Ex-Nxivm member Lauren Salzman, an admitted DOS first-line master who once had 21 ‘slaves’ under her command, is selling her house in Waterford, New York, with approval obtained from the Honorable Judge Nicholas Garaufis. This is the house where Salzman hosted a group of DOS recruits for a secret initiation ceremony attended by actress Sarah Edmondson, who tells her harrowing story in HBO’s ‘The Vow.’
Salzman is awaiting sentencing for racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges related to the Nxivm ‘sex-slave case.’ Despite her guilty plea, she could be facing as many as 40 years in prison. However, because Salzman was a cooperating witness for the prosecution, it is expected that they will recommend leniency for her.
Sentencing guidelines reportedly fall in the 3-to-5 year range, but the judge is not bound to follow the guidelines — in the case of Clare Bronfman, he chose to sentence her to three times the sentencing guidelines’ maximum.
Significantly, however, Bronfman chose not to disavow Raniere, while Salzman testified against him at his trial. This may have factored into the judge permitting her to sell her house, despite the fact that it is being used to ensure she does not flee the jurisdiction of the court.
The farmhouse-style home at 21 Lape Road was held as part of the bail package securing her release.
“Ms. Salzman would like to be able to sell this property and use any excess proceeds from the sale to pay off existing debts and assist her with her own living expenses,” says her request for bail modification.
A courtroom sketch shows Lauren Salzman on the stand as Judge Nicholas Garaufis holds court — and Keith Raniere takes notes in the foreground.
Judge Garaufis has a history of demonstrating kindness to Salzman — like when he halted her cross-examination at the Raniere trial because she was sobbing on the stand. “I am worried about her composure in this case,” the judge explained to an apparently perplexed Mark Agnifilo.
Agnifilo, Raniere’s lawyer, had been attempting to grill Salzman on her involvement in the Raniere-led women’s group known as DOS before he was cut short by the judge.
She Bought the House the Same Year DOS Was Reportedly Created
Salzman, the daughter of Nxivm president and co-founder Nancy Salzman, bought the four-bedroom, 1.5-bath house for $332,175 in the summer of 2015, and it was her primary residence in the years leading up to her arrest. (Another property she owns in Clifton Park is still included in her bail package).
The Nxivm women’s ‘self-improvement’ group DOS, aka The Vow, was formed in 2015. Prosecutors in the Keith Raniere trial alleged that Raniere created the group that year as “part of a scheme to provide him with a flow of submissive women.”
The home is situated a mere four-minute drive from “The Library,” a townhouse-cum-sex lair where Keith Raniere frequently mentored his female students. While located in Waterford-Halfmoon, Lape Road borders the back of Knox Woods, the neighborhood where Raniere lived in a townhome with several harem women, and amid many others of his harem who rented or purchased townhomes in the subdivision that he lived in for more than 20 years. [He later moved to a larger home just outside Knox Woods on Oregon Trial.]
“Physical proximity is crucial to Keith.” – Sarah Edmondson, in ‘Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM’. It was 4 minutes from Lauren Salzman’s Lape Road home to Keith Raniere’s hot-tub furnished “Library” on Hale Drive. (Via Google Maps)
Salzman’s unloading of the house takes away an asset that could have been seized to pay more than 80+ plaintiffs involved in a civil lawsuit against former Nxivm leaders.
The current asking price is $374,900, per Realtor.com where it’s listed by former Nxivm coach Franca DiCrescenzo, a real-estate broker with Armida Rose Realty Group. Salzman already had a buyer lined up when she made her request to the judge, and the current status is listed as ‘Sale Pending.’
Former best friends – DOS ‘master’ Lauren Salzman and ‘slave’ Sarah Edmondson.
The House Hosted at Least One DOS Ceremony
Salzman testified that when the time came for her DOS slaves to get branded, she invited the women to her house for a secret initiation ceremony. One such group included actress Sarah Edmondson, along with four others.
From Lauren Salzman’s court testimony:
“I invited them to my home… I asked them to come in staggered times [15 minutes apart] so they wouldn’t know who each other were, and I put them in different rooms of my house, and I asked them to remove their clothes and blindfold themselves, and then I led them downstairs to my living room, where they sat in a circle, and then they were able to take off the blindfold and see each other, and I did a candle lighting ceremony with them…to initiate them into their [slave] circle.
Then they got dressed. We all had dinner and we went over to Allison [Mack]’s house to do the branding.” That was in March 2017.
As is well known today, those women were branded not with Latin “symbols” representing the four elements as some of them claim they’d been told — but with Keith Raniere’s initials.
Take a Tour of Lauren Salzman’s Soon-to-Be-Sold House
“This cozy + charming farmhouse offers charm mixed with modern aesthetics all set on 3.73 acres” – realtor.com / The Vow’s Sarah Edmondson says she participated in a pre-branding initiation ceremony at this farmhouse with Lauren Salzman and four other DOS women, as she writes in her book ‘Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM.’
The home has four bedrooms. / On the night a group of Lauren’s slaves underwent their branding ceremony, she ordered each of them to go to a bedroom alone, get naked and put on a blindfold.
Another bedroom in the 1928 home.
“The interior features gorgeous woodwork trim and hardwoods.” – realtor.com / Sarah Edmondson writes in her book that on the night she was branded, she was led down these stairs blindfolded, holding the hand of her master, Lauren Salzman.
This appears to be the home’s foyer that Edmondson and other DOS women were led past while blindfolded on the night of a secret initiation ceremony.
Sarah Edmonson writes that she was led through this kitchen to a sitting area on the night she was branded with Keith Raniere’s initials.
This could be the sitting area/living room where Lauren Salzman held the pre-branding ceremony. Today, there is no sign of the sheepskin rug the women reportedly sat on during the event.
This sitting area is part of the “owner-modernized back addition to the house with clean, modern twist and elegance, radiant heat, new floor tile, skylights, lighting and new natural gas fireplace.” – realtor.com
The dining area. / Lauren Salzman and her DOS recruits ate a potluck dinner together before departing for Allison Mack’s house on one fateful day in March of 2017. They were then branded one-by-one with a cauterizing pen.
The bonus/music room in the soon-to-be-sold Lauren Salzman home.
A sitting area in the back
The grounds. “Walk around and enjoy the fresh flowers, sit on the back porch and overlook the gazebo and koi pond, detached two-car garage with new concrete floor, heated barn for workshop, studio or home office/business.” – realtor.com
The backyard gazebo
When this sale goes through, another chapter will close in the Nxivm story. The home where “the beginning of the end of Nxivm” began will transition into a place for a new family to form bonds and make memories.
For Lauren, she bought the house no doubt to have a home for herself and for the baby that she believed Keith had promised to sire for her. One Nxivm source told Frank Report that she had set aside a room in it for a nursery for the baby she never had.
And likely never will have. Lauren is over 40, and Raniere will likely be incarcerated for the rest of his life.
There will be no joyous sounds from the nursery and the dreams she had are broken to pieces; 20 years of her life gone as if in a dream.
She needs no house now; she will be sentenced soon and likely to be sent to a penitentiary, which some refer to as the Big House.
