Raniere’s Various Claims as a Child and Teenager Compared

Young Keith Raniere was a student at a Waldorf School in Suffern County. But don't blame the school.

Source 1: His published bio, formerly found on http://www.keithraniere.com[BIO]. This was written and occasionally update in the early 2000s.

Source 2. A story published in the Albany Times Union entitled “TROY MAN HAS A LOT ON HIS MIND –  IQ TEST PROVES WHAT MANY SUSPECTED: HE’S ONE IN 10 MILLION” by Irene Gardner Keeney, Staff writer. This was published on June 26, 1988. [TU 88]

This story is important for the information comes from an interview Keith Raniere gave to Keeney.

Source 3: Mr. Raniere’s sworn affidavit in 2003 in the Rick Ross lawsuit. [RossAff]

Keith Raniere was born on Aug. 26, 1960.

1961 age 1

[BIO]: “By the age of one, he [Keith Raniere] could construct full sentences and questions;

1962 age 2

[TU 1988] “By age 2, he could spell the word ‘homogenized’ from seeing it on the milk carton.

BIO: “[H]e was able to read by the age of two.

[Being able to read is not quite the same thing as being able to spell the word homogenized. It seems Keith kept on improving his history.]

1964 age 4

[TU 88] He had an understanding of … quantum physics and computers by age 4.

[Wait a minute: He was four in 1964 and he understood computers then? Computers were not available in people’s homes and they looked like this:}

1964 | Timeline of Computer History | Computer History Museum

1971 age 11

BIO: Mr. Raniere “was an East Coast Judo Champion at age eleven.”

1972 age 12

TU 88: “He was East Coast Judo champion at age 12.”

[We have already revealed that this is a bullshit claim. There is no East Coast Judo Champion. There is an east coast judo tournament – mainly for children. He competed with other children his age, and may have won a match with another child but he was not designated a champion.]

BIO: “By the age of twelve, he taught himself to play piano at the concert level; his passion and aptitude for music would inspire him to master many other musical instruments.”

TU 88:  “He says he plays seven musical instruments.”

[Keith never played any concerts that anyone knows of. His skill at piano, based on available recordings, is nowhere near concert level. At least not the kind of concert where people pay to hear someone play the piano.]

BIO: “He taught himself high school mathematics in nineteen hours at the age of twelve”.

[More bullshit.]

[Ross Aff] “It was at the age of 12 I read The Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov and was inspired by the concepts on optimal human communication to start to develop the theory and practice of Rational Inquiry™.”

Author Isaac Asimov was one of Keith Raniere’s heroes

1973: age 13

BIO:  [H]e was proficient in third-year college mathematics and was a professional computer programmer.

[Ross Aff]: “I have been a computer analyst/scientist for the past 30 years.”

Keith claims he was a computer programmer in 1973 – which would mean that he worked on computers like this? For whom?

{Ross Aff]: By the time I was 13 I had taken and passed the 9th, 10th and 11th grade NYS
Mathematics Regents exams and had taught myself the first two years of college Mathematics and several computer languages.

1976 age 16

[TU 88]: “By the time he was 16, the Brooklyn-born genius says he had exhausted the curriculum at his high school. He dropped out of school and entered RPI where he simultaneously earned undergraduate degrees in math, physics and biology. To do that, he had to take 60 credits in addition to the 124 credits required for a single major.

[BIO]: “Keith Raniere entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) at age sixteen. From his first semester onward, he began taking Ph.D. level mathematics courses, ultimately taking most of the graduate-level physics and mathematics courses available at the time.”

1977 age 17

[Ross Aff] I entered RPI just after my 17th birthday and started to take high level (PhD) graduate courses in Mathematics. These courses are normally reserved for advanced graduate school students. To my knowledge I was the first 17 year old to take advanced 600 level mathematics courses in RPI’s then-153 year history. I continued to develop Rational Inquiry™ and formalized a new method of computer programming which I called ‘functional programming.’ It was my demonstrated ability to optimize computer programs that enabled me to obtain a position as a systems programmer/physicist for the Gamma-Pi physics group at RPI and the MIT-Bates National laboratory (MIT-yTt), MIT-y7r was examining atomic particle properties using a scattering methodology through a Quadra-pole magnet. I helped devise, construct and utilize the B-field measuring tool for this magnet. Its utilization involved measuring the B-field at millions of points within the magnet array and constructing a 3 dimensional mathematical model of the field. At this time I noted that a human could often ‘see’ a data pattern quicker than a computer. So I created a visually driven computer system to allow for ‘human intervention’ in optimal parameter selection and curve fitting. This successfully reduced our system’s search time by over 90%. I thereby refined and tested my model of how the human mind, with sense capability, compared to a computer and how the human mind, equipped with a motivationally driven projective mechanism, ‘understood’ and strategically made decisions.

[It came out as part of the government’s revelations prior to trial that Keith was anything but an exceptional student. He had a 2.26 grade point average.]

TU 88: [He] “tied with the state record for the 100 yard-dash.”

[This is claim that Keith did not put on his online bio, though numerous people heard him say it. There is, of course, no record of Keith tying or holding any record for the 100-yard dash. To one person who questioned him about his oft stated claim, he admitted that he tied the record for the 100 yard dash in an unofficial setting with Pam Cafritz, as I recall, keeping the stopwatch and verifying the truth of the sprinter’s statement.]

The wonderkind.

1969 Raniere

1977 raniere

1978 raniere

It is fascinating that Keith found it necessary to lie about his youth making himself appear to be a prodigy.

From what I could gather, his family considered him to be a boy genius, and may have helped to reinforce this madness in him. He became part of his psychosis.  As her grew up, he became desperate for everyone to acknowledge him as the smartest man, a genius. It became his way of living. It led him to work so hard to authenticate his genius. He did this by utilizing a take home IQ test – perhaps the only kind of test he could score very well on – because it was one which he took at home – and not in a controlled setting where he could not cheat.

He then worked assiduously to get the test results place in the Guiness Book of Records in 1989, Australian edition.

The editors at Guiness realized that the IQ test was not reliable and not only failed to put Keith and other’s who took the same take home test in their American edition of the same year, but actually wound up retiring the category of “Highest IQ”.

Why this is important is that while Keith appears to have been exposed and placed in a facility that will likely prevent him from harming others, there are others like him who seek to have people follow them and use them.

These people, psychopaths like Raniere, will attract victims and so what we are attempting here, with the continued study of Raniere, is to observe the mind and actions of a psychopath.

For Raniere, part of his disease was to lie about the exploits of youth. These lies are pretty obvious and many thought so even before he was exposed. But he was able to fool many of his followers for years who believed in the absolute veracity of his claims.

For a psychopath to attract a cult, he needs many gullible victims and a few psychopaths and sociopaths whom he can bring in to a greater or lesser degree and reveal the secrets of his diabolical nature.

He such as Nancy Salzman, Clare Bronfman and a few others who were full blown participants in his evil. And he had a number of hybrids who were half-evil and half-victim. And then he had many mainly victims who supported him believing his lies and in his goodness.

That is how he built and kept a cult.

 

 

 

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Frank Parlato

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  • LISP, one of the first formalized functional programming languages for computers, was invented in the 50s before Raniere was born and the technique of functional programming, a derivative of lambda calculus, was around a good 30 years before he was born.

  • I’ve expounded on this before but will reiterate for newcomers, Raniere seemed to acquire a new expertise — and some past title to prove it — with each new girl he wanted to impress, own.

    When Pam Caffritz came on board, Raniere was suddenly a track star and started coaching Pam for the Olympics, etc.

    As “L” has pointed out, there was an element of envy to this phenomenon. L wrote that Keith followed her into music theatre making grandiose claims but to overtake her pursuit and interest he’d never had previously.

    I saw that pattern a lot with Raniere in the early days. Including following my brother’s stock market plays so it wasn’t just competing with the girls, it was something with guys, too.

    I also agree with Nancy Durkin that Raniere is highly intelligent. He and Salzman did ‘outsmart‘ a lot of pretty smart people by manipulating them in other ways — emotionally, socially, etc.

  • So, he learned high school math when he was twelve, but had previously learned Quantum Physics at age four? Hahaha

    In order to just grab a little bit of Quantum Theory, you need a deep understanding of advanced mathematics and high analytical skills.

    I’m gonna go cry now. Hahaha

    What a stupid idiot that Keith.

    • The term “…an understanding….” does not imply “…a deep understanding of advanced mathematics and high analytical skills.” For example, someone who can grasp this: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/quantum+theory can legitimately claim they have “an understanding” of quantum theory even if they suck at even basic mathematics and analytical skills. LOL

      • Sorry, if you do not master high school math, you can not master calculus, then you do not have the skills to continue any further (let us say into linear algebra, Fourier, Laplace, Dirack notation etc.) So you can not grasp any bit of Quamtum Theory.

  • Great read, Frank!!!! Thanks

    The last 3 paragraphs are an excellent short explanation of Raniere and his psychopathic female brethren developing the cult.

    ****

    I am very excited to read your book.

  • The stories of his wonderful youth are all true. He plays concert level piano and he knows computers better than any person living or dead for he is smarter than any computer.
    I will dance every night for you my eternal husband and I know you will soon be free.
    I love you M.

    • –he is smarter than any computer

      Well that’s not anything special since computers are dumb.

        • A computer is only programmed to do what the code tells it to do. It exhibits nothing remarkably close to the powers of human intelligence, e.g., abstract thought and imagination. That is why AI is such a grandiosely inapt term for the technology. The entertainment that portrays that AI is right around the corner in sentient Terminator or androids indistinguishable from humans is outright fantasy, and the blowhards like Elon Musk who say they are “deathly afraid” of AI technology are being beyond melodramatic. We haven’t got the slightest idea of how the human mind really works. Sure, we know what part of it does such and such, but how it all works together to do what it does is unfathomable. It truly is the greatest creation that we know of. There is nothing “intelligent” about a computer. What a computer possesses and exhibits is the capability to do repetitive tasks extremely fast. But it’s only “smart” in doing them when it produces the “right” results–whatever they may be–because it can’t even understand what that even means. You can program a computer to calculate 1+1=3 and it will do that for you a trillion times a second and as many times as you want for its life–faster than any human and without getting tired–and it won’t have the foggiest idea that the calculation is wrong.

          That Raniere is smarter than a computer is a very low bar and not something any of his followers should gloat about.

    • Pea I have so much more to offer you than Raniere and Shadow. LOL

      I don’t know about your husband being free, but I’m going to free-willy just as soon as we’re alone. LOL

      You will walk like old people fuck when I’m done with you. My Jimmy runs deep. LOL

      • —Reading your comments is watching an alternative reality video footage.

        We can make some alternative videos. How do you feel about gerbils?

    • Pea Onyu:
      It’s too bad that this so-called genius never learned about the RICO Act.
      The law that allows this genius to be prosecuted for crimes that are up to 20 years old.
      The law that allows Clare, Sara, Allison, Nicki, Nancy, Lauren and others to be civilly sued by their victims.
      And now Keith is locked up with the talented professional pimp Jizzlane Maxwell!
      Pea, it looks like you have some serious competition!
      Can Keith play some Boogie Woogie piano?

  • I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this article, Frank.

    Raniere completely debunked and exposed.

    So to the point.

    Thank you.

  • He is obviously very intelligent and had he put half the effort he devoted to inflating his image into something genuinely productive, he would have succeeded. But he had no interest in anything so mundane as earning a living in the normal way – though most people take pride in that. He apparently saw himself as “above” toil or self-discipline. He used his talents to assure others went to work for him, paid his bills, and waited on him. This would have remained a pretty good scam had he not gone off the deep end with the slave/branding/imprisonment thing. He might still be living his pampered life today. But I guess that got boring. Psychopaths are easily bored.

    • Thanks for your input:
      Raniere is highly intelligent
      Raniere is also a psychopathic, deceptive liar
      Tragically, Raniere did not use his talents to serve humanity.

      Why am I so interested in his story? It’s a cautionary tale. Psychopathic ambition is self-destructive; humble honesty and simple respect for others may not earn one big money and fame but it is still the best way to live life.

      • Let me give you a quick story. Many years ago I stumbled on something posted to the internet by a teenage boy – obviously a brilliant one. He had figured out a way to have solar panels directly operate a home’s central AC system during daylight hours, automatically switching over to regular electric after the sun went down. There were no toxic batteries to charge, maintain, or replace. Again, this is at least 10 years ago, so we likely have the technology now.

        This young man posted pictures of his prototype and instructions. He said he did not want a patent or any money for his design – he just wanted someone to run with the ball and manufacture it. He knew it would be good for consumers and for the environment. He was extremely bright and apparently wanted to contribute to our collective well being.

        Can you possibly imagine Raniere, with all his intelligence, doing anything of the kind? Doing something to help humanity, for no money?

  • Frank, what does the Mega Society have to say about Keith’s inclusion? Do they feel they were duped, or do they believe his score was legitimate? Have you tried to ask Marilyn vos Savant?

    • I think the Mega Society has disbanded, and they are smart enough to not have any comment on Raniere. LOL

      Same with Savant. LOL

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” He also appeared in "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM, and was credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premieres on May 22, 2022.

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Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankparlato@gmail.com

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