While this is a short post, and was originally posted as a comment for Heidi Hutchinson’s story, Heidi: Nancy and Lauren Salzman Knew Day of Reckoning Would Come and Prepared for It, there is a gem of new information and it deserves to be shared with readers.
By Nutjob
Heidi – Nothing would shock me with any of these NXIVM players, but a couple of things would surprise me.
It would surprise me if any of the evil deeds did not originate with Keith.
It would surprise me if Nancy or Lauren had any real say in the nefarious activities.
It would not surprise me if they helped Keith pull stuff off.
It would surprise me if they were not involved in cover-ups.
I like reading your points and information regarding Lauren and Nancy. You notice I don’t push back on much of what you write, because I don’t know for sure about much. The more you share, the more of the puzzle we see.
I don’t think I ever met Gina. I wish I did.
Here’s the timeframe I remember:
One month around May/Junishish 1998, Nancy Salzman was talking about meeting and spending time with this psychopath guy who wanted to go into business with her. She said she was scared of him and wasn’t going to have anything to do with him.
She talked about the situation a lot and you could tell it was weighing on her mind.
A month later, she glowed when talking about him and was all giddy about going into business with him. It was bizarre and a little creepy.
It was also weird because she openly said this in front of Toni Natalie, and Toni didn’t disagree. That’s why I remember this. A month or two later, ESP had started. Lauren had just graduated college and was a part of ESP from the beginning.
***
End of Nutjob’s comment.
By Frank Parlato
This is fascinating.
Nancy’s first instincts were right. Keith is a psychopath. And Nancy said it right in front of Keith’s purported girlfriend at the time, Toni Natalie and she did not apparently disagree. Toni would soon leave Keith, [they were both cheating on each other] but not before joining Nancy and Keith in their ESP business for a short while.
Within a month, Keith, meeting with Nancy, at least some of the time, at Toni’s health food store/restaurant, evidently persuaded Nancy that he was not a psychopath and that they could successfully go into business together. Her fear left her and they had a 20-year run – until the law caught up with both of them.
The very early days of Executive Success Programs with l-r Keith Raniere, Nancy Salzman, and Toni Natalie.
Nancy was intuitive or prescient. Perhaps she saw ahead in time some 20 years, to where the road ended for them, but perhaps greed got the better of her. Or perhaps Raniere hypnotized her.
She went from having natural fear and wise caution to become his slavish follower. For 20 years, she was the face of the operation, doing his bidding and harming innumerable people for him. She was the ostensible number two person in the organization. She was given the title of Prefect.
Did he convert her to a psychopath? Was this his greatest talent?
The early days of Nxivm. L-R Barbara Bouchey, Keith Alan Raniere and Nancy Salzman.
Or was Nancy always a selfish, sociopathic monster just waiting for the right leader to unleash the fullness of her evil?
It is also interesting to understand that Lauren, Nancy’s daughter, joined in from the start, thanks to Nancy – and, thus, lost the best years of her life dedicated to being his slavish follower as well.
I always thought it was fascinating that Lauren would abandon her own father for Keith, at Keith’s command.
The Salzmans ran ESP [under Keith’s command] for most of its run, with one important proviso: After Barbara Bouchey began to distance herself from NXIVM and ultimately left, a certain degree of decency left with her. It was 2009, and this opened the door for Clare Bronfman to assume more power.
It is arguable that Clare, starting around 2009, with the departure of Bouchey, and the other eight women known as the Nxivm 9, had more authority than Salzman. Clare basically became the number two person in Nxivm, at least behind the scenes.
Keith Raniere gives a loving hug to his inner circle member Barbara Jeske. shortly before her death.
When Barbara Jeske died in 2013, he lost one of the more gentle, kinder voices, who sometimes dampened his harsher nature.
When Kristin Keeffe left in 2014, it became worse. Keeffe was one of the few who could tell Raniere that his plans were too wild. With her departure, along with their son, Keith had fewer filters than ever before.
When Pam Cafrtiz died in 2016, after a long illness, it seems all the filters were gone.
Cafritz was far and away his best pimp woman. She got him young women and sometimes girls and when she got ill and died, Raniere realized that no one could get him young women like Pam did.
He went utterly wild, and with Clare always ready to do sadistic things for him, and with Nancy always believing blindly in him, and with Lauren wanting to have a child with him so badly that she would follow his most diabolical plans – he cut loose from all bounds of rationality.
Pam Cafritz was always willing to pimp for Raniere.
DOS First-Line Slaves
With the help of Allison Mack, Nicki Clyne, Rosa Laura Junco, Loreta Garza, Daniela Padilla, Camila Fernandez, Monica Duran, and Lauren Salzman, he created the most bizarre and insane operation he ever devised – a blackmail and branding, sex slavery, multilevel marketing scheme. It was called DOS.
It was what sent him to prison and will likely send the other defendants there as well.
Yes, he was a psychopath and the result was that he was caught in time. Nancy was caught with him, and so was Lauren. [And Clare, Allison, and hapless Kathy Russell, their foolish bookkeeper and pawn].
During that fateful month, when he plied his charms and made his promises of her fortune, Nancy smelled a rat and did not run, and led her daughter to ruination also.
I wonder if she could go back in time and reconsider, would she run from the monster?
