S35 E5: The Trial | Allison after NXIVM

Hey, it's Gavin Crawford, host of Because News, the weekly podcast where I quiz my funniest friends on the latest headlines.

Oxford has chosen rage bait as word of the year, so why not go against the grain and join us for some news therapy? Joining me this week, comedians Alice Moran, Martha Chavez, and Craig Lazon.

We'll be talking about how Franklin the Turtle ended up in the U.S. military and what is going on with breathalyzer stings on right whales.

Come laugh along with us at the absurdities of the 24-hour news cycle by following Because News on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts for free.

This is a CBC podcast.

Campsite media.

It's an overcast afternoon in 2018. And Alison Mac is moving house.

After camping out in Guadalajara for a period, word came down from Nexium higher-ups that she should return to New York.

So now Allison is back in her brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, surrounded by boxes.

It's the same apartment that Vanessa Gregoriadis met Allison at just a few months prior. Vanessa was the reporter Nexium authorized Allison to speak with when they were in damage control mode.

She's also our executive producer on this show.

When Vanessa spoke with Allison, the apartment had been bare because Allison was still making the move down from Albany.

Now it's in complete disarray, stuffed to the gills with all the things Allison needs to unpack.

And Allison is carrying on as if everything's normal, as if her guru, Keith Ranieri, hasn't just been arrested.

I was like looking around my place and I was like, okay, okay, it's pretty bad, but like we'll start figuring it out. And then Nikki walked in my door with two guys behind her.

That's Nikki Klein, the Canadian actress, another first-line DOS member, and the woman Allison is legally married to at this point. And she mouthed to me, they're going to arrest you.

And I was like, okay.

And everything just went

like quiet, you know, and slow.

The two men with Nikki are FBI agents.

And they were like, We don't feel like we need to put cuffs on you if you'll just come with us. And I was like, No, I'm not, I'm not gonna fight you.
Like, I'll come with you.

And I was like, What do I need? And they were like, Nothing. And I like took all my jewelry off and put it down.

Took my earrings out and put it down. I went to grab a scarf, and they were like, Don't bring a scarf, just come with us.
So I put the scarf down and I went with them.

And they had this like unmarked car sitting outside the house. And I sat in the car and we drove to,

I think we drove to the courthouse.

From there, Allison is transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center, an imposing building in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. It's on the water.

So they put me in the paddy wagon. We're all shackled.
And we're driving and we drive past my apartment because my apartment was right on the promenade in Brooklyn Heights.

So we drive right past my apartment and I was like, that's my house, you know, from inside like this like thing that I've only seen from the outside and i laid down and i went to sleep in the paddy wagon like i tucked my legs up from under me and i just put my head on and i think it was just like my body was like we can't do this like

you're done when they arrive allison wakes we got to the detention center i remember the marshal was like okay piper like from Orange is the New Black. Let's go.

The Marshal calls her Piper, after the blonde-haired, blue-eyed main character from the TV show, Orange is the New Black.

And the weird thing about that is, I had gotten really close to getting that part. Like, I went back multiple times when they were casting that show for Piper.

That's right. Allison says she had actually auditioned for this very role, the wide-eyed white woman who finds herself in prison.
This is so

surreal and ironic. Like, what are you talking about? So, he's like, okay, Piper, let's go.
Allison is taken inside, given her uniform, a set of oversized scrubs. She's taken to her cell.

There's just this big,

huge dorm room that has bunk beds and then like picnic benches kind of, and TVs and an ice machine. And there's just like women in there, like doing each other's hair, talking, hanging out.

And they told me like what bunk was mine. Allison goes and sits down on the edge of her bunk.
And these two women came over to me and

bent down and looked at me. And it makes me cry.
She was just like, Are you all right?

And I was like, Yeah, I'm okay. And she was like, You look so scared.
She had like this thick New York accent, you know, you look so scared. And I was like,

Yeah, I've never been to prison before. They were like, Oh, you're gonna be all right.
They were like, Do you want a cookie?

And they gave me like this oatmeal cookie, you know, that you can buy on commissary. And uh,

and I was like, oh, thanks, you know.

Allison has moved house just not to the place she was expecting and if she wants to survive she'll have to unpack what got her here in the first place

but Allison is still completely under Keith's spell and everyone around her her family the press the prosecutors have one big question

Will she defend Keith or turn on him and potentially save herself?

From Campsite Media and CBC, this is Allison Afternexium from CBC's Uncover. I'm Natalie Robomet.

This is episode 5,

The Trial.

While Allison sits in detention, Allison's mom, Mindy Mac, gets a call from Allison's attorneys.

They tell Mindy she needs to examine her and her husband's assets because they're going to be asked to put up bail.

So I had a real estate friend do a quick evaluation on our home and I got together all the assets, you know, IRAs and everything that we have.

But first what I did is I said, I want to write a letter to Allison because I'm nervous about putting every asset that we have on the line.

when I'm not sure that her allegiance is to us and not Keith.

Because I don't want her to throw us under the bus to uphold Keith.

And so I wrote a letter to her to that effect about how much we love her and how much we support her, but we need to be sure this is all we have. So we need you to promise us

that you'll be loyal to us and uphold

us.

Allison's lawyers read her the letter. They said, what do you want us to say to her?

And I was like, well, what if she knows that if they bail me out, like, I'll come home to Long Beach and I'll stay with them in Long Beach and do what they want me to do if they'll bail me out.

Allison's bail is set at $5 million.

We put up the bail, everything we have,

plus $2 million.

So the judge, he said, you realize that you owe the state of New York $2 million if your daughter runs. And I went, gulp.

Allison Allison is fitted with an ankle monitor, a permanent one. I remember that moment very specifically, them putting the ankle monitor on my foot and just being like, whoa, like,

like just clamped, you know?

It's very heavy and so cumbersome and awkward and uncomfortable. And I wore that fucker for three and a half years.

About a week after her arrest, Allison flies back to Long Beach. She starts house arrest at her parents' home, just outside the city.
It's a small, prim white house in a suburban neighborhood.

For the first few weeks, Paparazzi are camped outside, hoping to get a glimpse of Allison. But Allison isn't allowed outdoors.
She couldn't go outside for the first six weeks at all.

She couldn't go in our backyard. And she was freaking out.

Mindy, ever the loving mother, comes up with a creative solution. Their living room has French doors that look out onto the garden and a small turquoise pool that sits glistening within it.

So I opened all the French doors on the back of our house and I put a chaise lounge with her ankle inside and her body outside so she could feel the sun on her skin.

You know, because she was losing her mind. Because this story is becoming major news and Allison is going from famous to infamous.

Her face is splashed across the tabloids.

Government prosecutors are alleging Allison was part of an organized scheme to provide sex to Keith, that under the guise of female empowerment, she starved women until they fit Keith's sexual feminine ideal.

The press is even beginning to call her Madame Mac for what she did. And the case is widening.

Three months after Allison's arrest, Laurence Salzman is arrested and indicted, along with her mom, Nancy Salzman, Seagram's heir Claire Bronfman, and former Nexium bookkeeper Kathy Russell.

These Nexium hire-ups are named as co-defendants alongside Allison and Keith.

But Allison is still insisting this is all a mistake. I would just fly into these like fits of rage where I'd be like, why is this happening to me? I didn't do anything wrong.
I'm innocent.

I miss my friends and I miss my community. And then I would always end it with, I'm not crazy.
And I would just say over and over, like, I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy.
I'm not crazy.

And my mom would be like, I know you're not crazy. You know, it's like, so strange.
It must have felt like an exorcism for my mom. You know, like, what is happening with my daughter?

I thought, my poor girl, my poor, beautiful girl, she doesn't know what's going on. I mean, he messed with her brain, he messed with her mind in a way that

it hurts me so.

While on house arrest, Allison isn't allowed to talk to anyone from Nexium, but she's still carrying on with her DOS activities.

I would like to structure my day, wake up at five, take a five-minute cold shower. Like I was still trying to do DOS stuff to keep like my discipline, you know? Journal 30 minutes, 9.05,

have breakfast, weighing all my food still. I set up like an obstacle course in my parents' house so that I could exercise because I couldn't run, obviously.

So I I would like run up and down my parents' stairs 10 times and run around the living room four times. And I was just trying to keep whatever I could keep together

together, you know. At this point, Claire Bromfman, the Seagram's heir who bankrolled Nexium, is also allegedly funding its defense.

She's paying for lawyers for Allison, and Allison flies back and forth to New York to meet with them. My poor attorneys, I was so delusional.
I was like, we weren't doing anything wrong.

Let me me tell you all the amazing things that were happening. And then they'd be like, but you were starving.
I'd be like, no, I was actually very disciplined and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And they'd be like, but you were wearing something that was cutting your belly if you ate too much. Yes, but that was because blah, blah, blah.
But you were sending women to have sex with Keith.

No, I was having women therapeutically overcome their, you know what I mean? Like I had a justification for every single thing. And my attorneys were like, how do we get through to her?

How do we defend? How do we defend her?

But what will Lauren Salzman do? Lauren, the daughter of Prefect Nancy Sulzman, who was in the room with Keith when he was arrested by Mexican police.

They just basically stormed the property, and all I can think of is just protect Keith.

Lauren is one of Keith's long-term girlfriends and has been in Nexium for most of her adult life, ever since her mom got involved when Lauren was still in college.

Like Allison, Lauren's life is now on the line. She's facing charges of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy.

Really serious felonies typically brought against organized crime operations that come with hefty jail time.

But that incident in Mexico, when Keith hid in the closet and left Lauren to face the armed men alone, shook something loose within her.

I remember the moment when Keith went and hid in the closet, and I was like, I couldn't process what had just happened because it didn't fit with what a leader should do.

Lauren's starting to see some contradictions in Keith's behavior. When Keith started having situations

where it was life or death or freedom or not freedom, you got to see his values hierarchy in real time.

Lauren says the thing he valued most was himself only.

Only, save himself. And he expected everyone else to throw themselves on the mercy of the court and the court of public opinion.

During this time, Lauren is on house arrest too at her home in Albany. And while she's there, all alone, cut off from everyone, she starts reading the discovery.

That is, all the information that has been gathered in the case against her. I sat for three months home, like from October to December, just reading everything that they sent me.

Anything that I could get on the case, but it was like all of Keith's communications with everybody.

And so when you can read Keith's communications with everybody, it paints a different picture when you can just read the words instead of how he's choosing to creatively interpret his behavior.

So, what did you see in those communications?

I saw him gaslighting people

and then I understood what he did to me.

What did he do to you?

He gaslighted me and made me think that

I had no

real worth

outside of

whatever benefit I could be to him or to the organization. And to the extent that

I tried to prove my worth, it was like a joke, like that I would think that I could

heal or fix things where I could actually have the life that I wanted for myself or had been promised. It was like I was so worthless, I didn't qualify for that life.

And I made real trades for things I wanted in my life because of the work and because of the community. Children, sex, any close relationships of any kind at all for 20 years.

He

undermined and thwarted every close relationship that I had in my life.

My grandparents, my parents, my sibling,

my best friends, any partner, any prospect for partner or a co-parent to a child, anything.

I had no worth to anyone.

And it felt like

I didn't know how to

explain that I wasn't this bad thing.

She's been in Nexium for 20 years, her entire adult life, and now she's doubting it. All

You have perspectives about things. And then when you go and you check where the perspective came from, it all came from Keith.

So then you start going, I can't count on that. I can't count on any of that.

Then, Lauren says something happens in one of those conversations with her lawyers that opens her eyes even further. There was an ask.

It was...

communicated quite clearly what he would like in the situation.

Legally, Lauren isn't able to talk about the specifics, but what she's alleging is that Keith made it apparent that he would like her and other Nexium people to take the fall. He wanted out.

He wanted out. He wanted to get out and he wanted other people to figure out ways to get him bail and get him out.
I realized that if he could, he would send me to jail in his place.

For Lauren, That changes everything.

Keith's apparent unwillingness to take responsibility for his own actions and instead wanting his followers to take the fall for him does not fit with the core Naxium ethos of accountability.

I just started seeing it. It was so fucking clear.
And after Christmas vacation,

I called one of the attorneys who wasn't my own

and I said, am I right to believe that if Keith wanted to, he could take a plea, even if that plea was life

and make this go away for the rest of us. And they said 100% he could

and i said that he's not the leader i thought he was because the leader he convinced us he was is the person who would be the leader he's the most responsible and he takes the hardest consequences for everyone

that's what a gandhi does that's what a jesus does that is not what keith does

And the people who don't see it are because they were not in a situation where it was like black and white, him or you.

When it's black and white, him or you, and he chooses him every time, you didn't misinterpret that and there is no creative interpretation of it. They weren't there when he sent me to the guns.

They weren't there when he tried to get us to take his place.

Lauren does something unprecedented, something Keith probably never would have expected from one of his most loyal, longest-term girlfriends. I was like,

call the prosecutors. Call them.

I have to testify. They don't understand what happened.
I have to testify. And I was basically told, you can't testify, you'll go to jail.

And I was like, well, if I'm going to jail anyway, I'm going to jail telling the truth. Call them and I'll tell them now.
I'm not going to go to trial and sit next to him and act like this is noble.

So just call them. Tell them I'll tell them everything.

And they can send me if they're sending me because I'm not doing this anymore.

Lauren breaks rank from the other Nexium folks and starts talking to the federal government, cooperating with them, helping them build their case against Keith.

But with a trial looming, what will Allison do?

So while Lauren is cooperating with prosecutors, beginning a process called proffering, where you cut a deal with the government in exchange for providing information, Allison is being badgered by prosecutors too.

They're questioning her and also giving her information to try to change her mind, including messages between Keith and a particularly vulnerable woman.

They kept giving evidence to my attorneys to give to me, and they were like gross text messages, like really inappropriate gross text messages.

And I would read them and it would be like a chink in the armor. You know, it would be like, whoa, that's like.

fucked up and disturbing. But then I would be like,

but he was in some way helping her. Like in some way he was trying to work with her.
But Allison's self-interest is part of the denial, too.

If I recognized that Keith was manipulating all of us and that this was a strategy for his own perversion, I had to acknowledge what I had chosen and that I had hurt people in a way that was not righteous and was not good, but was actually the opposite of all those things.

Still, some evidence is too hard to ignore. One day, Allison's in her bedroom at her parents' house, and she says her attorney calls to deliver a message from Lauren.

The real linchpin was there was a superseding indictment that came out that confirmed that he was having sex with underage women.

And Lauren called my attorney and was like, tell Allison to get the fuck out that we were wrong and get the fuck out.

Lauren, this woman she's looked up to for years, who was a first-line slave like her, is telling her to get out.

There was nobody, there is nobody in the world that I can say has had a similar experience to me other than Lauren Salzman.

And

she never

forgot about me. You know what I mean? She never ran away to her own sacrifice, you know, like she

went through some pretty gnarly shit. And so when she said that, I was like, she has nothing to gain.

Nothing, There's no reason for her to say this other than it's true, and I need to pay attention.

Hi, I'm Brian Lucci, a former Chicago cop. Now I'm a producer on Chicago PD.
And I'd like to introduce you to the official One Chicago podcast.

The first ever behind-the-scenes look at the iconic TV shows. We're talking Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, and Chicago Med.

Join me each week for an exclusive conversation with the writers, the crew members, and the stars. Voigt's doing the right thing for Voigt.

Check out the Want Chicago podcast from Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

It's May 2019. about a year since Allison was arrested.
We're outside a federal courtroom in New York for for the first day of a trial that has grabbed the nation. United States v.
Keith Ranieri.

Our executive producer, Vanessa Gregoriadis, was there. Here's Vanessa.
So the courtroom was in a modern building in downtown Brooklyn. It was basically this courthouse with a park in front of it.

And the reporters and the paparazzi and everybody else just hung out with their news cameras in the park.

And then when somebody would pull up, they sort of would look down the street, and it was almost like a half block away, where folks would get out of their cars, the defendants.

And as soon as they saw something like Allison's blonde head, they would just all dash to go surround her with their cameras.

Inside, no audio or video recording is permitted. But luckily, Vanessa is in the room, which is on a high floor of the courthouse.

I've described this courtroom as being very large and the judge's bench as being terribly tall.

And

I actually

got a letter from somebody who said it wasn't terribly tall. And the next time I went in there, I went and I looked and it actually,

indeed, it was not.

And I thought to myself, oh my God, this was just because what was happening in this courtroom was so dramatic that it felt almost like we were little kids at school where everything just took this larger size.

Judge Garifus sits behind the bench. The judge was

almost out of central casting, this really heavy New York accent.

Sort of surprised. Like, who are you people that you're in my courtroom? What? Occult branding? What are you guys doing? This is crazy.
I can't believe you're here.

And

when Claire Bronfman was arraigned, he really gave her the business. He was like, your family, you had everything.

You're here trying to get bail. I think it was like a $100 million bail.

How did you get yourself mixed up in this thing?

In the crowd today are a bunch of former Naxium members, as well as advocates, including actress Catherine Oxenberg, who campaigned to get her daughter, India Oxenberg, one of Allison's slaves, out of Nexium.

They're all here to see Keith and Nexium's inner circle brought to justice. The big first thing that happened is Keith showed up with his lawyers, you know, in his little sweater.
And

here's the guru. And he's just sitting there.
He's tiny. You know, he's not a very tall man.
And he seems so small.

And

you're realizing that he's captured. Almost a year and a half earlier, Vanessa had been talking to Keith in Mexico and now the larger than life cult leader is here, shrunk down to size.

He's been denied bail and as the trial gets underway, the testimony that comes out shrinks him even further.

There were so many people who came to the trial that they had to set up an overflow room. So there was an overflow room on a higher floor that had the video feed of what was going on.

And if you didn't get there really early in the morning, you had to go there. Today, they're talking about the underage woman Lauren told Allison about.
So I was in that room when

the testimony of Camilla came in and Camilla being the woman who allegedly had sex with or was raped by Keith when she was was underage

and had a long-term relationship with him as a first-line master, just like Allison and Lauren and everybody else.

I don't think that their relationship was fully understood or known.

Keith was so secretive and so many parts of Nexium were kept from others that some Nexium members were learning what had really been going on for the first time during the trial.

Allison remembers this. As we were going through the case, I was like, wait, what? He He was stealing money? Wait, what? There was cash in Nancy's house? Wait, what?

They were holding passports from people. And wait, what? Like, Danny was kept in a room in a house.
Like, wait, like, I didn't, those were all things that I was waiting.

We were freezing people's bodies. Like, I didn't, I wasn't inside the know of all of that stuff.
I was inside the know of a lot of the stuff that was happening in DOS.

Even with that, I knew specifically what was happening with my group and the stuff that I knew about Danny's group or Nikki's group or whatever was like strategically told to me in order to leverage that information so that I would change my behavior or do something different in my group.

Again, devil's advocate, like, were you willfully ignorant? I think part of me was, yeah, absolutely. I purposely kept myself from hearing things that would have been uncomfortable for me.

But the way that I processed what I heard when I did hear those things that were uncomfortable for me was, how is this my issue?

Keith is altruistic and everything he's doing has has good intentions. So how is what he's doing in this situation

helping somebody or working around a boundary that shouldn't exist in the world? Do you know what I mean?

So that was like my base assumption and my processed frame that I was just constantly operating within. There was a lot of stuff that was going on that was like, I don't understand that

and I don't need to know that. And Keith would say that.
You don't need to know that information. Here's Vanessa again.
I think that Keith kept a lot of his girlfriends pretty siloed.

So nobody quite knew how deep the relationships were with other people. I mean, they didn't think they were monogamous, that's for sure.

But they didn't know the degree to which they were siloed and

how this guy was tomcatting around like he's in big love, going to all these different houses, taking walks or having sex. Taking walks and having sex is like like basically what this guy is doing.

It all comes out. All the disgusting, manipulative stuff you've heard.
The photographs, the brandings, the repeated exploitative sex acts.

Among them are the accusations against Allison that she sent women to Keith to be sexually assaulted. Like the instance with Nicole.
Something Allison still has trouble coming to terms with.

When you just said forced oral sex, I was like, who was ever? Who, you know, like, I'm still

putting those things into that frame,

right? Yeah. Because at the time, in my head, it was like it was an exercise and it was like a radical exercise.
When you said to me yesterday, like, did you recognize that it wasn't consent?

And I was like, of course not. I'm still

formulating that, understanding that, right, perception.

Two of the most moving things were there was a letter that was introduced into the court that was from Allison to Danny, Padilla, and Keith.

And in this letter, Allison is saying that they had a threesome and she's thanking them for, you know, the opportunity of growth, of having this sexual experience. And

you read that letter and you just think,

oh my gosh, she really took this all seriously. It's just simply saying, you know, master, thank you.

Thank you for this amazing experience of being able to open myself to enlightenment through this threesome, which at this point, you know, everybody in the court house knows that, you know, this is this

twisted Don Juan. You know, everybody knows that there's,

there's no growth.

And then cut to like now, you know,

people assume that I'm like this pervert.

And I'm like,

okay. Like at a certain point, you just stop defending yourself.

because it's like

that's not the story. It's like that's not what happened.
That's not what it was for me, but

I can see how you think that.

So, okay, just take it.

So part of the reason why I want to do the podcast, because I feel like I owe it to myself to like at least have the opportunity to say on my own behalf, like what it actually was.

And people can believe me or people can think I'm full of shit or whatever. People can not listen, like whatever.
But I feel like I at least have to to say it out loud for myself, like once, you know?

During the trial, one more pivotal piece of tape is made public. It was the tape recording of a walk that Allison and Keith took.

Keith and Allison,

what's the date? The 10th. No, the 9th, January 9th, 6.59 a.m.
talking about branding of a walk.

You know, you hear Allison say that she's turning on the recorder and the date and the time that they're taking this walk and you can almost hear her just puppy dogging along like with her breath quick as she's walking with him.

So what would have been most meaningful, deep

surrendering, focusing for you? I think it probably having it whispered in my ear and then me repeating it out loud. Well ask the others.
It's not all you. Uh-huh.
No, I thought you were.

No, I said all of you guys who've gone through it. Yes.
Okay.

And he's telling her how to do the branding ceremonies and the ways in which

the women should be held down and that they should say, Master, please brand me. It would be an honor.
And she's like, okay, okay. And she's even

getting nagged by him. Like, whenever she tries to say something, he kind of makes it sound like, oh, well, that was just stupid.
What you said. what I'm saying is

Word of God.

And the person should ask to be branded.

Okay.

Should say, please brand me, it would be an honor, or something like that. Not an honor I want to wear for the rest of my life.
I don't know. Okay.

And they should probably say that

before they're held down.

So it doesn't seem like they're being coerced. Okay.

The recording proves that the branding was not Allison's idea.

It hits home that this was actually all Keith.

And again,

by that point,

there was an understanding in the courthouse that Allison had really hurt people,

but that she too was

under his thumb in a really profound way.

While the trial is going on, Allison is being grilled by federal prosecutors who are trying to get more information to bolster their case.

But Allison is still so delusional, she's not operating in reality. I was like, I didn't tell anybody to have sex with Keith.
I wasn't enlisting girls to have sex with Keith.

I told them to seduce him. And they were like, seducing is sex.
And I was like, no, it's not. Like, that's not what it is.
Because in my head, that's not what it was, right?

And but, but then we looked up the definition of seduce, and it's like to elicit sexual favors from someone. And I was like, fuck, you know, like, well, there I go.

To me, it meant flirting, being teasing, and to the point where you got naked, and then he took a picture of you. It was that basic for me.

And I remember having a conversation with my attorneys where I was like, I didn't tell anybody to like lay down and spread their legs for Keith. And my attorney was like, it seems like you did.

You know? And I'm like, but that's not what I did.

And and they were like you explicitly told girls to go seduce keith and i was like but i but i meant just flirt with him until the point where you had to be naked and he would take a picture of you and he's like how is that any different you know and because it's different it was different in my head

and of course keith lied to allison he told her he wasn't sleeping with certain women when he really was which allison learned about during the trial There was a point when the prosecutors were asking me questions.

So I'm sitting in a room with these two women who are assuming that I am the worst of the worst version of Joelle Maxwell you can imagine.

And I'm me going like, I was just trying to bring them through a sexually therapeutic process that I went through and I was trying to please everybody and I was, and they're like, we don't believe you, we don't believe you, we don't believe you.

And I broke down. I like lost it.
I had like a break in my head where I was just like, lost it.

And they stepped out of the room and I looked at my attorney and I I just said like tell me what they want me to say because I just need this to stop. I don't know what's true.

I don't know what's true. I thought I knew what was true.
Clearly I was wrong.

They want me to say something that I don't think is true but they're not going to stop until I tell them what they want me to to say. So please tell me what that is so that we can make this stop.

Because at this point, I just don't know what is real, you know? And my attorney was like, I can't do that. I can't tell you what to say.
That's not ethical.

I can't do that. And I was like, well,

then we're a fact.

Like, you know.

But at this point, the defense is starting to come apart. Lauren's mom, Nancy.

who people think had started to have some doubts, who was furious that all of this branding and this secret society was going on under her nose and kept a secret from her.

And she's supposed to be number two in the organization.

And then we started to give the word that Lauren might be in talks.

And then the question was, what's going to happen with Allison? Is she going to flip?

Vanessa's in court one day when the prosecution star witness is called to testify. So a bunch of people had already testified.
testified. And then the prosecutors put Lauren on the stand.

Lauren Solzman is the only named defendant who takes the stand to testify against Keith Ranieri. She gets up there, her dark hair framing her face, and starts to answer questions from the defense.

So the judge at this point has heard a lot. He's fully wrapped his head around what's going on.

And a lot of the questioning of Lauren was about

how

she had been just really in her late teen, early 20s years

when she got wrapped up in Nexium through her mom.

And there was this idea that maybe she wasn't really able to make that choice herself.

She was too young and her mom sort of influenced her and

Keith influenced her and Keith and she were having an affair for many, many, many years.

And

the

portion of her testimony that seemed to really get the judge upset was that she

had really wanted a baby, and that Keith kept stringing her along, saying

that they were going to have a family together. And

that never happened.

And so, Mark Agnifilo, Keith's attorney, takes over.

And

he's trying to establish that she's not somebody to be taken seriously. Lauren remembers this.
Keith's attorney was doing a cross-examination, as they do.

Keith was sending post-it notes through the other attorney

to get him to ask me if I was still in love with Keith while I was on the stand.

And I was having a complete fucking breakdown.

That's right. Lauren alleges that while she was on the stand, Keith was sending post-it notes to his attorneys, instructing them to ask Lauren if she was still in love with him.

They were trying to get me in my cross-examination to perjure myself. And Keith kept sending post-its to ask if I love him, if I still love him.

And they were trying to get me to say that I was the one that left the relationship. He's the one who was still there, upholding his commitment, not because of what he did.

They're like, what's the mission of the organization? I said, to raise the ethics of the world. And he's like, and that's all over now, isn't it?

And I was like, no,

I'm here trying to be ethical by telling the fucking truth.

And he's like, well, what were you doing when you were in DOS? I was like, I was trying to get Keith to fucking love me. That's what I was doing.

That's what I was doing. I was trying to convince myself that somehow this farce of a situation that I told myself could be my life was going to still fucking come true.
And that's crazy.

And it's not happening. And it's not true.

Lauren breaks down on the stand.

All of a sudden, the judge stops Mark

and says something like, that's it. I'm cutting this off.
You're not going to do this to this person. I've heard enough.
And says to Lauren, you're dismissed.

This debate started between Mark Agnifilo, Keith's attorney, and the judge. And

Mark Agnifilo said, you can't do that. I was questioning a witness.
You can't just stop that. And she said, I don't care.
I care more about Lauren and her sanity

getting through this than I care about you asking these nonsensical questions. And I don't want to hear it.

And so for a minute, people were like, well, maybe there's going to be a mistrial because I'm not even sure you're really allowed to do that. But of course, the trial continued.

These women have done terrible things, but they are also so broken themselves. And Allison is in so deep, she does not know which way is up.

It's like she's been picked up by a wave and tumbled over and over, held underwater, gasping for breath. But through the depths, Lauren's words ring in her ears.
Allison decides to plead guilty.

I don't understand this and I don't know how this is true, but I'm going to plead guilty because I am guilty.

I do believe that that's true and I'm going to trust that I'll be in therapy for years after this and figure out how this happened and how this is true and how to reconcile with that.

Allison pleads guilty to the racketeering charges. So does Lauren Salzman.
Allison begins proffering, cooperating with the government to try to get a deal for less jail time.

She flips so far into the process that she's proffering while the trial is going on.

But is it too late? Will Allison manage to save herself and avoid a prison sentence? And will anyone believe she's actually changed her mind?

I've pled guilty. I was wrong.
We were wrong. Okay, I need help.
Like, how the fuck do I, I don't, I'm drowning. I saw how people can go crazy and not come back.
I saw it.

Like, I saw the choice for myself. So I walked as far as I could walk and

she walked, and then she turned around and waved to me.

Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Allison Afternexium.

Or you can listen ahead to the full series now by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts, or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on YouTube. Links in the show description.

You've been listening to Uncover Allison After Nexian from CBC and Campside Media. It's hosted by me, Natalie Robomet.

Our executive producers are myself and Vanessa Gregoriatis at Campside and Stephen Belber. Our senior producer is Lily Houston-Smith and our associate producer is Emma Siminoff.

Sound design, mix and engineering by Mark McAdam and E. Wynne Lai Tremuyin.
Thank you to Colin Campbell. At CBC, our story editor is Derek John and our senior producer is Kate Evans.

Our coordinating producer is Emily Cannell. Our executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak.
Tonya Springer is the senior manager. Arif Nurani is the director.

If you enjoyed Allison After Nexium, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/slash podcasts.