By Kim Snyder
In 2002-2003, my only sister, Kristin Marie Snyder, got sucked into the clutches of a rapist/killer cult.
Kristin was so absorbed that she even wanted me to take ESP courses. She told me how Keith was superior, but I declined to get involved in something I didn’t know anything about. I wasn’t interested in sitting 12 hours a day in an intensive.
When I traveled to Anchorage, I met the woman responsible for getting Kris involved in ESP – Wendy Irek. Wendy was a hairdresser but deeply committed to Keith and ESP. Her shop seemed nice; there wasn’t anything out of place.
When I went to Colorado with Kristin, she had already taken a course. She was not quite the same. She was too enthusiastic about ESP.
It was too good to be true.
Kris came in the 3rd week in January 2003 to our parents’ home in Dillon, SC. She was now even more gung ho on ESP.
And also decidedly more defensive.
But mainly, she was euphoric. She was so excited about ESP and Keith that she wanted mom and dad to take the course. They argued with her. She excused herself and got on the phone️ with her ESP coach. At times, I think she was crying and alternately angry on that call.
I overheard another phone call – of which there were many – where I understood she was talking to Nancy Salzman.
Mom and dad knew that Keith and his group were too good to be true. There was something not quite right. But they could not convince Kris. She was sure she was doing right.
It appears from her charge cards that she had been in Albany just before she came to us. How many times she met Keith I don’t know. But when she came to us, I believe she had just left him.
When Kris left our home for the last time, she did not seem suicidal. She seemed to believe that Keith was the greatest man living and that she was privileged to be part of it. She wanted all of us to benefit by his wondrous teachings.
Kristin left Dillon and I don’t know if she returned to Albany but she did not go straight back to Anchorage. About a week later, she was back in Anchorage and attending the Nxivm intensive.
During the first week in February 2003, I received my last phone️ call from my sister. She didn’t sound like she was in trouble – but she did tell me, she loved me, she really, really loved me.
Maybe I should have known she was in trouble then but I did not realize it. Kris had been always a tomboy, and if you said, Kris I really miss you and love️ you, she would say – yeah, yeah…..whatever.
Now she was telling me she really loved me. Why? She never said she was pregnant to my father, mother or I. But there may be a good reason for that. My parents are devout Catholics and would have been hurt because she was not married. [They were not in support of her living with a woman in a romantic relationship, but had come to accept that.] But an abortion was far worse. One was an aberration from the Lord’s Word – being lesbian. But abortion is murder, which is far worse.
This is their belief, and they are not alone. It is the belief of the Catholic Church.
My parents would never have supported an abortion. If she was pregnant, she would have kept the child, I believe. I don’t think Kristin could have ever agreed to abort a child no matter how much pressure Keith Raniere or others put on her.
This obviously could have presented a serious problem for Keith. We have learned he regularly required women to have abortions.
If Kristin was pregnant – and Keith would have known if this was possible or not – and she would not have an abortion – I believe Keith would have gone to work to make her appear crazy.
But even then, there could be a problem for Keith. If she really was pregnant there is nothing he could do if a pregnancy test was taken. I think he had to get her out of the way.
We may never know for Kristin disappeared on February 6, 2003, after being thrown out of class for claiming she was pregnant. She was driven home by Nxivm member Elaine Smiloff.
Heidi Clifford was told by Esther Chiappone that Elaine Smiloff was going to stay with Kris. But she didn’t stay – and we never saw Kris again.
I don’t understand why those involved have gotten away with no interrogation concerning Kris’ death.
We need a break in this case.
I am calling on law enforcement to take up this cold case and interrogate [Name Redacted], Ed Kinum, Esther Chiappone Carlson, Kristin Keeffe, Nancy Salzman, Karen Abney, Wendy Irek, Kathy Russell, Elaine Smiloff and everyone who was in the last intensive with Kris.
Knowing what we know now about Keith and the lengths his women would go to lie for him, there is sufficient reason to reopen this case.
And while forensics are perhaps long gone, the people involved are all still living.
It’s high time to interrogate. It is astounding to me that when they first did the investigation, they were so sure that it was a suicide that the main people who witnessed Kristin in her final week were never investigated. They made the assumption that it was suicide and followed a course bent on confirming suicide. Even without a body.
I have heard that the few people who were interviewed by the police, like Elaine Smiloff, were interviewed with Esther Chiappone present. Elaine told Frank Parlato she was afraid to tell police that Kristin said she was pregnant – with Esther there intimidating her.
Evidently, she was told to keep this secret. This information was also withheld from us, the family. We did not learn that Kristin claimed she was pregnant until Frank Parlato started his investigation.
Why was this kept from us?
Had this not been kept secret, we, the family, would have raised this issue with state police. There was a conspiracy of silence.
When I asked Heidi why she did not tell my mother and father and me at the time, she said she did not want to hurt us – and like all the rest – she did not believe Kris at the time.
But I believe Kris. If she said it, I believe her. A liar she was not. An attention seeker she was not.
I believe she was raped or seduced unethically by Raniere. I believe when she created a problem about it, he might have ordered his followers to drug her. It was done in the past, as Lauren Salzman testified. I believe they gaslighted her and I know for certain that they know more than they have told.
The people who may know something – [Name Redacted], Kinum, Chiappone Carlson, Keeffe, Salzman, Abney, Irek, Russell, Smiloff – were not thoroughly questioned in 2003. The police did not pressure them. Some of them withheld vital information that might have turned the corner on the investigation and opened it up to a potential murder investigation.
The time has come to interrogate witnesses. We know their names. This has never been done. And it is about 17 years overdue.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
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Ed Kinum told me years ago he knew nothing about what happened to Kristin. He was not trusted by Keith and the inner circle to know the truth because he is a Christian. He holds firm to his values. He was let go as a trainer even though he is an awesome speaker because the NXIVM tech he was teaching didn’t work for his issues and weight problem, and Lauren Salzman needed a job after college. He has been interviewed by the FBI already according to his family. He is a great Chiropractor but totally drank the cool-aid. He started to see the light when his NXIVM 9 friends left the cult, but has been quiet to protect himself from their legal machine. If he knows anything, it’s because he dated Esther for several years, or you could say she used him for several years to drive her kids, get free Chiropractic care, and be her all-around-gopher. He was too kind to admit it. I doubt she gave away her secrets. The inner-circle all used him but cut him out of the truth.
Wow fucking wow!!!! This is by far some of THE most HOMOPHOBIC crap I’ve seen posted in ages!!!!!! If Kristen’s family truly was/is THIS HOMOPHOBIC, no lesbian alive would have had anything whatsoever to do with their family. This is obviously a campaign to smear a dead lesbian by her own family. A family whose HOMOPHOBIA trumps all! Her family would rather believe their daughter/sister was raped and pregnant by a stranger than be a happy and healthy lesbian! That’s pretty effin sad!
I wondered why no one in Kristin’s family bothered to fly to Alaska and search for her, why her own flesh and blood so readily accepted the bizarre story Heidi Clifford was pitching at the time and which has changed more times in the last few months than I changed underwear. Now it’s clear as the nose on a face. Kristin’s family would rather have a dead LESBIAN daughter who can no longer be the lesbian she was born and instead remember her as someone she never was, an invented someone who did not exist!
Brynn
Quote from this post: “One was an aberration from the Lord’s Word – being lesbian.“ Geez. No wonder Kristin moved so very, very, very far away from her toxic, homophobic “family.” Clearly, Kristin was NOT truly accepted by her (allegedly) “loving” parents who were clearly part of a cult themselves — a cult more powerful & successful than NXIVM will ever be — the Catholic Church. (Talk about brainwashing). No amount of Hail Mary’s will ever make up for the lost opportunity for her parents to TRULY accept/love Kristin for who she actually was.
Thank you, Toni Natalie, for making another false statement pertaining to the Snyder family. Tell us, Toni, how is your investigation going into the disappearance of Kristin?
To: “Tony The Retard”: If you are referring to my previous comment in regard to the Snyders being homophobes, your screen name is perfectly accurate.
And then she fell in with a guru promoting his version of gay “conversion therapy.”
Could Snyder’s parents’ concern about her involvement, have been lessened by their believing she had found a man who was going to fix her?
KS’s disappearance has never gotten the attention it deserved from the press or from law enforcement.
NXIVM is extraordinarily intolerant of critics. Why haven’t authorities pursued the possibility she may have been silenced by NXIVM?
The group’s behavior, as reported, to an ill KS was bizarre.
So strange that no one at NXIVM pressed for more information and/or tried to help her at the time — but they went to her funeral?. What is that about? They should all be asked.
There’s plenty of potential witnesses still living in Alaska, perhaps inconsequential but perhaps not —- as well as the more obvious ones — these people were around when KS disappeared.. who knows where a lead may come from….? They should be questioned. Just to name a few — there’s Irick, Billingslea, Gutierrez,
Gutierrez was listed as General Counsel on the NXIVM website around the time of Snyder’s disappearance. In 2018 during the Raniere prosecution, NXIVM claimed attorney-client privilege re advice from Gutierrez on the Ross litigation — litigation predicated on going to all lengths to silence a critic of NXIVM, to protect Raniere. Eerily similar to the group’s apparent attitude to Kristin?
Irick was involved with NXIVM day in, day out for decades; she worshipped Raniere, and actually bought into the smartest guy in the world garbage. She divided her life between Alaska and Clifton Park. She’s devoted a lot of her life to this guy. She was there, too.
Those are just a few of the folks we haven’t heard from. They, and lots more, should be questioned.
You make valuable points, and I wrote similar remarks here last night, but felt physically sickened, contemplating WHO has done WHAT to Kristin Snyder. Those comments I wrote were very specific, needed to be scrapped. What I see could be wrong, but what I keep seeing, in ever-increasing detail, sometimes causes me to feel ill. It is like a feeling in what we call the solar plexus, not pain physically, but like a sense of being kicked as if by a steady, unstopping heartbeat.
The coldnesss, the calculated and fanatical words, behaviors, actions. How can anyone accept living like this, having cooperated in taking the life of Kristin Snyder? As well as helping to destroy Gina Hutchinson. The blind selfishness is very hard to fathom or to imagine. Yet here it is and it must be faced.
How can anyone continue to live like this, with terrible secrets? Is it so impossible to be humane, to find the decency, within one’s own mind and heart?
This is no time to be clever. If someone knows something about Kristin Snyder, come up with it now. Find the courage to be honest. There can be no higher value than life itself.
Raniere wanted to destroy girls and women, one way or another. He even feasted upon the vulnerabilities of boys and men, those who were receptive to him. Then he formed his own squad of demons. Raniere got women to participate in femicide.
Yet these women have refused to see this, and so have many of the men refused to see. Raniere hated girls and women. He seems to have hated anything that he saw as vulnerable. He could never see himself. And he taught others to lose the true self.
This is similar, although an extreme example, of what happens when someone joins an MLM. It wasn’t just Raniere, it was all the women who assisted him as well.
If Snyder went somewhere in between Albany and Alaska, shouldn’t there be credit card evidence of that as well?
We have some critical gaps in the credit card statements.
Can a subpoena be used to get them?
Possibly. At the moment, I do not believe we have authorization to subpoena anyone. But if law enforcement got involved, obviously, they could issue subpoenas.
The executor of Snyder’s estate, or whoever had legal authority over it, might be able to request such records – if that person was still around and willing to cooperate, or if a new authority could be established. But I don’t get the impression that Snyder’s survivors are quite that determined to take real action, perhaps reflective of the attitude the lead them to initially accept her death without raising any questions.
Yes, I was thinking more in the law enforcement area. If she had any legal agreement with Clifford or her parents, they could be another possibility.
I agree 💯 % Kim. What are the chances anyone in Alaska State care? It seems like a lot of hard work to interrogate 10 people. That would take time and money. Can Alaska State officials even read? I think they are more worried in giving unlicensed fishermen citations. I wish you the best.
Can the FBI be used to investigate? Seems like state lines were crossed during illegal activities.
Snyder’s partner and parents readily accepted that the suicidal woman did, unfortunately, succeed in ending her life, and have never themselves pushed to have the case reopened, plus a jury (which for some reason we have never heard about) also determined that she was dead by her own hand. What basis would the authorities really have for even doing anything?
And any Alaska state officials who came to this site, and saw all the pieces about topics like Satanism, and Ayahuasca conspiracies involving the CIA and Rockefellers, might somewhat justifiably conclude that it was just a fount of crackpottery not worth paying attention to – Frank, your editorial choices may sometimes undermine your mission like that.
BRAVO, Kim! Sing it, sister.
It smells to high heaven — where Kris and Gina may dwell in unrest — for investigators to fail to even question these witnesses — some of whom are supposedly co-operating with them and the DOJ in the NXIVM investigation — while at the same time using your sister’s image as the poster child for alleged NXIVM suicides when they can’t say it wasn’t murder or, to be fair, something far less sinister altogether.
Same way they used Rhianon, I’m sorry but I must say — the DOJ owes all of us the most thorough investigation and closure possible, especially if there is to be no NDNY investigations or charges for those crimes.
Nice piece, Kim. Keep it up! Kris and Gina and the others on the other side will protect us.
Shouldn’t there be one somewhere? If enough readers and regulars hear it, it will help you gain further traction.