Last episode, the New York Times article exposing Nxivm/DOS came out. Barbara Bouchey shared her story of her years with Keith. We met Susan Dones, who along with Barbara, was faced with Keith’s revenge after leaving Nxivm. The wretched Bronfman sisters arranged for the Dalai Lama to come to town. We concluded with the Attorney General wanting to meet with Catherine Oxenberg.
We open with shots of a beach with Bonnie, Sarah, Nippy and Mark looking contemplative as we hear Nancy Salzman, in voice over, give us the kindergarten rundown on guilt and shame. “Just like guilt, shame is a verdict we pass on ourselves. But the issue here, is how you handle shame. Someone who is “at cause” doesn’t feel shame the same way. When the “at cause” person knows they have participated in something that goes against their values, they’re motivated to face it and do something about it. They feel empowered.”
We are in LA. Catherine tells us she had fervently hoped once the NYT article came out India would wake up and want to come home, but the opposite is true. “I am a tad hysterical right now,” says Catherine. This is not a criticism, but one of the things I have observed about Catherine is that she is very emotionally controlled. I express more visible hysteria having to go to the grocery store on a Saturday. It’s just the nature of her personality. “Darling, please call me. I love you,” she texts to India.
Back to Catherine’s house. She is with Bonnie and Mark and they are video conferencing with Sarah and Nippy. She tells them the Attorney General’s office needs evidence of criminality from them to bolster the case. Mark says Frank Parlato of the Frank Report knows a lot of what has gone down in Nxivm. But everyone’s issue with him is he can be rather crass in his reporting. Bonnie says he is “vulgar.” Catherine admits some of his reporting can be hurtful, but she doesn’t interfere.
After the conference, Nippy and Sarah talk more about Frank. He was initially hired by Nxivm to clean up Keith’s online reputation. That is until the whole thing went sour. I don’t know the details of that, but maybe we will find out later. Nippy feels Frank is insensitive to the women he writes about and Sarah says he “has published lies about people that have really hurt them.”
Back at Catherine’s, she receives a call from Frank and she lets him know about the latest news. She wants to get together with him so they can correlate all the evidence they have.
We cut to Catherine driving to Buffalo, New York where Frank lives. She calls her mom Elizabeth. She wants her mom to call “Charles” and ask him to speak to the Dalai Lama. They are friends so perhaps His Holiness can make a public statement. Charles, as in Prince Charles. Prince Charles is Elizabeth’s second cousin. Elizabeth doesn’t sound too responsive to that idea. Catherine tells her she is spending the night at Frank’s house. Elizabeth thinks they will get along quite well. Catherine laughs and agrees. Elizabeth thinks Frank is brave and “out to kill.”
Catherine arrives at Frank’s and says it looks like the house from The Addams Family. Once inside, introductions all around. There is quite a gang of people there. Some are there just to meet Catherine Oxenberg, I’m sure. She and Frank sit down to talk and he kicks out the filmmakers, because he wants to talk privately.
When we come back, Catherine gets right down to business making a fruit and veggie drink using Frank’s never-been-used juicer. Which cracks me up for some reason. Catherine is so far away from her usual environment she probably intuitively reached for something that feels familiar. L.A. comes to Buffalo.
Frank is asked if the whole thing is like a chess game. Franks says the great chess players, like himself, keep the whole game in their head. He is 14 steps ahead of Keith with seven to go. He kind of smirks when he says it. I think Frank is one of those people who has a rather dry sense of humor so it’s hard to know when he is joking around or being serious.
We cut to archival footage of Susan Dones conducting an intensive. Mark tells us in voice over Susan had been dragged through the courts after resigning from Nxivm. She had over 200 charges brought against her. “She defended herself,” Mark tells us. “And won.” That is amazing considering the team of lawyers she was up against.
We hear a recorded phone call of Susan telling Mark about her experience in court. The judge had told her that due to the seriousness of the charges against her she really needed to hire an attorney. Susan told the judge she simply would not be able to afford the half a million or more it would cost her in attorney fees. But she believed she had a chance because she had the truth on her side.
Back at Frank’s house. Frank tells us he was never a follower nor did he ever take a course of Keith’s. He was simply Keith’s publicist. “It’s astounding how many people Keith has intimidated and frightened,” Frank says. He will spend millions of dollars just to go after a person he doesn’t like. “He enjoys hurting people. This is a pattern.”
We see a small house “somewhere in New York” as Frank in voice over tells us about a woman named Toni Natalie. We see her in her house as Frank tells us she was the first of the defectors and “the one out there fighting long before anyone else came out to fight.” For thirty years Keith harassed her. He wrecked her life, says Frank.
Toni Natalie
Toni tells us she is a former girlfriend of Keith’s. She knew him before he was called “Vanguard” and the spiritual leader of Nxivm. He was “just Keith” and a business man. Keith created a company called Consumer’s Byline. A multi-level marketing company where people paid a membership and as a group bought consumer goods at much cheaper prices than what would normally be paid retail. Members were represented by “professional buyers” who shopped around for the best deals.
“We help each other have more” was the motto of the company. In archival footage we see Keith say what the company is really about is changing the way we live and maximizing human potential. Yeah, I always think about maximizing my human potential when I buy something. I mean that genuinely. It is my rationale for all my impulse shopping.
Curious about it, Toni drove to Albany to check out the company. The place was energized. Young people excited and working hard. Keith came out of his office to greet her. Toni said the way Keith represented himself to people was, “Hi, I’m Keith Raniere. I have a 240 IQ and I want to change the world.” He offered to help her quit smoking. (Toni said in another interview that he could smell the scent of cigarette smoke on her clothing.) Toni was so flattered that “this genius” was offering to spend time and help her.
She went into his office and they talked. He asked what things made her nervous and was pressing on certain points on her hands while he was talking to her. He told her anytime she felt like smoking to just press on one of the pressure points and the urge would go away. Toni thought she had been in Keith’s office for about 15 minutes, but it had actually been several hours. I guess he hypnotized her? Toni said in an interview the one good thing she got from her relationship with Keith is she did lose her cravings for cigarettes and quit smoking.
Toni returned home and Keith started calling her. A lot. They would talk for hours and Toni told him all about herself. Keith would always ask probing questions and was a good listener. “So, Keith knew all of my secrets.” Toni says. She asked him why someone with a 240 IQ wasn’t out curing cancer or something profound like that? Oh, did he forget to mention he is a sociopath? Because that might explain at least part of it. No, what he said was that Consumer’s Byline was the platform he was going to use to change the world. Did she want to come along? She was hooked, Toni admits to us, her face revealing a big swath of emotions, including regret.
Toni was offered a position within the company. From her description, it had the same vibe that people felt in Nxivm. Warm, friendly, happy people. It wasn’t a company, it was a family! Toni was excited because it was a good job that paid well, but Keith told her to not tell anyone they were dating each other. “Because you don’t have a formal education,” he told her. People will think she only got the job because Keith was her boyfriend. Toni was a high school drop out “so he took my shame and he figured out a way to use it to control me.”
Things started to go wrong with the company. Commission checks weren’t going out. The company was accused of being an illegal pyramid scheme that used unfair sales practices to sign up new members. Consumer’s Byline was in deep shit. Keith was facing multiple investigations as well as lawsuits from multiple states. The company was shut down and Keith refused to admit guilt. He claimed Walmart was behind it all, because they saw his company as a threat. Sure, lol. He eventually paid a fine, but that’s all I know he had to do. To Toni, it seemed like Keith was falling apart.
Then Nancy Salzman entered the picture. Somehow she always does. Nancy met Keith through Toni. Nancy was Toni’s therapist. In a podcast interview, Toni summed up Nancy before and after meeting Keith:
Nancy said, “You’re so wonderful; how can I help you?” So I said, “Well, you can help me with my boyfriend.” He had grandiose ideas and his hours were becoming erratic again … She listened and she said, “Oh that’s easy, I can help you. He’s a sociopath …” They met, and four days later she came out with the glazed eyes and she gave me the, “You don’t know who he is”, and I was like, “Wow, there goes another one.”[45]
Nancy described herself as the “number two NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) expert in the world.” NLP is a type of hypno-therapy, Toni tells us. I’m harping but, unless something is genuinely quantifiable, like in a sports competition or a grade point average, how is it determined who is considered number one, number two and so on, in “expertise”? Usually a person would describe it like, “I’m one of the leading experts in [fill in the blank.]” Then they would say how they achieved their expertise. It just sounds bogus and kind of cheesy to describe yourself the way Nancy does/did.
We see footage of Nancy leading a group of people sitting in a living room somewhere. “Define… lie. What does it mean? Lie. What is a lie? What does it mean?” Nancy is talking in this weird repetitious way. I read somewhere this is one of the ways you can put people into a hypnotic-type state, by repeating things and with a certain cadence. Apparently, you can do that to people without them even realizing it. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I have read that some people are highly suggestible and some not so much. Regardless, trying to put people into a trance-like state, without their consent, whether you will succeed or not, is sleazy as fuck.
We see Nancy in archival video footage say after she became a trainer in NLP she was able to help “literally tens of thousands of people” using it. Where’d she get that ballpark? She must have been very busy. Once Nancy met Keith however, many of the questions she still had “burning in her mind,” were answered. Keith developed a model called “rational inquiry” that could get to core issues in minutes, she says. Keith taught it to her and said he could teach it to literally anyone if they cared to learn. “A single man had developed a technology to transform and empower the world,” Nancy says, looking like a complete loon.
Toni tells us she has a video of the first class Keith and Nancy did together. Toni says she watched Keith watch Nancy take control of the room. It was like a light went off for him. He could use Nancy to control people for him.
We hear audio of Keith talking about when he first met Nancy. He had warned her of what would happen if she became a partner of his. He was infamous, he told her, because he had challenged “an entire industry” with his business Consumer Byline. I really think Keith believed his own bullshit on some level. Oh yes, Keith. The entire retail industry was threatened by your little pyramid scheme in Albany, New York.
Nancy and Keith wanted to start a business, Toni tells us, that would be working with corporations. It was originally called Raniere Management Systems. The feedback they got from their first pitch was Nancy was great, but the company wanted nothing to do with Keith. Was it because of his bad reputation from his failed pyramid scheme or because he made the usual uninspiring and repugnant impression he did on everyone else he met? We can only wonder. Anyway, Keith and Nancy reworked it and created the Executive Success Program, or ESP, to sell to individuals.
Toni attended their first intensive, but she wasn’t comfortable with it or Keith so much anymore. Her gut was speaking to her; there were too many women around and too many pieces didn’t fit, she says. By the time Keith decided everyone should call him “Vanguard” (named after a video game Keith kept in Toni’s garage), Toni decided to break up with him. That would be that and Toni would move on with her life, she thought. “But that was just the beginning of hell,” she tells us.
We cut to Catherine who has received text messages from India. Catherine asks Frank for advice as to what she should text back. What can she say to turn India against Keith? “It’s not turning against Keith,” he says, “It’s turning towards herself.” Yeah, but how? Frank thinks India needs to be told Nxivm and Keith are going down. She needs to be told to protect herself and reclaim her own mind. Then what happens if Keith tells her to block her texts? Catherine asks. “We’ll send them by carrier pigeon,” Frank deadpans.
We cut back to Toni who takes us down to the basement to her “war room.” Her dog Ramona comes along. Toni tells us when she and Keith split up, he told her he would see her dead or in jail. She thought that was a terrible thing to say, but she had no idea what Keith had in store for her.
It started with phone calls at all hours of the day and night. Then her medical insurance was canceled, her phone was shut off, credit cards canceled, her son’s school enrollment was canceled and more. Toni couldn’t figure out how Keith was able to do it until a neighbor told her every day a woman with long hair (I am assuming that was Pam Cafritz) went through and stole her mail. Her dog was poisoned and died. (I got that info from an interview with Toni on the web.) Her house was broken into and stuff rearranged just to scare her. Toni filed complaints, but eventually she was forced to file for bankruptcy after lawsuits were brought against her. Somehow Keith was even able to get the FBI to investigate her. It just went on and on.
Toni said in a podcast interview–which I am sorry I cannot find because there are a lot of them on the web and I am not sure which one it was– Kristin Keeffe got in touch with her once she (Kristin) bailed on Keith in 2014. She apologized for poisoning Toni’s dog and all the other harassment. It had been decided by Keith and his inner circle the dog had to be killed, because he kept getting in the way when they were trying to break into Toni’s house.
Hearing that made me very angry and I didn’t feel any empathy for Kristin. Given that she was kind of the head thug when she was part of NXIVM added to my negative feelings. But then I read about how Keith really harassed Kristin, too, once she left him. It was pretty scary for her and her child. She had to get good at staying underground, while figuring out how to earn a living and stuff, because Keith did not give up on trying to find her. At least she owned her shit and apologized to Toni.
Toni shows us a day planner she has that belonged to Pam Cafritz. It’s filled with weigh ins and obsessive calorie counting. Pam was the one he first manipulated, Toni says. We always forget about poor quiet Karen, his college girlfriend, who was there before Pam. I don’t know when Toni became aware Keith had these other girlfriends or if she knew from the beginning. Toni started dating Keith in 1991. Pam had been with Keith for about five years at that point and Karen even longer. Pam had to commit her life to Keith and that included welcoming any additional women he wanted to have sex with and/or date. “And [Pam] embraced me with more love… than anyone ever had in my life,” Toni says. After she broke up with Keith, Toni still waited for Pam to call.
We see footage from 2006 where Keith is in someone’s car and he is talking about Toni. He claims Toni tried to steal the business and take money from Nancy. Keith says he told her he would no longer have anything to do with her if she didn’t pay Nancy back. “In my opinion, she sounds really crazy,” a woman in the car says angrily. Keith starts to make fun of Toni “… she needs more therapy. They should up the dosage on the—“ But he stops himself to revert to his very fake, but very well polished humble persona. “I have my opinions about her. It’s not really my place to say. Everyone builds their own postulate world. … for some people the world is a real hell. And she sounds very angry,” he concludes. You know who’s angry? Me. Having to listen to this asshole. I hate this guy.
We hear court testimony where Susan Dones is interrogating Clare Bronfman. She is asking Clare what Keith’s role is in Nxivm. Clare denies he has one. He has nothing to do with how the company is run. He is not the owner, a board member or a paid employee. He is simply Vanguard, the conceptual founder of Nxivm, she says. And even that she admits reluctantly.
Mark tells us Keith lied to people telling them Susan had “stolen materials and misused the tech.” It was therefore necessary to hold her accountable. Nobody knew she was being dragged through the courts on hundreds of bullshit charges. Mark says he was part of the opposition against her. He calls himself part of the “reign of terror.” Oh, boy. In voice over, Mark refers to himself as the “enforcer.” His job was to “capture everybody back into the system.” He does not say what he did exactly, and I certainly would like to know, but the point is, people were afraid to ask questions for fear they would be seen as dishonorable. “I sided with the wrong side of history,” he says. He doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he sided against people who were just trying to get away.
Mark has come to visit Susan Dones and he knocks on her apartment door. Whatever his offenses, Susan at least, is thrilled to see him. She gives him a big hug. She tells him she had always hoped he would wake up one day. He apologizes for how “fucked up this all was.” He says he let the lies that were being said about her affect his feelings and he has a lot of regret. Susan says what he is doing now is part of the healing process. The other stuff, the guilt, the remorse and so on, resolves itself in time and Mark just has to go through it.
We go back to Toni’s house. Mark calls and tells Toni about Catherine compiling evidence to take to the A.G. He asks her to gather any evidence she has that might help with the case. “There’s quite a bit,” says Toni. Mark hopes this is a chance for Toni to get some justice, too. Toni heads out to Frank’s place to hand over what she has.
Toni shows Catherine the “death timeline” Keith sent her after they broke up. I love the “you are here” marker. Reminds me of being lost at a mall. Catherine wants to add that to the evidence pile. “He is doing the same things,” Toni says. “His patterns haven’t changed at all.” And they really haven’t. It’s always the same old lines, same tropes, over and over.
Everyone works to compile the evidence. It comes to three big binders full. Frank takes them out to the car for Catherine. Catherine hugs him and Frank gives a casual wave good-bye.
Next we see Catherine taking a cab to the criminal justice building in Albany New York, I think. It’s a huge imposing fortress whatever building it is. Catherine says in voice over that she never thought she would be responsible for so much of bringing Nxivm down. But it has now taken a momentum of its own and she can’t control what that means for her daughter or how she will be perceived by the government, as criminal or victim. But she is at the point where she would rather see India serve time than remain in the cult. End.
“Change is Everything” by Son Lux is the outro music.
Next recap: Episode 8, “The Wound” We get into Keith’s head and it’s pretty dark in there. The FBI is ready to investigate and wants to talk to witnesses right away.
Recapulet 
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