Recently, several commenters said that when Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman were just getting started, back in 1998, Nancy handed her two daughters to Keith – when they were underage. Raniere and Salzman were the two founders of Executive Success Programs – later known as Nxivm.
The genesis of the story was Raniere’s ex-girlfriend Toni Natalie, who told me, Heidi Hutchinson and others that she saw Keith wrestling with the girls when they were teenagers in front of Nancy, with Keith pinning them down and lying on top of them.
Toni said she was alarmed and asked Nancy if she didn’t think that the girls were too young to wrestle with a man almost 40 years old. According to Toni, Nancy replied, “You don’t understand who he is.”
Toni Natalie told many of her recollections of her time with Keith Raniere in her book “The Program”.
Like many of the stories Toni told me, I believed them earnestly in the day. Some of them probably required a little more investigation on my part.
One of the stories she told that I did investigate, for instance, was that Toni said she saw Rhiannon, the little 12-year-old girl who claims she was raped by Raniere, some 60 times.
Toni said she saw Rhiannon during her first visit to Keith at the Consumers’ Buyline headquarters in Clifton Park, in August 1991.
Toni writes, “CBI occupied space in Rome Plaza… One of the employees had her child with her, a girl of twelve or thirteen with braces and wonderfully feathered blond hair who thumbed dutifully through an algebra textbook. Keith was tutoring her in math. That’s how amazing a person he was, we were told. He took time away from his busy schedule to share his genius with those in need….”
Rhiannon was 12 when Keith started mentoring her.
Toni did a nice job of packing Rhiannon into her memoirs by placing her there on that sunny August afternoon in 1991, and taking algebra lessons from Keith. If this was true, it would mean that Raniere was either engaged in raping her at that time or was soon to rape her.
The problem is that it wasn’t true. Her timeline is wrong.
Rhiannon’s school district report shows Rhiannon was already living at St. Anne’s Juvenile Home when Toni first arrived.
The repeatedly raped girl fled from her home and from Raniere months before Toni first came to Keith.
Rhiannon was not there for Toni to see with her long feathered blond hair and braces – when Toni was there in August 1991.
It’s bad enough that this poor girl – as the police deposition shows – was raped repeatedly by Keith Raniere, and had cancer [Raniere seems to cause cancer in a lot of women] but does Toni really need to cash in on her plight?
Another story Toni told – which was included in her book – was how her poor brother, John Natalie, committed suicide because of the hypnotic, persistent, malevolent influence of Raniere, who was relentlessly stalking their family.
John just couldn’t take it anymore and one sad day he chose to end his life. Toni was so broken up about her brother’s suicide, she went out and got a tattoo on her back in his memory, and to inspire her to continue the fight against Raniere.
The tattoo read ‘In War, Truth is the First Casualty. . . But Not This Time”.
Actually, the story of John’s suicide may not be accurate. John Natalie’s longtime live-in girlfriend told me that John died of a heart attack and that the autopsy proves it. She also said that John was anything but suicidal. She added that Toni and John had not spoken to each other for two years before he died.
Toni Natalie and her brother John Natalie.
This is not to pick on Toni, who is one of the most charming persons I have ever met; sweet-voiced, attractive, always quick to tell anyone that she is always looking out for them. Still, some of her stories just don’t add up.
When describing her story of hardship to success, Toni said she dropped out of the 10th grade in high school, and within no time at all, she opened a glamorous day spa.
Yet, I looked up her high school yearbooks online and found she was still in school when she was in her senior year picture. Dropping out of 10th grade sounds more dramatic than dropping out of 12th grade.
Toni Natalie said she dropped out of high school during the 10th grade. But her senior picture is in her high school yearbook.
As for the day spa she opened, two of her contemporaries in the Rochester area told me that she did not own or operate a day spa. Instead, she rented a small space in a spa where she did nails.
These and numerous other “little white ones” have cast some doubt in my mind on some of her other stories. That includes the story of Keith wrestling with teens Lauren and Michelle as their fond mother looked on, thinking how lucky it would be to have Raniere mentor them.
Prompted by recent comments, “Nutjob,” a man who was around in those days – he knew Toni, Nancy, Keith and Pam Cafritz pretty well – chose to offer his opinion of whether Nancy handed his teen daughters to Raniere.
By Nutjob
Anyone who says Nancy handed her teen daughters to Keith for him to fuck is lying.
It started when Frank was beginning his fight vs NXIVM, and he was throwing haymakers and blind darts. Frank no longer says this about Nancy, but Shivani does.
Lauren never met Keith until she was 21 or 22 yrs old. She knew him for roughly 2 or 3 years before having a sexual relationship with him, and Lauren kept this a secret from her mother. Nobody has ever given an ounce of evidence that Michelle has ever even slept with Keith – let alone that Madam Nancy handed a teenage Michelle to Keith on a silver platter.
Nancy has done enough on her own to destroy herself and the life of her daughter, Lauren. We do not need to be making up horrible accusations for the sake of piling on. When we do this, it discredits and devalues the actual bad things Nancy’s done.
I’ve been very vocal about calling out Nancy for the bad shit she’s done. I also feel the need to keep it real when made-up things are passed on as fact. This is my only motivation. (Not how hot Nancy is)
I have been very consistent in defending the female NXIVM players. I know Keith ran the show and they were his marionettes. When I defend Nancy, it sticks out like a sore thumb because nobody else does such a thing, and I have some first-hand experiences that give me my motivation & content to type.
I’d say I’ve defended a few people on Frank Report more than Nancy. Toni Natalie, Lauren Salzman, Heidi Hutchinson, and anyone else with first-hand knowledge who dares to speak up. I defended Toni for a short time as the drip campaign of the Frank Report against her was going down.
L-R Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman Keith Raniere and Karen U.
Lauren, because I truly feel the worst for her as she fell into the mess, and couldn’t muster up the courage to eject. Heidi because she’s been here so long, and had the most idiots consistently coming at her for no legit reason.
Later, we heard that Lauren was in her 20s when she and Keith first met. Keith did not tell Nancy at first. As for Michelle, I have no reliable evidence that she was ever mentored in the bedroom by Keith.
