This might be a minor breakthrough. Some documents were leaked to me and two eyewitness came forward to tell me what they witnessed, overheard or were told, during the last week of Kristin Snyder’s attendance at the intensive from which she was ejected and never seen again. I cannot reveal who the witnesses are but I can confirm they were present at the fateful intensive.
This report is prepared with both leaked documents, including at least one diary made in Feb. 2003, and the recollections of two witnesses. I have tried to piece it together as accurately as possible.
Thursday, January 30
Kristin Snyder had a two-hour Exploration of Meaning [EM] with Ed Kinum about “sexual abuse.”
Heidi was in a different part of the room getting her own EM.
Kris consistently, for over an hour, lie face down on the floor. Ed was also face down on the floor working with her, giving her an EM – face down on the floor.
Heidi had never seen Kris this emotional.
Kris told people afterward that she was more clear with regard to sexual abuse.
Friday, January 31
Kris expressed frustration to the class saying she thought she had worked hard since the November intensive and that she had achieved more integration. She was confused that she had not.
She began to feel, “If I don’t want to change means I don’t want to change = If I don’t want to change, I am bad.”
Esther Chiappone and Ed Kinum mentioned their need to do laundry. They were staying at the hotel. Heidi invited them to come to the house she shared with Kristin – at 6012 Glenkerry in Anchorage – to do laundry using their washer and dryer.
They went, arriving at about 9:00 pm. While they did laundry, they sat with Kris and Heidi in their outdoor hot tub on the deck.
There were Northern lights at about midnight. Kris did not look up at the lights. She made a few depressed comments saying she was to blame for many things.
She had been claiming to be pregnant, something no one believed. Kris was blaming herself and actually taking it as she had control over everything and causing everything.
Heidi explained to Ed in front of Kris that Kris was taking the ESP term ‘being at cause” to extremes – and that there must be a limit to being at cause. Heidi asked Ed to explain “being at cause.”
Ed said people do cause things to happen. But many things that happen are beyond their immediate reach and, therefore, they do not cause these things to happen.
[Actually, the teachings were different than Ed explained. Keith taught that Barbara Bouchey having emotional reactions caused the commodities market to work against him. He told Nancy Salzman that her taking too long to decide to join Executive Success Programs is what caused 9-11 to happen. Keith told his harem women that their bad thoughts could cause him to die. He told Cami that her having an affair with Robbie caused him to bleed from the rectum. He taught that when a woman did not agree with something he taught, it would rain only on her and not on him. He led his classes to believe that snowstorms were nature’s reaction to his teachings and when computers went awry, it was because of his powerful thoughts. Keith may have taught Kristin that she was at cause for having sex with him – and because she would not obey him – maybe by getting an abortion – or keeping quiet about it – it might be causing catastrophic world events. Ed was saying one thing – which was true – but Keith and Nancy taught otherwise.]
When Ed was explaining this, Kris did not look at Ed. She was quiet and seemed attentive.
After soaking in the hot tub, Kris and Ed played music. Ed plays guitar and so did Kris. She played one song and played drums. Ed and Esther left about 1:30 am
Saturday, February 1st
Kris, Heidi and her mother, E.V. Clifford, arrived at class at 8:45 am. This was the day the Columbia Space Shuttle imploded, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members.
When Kris learned about the shuttle (10 am-12 noon), she began crying in class, clearly sobbing, unable to stop. She was observed by the entire class. After about an hour of this behavior, Ed and Ester asked Kris to stop “satiating.”
She was told she would be asked to leave if she did not stop. She stopped but remained affected the rest of the day. She had low involvement in class. At some point during the day, she said she felt she had caused the shuttle to explode.
Monday, February 3rd
Heidi asked Ed and Esther if they talked to Nancy Salzman about Kris’ behavior. They said they had talked to her several times.
Esther said Kris was not as bad as some students she had in previous classes. She would come around. She had seen worse. She expressed that Kris was acting out and using this as “comprehensive control” because Heidi was in class with her.
Esther added that Kris was seeking attention. Kris would get worse if Heidi paid attention or reacted. As for Kris being pregnant, Esther said that was ridiculous, another symptom of Kris seeking attention.
No one in the class believed her.
Ed had a note written by Kristin on yellow paper, written with a black sharpie pen, which read, “Don’t shoot me.”
Heidi sent E.V. and Kris home alone that night. Heidi asked Esther for ideas of how to give Kris the space she needed. She came home 30 minutes later. In class, Heidi asked ESP coach Kathy Morton for a ride home.
They discussed home safety. Would Kris hurt herself or others? Heidi wanted to remove a gun from her home. She drove home with Kathy. Heidi put her 357 caliber revolvers in the trunk of Kathy’s car.
Heidi told Kris the house was safe. Kris slept alone in the master bedroom. Heidi slept downstairs to see if they could both get some good sleep to start off the next day fresh.
Heidi asked her to read to her and write a letter to a friend. Kris said she could not comprehend or read English.
Tuesday, February 4th
Esther said she had worked with people with real psychoses in South Central, AK. She said Kris’ behavior was not anything like these people’s behavior. Not as bad.
Heidi said it seemed like Kris was delusional. Psychotic. Not making sense.
This notion that she was pregnant with Keith Raniere, the celibate leader of ESP, proved she was delusional.
Heidi asked if Kris will get through this.
Esther recommended that Heidi keep her distance from Kris, to keep Kris from getting worse.
Before they went to sleep that night, Heidi asked Kris to write down things she valued. Kris wrote the note about her value, her self worth about 1-2 am when she was unable to sleep.
Heidi read it to Kristin that evening. She smiled. Heidi read it again the next morning to Kris to acknowledge her self worth.
Wednesday, February 5th
Kris acted out in class and said her desire was to sleep fewer hours, to match Vanguard’s sleep. She wanted to be as he was.
“He is superior. I want to be as integrated as he. He sleeps 4 hours a day,” she said.
Esther said Kris was using comprehensive control (cc), defined in ESP, as using behaviors to try to effect change in another.
Esther said she had seen this before when couples were taking the class together. One trying to get attention from the other.
Heidi told Esther that Kris had never been this way or used this behavior in the past. She said they had an equal relationship. Both were very independent of one another yet committed to each other’s development.
Esther insisted Kris was using comprehensive control.
After class, they went home. Kris prepared a stir fry for dinner and washed the dishes. That evening she, their friend Kenny Powers, and Heidi sat in the hot tub. Kris was silent in the tub. She did not interact.
Afterward, she sat in her bathrobe in the entry of the house talking with Kenny and was able to converse and make and keep eye contact.
When they were about to go to sleep, Heidi told Kris she was going to lock the doors and have the alarm on. She asked if she was OK with this? Heidi told her she did not want her to leave the house without her.
Kris agreed.
She did not sleep well. She went outside and lay in the snow. [Editor’s note: it remains unclear if Kristin went out in the snow on Tuesday night, not Wednesday night] She came back to the bedroom freezing. Heidi held her.
Kris said she never wanted to die. She valued life. She wanted to live and never abort or hurt humanity.
They made a verbal contract that Kris would not harm herself. Kris looked Heidi in the eyes with sincerity and apologized for her act of lying out in the snow.
Thursday, February 6th
Kris had also slept poorly the night before. She had slept only 3-4 hours. In the morning, she kept putting on her socks and picking out clothes to wear. She needed help to get in the car and to class on time [8:30 a.m.]
In class, Heidi sought out Ed Kinum to talk about Kris’ behavior the night before. Her confusion and her “obsessive-compulsive behavior”.
Heidi told Ed that Kris was laying in the snow and attempted suicide. She gave Ed a yellow piece of paper where Kris had written: “I am the bad baby, you are the good baby, kill?….”
Heidi told Ed that it seemed as though Kris was taking on the behaviors of each of the previous day’s workshops. The “right vs wrong,” “suppressive,” “parasite” “obsessive-compulsive behavior.”
Ed said Heidi was clever to see the patterns emerging.
During the class, Kris held her eyes clenched shut as the group was in a circle. Kris did not fill out much of her paperwork and had a difficult time with eye contact.
At the noon lunch break, Heidi, E.V. and Kristin ate a salad they made that morning.
Kristin reportedly was disruptive with a student, David, during the lunch break.
She had repeatedly insisted she was pregnant with Vanguard’s baby.
Heidi went for a 30-minute walk alone. Kris and E.V. Clifford stayed in the lobby. When Heidi returned, it was 2:30.
Kris was talking with a member of the class, Ben, out in the parking lot. Heidi walked passed them and into the Westmark hotel.
In the lobby, Esther and Ed were waiting to talk to Heidi.
Kristin had been telling them and the entire class she was pregnant with Keith’s baby. She was removed several times because of that. They wanted to send Kris home for the afternoon. Heidi was concerned about Kris going home but acknowledged this was their class. If they needed to do this, Heidi could not stop them.
Esther went out to call Kris and Ben in from the parking lot. Kris entered acting strangely. Her eyes scanning the room. She said, “This doesn’t look good.”
Heidi spoke to Kris and said she felt very uncomfortable with her behavior.
There was no way she could be pregnant.
Heidi walked back over to Esther and Ed where they were standing in front of the fireplace in the lobby.
Heidi said, “I think we should bring Kris to the hospital.”
Ed shook his head. Then said, “Well maybe.”
Esther interrupted him, looking at him with a sharp look, and said with conviction, “No! She is totally playing you. She is not sick. She is fine and she does not need to go to the hospital!”
Back in class, Kristin did it again: she said she was pregnant, crying out to the class. This time she had to go. Esther insisted. Heidi tried to suggest that she be sent to the hospital.
Esther seemed almost violent. She stood with other coaches in front of Heidi separating her from Kristin.
Kris was driven home by a previous participant in the class, Elaine Smiloff. Elaine picked up Kristin.
Kristin left in Elaine’s car and the Toyota Tacoma truck that she and Heidi owned was in the parking lot when she left.
Esther told Heidi that Elaine would stay with Kristin until she got home. During the ride home, Kristin cried about being pregnant and said she did not know what to do – whether she could go through with it or not. Elaine thought she meant ‘go through with having the baby.’
Elaine dropped Kristin off at the house and left.
A little while after Kristin had been driven away from class, Esther told Heidi that Kris was on her way back to class. She never made it back. It is not known if Esther merely said this as misdirection.
When Heidi left the class in the evening, the Toyota was not in the parking lot. She got a ride home. Kristin was gone.
Friday, February 7, 9:30 a.m.
Kenny Powers and Heidi Clifford went to the hotel to meet with Esther before they went to go to a police department search meeting.
Esther laughed, stating Kris was really manipulating them.
“Kris is playing all of us for everything,” she said. “Big search, Big efforts, just as Kris wanted it.”
Esther expressed displeasure that Heidi was opting for not going to class, choosing to enable Kris’ manipulation over choosing to learn in class.
“Kris is fine,” Esther said. “We have seen way worse than this. We have seen Kris’ behavior in other students in the past.”
[Name Redacted] chimed in, supporting Esther. [Name Redacted] said she had been kicked out of class the first time she took the ESP 16 day intensive.
Later that evening, Kristin Snyder’s pickup truck was found in Seward Alaska with a handwritten note inside that said:
“I attended a course called Executive Success Programs (a.k.a. Nexivm) based out of Anchorage, AK, and Albany, NY. I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. I still have feeling in my external skin, but my internal organs are rotting. Please contact my parents Bob and Jonnie Snyder at [phone number redacted] in Dillon SC. if you find me or this note.
I’m sorry life, I didn’t know I was already dead. May we persist into the future – Kristn Snyder
On another note, evidently on the next page of the notebook, it read, “No need to search for my body.”
…If you look closely at the second note you can see the shadows of the first note. This indicates that the two notes were written on the same notepad and the second, shorter note was written after the first.
By enhancing the shadows using photoshop, it shows up more clearly:
Kristin Snyder’s body was never found, despite an extensive search for her and the alleged kayak she supposedly stole.
That kayak, according to Sherrie Miller of Miller’s Landing, the woman who owned the missing kayak, was seaworthy.
I was told by one of the members of the search party that police saw footprints coming out of both doors of the pickup truck.
By the time this member of the search team arrived, however, there were footprints going in every direction from dozens of searchers that had assembled to search for Kristin.
Neither her body, the kayak, nor the paddle were ever found.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
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I was born at night, but not last night. This post is a big fat load of hogwash. The only possible witness is Heidi in most of these scenarios, unless Heidi and Kris were having a threesome, foursome, fivesome, or moresome with the likes of Kenny, Esther, Ed, and [Name Redacted] AND Heidi’s mother.
What is this BS about a suicide note about lying in the snow? Do the police have a copy of THAT note? That is new info. Do you have a copy, Frank P.? Heidi says above she is the one that witnessed it, so how does Esther have a note? Were Esther and Heidi getting it on??
This story and Heidi’s multiple accounts surrounding the circumstances have more holes than Bonnie and Clyde! What is it going to take for law enforcement to see they have been fed a load of crap?
What says Kathy Morton now about the 357 revolver? Didn’t she recently move from the United States to Canada?
Ben Stevenson. I found it.
Didn’t Heidi have many guns in her house? Why then only put one gun in Kathy Morton’s vehicle?
It doesn’t make sense to only take one of the guns away, but then, there aren’t any NXIVM stories that make any sense.
Who is Ben? I don’t see him on the log sheet.
This adds a lot of important detail and context – thanks for the great work. I’d love to know what a real professional used to dealing with people in the midst of mental health crises, thought of the situation now that it is better documented.
Overall, it fleshes out the picture of Snyder definitely being very mentally disturbed, even delusional, and suicidal – not to mention sleep deprived. And it all seems too real for her to have been faking it, NXIVM’s conspiracy theory about her staging her disappearance aside.
NXIVM’s EMs bore some similarities to Scientology “auditing,” from what I can tell. They’re based on an early psychological technique related to hypnosis called abreaction, which takes people through past traumas in an attempt to alleviate them, and which can produce a sense of relief and even euphoria – but it turns out that is not long lasting, with some subjects getting significantly worse rather than marginally better, plus the technique can induce false memories (including of supposed past lives), and so it was abandoned by professional psychologists by about the middle of the last century.
If an amateur like Ed Kinnum was giving Snyder EMs when she was in a troubled state, that’s a recipe for making things worse. Something likely similar happened in the infamous case of Lisa McPherson in Scientology, where a young woman became extremely disturbed and ended up dead after the group’s attempts to avoid taking her to a hospital for real care.
Group processes used in NXIMV’s intensives probably had a similar basis and so could also have similar effects. Various human potential groups have used these sort of techniques because they’re a fairly easy way to produce impressive-seeming results – so much so that quite a few figures of early psychology were enamored of them until their long-term outcomes and implications were better understood – but their overall ineffectiveness, and dangers in a small but significant number of cases, are hard for untrained amateurs to grasp.
“Being at cause” is a concept heavily used in Scientology, and probably originating with it, though it’s really just a jumble of other ideas. As this example shows, it is badly defined and covers everything from realistic personal responsibility to what might be classified as “magical thinking” – and as Frank elucidates, is often used in cults to try to hold people responsible or blame them, for things over which they had no control or were not even involved in.
Chiappone Carlson sounds like the most dangerous amateur of all, with her dogmatic and heartless attitude regarding even things she was completely wrong about, such as suicide attempts – which are actually about 10 times more common than completed suicides (though still hardly to be dismissed).
And it’s interesting that they said that Snyder was going to return to class. That indicates she may have found a ride back with someone like one of the coaches – but also, if you click the Transit option on Google Maps, at least now there’s a bus that goes most of the way, too.
In the big picture, this is a reminder that groups like NXIVM can be dangerous, and shouldn’t be practicing counseling or therapy without adequate training or at least professional supervision. I checked in with a source and verified what I had suspected, that NXIVM was grossly negligent in not having even done due diligence and copied what other groups do; in the Landmark Forum (formerly est), for instance, they do a bit of mental health pre-screening and then have a psychological professional on call in case there is any question about participants’ state of mind.
I would like to apologize to Heidi (Kris’ wife). I criticized her for not going with her partner home. For not doing anything when they kicked her out. I think she had no idea what sort of evil she was dealing with. Probably hard for anyone to make a wise decision here.
I wish her the best. We cannot judge others.
Esther looks very noble and nice in her pic. So scary how evil she is
Thanks for this info
That was her mate I know if my significant other was acting a fool in class I wouldnt have just sat there. I would have taken care of her. Hell, I’d have been embarrassed and left if my full grown adult mate was throwing a fit on the floor. Heidi may say she cares but her actions sure didn’t show it.
Besides, by the time Heidi Clifford got home Kristen was apparently already gone, so how the hell did she see her last wearing purple slippers?
I’m not saying Heidi Clifford is guilty of anything but why the conflicting stories? Was Heidi Clifford brainwashed and therefore can’t remember specific details from this monumentis moment?
Snyder must have worn her purple slippers to the class.
They weren’t married, unless they were illegally married. Same sex marriages were illegal back then. Do NOT attempt to rewrite history and minimize the stress caused by their relationship alone, it was probably a major contributor to Snyder’s death (assuming she’s dead). Clifford let virtual strangers take away her “significant other” even though she had attempted suicide the night before and had been acting suicidal and otherwise very strange for several days. Everybody present let down Snyder, most of all Clifford. I don’t think it was intentional, it was pure stupidity.
Regarding the footprints, not having pictures and/or molds is pure incompetence. How anyone expects to solve this mystery at this late time without a lot more evidence to back up these statements must be taking the drugs discussed on another recent Frank Report story.
They were married in Vermont. If Kristen wasn’t so heavily gaslighted by her so-called friends and Nxivm coaches, there probably would’ve been a proper investigation starting with Heidi Clifford.
And don’t worry, ye of little faith, Scamway Johnson. Frank will do two great things in 2020.
1. Win his case
2. Solve a cold case technically not a cold case.
Really? Vermont passed the gay marriage act in 2009: https://www.google.com/search?q=when+did+vermont+legalize+gay+marriage&oq=when+did+vermont+legalize+&aqs=chrome.2.0j69i57j0l3.10507j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Snyder died in 2003, that means that Clifford married a corpse that died six years earlier, in abstentia. Now who needs help again? LOL
Methinks your track record doesn’t support making 2020 predictions.
Not sure why you continue to amaze me, but you know damn well about the facts surrounding their “marriage”. You lie and play stupid.
You instigate. You try to cause pain in others. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. Combine these wonderful traits with you being a full-blown, 100% mismatcher, and you certainly are an interesting fella.
Your right Scott, technically it’s called a Civil Union. I suppose we can’t technically call it a marriage. Its officially signed by a Jeanne H. Clark on September 27, 2001 and printed on paper that says vital statistics on the top. State of Vermont Department of Health Vermont License Certificate of Civil Union.
It’s both a technicality and a social construct. Gay unions were not seen nearly as acceptable today as they were almost a couple of decades ago. This placed a lot more social pressure on those who were “couples.”
This is so sad yet very interesting. It answers many questions I had. It is truly insane this is the type of thing happening at a self help workshop and nobody was held accountable for the neglect of a mentally vulnerable person in need of treatment