Karen Abney — probably most readers never heard of her, or her role in Nxivm.
Probably less know of her role in the disappearance of Kristin Snyder, a Nxivm student from Alaska who was removed from class on Feb. 6, 2003 and never seen again.
Karen Abney was Kristin Snyder’s Nxivm coach.
In the last few weeks before Kristin disappeared, maybe no one was on the phone more with Kristin Snyder than Abney, coaching her, guiding her, leading her – along Nxivm lines.
Before she disappeared, it was Karen who was tasked with working with Nxivm ‘s problem-student Kristin Snyder.
Karen worked with Kristin, taking directions from her mentor, Nancy Salzman.
Of the various possible co-conspirators, Abney might stand the best chance of cutting a good plea deal, if there was criminality involved in the disappearance of Kristin Snyder. Karen was not at the death scene and she was evidently only taking orders.
Snyder was 35 in February 2003 when she disappeared. An environmental consultant with a growing business, she was attending her second 16-day intensive in Anchorage, Alaska, held at the Westmark hotel.
Kristin’s first intensive was three months earlier, in November 2002, held also in Anchorage.
Kristin loved ESP.
In January 2003, she went to visit her parents and sister in Dillon, South Carolina. Overall, her mother Jonnie said, Kristin seemed fine, healthy, happy, but was excessively gung-ho about Nxivm.
When her father, a college professor, career Marine and religious teacher, tried to quell some of that enthusiasm, suggesting that Nxivm sounded like a cult, Kristin reacted, not by confrontation, but by retiring to another room and calling her coach, Karen Abney.
Kristin’s mother, Jonnie Snyder, told me that Kristin was often on the phone with her coach at Nxivm talking for extended periods of time.
Jonnie also told Frank Report that Kristin was the same loving, stable daughter she had known all her life during her last visit. Though bubbling over with enthusiasm about the greatness of Executive Success Programs and its founder, a man she had never met, Keith Alan Raniere, she otherwise seemed fine.
Somehow, possibly while she was on the phone with Abney, Kristin conceived the idea that she should visit Albany to see their headquarters.
Nancy Salzman would have worked hard to get Kristin into a private mentoring session with Keith Raniere.
Abney may have even arranged, through Nancy Salzman for Kristin to meet with Keith while she was in town. Nancy knew Kristin because Nancy had taught the first five days of the first intensive Kristin attended.
Nancy would have noticed the beautiful, young woman in the class, and, since Kristin was openly gay, she would have reported to Keith that this was a woman he would want to meet.
Nancy, as much as anyone, sought to recruit young women for Keith to mentor. In reviewing some of her emails to Keith, which were revealed at trial, it is clear Nancy had a sexual relationship with Keith. They had a kind of code word sign off, a slight variation of “love and kisses” – it was “love and wet kisses”.
Keith loved to give and get “wet kisses.”
Keith Raniere loved “wet kisses” and often signed off with a variation of “love and kisses” with “love and wet kisses”. So did Nancy Salzman when writing emails to him.
Keith would have loved to get his hands on Kristin Snyder. She was young, intelligent, beautiful, slender, athletic and lesbian.
At the time Keith had a secret harem. This was in the days before he earned his first wave of bad publicity. That was to come later in the year when the Albany Times Union and Forbes Magazine wrote about him.
But right now he was gliding under the radar.
His harem – from Nancy on down – gave it out to students that he was celibate. A man above the mundane carnality of the world. A man absolutely to be trusted with your daughter or sister. He wanted only the good of the world.
But Keith loved – he openly admitted to his inner sex circle – to have sex with lesbians and try to convert them.
He said lesbianism was an “act of defiance” and that only heterosexual attraction, for a woman, was natural. He was especially interested in his conversion therapy if the lesbian was slender and attractive, like Kristin.
Kristin Snyder
If there is any gross crime his inner circle should forever stand accused of and damned for is that they all were having sex with Raniere and lying to other women that he was a celibate – even when they were setting these same women up to be seduced and entrapped by Raniere.
Many of these women now proclaim they are victims. Some of them are even trying to write books and capitalize financially through largely deceptive stories about how they were victims, without telling the tale of horrors and brutality they themselves engaged in. But all of them, all his women knew they were part of a giant lie – to make Keith out to be a saint when they knew he was a devil.
Kristin Snyder, safe at her home in Dillon, making her last family visit ever, was on the phone with Karen Abney – as Nancy Salzman plotted to get her to Albany to meet the glorious, saintly, super smart and compassionate Keith Alan Raniere, who secretly wanted to have sex with her.
Karen Abney – her life coach – helped guide Kristin, navigating her against her father’s arguments that this Executive Success Programs [It was also known being referred to then as Nxivm {more on that later}] may not be what it appeared to be.
The Snyder family.Every time Kristin’s dad debated the matter with Kristin, she would excuse herself and call Abney and get something from her to rebut her father.
After a three days’ stay in Dillon, Kristin left her parents, on January 18, to go to Albany. She rented a room in the home of Esther Chiappone Carlson, a Nxivm teacher.
Kristin took a few Ethos classes at night [an inductive recruitment class to get people interested in the more expensive intensives]. Strangely Kristin was gone during the day. No one knew where she went, and some who were around at the time told me they wondered where she went during the whole day.
It is now believed she met with Raniere, in private sessions – which for Raniere always meant sex – under the guise of mentoring.
Women who were permitted to meet with Raniere were told by the inner circle that were setting it up that it was a great privilege to meet the smartest man in the world and the most ethical.
Esther Chiappone, who had sex with Raniere, spoke of his greatness and his purity. Nancy reinforced it. Karen Abney advised her to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity.
Her growth as a student in Nxivm – with its rare and exclusive teaching – would be enhanced if she got an audience with the Vanguard – the name Keith had his followers refer to him as – and if she listened carefully and did everything he told her.
Once alone with a woman, Raniere’s practice was to tell them they were fortunate to be a woman – for only women could receive a special kind of teaching that could hasten their advancement.
He could perform a special spiritual practice with them. It required faith and dedication to attaining the high spiritual and intellectual attainment that he himself had achieved, something he called “unification.”
It also required the woman to strip naked so he could evaluate her physical and astral condition – so he could tell her what she needed to do as far as diet and other practices were concerned.
As the woman was led by the great guru, he told her that the contact of his tongue with their genitals would aid her even more. Then he led them to the highest practice – him giving the woman some of his pure semen – is was really the highest spiritual practice, he said, life altering – and would lead, if she did it right, to the woman seeing the coveted blue light.
I believe Raniere seduced Snyder this way, the trusting woman being led, step by step, by his holiness, trusting that what he was doing was for her own good and that he was not just a filthy man trying to have sex with her for his own gratification.
I am less inclined to believe Keith raped her in the conventional sense of the word, as I am inclined to believe that he persuaded her step by step to submit to a special teaching that led to him penetrating her and ejaculating.
I don’t she think she expected it. And for weeks after she tried to get her head around what happened.
A first sign of her discomfiture occurred while she was still in Albany, although no one fully realized how serious it may have been.
Keith Raniere at one of his gatherings answering questions from his devotees.
Keith called one of his impromptu gatherings. He did this occasionally. He would tell Nancy he would be available at their headquarters to answer questions. Nancy and the other harem women would put the word out to all the students in the area and they would drop everything they were doing to come see Keith.
Usually, within the hour, 80 or 100 people would gather. It was described by Nancy and the other women that this was so special – Keith’s appearance – that it would be a clear sign they were not interested in advancing in the tech if they didn’t show up.
And they did.
Kristin Snyder came and sat in the audience as Keith sat at the front and took questions.
This may have been on the same day he seduced her. He might have called the meeting because he expected Kristin to be there – and perhaps he had noted that Kristin did not respond well to his earlier seduction.
At the impromptu meeting, Kristin did something that no one did at a Keith meeting.
Keith spoke to his breathless acolytes, who always stayed throughout the entire session – be it an hour or three hours – as the mood struck the Vanguard. But amazingly, Kristin stood up, right in the middle of the Q and A, and walked out the door.
She made no explanation. She had to walk right past Keith and the entire audience as she went out the door.
Kristin left to go back to Alaska
Within days, Kristin, back in Alaska, seemed to have self-doubt and recriminations.
Instead of expressing it openly, and blaming Keith, she blamed herself. It was something she messed up. Something she, alternately, should not have done – or something she should have done but did not understand why she did not get the results Keith promised.
She began the second intensive in Anchorage – a 16 day long marathon event. Kristin began to break down. She announced to the class that Keith had sex with her and she was pregnant. Keith who was supposed to be celibate.
Immediately the “wolf pack” – as Susan Dones calls them – went to work on Kristin. She had to be discredited at all costs. And she was. It was extremely helpful that she was already emotionally upset. That made it easier to discredit her.
And the woman who had sex with Raniere were telling her and the class that Keith was celibate.
Between Chiappone, her co teacher Ed Kinum, and Kristin’s coach for the class, [Name Redacted] in Alaska, and Nancy Salzman and Karen Abney on the phone with her – they gaslighted her.
With Keith Raniere guiding them in the background.
They tried to get her to believe she was imagining having sex with Raniere. Kristin was adamant. She wasn’t blaming Keith. She wasn’t accusatory, She was genuinely concerned about what she should do.
It is not known if she took a pregnancy test. But she claimed she was pregnant. Tormented, she did not know if she could go through with it.
No doubt the wolf pack was alternately telling her that she was imagining having sex with Keith and advising her that if she was pregnant, she must get an abortion. They kept pounding away, trying to make her go insane.
She was on the phone with Abney, and Salzman. Ed Kinum, [Name Redacted] and Esther Chiappone were breathing hard down her neck telling her she was just trying to get attention. They openly mocked her. They discredited her and largely made sure the class did not believe a word she said.
And they told the class that this was the Nxivm tech working and not to worry. Esther and Ed had seen reactions to the tech like this before and worse – she would come out of it – and her delusion about Keith would go away.
Kristin was just seeking attention.
Finally, when Kristin was too stubborn and loud about this, insisting she was not imaging things, finally someone gave the order that Kristin was to be removed from class and driven to her home.
Elaine Smiloff, a Nxivm student, was assigned to pick her up and take her home. Smiloff was given orders by Chiappone to make sure she got Kristin home and not stay with her.
Leave her home alone.
But Chiappone told the class that Elaine would stay right with Kristin until Heidi got home.
What happened next, we don’t know. Kristin was dropped off by Elaine. On the drive home, Kristin told Elaine she was pregnant with Keith’s child and she did not know what to do. By this time she sounded raving, perhaps she had been drugged unknowingly.
Elaine did not think Kristin was capable of driving anywhere.
But somehow her Toyota pickup truck, which was left back at the Westmark Hotel, while the class was still going on, left the parking lot. We don’t know how that happened.
And somehow Kristin Snyder left her home in Anchorage. We don’t know how.
Her pickup truck was found a day later in Seward Alaska, a 2.5 hours’ drive from her home.
A “suicide note” was found inside the vehicle.
It read:
“I attended a course called Executive Success Programs (a.k.a. Nexivm) based out of Anchorage, AK, and Albany, NY. I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. I still have feeling in my external skin, but my internal organs are rotting. Please contact my parents … if you find me or this note. I am sorry life, I didn’t know I was already dead. May we persist into the future.”
On a separate notebook, another note read: “No need to search for my body.”
Police immediately assumed she committed suicide and when they learned that a kayak was missing at Miller Landing resort near where the pickup truck was found, they “knew” it was suicide.
A massive search party was organized and they searched by land, sea and sky, a search entirely predicated on the assumption that Kristin drove to Seward, stole a kayak and killed herself by tipping the kayak over and drowning in the cold February waters.
No trace of Kristin was ever found – no kayak, no paddle, no body, nothing.
Had an alternate investigation been conducted, it might have gone in an entirely different direction.
In one of the most shocking omissions, nobody bothered to tell police that Kristin was claiming to be pregnant with the self-help group’s founder and was deeply distressed about that.
Police didn’t bother to follow through with [Name Redacted], who just happened to have a cabin a few hundred feet from where the truck was discovered – [Name Redacted], who lied to police and told them she last saw Kristin heading for a concert when she knew damn well that Kristin was raving about being pregnant and was removed from the class almost forcibly.
Police did not check in Anchorage – check the house where Kristin lived for blood or fingerprints, for they assumed that Kristin somehow got her pickup truck and drove to Seward and died there.
They did not suspect foul play. They thought it was suicide. The note proved it.
If they had any reason to suspect that Executive Success Programs, AKA Nxivm, was involved – that was immediately quashed by the suicide note itself.
The suicide note blamed her mental condition on Nxivm. Who would kill a woman and leave a suicide note in her car that called attention to themselves as the cause of suicide?
In any event, Kristin was never found. The police presumed it a suicide. No further investigation was conducted.
Still, it was funny. After it was ruled a suicide, Karen Abney, Esther Chiappone, Ed Kinum, [Name Redacted], Nancy Salzman, Keith Raniere and others of his circle including Kristin Keeffe – all gave it out that Kristin did not commit suicide.
Neither was she murdered.
The official Nxivm story – through the years – was that Kristin Snyder planned her own disappearance. They said she was involved with drug running and she had to escape the law and the drug cartels and so she arranged to disappear and change her identify.
This story was told for years and the Nxivm faithful believed it. They had to. Keith told them it was true.
Abney Knows Something?
What was Karen Abney’s role in this? She was Kristin’s coach. She knew there was a conspiracy to destroy this woman credibility. She probably knew Keith had sex with and she might be pregnant.
But Abney is a true diehard of Nxivm, A woman who would sell her soul for Keith Raniere.
Originally from Alaska, Abney moved to Albany to be nearer Raniere. She went to work full time for Nxvm at low wages and spent her money on more and more Nxivm classes.
Abney and Kathy Russell
When Kathy Russell was arrested for racketeering in July 2018, bail was set for her at $25,000 cash or property.
Kathy had no property and Abney came to court with $25,000 in cash, becoming guarantor for the bail bond of Russell
Abney worked in the bookkeeping department of NXIVM – under Russell. It seemed strange that she would be able to come up with $25,000 in cash to bail out Kathy, her boss, when Kathy was unable to do so.
Anyone who knows the inner workings of NXIVM knows that an inner circle member of Nxivm, a bookkeeper like Abney would not likely be allowed to have $25,000 cash of her own saved up. She would have been required to spend it on NXIVM courses.
This inclined some to suspect the money was part of the money NXIVM routinely laundered for itself and stashed at various locations [$520,000 was found at Nancy Salzman’s house by the feds] – or that it was Bronfman money.
What Happened?
Does Kristin Snyder live somewhere else having escaped the drug cartels as Raniere, Abney and others claim?
Did she drown in the cold waters of Resurrection Bay, probably experiencing hypothermia first, then drowning?
Did her body fail to float up to the surface or get washed ashore?
Was she taken somewhere else – possibly murdered – by professionals – hired by Raniere?
Or something else?
We don’t know. But it is a safe bet that Esther Chiappione, Ed Kinum, [Name Redacted], Nancy Salsman and Karen Abney could shed some light on this.
We know Raniere won’t talk.
So far none of the others have talked, other than to say Kristin Snyder is alive and in hiding.
Maybe one of them, perhaps Karen Abney will be first to speak out and tell what she knows.
Note to Karen Abney
Karen Abney, if you are reading this, I offer you the same message I have given others:
I can be reached at 716-990-5740 or via email at frankparlato@gmail.com.
If you fear that you may have some legal liability regarding the disappearance of Kristin Snyder [there is no statute of limitations for murder], I can help you get legal representation.
Proper legal representation might lessen your criminal exposure and perhaps procure immunity for you – if you cooperate with law enforcement and provide truthful information.
And if you are innocent, now may be the time for you to speak on the record.
