The headline is CULT MYSTERY Sister of missing woman believes Nxivm sex cult leader Keith Raniere ‘had her killed after getting her pregnant’.
It was written by Emma Parry, Digital US Correspondent for the SUN.
Emma Parry, US correspondent for the SUN.
Emma Parry was one of the earliest reporters on the Nxivm trial and has offered the public some fantastic work – taking deep dives on dangerous topics like the Rainbow Cultural Gardens – way ahead of the pack. {Sara Bronfman threatened to sue her and the SUN – but they went ahead and published the story anyway.]
I have been a source for her at times, and I helped arrange the interview with Kim Snyder, sister of Kristin Snyder.
Readers know Kristin is the 35-year-old woman who disappeared in Anchorage, Alaska after being ejected from a Nxivm intensive, on Feb 6 2003. The State of Alaska has ruled she is a “presumptive suicide.”
Kristen’s body has never been found.
She was claiming to have been pregnant with Keith Raniere’s child, which prompted her ejection from the class.
Kim, as readers also know, was effectively shut off from speaking with the media, when a woman named Toni Natalie offered to handle media relations for her and her mother. Natalie told media representatives that Kim was mentally retarded and her mother was almost senile.
None of it turned out to be true.
Happily, Kim contacted me after she discovered that this Natalie woman was lying to her [as well as lying about her] and told a grotesque lie in Natalie’s book about Keith Raniere. It appears Natalie was trying to “hog” the story for herself.
Kim Snyder’s interview with the SUN is her first – other than with me for Frank Report – in the media.
Kim also filmed with me at her home in Dillon SC., along with the production team that produced ‘The Lost Women of Nxivm’.
Because of Natalie’s efforts to sequester the Snyders from the media [and especially me], the Snyders do not appear in the Discovery ID 2-hour special, ‘The Lost Women of Nxivm’, that airs this Sunday.
By the time, they discovered Toni was lying about them, the film was completed.
However, it is anticipated that the filming we did in Dillon, with Kim, her mother Jonnie, Susan Dones and Heidi Hutchinson, and an appearance by phone with Heidi Clifford, will be featured in a follow up film. [More on that later].
Meantime – we are investigating ‘The Lost Women of Nxivm’ – and one of those women is Kristin Snyder.
We want to know what happened to her.
Here are Kim’s comments as quoted in the SUN.
Read the whole story here
The SUN writes, “In an exclusive interview with Sun Online, Kim Snyder, the sister of Kristin Snyder, says she blames Raniere and the cult for her “beauty queen” sister’s mental demise and her death – and would like to see him get the death penalty for his alleged crimes.”
Kim Snyder says she is not, as Toni Natalie claims, “mentally retarded.” In this, I concur. I find her to be actually very bright with a good command of the English language.
Parry, for the SUN, writes about Kristin, “The then 35-year-old apparently drove over two hours from her house in Anchorage, Alaska, to a deserted lake, stole a kayak, paddled it into the middle of a freezing lake and purposely tipped it over.
“The strange disappearance is now the subject of a two-hour bombshell TV special on Investigation Discovery called ‘The Lost Women of Nxivm,’ which investigates whether Raniere was, in fact, responsible for the deaths of four of his female followers – including Kristin.
“Angry Kim says her sister’s death – and Nxivm’s involvement – was never investigated properly – and witness statements from Nxivm members, who were the last to see her alive, don’t match up.”
Kristin Snyder was an avid kayaker.
Here is what Kim Snyder had to say:
“My sister was beautiful. She was tall, blonde, slender, very bright, very people-oriented.
“She was a beauty queen, a straight-A student. People loved her. She was very loving, very giving of herself. She was very much a daddy’s girl kind of person like me. She was very, very brilliant in different things.
“And we miss her. I believe Keith Raniere snuffed her life out – and for nothing.
“I believe that not only is Keith Raniere a rapist but a killer.
“There’s even video where Keith says, ‘I’ve had people killed because of my beliefs’.
“It’s almost 17 years ago and there’s still no justice for my sister. I would like to see him executed. Why should he be able to live?…
“I first heard about this group and Keith Raniere in late 2001. Not long after in 2002, she wanted to go on a trip, just the two of us.
“So I met her in Colorado and she was flipping out. She was not her even-keel self that she always was. She was yelling and crying. Any little thing, she lost it. And I knew that that wasn’t the girl that I knew.
“Then the last time I saw her was in January 2003 with my parents. Again, she was absolutely explosive. She had become this angry, depressed, sad, upset woman that we didn’t recognize anymore.
“Kris was always stable, very even, very flat. She never had any mental, emotional, psychological problems up until she met this idiot.
“And she never had any problems until she got into this mess with Nxivm, who I believe are culpable of murder…
“I’m now coming to believe that that was all a setup. I think that they set that up to make it look like it was a suicide.
“Yeah, she had deteriorated quite a bit, but I think that Resurrection Bay is not the site of the crime scene.
“Her partner Heidi [Clifford] says that she was in such bad shape that she couldn’t have possibly driven that truck, but two or two and a half hours away from Anchorage.
[Ed. Note: Elaine Smiloff, who was the last person known to have seen Kristin Snyder alive, says precisely the same thing.]
“My parents and I have done it and it is a dark, gravelly, nasty, muddy road. And if she was in the shape that she was in, no ma’am, there’s no way she drove that vehicle down that dark road that night. None whatsoever.
“Kris was about 5’8” and when I sat in that car [her small pickup truck that was found near Resurrection Bay with a suicide note in it] I was almost under the steering wheel, so whoever drove that truck last was short.
“And guess what happened to the truck? It was given to Keith Raniere to pay off the rest of Kristin’s bills from Nxivm.
“I also don’t believe the suicide note is her writing. The lettering is too big. And the things it says are not her, she wasn’t a lovey-dovey person and that message is.
Kim Snyder does not believe that the suicide note found in Kristin Snyder’s pickup truck was written by her sister. A handwriting expert compared the suicide note with a handwritten greeting card written by Kristin and could not conclude that it was written by Kristin. There were some definite discrepancies.
“And the biggest thing that I’ve only recently found out about is that she told friends at the time she was drugged and raped by Raniere and was pregnant with his child.
“I believe that they [Nxivm members] killed her. I believe that they killed Kris to silence her because she was saying that Keith had raped her and she was saying that she was carrying his child.
“I want them to re-open this case and re-investigate it. There are too many unanswered questions.”
***
Kim will have much more to say to Frank Report in the coming days.
By the way, ‘The Lost Women of Nxivm’ premieres on December 8, 9-11 pm ET on Investigation Discovery (ID).
Ed. Note: We are researching when and how many times Keith Raniere met with Kristin Snyder. We have ascertained that Kristin came to Albany prior to visiting her parents in mid-January 2003. The levels of her escalating erratic behavior are a subject of deep interest.
Kim’s description of an angry Kristin when they met in Colorado may coincide with evidence that she had already met Raniere prior to that Colorado visit. More on that later…
