like, that's that we're, we're all about rationality and like, scientific inquiry. But by the way, you are Hitler reincarnated and people bought this.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. What was the name of that One great episode we had was a great name that somebody gave us, Nazis and...

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah, Sex, Nazis and something.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It was awesome. He talked a little bit about how he lured them in. But I mean, he was luring people in from an early age. What was it about him that he could enraptured people the way he did?

JOSH BLOCH: Right. I mean, I think you and I talked a lot about, like once we started digging into who this guy was, we're like, wait a second, this guy's a dork. He's, like, really nerdy looking and he, like, plays volleyball twice a week and invites people to come play volleyball with him at night and, like

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Or to watch him play vollyball.

JOSH BLOCH: To watch him play volleyball. And like, whisper questions in his ears between points. And he's he's just doesn't have he's not like this larger than life charismatic figure. But, you know, as we went out and started interviewing people that knew him from way back, ex-girlfriends, that people in NXIVM, I think we discovered the same idea that people kept saying again and again, which was he had an amazing ability to to lock into you and make you feel like you're the only person in the room. And it's kind of like a quality of narcissists. Like often people say that about narcissists is that when they shine their light on you, you just feel enraptured by it and so taken by it. And I think a lot of people gravitated towards him because of that. And he obviously had a skill to kind of lock in and and figure out what made people tick. And clearly an ability to to engage with people on a lot of different levels. You know, we heard about pianists and scientists and all kinds of like really prominent people coming to visit the NXIVM headquarters and that, you know, Keith Ranieri would come and engage with them and then feel everyone felt like there was a real honest, authentic rapport. So he obviously had this, like, nimble ability to engage on a lot of levels. But I do think it was that kind of one on one ability to connect with someone and kind of figure out what it is they needed and where their vulnerabilities were.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: It always used to make me think when people said that, you know, like I once produced a interview with Bill Clinton and it was just over the phone, but he and everybody had always said that he has this ability to do the same thing, that when you're in the room with him and he sees you, everything else falls away. And it even felt like that on the phone.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I think Barack Obama had the same characteristics and lots of people had the same characters. And I always think that they're all kind of the same type of people. It's just which direction they go. And you can decide whether even the political path is evil or good or not. But I mean, I felt like that was something about Keith that we learned as he had that charisma that had nothing to do with a moral compass. It was just his ability to connect with people that way.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And he connected on a sexual level to like, we ended up finding out that most of his life as an adult or even starting as like a teenager, he had these women swirling around him that even though he told people he was uninterested in sex, he was actually very interested in sex.

JOSH BLOCH: Right. And there were actually I think there were different stages of of Vanguard, as he was called in in NXIVM, like initially, he was a celibate and never enunciated. And he, you know, just he couldn't bother with the material world eventually. And I remember Sarah saying eventually I think it was in like 2010 or so. Suddenly they're like, Oh, Keith seems to have some like girlfriends or whatever. And there was a little bit of a sense that he had sexual partners, but 100% from the get go. And this is like part of his philosophy going way back. And and it was deeply kind of entrenched in NXIVM philosophy as well. It's that men are inherently polyamorous and women are inherently monogamous. And he kind of set up throughout, you know, the various projects in his life situations where he would have multiple partners. Then next to him, he had like almost a so-called harem of like ten or 15 women who all were devoted to him that could only be with him and were aware that he had multiple other partners as well.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the more disturbing things, I mean, there are so many disturbing things. I shouldn't say that, but was when we were interviewing Sarah, we discovered the misogyny at the basis of so much of what he was teaching. And I actually remember you sort of realizing it as you were interviewing her and feeling kind of pretty sick about the whole idea because of your connection to Sarah and her husband. So tell me a little bit more about what we discovered in terms of just exactly what that base was and how hard it was for the women and how they got caught up in it.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately one of the big motivating factors that landed Sarah in this secret women's group called DOS, which is where she got branded, was because of this idea that that Keith and that the folks running NXIVM instilled in the NXIVM followers. And it fundamentally comes down to the idea that that women are somehow inherently deficient and that there's a different path that that women in NXIVM had to go along to address this deficiency.

SOUNDCLIP

KEITH RANIERI: Inflammatory, all the women in here. Do you understand why we hate you? Do you understand why you're obnoxious bothers? Why all your little whining and complaining and all this this garbage that you do? And how much do you think you do? And it's just all a bunch of crap.

JOSH BLOCH: So there was all these like precursors to DOS where women and men would be separate or be given separate curriculum in order to address these issues. And yeah, I mean, it was it was surprising. I mean, I think part of that period of time of Sarah coming out of NXIVM and trying to grapple with the things that she learned was contending with some of these ideas about like I mean, even the names of the groups like the Society of Protectors was the name of the men's group that that her husband, Nippy, was one of the leaders of. And they had this other program called Janes for Women. So for the reason Sarah eventually was convinced to join this group was was that a mentor in the program, Lauren Salzman comes to her and says, you know, it's time for us to take our training to the next level. Like, we as women need to take accountability for our, you know, inherent deficiencies. And the only way we can do it is by going next level and joining this kind of secret group. So it was it's incredibly disturbing to hear that the ways that Sarah was complicit in that and and and the way she's very smart and she's like-

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She's so smart. And I felt like there was this real effort on Keith's part and some of the other leaders who were teaching to kind of carefully pretzel her thinking.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And that's what they did, is they would say things that seemed on the surface either sort of benign or.

SOUNDCLIP

KEITH RANIERI: All the women.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Common sense. Like, men are physically stronger than women.

SOUNDCLIP

KEITH RANIERI: All the women in here. Do you understand why we hate you? Do you understand why you're obnoxious bothers? Why all your little whining and complaining and all this. This garbage that you do and how much you you think you do. And it's just all a bunch of crap.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then you brought her slowly to this place where she started to, like, be like. Yeah, women are pains in the asses. And and that was very hard to listen to.

JOSH BLOCH: Totally. And I remember that like, well, how women complain a lot and I can't handle pain as much. And like, all these things that she was sort of saying matter of factly and you're like, Wait, wait a second, what's going on here? And, you know, and one of the things in terms of that, like Pretzel language is so like one of the key things they introduce and Nexium is and and this is classic for all coercive groups and all cults is an inability to question. So as soon as you start questioning the situation you're in, you are told that that is your issue, that you have an issue that's holding you back from being successful because you are the kind of person that won't act. You'll just question. And and so it creates an inability if you're in that group, to to at all challenge anything that's going on. And Sarah described when she's on that table getting cauterize incredible pain for 45 minutes and so much of her body and her mind is saying, run, get the hell out of here. The other part of her brain, which had been trained for 12 years, is saying, this is this is it. See, this is your deficiency is to run away from a situation, to not handle the pain because you're not good enough, because you're a woman, because of all those things that had already been instilled in her. And that's like a really now I think we talk to a lot of people that when when you ask them in retrospect, like there's a ton of red flags from that, the first course you take a ton of red flags about the organization that you're part of. I mean, down to having to like, call this dude Vanguard and his number two prefect. Like, there's just a lot of weird things. But part of what happens is this idea of like, are you willing to invest in your personal growth and challenge yourself to not always ask questions and challenge authority? Just trust the process. Trust is super dangerous and super red flag it in itself.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I just remember us trying to figure it all out. You know, it was so dense and so complicated. And Sarah had spent 12 years trying to learn, and you and I had like two months. And I remember our office remember the posters on the wall where we had, like, the strike path written out.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And we had, like, his teachings written out on big poster boards on the wall because we kept having to reference the word salad, as they call it, of Keith Raniere, his teaching, because it it was you know, it's such a stark difference between those of us coming in and trying to, like, figure it out versus like Sarah, who had been indoctrinated slowly over this time. And we did eventually get there and start to be able to obviously not agree, but see the logic, quote unquote, logic that they would use to get them to think the way they wanted them to think.

JOSH BLOCH: Totally. And I feel like that's one of the decisions we arrived at. I mean, we had this big board, we had a million different things. As we started to dig in the story, there were so many different threads to pull on and so many different directions to go. I mean, the Bronfman sisters, there's like, you know, Billionaire Heiresses is a whole story which we were fascinated by. And at some point I think we made a really smart decision, which was to say, what is our like, you know, added a. To our advantage here. What do we have that no one else has? And it was Sarah. It was the access to Sarah and that inside view. And even though, like you think a podcast is like seven episodes, you have so much real estate, it's really not like you need to be so focused and especially on a complicated story. So so I think we had early drafts where like that first episode was going to like tell, you know, the sweeping story of Nexium, and we were like, pare it back, parrot back, parrot back until it really just became Sarah story and actually a very specific part of Sarah's story of just how she got branded and how that what led up to that moment, which I felt was like a big relief. Once we kind of discovered the way to tell it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: We learned so much about making podcasts, making that podcast because we had no idea what we were doing.

JOSH BLOCH: At all.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: At all.

JOSH BLOCH: There was a lot of a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, and then just barrelling ahead

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: A lot of. Phone calls all night being like, What are we doing? How are going to get through this. At the height of NXIVM How successful was it?

JOSH BLOCH: Well, it's interesting because like in a lot of ways, as we go, who we went down to Albany and we visited their headquarters and their headquarters is like a rinky dink. It says executive success on the door. But like the letters are peeling off of it as it's like a one story building.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: In an industrial area outside of Albany, New York.

JOSH BLOCH: Right. And it really is like a couple, I don't think a couple hundred people at most that live there. I don't even think that many, probably dozens. But there was a few things about it that made it like totally defy that the peeling letters on the door. And, you know, one of them is the celebrities they started to recruit. So the Bronfman family or sisters, the, you know, Alice and Mac and Nicky Klein and others that were, you know, had had some amount of fame that became like really important calling cards for the recruiters, people like Sarah, to get people to come in and take new courses. And by the way, like the vast majority of people that, as you know, that engaged with NXIVM, all their their experience of it was like you com you spend $5,000, you take a five day course or a ten day course and you're on your way. And there were something like 20,000 people that did that, and it was only a few people that then would go on to become more involved at the organization, maybe moved to Albany or maybe like be part of another center. So they were successful in the sense that, like even when we ran into Sarah, they were operational, you know, in multiple centers across North America. They had big centers in Mexico, they were expanding into Europe. And then they had, you know, as just say at a couple other like major figures that gave them serious legitimacy. So in Mexico, the son of the former president and the son of a major media tycoon there, media baron there, it was part of NXIVM. So they had like really like strong inroads into like a powerful Mexican community. And then in 2009, I think probably the biggest coup for them, the biggest legitimacy was that they invited the Dalai Lama, they hosted the Dalai Lama to come speak in Albany. And there you have the Dalai Lama, Keith Ranieri, and his number two, Nancy Salzman, on stage together.

SOUNDCLIP

DALAI LAMA: Indeed. I'm very, very happy to be here, actually.

JOSH BLOCH: And it's essentially an endorsement for them. And they have these photos, they have these videos. And, you know, Sarah says that in a now in a recruiting meeting, you know, an informational session where she's getting people to come take the course, she can say, look, Keith Ranieri with the Dalai Lama, like what better legitimacy can you have than that? So that I think elevated them. And it's kind of wild because, you know, they had these, like really lofty visions. I mean, one of their goals was was control as much money as we can in the world and we'll spend it ethically. And that's how we're going to change the world. And they're like, that's kind of laughable, except you also this goal to have a NXIVM member as president in Mexico. And that was not outside the realm of possibility. I mean, there is a world where if he didn't sort of get so distracted by his sexual proclivities or whatever or like that, he would have been able to to to draw in a ton of power. So there's an interesting tension there between the kind of small size of it and the amount of resources they ended up having.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I mean, that's really where Sarah was so important to the organization, too, because she ran, started and ran with a partner, the Vancouver office, the only Canadian office. And that was hugely successful.

JOSH BLOCH: Right. Well, I mean, Sarah was their star recruiter, and Sarah made huge inroads for NXIVM in the acting world, in the you know, in the yoga world as well. But but certainly like the whole Allison Mack, you know, Smallville was shooting in Vancouver. That whole cast was in Vancouver, and she was able to kind of infiltrate that world. So that was, you know, everyone got their role in Nexium and like Keith would set up people with different projects. And I think he quickly identified Sarah's skill set as a recruiter. And like, it was almost, you know, these kinds of pyramid schemes or like of multilevel marketing, it's like next to impossible to make any money. It takes forever to actually recruit enough people. And she was one of the few people in NXIVM that actually got to a point where she had enough people enrolled and those people that were enrolled were enrolling other people that she was actually making money for a period of time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She made a lot of money.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. And then you mentioned her trip to Albany, and I have to just talk about one of the most fun. I mean, that was such a fun, crazy trip.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And we were nervous most of the time. And we tried to do a quick undercover session in the NXIVM offices where we got you all set up to go. And we thought of every convoluted story we could think of as to why you were going into the offices to ask questions. But obviously they were on high alert.

JOSH BLOCH: Well it was hilarious because we were we had come up with a scenario. We were like, I'm I'm going to walk into the offices. And then we had we had talked CBC And the idea the rule was that we couldn't. Lie about anything. So I said, you know, I'm visiting my partner who is in New York, which is true, and I'm through Albany. And I'd heard about NXIVM, which is true. And I'm very interested in taking a course was my story. So I like knock on the door and no one answers. I like peering through the window. No one's there. I have like a wireless mic.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And we were waiting in the car. All nervous, like. Something is going to happen to you.

JOSH BLOCH: I was pounding. And so eventually I like, try the door and it opens. And I was like, Oh my God.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I have to go in, walk in now.

JOSH BLOCH: And suddenly a woman, like, pops out of it off out of office, and she's like, Hello? And I was like, Hello? My voice is like ten octaves higher. Than it should have been. Hi. Yeah, I'm here is this executive success program? And I and I like rather, you know, the idea was like, just divulge information if it's asked of you, but I just let it all pour out. And I was like well, it comes over in New York and my wife's down there and now I'm traveling up to New York and I really want to take a course can I take a course

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Cause I take a course!

SOUNDCLIP

NXIVM RECEPTIONIST: Who are you?

JOSH BLOCH: I'm, my name is Josh, I wanted to find out about some programs. A friend of mine had taken some courses.

NXIVM RECEPTIONIST: Uh, who are you here to meet?

JOSH BLOCH: I just wanted anyone that could tell me about some of the programs that are here?

NXIVM RECEPTIONIST: You would need to be meeting somebody. How did you get in?

JOSH BLOCH: That door was just open? But I knocked on that door with there.

JOSH BLOCH: So it turns out nobody cold calls NXIVM. You don't walk into the NXIVM office. The whole point of a multilevel marketing company is you get recruited. So she was like, oh, like big red flags.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: They see the red flags in you.

JOSH BLOCH: That's, right. She's like, you don't feel like a safe to me. So she was like, okay, give me your phone number and I'll call you back. And I was like, Okay, okay. Then I just like ran back to the van and I was like, let's get out of here.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That was so funny. How is Sarah now, do we know how she's doing?

JOSH BLOCH: She seems to be doing great. She's. She's. It's been a whole process of redefining herself. I think that, like, you know, she for 12 years of her professional life, all she had on her resume was like star recruiter of NXIVM. So there's been a process of, like, reentering the world as not a member of a self-help group. But I think in a lot of ways, she has to, you know, used her experience of leaving a group and turned that into a career. So she has her own podcast and she's, you know, has a book and she has a speaking engagement. So she's done really well in that space as being a kind of outspoken advocate for survivors of cults.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. And she also was a big part of getting Keith finally arrested. So let's jump to that part of the story. So when we were in Albany, he wasn't there. We didn't know where he was. It ended up that he actually had fled to Mexico, and he was in a very expensive villa provided by the Bronfman sisters. And what happened to him there?

JOSH BLOCH: So, I mean, the FBI had really, you know, had a warrant for his arrest. And they basically came with the Mexican police and raided the compound. I think Nikki Klein was filming it at the time. So suddenly we be privy to this like video clip on YouTube of like all the inner circle of NXIVM being chased around by cops in this in this fancy Mexican resort. I think Keith was hiding in a closet and they found him. And then they had them back to the states and there was an arraignment and we attended.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, we saw him in real life.

JOSH BLOCH: In real life, which was wild in a courtroom in New York, sort of before the trial. And that was wild because we had been hearing about him and thinking about him and hearing other people talk about for months and months and months. I mean,.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That's almost a year, I think. And Yeah, yeah.

JOSH BLOCH: And and I think we both had, like, dreams about him, like he's became this like a real force. And then suddenly to see it, like seeing a celebrity and this courtrooms are not big. I mean, there was like a five or six rows of seating for people attending the trial, and there he was in a jumpsuit and and, you know, handcuffed and with lawyers. So it was like a really it also was like this crazy journey and a pretty compressed amount of time from that first day of walking into your office and being like this. I don't even know how to pronounce this thing NXIVM, like it's spelt weird and like, you know, us trying to pitch it to other people and sort of not registering at that point as a totally become part of the of the zeitgeist. And, and people were aware and it became a kind of big news story.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The media circus.

JOSH BLOCH: It's a big media media circus.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. Yeah.

JOSH BLOCH: So he there was six charges. I mean, the prosecution's main charge towards them was racketeering, which is essentially a charge to go after like mob leaders with to say that Keith Ranieri and his coconspirators were engaged in a pattern of illegal activity for personal financial gain. But in there is also sex trafficking, child pornography, while wire fraud, human trafficking, so a whole host of charges. And eventually he got 120 years in prison.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And that was really something like I mean, we joke about him even now when we think about him, is sort of this really a silly, pathetic twerp.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But his crimes were evil and they were against young especially this one girl. And I remember reading the testimony of the WhatsApp conversations that he would have with a lot of his victims. And it was within those moments where you finally actually got to see the true evil manipulating Keith. And it wasn't funny and it wasn't silly. It was.

JOSH BLOCH: Incredibly dark.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Incredibly dark. And the the the victims will never be okay.

JOSH BLOCH: Right. Yeah. I mean, and there was, you know, having run, you know, he was running that organization for almost two decades. And so there were a lot of victims, a lot of victims testimonies that were involved in the trials. And certainly the most disturbing stuff were to do with grooming young girls. I mean, he he groomed several young teenagers.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Teenagers. Young teenagers.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah. From an early age. And again, they were like in a in this really sealed off community. In one case, Mexican national, who had they had withheld her passport. So, you know, she wasn't even able to escape. There were also cases of of essentially, you know, well of rape. But through this DOS system where women had given over their collateral to be part of this secret women's group thing, thinking it was a program run for women by women was actually run by Keith Ranieri. So they had you know, Sarah included had given over collateral to kind of show your commitment to your self-improvement. And that collateral was nude photos. It was videos and things that if they were to be released, would destroy your life. So people were really, you know, once they were in, they were locked in. And then there were cases and it came out in the trial that that women were instructed to go have sex with Keith. And if they refused, they were threatened with having this collateral released. So it's incredibly dark, incredibly manipulative. And it is I mean, a lot of ways it was the culmination of all that misogyny and control. And like, you know, we talked a lot about, you know, what was behind all this and and why was Keith Ranieri doing this. And the psychologists and called experts that we talked to, you know, talked about this need for control among narcissists like Keith Ranieri, and that it's almost like a drug like, you know, first you start this organization and people come to you and they venerate you and they have to say thank you, Vanguard, after every meeting and you get a little bit of a buzz from that. But then you have to take it to the next level. And a lot of ways DOS was like the logical conclusion of that, of like, what happens if I can control people so absolutely that every second of their waking day they are in my control and my power. And that's that was ultimately his demise was was it was a structure that could never actually sustain itself because it required recruiting more and more people into it. And at some point, as it did, it was going to crumble.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And another one of those cases of that kind of control ended up being Lauren Salzman, whose mother was prefect, second in control, Sarah's best friend, the one that convinced her to get the brand and joined DOS. You know, and in our mind, Lauren often sort of, ah, wasn't the good one in this story. But during the trial, she testified against Keith, and she really I completely changed my mind about her. And she became as much of a victim as anybody else. Her story was heartbreaking, not excusing her behavior, but tell us a bit about what Keith did to, to Lauren.

JOSH BLOCH: I mean, Lauren is like another incredibly tragic story in that she essentially grew up inside NXIVM. I mean, her mom was prefect. This was from I think she was a teenager basically when NXIVM was started. And so this was her world and this was the path set up for her, for, you know, how she could become a successful person. And she did rise really high in Nexium and got a lot of a lot of praise and saw a lot of success within that system. But she like a number of women, you know, part of being in this inner circle around Keith was eventually being invited to become a sexual partner of his, and he promised her that that she down that that she would carry his baby. And I think she dedicated a lot of time and energy and a lot of herself to that path and that dream and didn't have other boyfriends and didn't do other things that people were doing. As you know, as you come of age. And and, by the way, like, you know, part of of that inner circle and the control around that inner circle was actually a dietary restriction. And you could see it you could see it with Alison Mack, you could see what the number of women and Sarah talked about it, that people were put on these like caloric restrictions of like 800 calories a day. And that and Lauren was part of that as well. And that obviously has like a bunch of levels of coercion. And and it's a classic tool that that coercive groups will use to just like not make you function at 100% by by withholding calories as well. So, you know, Lauren was right in there and and Keith had his talons in her and she became one of the like first line. So like in this dos kind of pyramid scheme of Keith at the top of it, she was one of his like slaves. And so she became really implicated in this blackmail system inside DOS as well. So I totally agree that, like she's and I think this is like the reoccurring theme within people that have been a part of Nexium is like this tension between your victimization and your complicity in the organization. And, you know, I think as we talk to people about the podcast, it was interesting to see the different responses that people had. And some people were very empathetic towards Sarah and towards others that were a part of it and really realized how traumatizing and damaging and coercive the organization was. And I think some people had a really hard time wrapping their head around just being empathetic and felt like, well, wait a second, weren't they recruiting other people? Weren't they complicit in it? Don't they have like free will as as well? And I think it's I've always felt like both those things have to exist at the same time. And that has to be a space that like and is just how complicated that we are. And I think it's what the cult experts say is that you can be both like we all are vulnerable to a certain extent of being drawn into these, you know, really damaging and violent and terrible systems. And there ought to be compassion for people that that suffered that and maybe perpetuate some so bad along the way.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I mean, and Lauren really embodies that. Like one of the stories that really threw me was when we were in Albany. And even before we got there, we had heard about a woman that we were told has been locked in her room for three years, two years.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And we weren't really sure that that could possibly be true. We even went by, remember, And you thought you saw somebody look out and we had no idea, again, like adding to this whole there was something scary about being in Albany at the same time, thrilling and just none of it was making any sense.

JOSH BLOCH: Right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And then in the trial, we found out that not only it was true, but tell us more about what Lauren did. I mean, Lauren was her, what's the word like? She kept her in there.

JOSH BLOCH: Right. Her captor.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Her captor. Yeah.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is again, it all comes down to Keith and relationships to Keith. So she was one of Keith's partners. And the rule is, if you are a girlfriend of Keith, that you are dedicated to Keith and only Keith, and she committed what they call an ethical breach, which is that she had feelings for someone who was not Keith and they said, well, you're going to have to atone and atone for your your ethical breach and stay in this room until you apologize. And she actually refused and then they wouldn't let her out. And literally for two years. And it's a really it's a story made even more complex because her entire family was part of NXIVM. And so this was done with some degree of complicity with her, her own parents.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The door wasn't even locked.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah. Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And her parents were living in that house.

JOSH BLOCH: Her parents living there. And this is a case where they had her passport and she's a Mexican national and she couldn't leave.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, that was unbelievable. Is anybody still loyal to Keith?

JOSH BLOCH: There are a few. I mean, so interesting as the layers of information or as like the stages of information came out about NXIVM, he slowly started you know, there was a period of time that, like it was a huge exodus, but a number of people in the inner circle that were holding out and saying, you know, this is like a smear campaign. And by the way, like one of the things that NXIVM did and Keith did really early on was talk about the way that the media is going to come after us. I mean, he planted the seed because there were like throughout NXIVM's history cases of people doing investigations and trying to to go after and to go after the organization. And you kind of inoculate the the group by saying this happens when when there's courageous leaders that stand up, people will take you down. And so I think that that, you know, that idea kind of persisted for some people all the way through the trial. So even at the trial, there were a dozen people there that were there on, you know, to defend Keith and their on his behalf. And he was locked up at the, you know, a prison in Brooklyn. And, you know, many nights there'd be his supporters would come out and dance outside his window and dance for him. And he would have flashed through. He would and he would kind of respond back. And they started a whole website and a kind of like they had a whole narrative about the way that the prosecution had fabricated evidence. But even but slowly, slowly. So as more information came out and more people, you know, confessed and more people turned against him, it kind of had this snowball effect so that even some of those diehards, people like Nicky Klein not too long ago coming forward, and Nicky Klein, is you know.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: She was like the, I think she might have been one of the last women.

JOSH BLOCH: Totally. That was still that was so deeply, deeply committed. And it just felt like, well, if the trial and the testimony and all these investigations and documentaries and podcasts and everything come out and it still doesn't shake you from it, like what possibly could. But then she did and something clicked and she kind of recognized that she that, you know, Keith was not who he said he was, but there are still a few people. I don't know if you saw that Keith after we talked about it. Keith put out his own podcast at one point, which is really more of a monologue.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yes.

JOSH BLOCH: From a prison phone. But the kind of the the producer of that the guy on the other line is still still going strong and still committed to him. And there's, you know, others there's a whole side of NXIVM. They had this this treatment program for Tourette's. And Marc Elliot was a someone who, you know, suffered from Tourette's and claimed that it really cured him and and was just like, I have the evidence. It's me, it's my body. I know that that that NXIVM is treated me and able to cure me of my of my symptoms. So he has remained really loyal to Keith as well.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And one of the most engaging stories to me, and one that I wish we had been able to do more on is Claire Rothman is still and she's in prison.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and she's she's in prison. I mean, she could she did plead guilty to some charges. She's in prison for, I think, over five years. And during her her sentencing, there were a number of witnesses that came forward or a number of victims that came forward pleading with her to say, please, just renounce Keith like like let it, let it go. Like, can't you see the damages down to the damages caused? And she's refused and likely had it played an element in her sentencing as well, just the inability to recognize that he's a bad person.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So I said Claire's one of the stories that I wish we had been able to dig into more. Are there any stories that we didn't get to tell that you wish we had?

JOSH BLOCH: I mean, I think the Mexico story is something that that, you know, not only did we not touch on it, but I think there hasn't actually been a lot done on it. And it is fascinating and also incredibly dark and partly just because of the amount of power, that NXIVM, the number of people in power who had power that were part of NXIVM and how corrupt this, you know, judicial system and various systems are in Mexico that were leveraged by them or certainly threats were leverage. I mean, there were people who we spoke to who had left NXIVM, who had been whistleblowers, who received threatening letters. Essentially, they would never travel to Mexico because they knew that the moment they stepped foot in that country, they would be arrested and thrown into prison.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: There were actually charges right?

JOSH BLOCH: There were charges laid.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Laid against some of them.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah. And so there's a whole story there just about how, you know, they were able to infiltrate that world. And, you know, there were a steady stream of Mexican, both adults, but also teens that would come and visit the Albany Center. And it's also a very disturbing we've heard accounts of like grooming going on there and this kind of like pipeline of young girls that that that were coming from Mexico that Keith had access to.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And connections to other dangerous groups in Mexico.

JOSH BLOCH: That's right. Yeah.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I know. It really is a story that I feel like has so much to tell. And this changed our lives. I mean, how many downloads of this podcast were there?

JOSH BLOCH: I mean, I think we're we've got to be close to 25 million or More.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah it was crazy.

JOSH BLOCH: It's insane. You know, from like, there was a certain moment. I tell you what the moment was. There was a moment after the podcast was released where we were, you know, doing interviews and on different shows. And then the PR our PR person in the state said, Megan Kelly wants to interview you and she's going to fly you down and interview on the show. And I was like, Okay. But the experience of being on that show and sort of walking, you know, they call they called us up in the commercial break to sit on stage and they wheeled out this like two story high scream of that of our escaping NXIVM like key art that they're just made for this like five minute section. And there's Megan Kelley and this whole audience of people that were there. And I was like, this is never going to happen again. It's just it was to do. And I think, you know, there was a point probably earlier on that the serendipity of that story landing in our laps and the way that it became this international news story kind of under our feet so that by the time we released it, it was like a huge trial coming up and there was such a massive appetite to understand the story. And if I had access to the story that the, you know, the stars just kind of aligned in that way, that is really hard to manufacture.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But it also gave us like, you know, podcasting was very young. Serial had come out. Sort of, you know, either the.

JOSH BLOCH: Few years.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Before that and we didn't know what we were doing. And I'm even still happy that we thought podcasts like that, that we're still young, even at CBC and both of us, myself and you, we really never looked back. We sort of quit Daily News and we've been making podcasts ever since. I feel like, well, one, I'm grateful for you two coming into my office and allowing me to be part of the journey, but also just like giving us this like access to a way of telling stories that I've come to realize is the best way in the world to tell stories. And I love every minute of this job. And I always said NXIVM, escaping NXIVM was the best professional experience of my whole life. And I don't think that that has changed.

JOSH BLOCH: Yeah, no, it was it was on so many levels, remarkable, both because of, you know, working on that story, that team of people working on that story and and also its reception. But yeah, the way that career wise opening opening up a ton of of doors and as you said it happened at a moment and you know even now we're only what, five years or six years since it was released, the podcast landscape has radically changed again and really shifted. That was a moment when you could kind of release a podcast and it could become a hit and it's sort of not you can't really do that in the same way anymore. So it was it was a really lucky moment to really see it and then to have the kind of doors open that have opened. But but I totally agree with you that the the medium is incredibly exciting to work in. I mean, that that a, you know, the privilege of sitting inside a story for a year and like feeling like you really become an expert and talking to dozens of people about it and just really getting to sink your teeth into it and tell a story in a fulsome way. I love I love doing and certainly now having like done others and like helped, you know, overseeing that a bunch of times. I also kind of. Laugh at how we were fumbling in the dark and tried to figure out as we went, you know, how to put these things together because it is tough and it does actually hard work. Even even still, it every project has its own kind of nut to crack. And it always felt like you're kind of painting in the dark, like you sort of like, you know, pulling clips together and writing and whatever. And then only when you've heard it and sat down and really digested it and then, you know, having to like take a bunch of notes and go back to it again and again, can you get a sense of if it's coalescing? But there's many steps to, you know, to the moment, like it's really bad until it's not a good thing.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What's the what's the I don't know if we keep this in, but it's like, what are the five steps to making a podcast? It's shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. It's done.

JOSH BLOCH: That's right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Okay. Well, thanks, Josh. I mean, one of the other things for me was it made you my work turned from my work friend to, like, a dear, dear friend, which was already on the road of going that way. But I feel like that gave that to me on a personal level. So that makes me very happy too.

JOSH BLOCH: As well. And you know, it's rare to find someone that you can work with so easily together.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah.

JOSH BLOCH: And like now. Yeah. I mean, literally we would sit down and be inside a Google doc together and co-writing stuff, and it's a really vulnerable experience as, you know, like.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Well, you cried a few times. I still make fun of you for that.

JOSH BLOCH: That's true. Not crying for my performance, but. But for the things I heard. But I. But it is so difficult to like, you know, in the in this series of moments where it's really not going well or where you're, like, grappling with it to feel like you can trust someone else to work through it together. It's a rare thing. So I totally agree that it was it was fortunate that we landed on it together for sure.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Cool. Thank you for coming in.

JOSH BLOCH: Thank you so much.

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TRANSCRIPT: Crime Story, Episode 2

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