NXIVM sex cult leader Keith Raniere may have impregnated woman who went missing after she tried to speak up
The NXIVM cult started as a self-help group with a structured curriculum on how one can fulfill their true potential. However, this image was a tainted one with many rumors suggesting that the cult was involved in sex slavery and the torture of women, among other things.
The group's leader, Keith Raniere, denied having any sexual relationships with the women in his inner circle although he reportedly got some of them pregnant. These women include Kristin Snyder, who was also allegedly pregnant with Raniere's child.
Investigation Discovery's latest documentary 'The Lost Women of NXIVM' looks at the disappearance of four women who were in the inner circle of cult leader Raniere. The investigation is led by journalist Frank Parlato who looks into the disappearance and death of Kristin Snyder, who vanished in 2003.
Snyder was last seen at a hotel in Alaska where she had been attending one of NXIVM's 'Executive Success Programmes'.
According to witnesses, including her wife Heidi Clifford, Snyder was forcefully removed from the program for behaving erratically. A couple of hours later, Synder was reported missing by her wife and two days later, her pickup truck was located with a suspicious suicide note.
Given that Snyder was a very well-respected and well-liked member of the community, a massive search was launched to find her. The shocking thing was the lack of any evidence — her body, the missing kayak which she reportedly rowed away in — nothing was ever found.
According to witness statements from NXIVM members, who had last seen her alive, nothing added up.
Former NXIVM member and survivor, Kristin Keeffe, who was also a member of the inner circle, revealed that she was sent to investigate Snyder's disappearance.
With people starting to ask many questions, Raniere sent Keeffe to look into the case. Keeffe found that many facts in the case did not add up and she too began to question what exactly happened to Snyder. She went on to add that the official story regarding Snyder was "not real".
In the documentary, Keeffe dropped a massive bomb and revealed that she too was pregnant with Raniere's child and managed to give birth to the baby despite him forcing all his women to have abortions.
Keeffe was able to escape the clutches of Raniere and has been monumental in bringing down the NXIVM cult. She sent Parlato to talk to Clifford, who was also present at the program where Snyder started to behave erratically.
Clifford, who prior to this documentary has never spoken on camera, said that she was still fearful of the cult and the consequences of speaking out. Clifford recalled how Raniere having sex with Snyder had completely thrown her off balance and in the month before her disappearance, Snyder had become erratic.
"I think Keith Raniere had inappropriate sex with her, which would have thrown her off her rocker… she reported to me that she was pregnant with Keith's baby, and I'm like, 'What? What are you talking about?'" Clifford shared.
She continued that in the program that Snyder was thrown out of, she kept repeating the same thing. "Then when I heard it more in the class when she was yelling it out… they just kept pulling her out of the room. This is not just one time. This is three or four times, she was blurting this out," Clifford shared.
The fact that Snyder was also pregnant with Raniere's baby was proof that Raniere was having sex with his inner circle, a claim he had constantly and incessantly denied.
She also spoke about the fact that the women who were in relationships with Keith were told that they could not be with anyone else. Clifford and Parlato also discussed the suspicious suicide note that was found in Snyder's truck with Clifford handing over some known writing samples to Parlato.
The known samples were matched with the suicide note by a forensic document examiner who found some discrepancies in the two, thus leading to the question — did Snyder write the suicide note or was it someone else?
However, there are not enough known writing samples of Snyder to prove this theory any further. There are still more questions than answers to Snyder's disappearance and a lot to the NXIVM cult that we may never know the answers to.