Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. Hey, oh, hey.
Well, we are live now. You thought we went away, but we're back. We are back. I'm finding my document here with all of my info on it.
See, this is the kind of stuff on Patreon that you don't get on the regular. Mm-hmm. What do we do? Podcasts?
Yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay, so this is our mini episode, and I think it will be. But, so, listen, I go through kind of phases where, because I'm not working in the summer, so I have had a lot of free time.
I've been unemployed for two months. But I just, I hear what you're saying financially, but also in kind of jealous. Yeah, it's a wonderful schedule. I wouldn't trade it.
It is stressful to make sure that I have enough money to where I don't have to work in the summer. And I'm very lucky that I can do that and budget that way, because I do have some friends at work in education that do have summer jobs. And a lot of people do. And I was probably smart.
I would, too, and just save all that money. But I'm so burnt out by the time summer hits that I'm like, I just need to sit and stare at the walls for two months, right, before I can do what I do. I'm fortunate at my job that we do get a lot of PTO paid time off, because they really do prioritize mental health. So we, I mean, we bank probably, I don't know, maybe 15 hours a month or something.
PTO, that's really good. Yeah. Yeah. But, and you also like, you kind of have a flexible schedule in a way.
I do. I have some flexing. You're able to work from home, some, and, you know, if I work later one day, I can kind of flex some of the next or whatever kind of thing. Yeah.
So that's nice. So that's the first time I've had to pick up some hobbies. So I've done some crocheting. I've done some embroidery.
Have you sold any thumps? I've sold any thumps. I've sold any thumps. I've sold any thumps.
So many. It's good. I've sold any thumps. Really, really fun to do those.
Should have plugged it on the main channel, but some of them. Do you just buy different size sweatshirts and then you just embroider? So right now, what I'm doing is I get them by order. So I have, I'm working on one, I'll finish it all tomorrow.
I have one more and I'll go and buy the sweatshirt and the thread for that before I start it. And then I have another one that just came in today. You can make some mountain mysteries and embroiderts. What's your?
You can make some for us. I could. So we could represent. Yeah.
After I figured out a key design because I feel like the one I'm doing now is not very mystery. I'll get back to you on that. Let me know. I'll get you on that.
I'll get you a sweatshirt and we can go through that. I'll tell you that. It'll be so fun. Anyway, so with that, when I'm sitting there doing that, I like to listen to something.
So I've been listening to some podcasts. I've been listening to an old podcast. I think it started in like 2013, 2012, something like that. It's called Welcome to Night Vale.
If you've listened to podcasts, you probably already know about this one. But it is a fictional podcast about this town called Night Vale. And it's a community radio host is like the premise of it. And it's very sci-fi.
It's very spooky. It's very like just talking about almost like they're on a different planet almost like the face of the woman that secretly lives in your home. Hyram McDaniel, which is the five head of breathing dragon. It was on court for like on trial for trying to like murder the mayor.
There's a secret desert other world that you get to through the Forbidden Dog Park. It's just it's so funny. And that's like a day at my house. Right.
I love it. So I've been listening to that. But I also have been watching true crime documentaries about cults. That'll do it.
I've been on a kick on cults recently. So I just finished one actually today this morning and I was trying to figure out what should I do for Patreon. And then I was like, oh my god, I really want to tell the story. But I can't tell on the main channel because it didn't happen in Appalachia.
But it's so dang interesting. And actually they did go to North Carolina at one point. So I could have tied it in but I wanted to just give it to you guys. No, because it's just the special one.
You are. And if for some reason we were able to pull from the Patreon vault, sorry, all this won't probably go on the main channel. I know. We try not to try.
Because you guys pay for these. Yes. And it is hard sometimes because you know, we give you new episodes every single week. But sometimes something will happen one week and we can't meet up or one of us is sick or something.
And that we have to pull from the Patreon. Or weather is crazy. Yeah. That's happened.
Yeah, that's happened. Like especially in the winter. It's rare. I would say we've only pulled from Patreon maybe two or three times.
Yeah. In the two or three years we've been doing almost three years. So I don't go too bad about it. But know that you are extremely important to us.
We try not to. And we're so grateful for you. So here's a special story. What was we about a cold?
About a cold. Okay. So we're going to talk about the cold at Sarah Lawrence College. And I've never heard of this before.
In all women's college, right? No, it's COVID. Okay. Yeah.
Okay. But it's wild. This is Sarah Lawrence College is in New York. I do believe.
And this happened in like 2010-ish. So we're going to talk about Larry Ray and the cold at Sarah Lawrence College. All right. So Larry Ray was born Lawrence Greco.
He crashed on the couch at his daughter Talia's dorm where she lived with classmates. Oh, I've heard the story. That's Sarah Lawrence College following his release from prison for a securities fraud sentence. He soon began living at the house full time in 2010.
He cooked meals for the house and began having in-depth personal conversations with several of Talia's housemates. So watching this documentary on this is called Stolen Youth. It's on Hulu. And they interview several of the survivors.
Isn't this part of the Nexium cold? Or not Nexium, but it's- No, it's its own thing. Okay. Yeah.
But it's got similarities to it. It's in debt. Like skin and bones. Yeah.
Yeah. So he became like listening to this. You're kind of like, because I lived in a college apartment and with three other people, there are four of us in there. And I would have been super weirded out if one of my roommates dad moved into our apartment.
100%. Like, well, he just got out of jail. He needs to crash on our couch. I'd have probably been like, but then again, how do you say no to that?
Exactly. Because your friends with these people and these people were their best friends. And he was charming. He was very nice.
Right. Very nice. He comes in and then he is trying to get back on his feet. And the people they interviewed, the kids they interviewed, they were like, you know, it was awkward.
But also like, we didn't want to tell her to like, kick her dad out. Like we weren't going to separate them. Like they'd been this part for so long. She was so excited that her dad was back in her life.
Like, you know, and then he just kind of became like part of the group and you know, just one of the- Just got along with everybody. So Larry eventually moved into an upper east side apartment. Many of the students, including Daniel Barben, Levin, Isabelle Pollock, Claudia Durie, well, my surname, and Santos Rosario began living at the apartment. Santos's siblings, Yolitza and Felicia soon found themselves in Larry's orbit as well.
So Santos was very, very connected to Larry. Like he was like, he helped me so much. I know my sister needs this. Like she needs to come here and experience this.
So he got Yolitza involved and then soon she was living there. And then Felicia, which I think we'll talk about later, a little bit more, was actually had graduated from Harvard. And then Dr. with him.
Yeah, went on to Columbia Medical School and was in her residency in California when she flew in and met Larry and then her life spiraled. But yeah, it's just a lot. Larry implemented psychological tactics to control those in the cult that he had created and he was constantly filming them. So all through the documentary, you hear recordings of him talking of the members of this cult talking.
There are video of them and it's super disturbing. It's horrifying. Well, some of it that I have seen, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like, you know, tell so and so that they're stupid. Tell so and so that what they did, and it's like hours of the song, you're nothing, tell her you're nothing.
No, spit on her. It's just like all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and like tell her that everything he said was the truth. And he would make you believe that you had done something like hours on hours of like, you know, tell the truth, tell the truth, confess that you did this.
And finally they're like, I guess I did it. And not sleeping, not eating, all of that. So he made victims confess to things that they never did deprive them of food and sleep to keep them in a vulnerable state. Sont has claimed in that docuseries that Larry would pit him and Felicia against each other to quote erode any sense of trust between them.
Larry became fixated on Daniel's sexual education. And at one point, watch Daniel have sex with Isabella during what he said were helpful sessions. Larry would also often take part in these sexual encounters. Of course he did.
So, and Daniel's a part of this docuseries as well, kind of tells everything. And he's like, I like looking back on it, like I have no idea what I did that. What I mean, he's brainwashed. Oh, yeah, 100% if you've never like, if you don't believe that brainwashing is a thing, you got to watch this all the time.
Oh, it's true. Because oh my God, it's wild. Especially to women. Yeah.
Yeah. Larry also forced female roommates to have sex with him and with strangers. He would record the sexual acts and then threaten to post the videos online and send them to their families. Larry manipulated the women and claimed these encounters would help them overcome past sexual abuse.
He alleged that they experienced. Felicia told People Magazine that he did this with everyone. He rewrote everyone's childhood and he said all kinds of horrible things happened to me. He had me saying that my dad had prosecuted me and that I was sexually abused by him.
All sorts of horrible things that were just not true. And Felicia is super interesting because towards the end, like you still see her kind of in it. But then like the last little bit of it like she's out and like starting to process all of this stuff and it's like the wildest thing. There are two women left at the end.
Felicia and Isabella. Isabella. Isabella who were very close to him and still believe even post his arrest that he is innocent and all these things. Well, and Felicia is out now.
But Felicia did get out. Yes. Yes. Isabella was still in.
Claudia who was another one of the roommates confessed to poisoning Larry, Talia and others in a disturbing video that was posted on a website. She turns out she never actually poisoned anyone. But that was a big part of it. She got out of the way that he did this and then got everyone to believe that they were poisoned.
And it was just like what on earth. Claudia's friends also found her on an export website under a different name. She was giving the money. She earned to Larry for what he claimed was payment for poisoning him.
Claudia said that she gave him $2.5 million over four years. That's insane. I guess He's gonna start working as an export. I mean, because she tried to poison me.
Ah, that's it. That's all we're gonna be doing. Larry became violent with his members. Daniel revealed that Larry demanded that he wrap a quote necklace of metal lumps made of aluminum foil around his genitals.
Larry twisted the necklace and cut off circulation to Daniel's genitals. Larry also threatened to dismember Santos after he allegedly damaged the oven and would put the college student in a sleeper hold until he was unconscious. This guy is insane. So now we've got this clubies going on.
Okay. So Larry's cold crimes were first revealed in a New York magazine exposé that was published in 2019. A lot of these kids had gotten out, went to the police. No one believed them because it sounds insane.
It does. Like what on earth? So then they went to the press and they were like, I think one of them Daniel maybe had a friend that worked at New York magazine and was like, Hey, listen, this is a thing. And he's like, Okay, this sounds like a crazy story.
I'm gonna run it by and they were like, Yeah, publish it. So that's how we got where we are. Several months later in February of 2020, he was arrested by the FBI in New Jersey. He was convicted in April of 2022 of 15 counts, including sex trafficking, extortion, and forced labor.
In January of 2023, Larry was sentenced to 60 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy, violent crime and aid of racketeering, extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, tax evasion, and money laundering offenses. So according to, here's a quote by the US attorney, Damian Williams, that he said at the conviction that kind of sums it up nicely. Quote 12 years ago, Larry Ray moved into his daughter's dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College. And when he got there, he met a group of friends who had their whole lives ahead of them.
For the next decade, he used violence threats and psychological abuse to try and control and destroy their lives. He exploited them, he terrorized them, he tortured them. Let me be very clear, Larry Ray is a predator, an evil man who did evil things. Today's verdict finally brings him to justice.
This is a verdict. This verdict would not have been made possible that the victims who testified in court, we are in all their bravery in the face of incredible trauma. I just think how much they are. P.P.
So I was happy to go through it. Yeah, it was to watch like, especially Felicia through the documentary of like her, her, her going from this successful and like he got her to come to New York by telling her and convincing her over the phone that there were people out to get her and we're going to try to kill her and got her to come to New York and live in this little place. And she talks out at the end, it's just like, it's so heartbreaking because she's like, I don't know, like she's like, I feel un-humiliated. I feel stupid because I went from being in residency for sex, she was going to be a psychiatrist.
She was in residency for that, was going to school, finishing her degree and threw it all away and moved into this apartment, this tiny apartment with like six other people. And you know, alienated her family and just like threw her life away. I mean granted now, like you saw like at the end of the documentary, they, she reunites with her family and you know, they seem to have a good relationship now. But she's not a physician, you know, and I would highly doubt a medical board would ever clear her to be one again.
I hate that, but yeah. Well, and there was a chunk of it where they actually went down to North Carolina and he was working them, like they were like working out in fields and in gardens and they were trying to dig ditches and do all these things and they were like emaciated. They were excavating properties and cleaning houses and doing all this stuff and they said at one point that Larry was taking an ungodly amount of Adderall to stay awake and do all this night, but the kids weren't taking it. I think kids loosely, they're college kids.
So they're like 18, 18, 20 year olds. I mean, that's how he gets them to be submissive. They're exhausted, they're hungry, they'll do anything. Yeah, it's wild.
So Larry was also somehow connected to a New York City police commissioner, which was kind of a part of this whole story. In the 90s, Larry became friends with Bernie Karrick, who went on to become a commissioner of the NYPD. When Larry was on trial for a securities fraud scheme, he begged Bernie for help, but his friend wouldn't interfere on his behalf because he's a police officer. Bernie went on to be president Bush's nominee for secretary of Homeland Security, but he had to withdraw his nomination after some scandals emerged.
Larry became obsessed with the idea that Bernie was trying to take him down. He spread his conspiracy to his victims. So he would constantly tell them that it was Bernie that was plotting all the stuff that was going to kill Felicia and just all this crazy stuff. He would come up with outlandish explanations for why Bernie would want to destroy him.
Larry claimed that Bernie wanted to quote silence Larry because he knew secrets about 9-11. When Larry was evicted from the Upper East Side apartment, which was owned by his friend Lee Chin, they ended up having the space off in court. Claudia testified that her family received money from Bernie and others working for him after she enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College. She alleged that Bernie ordered her to poison Larry, quote Larry Ray in the psychotic con man who has victimized every friend he's ever had, Bernie told the reporter.
It's been close to 20 years since I last heard from him, yet his reign of terror continues. So he got this girl to testify against someone that she never knew. She never knew. Who hadn't seen him in 20 years?
Right. What on earth? Talk about a vengeance. So Larry was diagnosed with Hysteronic and narcissistic personality disorders.
His events team claimed according to Newark magazine. The report also said that Larry has characteristics that are strongly suggestive of pseudo-lalatia fentastica or a munchausus disorder. After psychological evaluation during Larry's custody battle with his ex-wife in 2005, an examiner claimed that Larry is, quote, able to manipulate and control almost any situation in which he finds himself, including a psychological interview with a forensic examiner, no matter how experienced that examiner may be. Mr.
Ray is very good at what he does. He can be utterly charming and one can be disarmed by his child's eccentricity and smile, but Mr. Ray is no child. He is calculating manipulative and hostile.
People who are narcissistic can manipulate anybody and change it to be about them and how could you do this to them and you really let me down and that kind of thing to where you feel guilty of this and master my good. He helps them with a problem and then they feel indebted and it's just wild. I'm so glad he's got 60 years to go. Me too.
So kind of how Larry really wooed some of these people was talking about his military service. So he told all of Talia's friends and later his coal members that of his time in the military and working with the CIA. Larry apparently served just 19 days in the United States Air Force. Despite his claims, there were no records that Larry ever served in the Marines.
He contracted with the CIA and insisted that he helped initiate a ceasefire in Csobo. If anyone questioned him, Larry would provide a letter written on NATO letterhead. Quote I remember him being around and quote said Christonally who the NATO official who wrote the letter said in the exposé. Quote he was connected and may have made some calls for us as many other people did at the time.
I wrote a letter for anyone who was involved. So during his 19 days in the United States Air Force, apparently he probably was assigned like a desk duty somewhere and made a few calls. I think I'm a co-subevoir here and they wrote a letter that was like thank you. And in the letter he did have a letter and it was like kind of one of those letters that you get when you volunteered somewhere that's like thank you so much for the time and the service that you provided.
We couldn't have done this without you. This great big thing that happened. We couldn't have fought the war without people like you. I think he loved the staff at McDonald's.
Yeah, that kind of thing. That was kind of the letter he got but he could spin it and make it sound like when he told the story and then he read that letter you were like oh my god this guy. He's the real deal. And they reached out to the Marine Corps and the documentary and they were like no we've never heard of anybody about that name.
So Sarah Lawrence College did put out a statement that said you know they after thorough investigation they had no reports of anyone you know no one reported that he was living there which they didn't. I mean because they were in a cult. But you know later on I think now there's a statement on their website like even to this day that's like you know we stand with the victims we gotta yada but like it's kind of one of those things like and I guess now more so especially post-COVID we see a lot more of like colleges and you know these higher level institutions really focusing on mental health I think a little bit more because just looking at these kids you would have to know something was going on. And what on earth is happening here but nobody like a step down.
And of course the college doesn't want to advertise hey we didn't notice what's going on with their kid you know what I mean but maybe on being open about it but kind of being quiet about it. I love mental health issues you know like that. And they did say like the house that they all moved into I think their sophomore year which is when Larry came to live like it was technically an on campus apartment but it wasn't like it was off you know. You didn't get in trouble.
And off the beaten path it was a house I mean they lived in a house and I think yeah it was technically campus housing but it was in an area that you know wasn't patrolled regularly like they weren't coming in doing like room checks like they do in dorms. Yeah it's one of those like yeah these are one of our college houses like we have and some colleges do that like they have houses that you can live in. But this was it was not like checked on which I mean I get it like I mean I always thought it was weird like we're all adults and you're doing room checks on us. Yeah it was kind of silly.
So make sure you didn't have any animals or boyfriends. Yeah or I mean when I was in college it was alcohol because we were a dry campus. But it was just one of those like I mean loud and proud I had my toaster oven out and I didn't care what they thought. Oh yeah we had all kinds of crap.
And our RAs were usually very like yeah whatever. Once you got out of the professional dorms they didn't care. I had a naked man making a bagel in that oven a whole ninch and chilla. What?
I didn't say a thing. I was going to get go ahead geeky one. Why is the chinchilla? It just doesn't history.
It just belongs to you. Who had a chinchilla? My friend's one making a chinchilla. Oh okay.
I just thought it was funny. My last question was guys, animals, alcohol. All at once. Yeah.
Yeah if they just opened the door we had one RA when I first moved in it was the apartment next to mine who they had just gone to the store and like obviously we live there between one and bought like a big box of beer and brought it in and it was sitting on the table and he opened the door and it was just sitting there and he looked around and they all looked at him and he just closed the door. He said I'm counting to ten. I'm counting to ten so I could throw it in the cabinet or whatever. Open the door and he's like oh great hello here here we are.
Because it was stupid because the rule was they couldn't, they could open our fridge but they couldn't open any like dresser or like so I had an Ottoman thing in my room and I just kept on my alcohol in there. And so it never was enough. I often kept it in the bathroom. Oh yeah.
They really wouldn't look at it. They claimed they would look in the bathroom but they didn't. I kept my in the automatic candles on their two because we're allowed to have open flames. I love a candle.
I do too. I always have a candle. I had to blow it out when we came down here to see sure. But that's the story.
A brief, a bridged version. That's, I tell you if you haven't seen that I've watched it as well so I've never seen it. You should watch it. It's fascinating and also really hard to watch.
It was really disturbing. Yeah. And it's only three episodes so it's short but I think in the third one they do show some physical abuse. It showed them like hitting I think maybe in all of those.
So they said we all go or Daniel can't remember which ones again. They showed hitting. They showed him throwing Flesha on the floor and just watching her deteriorate mentally was very disturbing. And it's kind of the verbal abuse and some of that kind of thing is really hard.
And they do a really good job at the beginning of, you know, there is a big trigger warning there kind of at the beginning. So if that is something that you've experienced like any type of abuse or any if that is triggering for you as someone who has not experienced like that kind of abuse it was hard for me to watch. Like it was triggering for me and it was just that was very difficult. But it was very I mean fascinating.
Really well done. Yeah. Well done and a good insight into what psychological manipulation brainwashing looks like. And how easy it can happen.
And how easy it can happen because this happened to and she said it in like in her own words this happened to a Harvard educated Columbia medical school graduate like I mean she was smart smart and this still happened to her. And she's still struggling with that. I mean it wouldn't be. But I believe that Isabella was actually sentenced to like four or five years.
And Jill on maybe the racketeering or something like that. And money laundering. Which part of me really struggled with that because she is definitely a victim. And I just I don't I don't know if I totally agree with that of her being charged because she was definitely I think I'm clearly one of the more you know not pitting people's stories but like more victimized like she was clearly being sexually exploited very early on because he was he would be even when they were living in the house he was in her room a lot.
Yeah. So I think she was in deep before they even went to the apartment. Yeah. So it's going to take a lot more and she did come out at the very end.
I remember that there was a thing that said you know when she was sentenced that that was the first time that she had like you know acknowledged that she was a victim. Yeah. Of this. But man that's that's years of therapy.
Oh for sure. They want to come see me I'm available but I don't do any sliding scale fees like in and I don't want to bill insurance so just you have to pay me out of pocket. Yeah. I'm going to do this.
I'm worth it. You are? Thank God. Yeah.
So that's a little bit longer than a typical mini but you guys deserve it. That's right. So that's that and you know say no to cults. That's right.
If you're looking for a good documentary would recommend that one. I'm currently watching one on Heaven's Gate. Oh that's on HBO which is apparently not HBO Max anymore it's just Max. Here is one on gosh maybe a Tulu but it's on Jim Jones and my gosh it's so good.
And his followers. Oh you try the guy on a cult. I want to say it's Tulu it is so good anyway and that's where we get the term don't drink the cool. Yeah.
So yeah I watched the vowel which was about the next. Yes. And that one's really good and really well done. It's also very that one's hard to yeah we talked about the next thing called I think on Patreon.
It's just it's a very that one's difficult because it's from the people that are being interviewed were very high up in the cult and have since gotten out but you kind of have to wrestle with like they brought in so many people and destroyed so many lines. Shouldn't they be held accountable right and I think they struggle with that too. Yeah but it's just that's that's that's a hard one. But yeah.
What's your best goal? David Rich they're horrific and awful but they are. There's one on the Waco one. Yeah I think that might be on Netflix.
That one's good too. And it's one of those things that like and I joke about this all the time when I see especially like big like mega churches. I know. I'm always like oh it feels a little culty like a little bit of a cult.
Yeah. I agree. Well don't drink the cool aid. Don't drink the cool aid.
Have a great week. Have a great month. We'll see you next month. We'll see you next month.
We'll be here to bring you more. I know you'll be excited about it. Alright. Bye.
Bye.