My Answer to Peaches:
It is true, Kristin Snyder could be alive. She would be 52.
As part of the Nordic Ski Patrol, being groomed, in fact, to be its next leader, she certainly had survival skills. She could have disappeared into the glaciers or paddled, even on a February evening, right across Resurrection Bay and hidden in any number of places for some time – far from where the search for her was undertaken.
She might have even driven away in another vehicle with the aid of some friend. There are a thousand ways she could have disappeared in Alaska if she so desired. No one was looking for her in those first few hours. Alaska is a big country to hide in.
Kristin’s partner, Heidi Clifford, at first refused to go on camera for the film “The Lost Women of Nxivm”. She had been advised by Toni Natalie [then pretending to be my friend while backbiting at every turn] that I was not to be trusted.
The ID team was up in Alaska, and her decision not to meet with me was kind of a blow to our plans to investigate what happened to Kristin.
Finally, Heidi agreed to appear on camera – provided she was not identified and in silhouette. The crew met with her and filmed her in her forest cabin.
Later, she agreed to go on camera with me, showing her full face and revealing her true identity. Both interviews were shown in the film – the one in silhouette and the one where she comes out and reveals her identity.
Heidi was very gracious and invited the production crew and myself to her house where we filmed the second interview.
It was August 2019 and in the midst of the long-running forest fires, the smoke of which hung over the area for months and obscured the view of the valley below where she lived.
After interviewing Heidi Clifford on numerous occasions, on and off camera, I doubt she had any direct involvement with Kristin’s disappearance. I don’t think she believes Kristin is alive. I don’t think she helped her escape and disappear.
There are some who think Kristin Snyder is still alive and did disappear, such as, for instance, Kristin Keeffe.
I chased down numerous leads – in places where Kristin Snyder was said to be living.
I went with the entire ID production team to North Port, Florida, [in Sarasota County] where we had gotten word that Kristin had been living.
Along with us came two private investigators and the four-person production crew. I went to two residences where Kristin was supposedly spotted and knocked on doors. Visited neighbors. She was not living there presently – and if she had ever lived there, no one seemed to recall seeing her or a teenage son.
We did not use any of the footage we filmed of our trip to Sarasota since we did not uncover anything.
I also found out that Esther Chiappone Carlson was living nearby in Sarasota and we went to her home and knocked on the door. An older woman answered and said that Esther was not there. We gave our phone number to the woman, but I knew Esther would not return my call.
Esther was the one who arranged to remove Kristin from class and interviewing her could be very revealing.
I called Esther several times on her cell phone and left messages but she never returned my calls.
I suspect that Esther, Ed Kinum, Keith Raniere, and Nancy Salzman know more about what happened to Kristin Snyder than they are willing to say. It was Keith and Nancy’s position that Kristin staged her own disappearance and, using Clare Bronfman’s money, they spent as much as one million dollars looking for Kristin.
Keith claimed he had pictures of Kristin with Heidi in the Grand Canyon taken several months after her disappearance. There were pictures and they were seen by people I have interviewed. However, the pictures were taken from a distance and it is not clear who the people in the pictures are.
Heidi said she was in the Grand Canyon at the time, but not with Kristin Snyder, but with another friend who happened to look somewhat like Kristin. [This shows that Nxivm was following Heidi Clifford].
One Nxivm member told me in 2007, when I worked as a consultant for Nxivm, that she spotted Kristin Snyder several years after she disappeared [2006], in New England and tried to follow her but lost her trail. She told me this story, saying she had absolute confidence that it was Kristin Snyder, whom she had met before. She said when she stopped at a pay-phone to call the private detective hired to find her, Kristin took off in her car.
Kenny Powers spent time with Kristin during that last week before she disappeared. He describes a distraught and clearly depressed woman. Was it an act on her part? Kenny does not think so.
I doubt that Heidi Clifford or Kenny Powers know anything more than that Kristin disappeared. They both report that Kristin was acting erratic, psychotic even. And suicidal.
I think they believe the official story of suicide is true. Kenny Powers is a lawyer and evidently a premiere outdoorsman. He struck me as completely sincere and honest. He seemed to have felt genuine emotion when talking about Kristin’s disappearance and presumptive suicide. I don’t believe he was faking it.
I think Heidi is rather a stoic person. I think she cared about Kristin deeply but is not the overly-emotional type. Although she did weep at times during our interview and she said one thing that impressed me: “You know Kristin has been gone 17 years but I still sometimes think I may find her somewhere. That I might run into her someplace or that she might just walk in the door someday.”
I think it is true, as she said, that she was harassed by Nxivm for years after Kristin disappeared, most likely to intimidate her into silence, and it is very likely – almost certain – that Nxivm hired private investigators to watch her, possibly to discover if Kristin was alive and they were in contact.
For nearly 17 years, after Kristin disappeared, the case lay dormant [other than what Nxivm was doing] until I started investigating it and published my findings on Frank Report and in the film “The Lost Women of Nxivm”.
One of the teachers, Jim said, was an apparently gay woman named Kristin, who said she came from Alaska – who had a birthday during the time that they were teaching. {Snyder’s birthday is Dec 14] The woman was the same age as Kristin Snyder would have been then – 43.
She was about 5’7″ and quite fit. He said the woman had sandy blondish hair – and that looked just like the pictures of Kristin he had seen on “The Lost Women of Nxivm” with the addition of several years.
Jim said he had lost her phone number but he recalled another woman instructor, whose number he still had – and suggested she might have this Kristin’s number or at least would remember the last name since they had been closer friends.
He called me back with Kristin’s last name the next day and he had some photos. This Kristin was the right age, and had the right general appearance. She was a Nordic skier and also an Alpine skier, I was told.
I found this Kristin, who had taught with Jim in Colorado. She had moved to the very uppermost part of Alaska and, for a few short days, I hoped I had a match. But after doing some discreet research, mainly by finding her relatives, I was able to discover that this Kristin was not Kristin Snyder and that she was using her true name [which was not Snyder].
It was pure coincidence that a woman the same age, possibly the same birthday, who was also a skier, who had the same general appearance and was gay and lived in Alaska, would be brought to my attention as a possible living Kristin Snyder.
But she is not Kristin Snyder.
One former Nxivm source told me that Kristin Snyder lived as recently as 2019 in Key West and that she knew her address. In addition to this search in Alaska and the search for her in Sarasota, I was told by a former Nxivm member that she had evidence that Kristin Snyder had been living in Key West, and from a private investigator, I got information that she had been in Miami as well.
Miami and Key West are about 165 miles apart so this information coming from two different sources seemed worth looking into.
In addition to this, I did get one mysterious call one night.
I had been given a number by a non-Nxivm source, who gave me a phone number and told me that this was Kristin Snyder’s current cell phone number. I called it and got only a prerecorded message that did not identity the name of the person whose phone number it was.
I left my phone number, saying “I am looking to speak with Kristin Snyder. This is Frank Parlato.”
The number was a Kentucky phone number [area code 606]. Kristin had lived in Kentucky before she moved to Alaska.
I called several times and left messages, adding once, as I recall, that Keith Raniere was in prison and that he could not hurt her anymore.
I did not get a return call for some time. I assumed it was not the right number [that there was no right number for Kristin is gone] and that whoever got the message might have thought it was just a wrong number or perhaps that I was some kook.
However, I saved the number on my phone as “Kristin Snyder” and oddly one night – months later – at about 3 am – the phone rang.
I was asleep and did not hear the phone when it rang. When I awoke in the morning, I looked at the missed calls and found strangely that I had gotten a call from the number I had saved as Kristin Snyder.
I thought this was odd because I had not called that number in months. The person had apparently saved my number and one night – deep in the night – this person chose to reach out and call me.
The person left no message.
Why did this person call me months later? Why did this person even save my number?
I tried the next day, or perhaps the day after, and left a message but I never got a return call.
Was it Kristin Snyder? Maybe it was a friend. Maybe it was someone who was curious. But why did this person keep my number for months? And why did he or she call me one night at such a peculiar hour?
Someone calling themselves Gene wrote to me:
Frank, if you thought the girl in Upper Anchorage [sic], was Kristin, where is the photo proof, age, and why have you NOT told the Snyders about this trip to the Upper Anchorage area?
Do you have a photo? May we please see it? Maybe the Snyder family would like to rule out the possibility – that it is Kristin?
Will you please put the issue to bed, and show us the photos? Please?
My Answer:
I cannot publish the photo of the woman who was suspected of being Kristin Snyder because she is NOT Kristin Snyder, and there is no good cause to violate her privacy.
Back when I was doing the research on her [December 2019], I sent a photo of the woman to a member of the Snyder family, without saying why, and simply asked this particular family member if she recognized the woman in the picture.
The family member said she did not recognize the person. This was my first evidence that the woman was not likely Kristin Snyder, for a family member would be likely to recognize Kristin even with the addition of some 17 years.
At the time, I did not tell the family. If it was not Kristin [as it turned out not to be], why should they get their hopes raised and then dashed.
On the other hand, if it was Kristin, there was a challenge.
It was a challenge I had thought of many times during the investigation. What if she was still alive? Would I “out” her? If she were alive, she evidently went through great pains to find a new life and become dead to the world she used to know.
Suppose she was alive? Would I have to respect the fact that she wanted to remain dead to the world, even to her family?
If she chose to not tell her family and have them think she was dead and I did find her, would I leave her be?
Would I tell her that she had nothing to fear from Keith Raniere if that was why she ran away?
Yes, I would tell her that.
And yes, I would tell her that I think she should contact her mother, who loves her, and no doubt regrets so much her disappearance. I would try hard to persuade her. But after 17 years, why would she change anything?
So, just so you understand it – if I had found her and she did not want to be revealed, I think I would respect her wishes. And let her live her life obscurely.
This probably won’t please some people, but as far as I could see, Kristin Snyder committed no crime by disappearing. That’s why I would leave her alone, with perhaps her child, Keith’s child, who is now, or would be now, 17 years old.
If she was suddenly found by me, and I exposed it, it would create a great deal of publicity for her.
I would not want her son to be known to the world as Keith Raniere’s son, not if she did not want that.
What would you do?
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Peaches wrote:
In my opinion, Kristin Snyder could still be alive. She was part of the Nordic Ski Patrol. I wonder just how well Kenny Powers [head of the Nordic Ski Patrol at the time Snyder disappeared] “groomed” Kris. I wonder how much Kris really loved Heidi Clifford and vice versa.
In “The Lost Women of Nxivm”, Clifford didn’t come across like she cared much for Kris. The one thing that sticks out is how she didn’t say anything about Kristin’s pregnancy to save her own ass from being a target of an investigation.
I love how ID had her in silhouette in the beginning and then later not.