Buffy Cafritz Dies at 91; DC Philanthropist, Political Hostess and Mother of Pam, Raniere’s Top Harem-Woman

The cause was pneumonia, said her son, Charles ‘Sandy’ Wilkes.

To those who knew her, Buffy was the hostess of the premier presidential inaugural party, and a philanthropist who served on numerous boards of DC-based charities.

To Frank Report readers, she is best known as the mother of the late Pamela Ann Cafritz, Keith Raniere’s top harem member, a woman he called his “life partner” of 30 years.

Buffy outlived her daughter by four and a half years.

About Pam’s mother, Matt Schudel of the Washington Post, wrote in an obiturary, “Buffy Cafritz, [was] a Washington philanthropist who served on the boards of cultural organizations, including the Kennedy Center and a support group for the Library of Congress, [and] was known for hosting star-studded gatherings of the city’s political and cultural elite….

“Mrs. Cafritz, one of the last of the District’s grand dame host­esses, threw quadrennial [presidential] inaugural parties for nearly three decades. They became coveted affairs for many in the Washington establishment.

“She and her husband, real estate developer William N. Cafritz, who were Republican supporters, organized their first inaugural gala in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan — whom they had entertained at their home — was entering his second term. In bipartisan fashion, the Cafritzes often shared hosting duties with prominent Democrats.

“The parties were held through 2001 at the Jockey Club in the Fairfax Hotel on Massachusetts Avenue NW and later at other hotels.

“Mrs. Cafritz pored over the guest list as if she were curating an art exhibition, inviting congressional leaders from both major parties, Supreme Court justices, State Department officials, celebrity journalists and a few select Hollywood stars.

“In 1993, when President Bill Clinton was inaugurated, Mrs. Cafritz shared hosting duties with broadcaster Phyllis George,”

In a January 2021 article in Tatler, “Why Inauguration Day is usually one of the biggest days for networking on the social calendar” Buffy Cafritz’s inaugural parties were described by Daisy Prince:

“The real action is at the private parties. And the private party every power player in Washington always makes a point of attending is Buffy Cafritz’s bash. A fixture on the calendar for 35 years, Cafritz and her late husband, William, gave their first party in 1984 for the second Inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Her initial co-host was one of the first female American sportscasters, Phyllis George, and held at the Jockey Club for 75 people.

“Now, she co-hosts her party with longtime Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan at the Hay Adams for 400. ‘Vernon has never met anyone he didn’t want to invite,’ she says with a laugh. Le tout-Washington feasts on simple yet filling fare like chicken hash and soup. It was always a late supper and not seated as all the guests were circulating far too quickly to be able to stop for even more than a moment. In later years, Cafritz changed to buffet stations to allow for greater mingling.”

“There was no music aside from a piano player and later a guitar player at the Hay Adams which was always drowned out by all the chatter. The guest list was a bipartisan mix of journalists (who always spice up a party), Democrats, Republicans and friends from the inner Washington establishment circles. The Cafritzs are not in politics so no partisan ever felt they were stepping on someone’s toes by attending. ‘It was a party where two thirds of the people who were invited knew the other two-thirds and wanted to meet the remaining one-third,’ says Chaffee.

“They were all well-attended events but if Cafritz had to choose one night, it would be the 1992 Inauguration of President Bill Clinton as one of the most star-studded. ‘We had Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, Michael Bolton and Jack Nicholson. Everyone was here to celebrate the election of President Bill Clinton.’

“Even more impressive, First Lady Hilary Clinton dropped by. Normally the President and First Lady are far too busy to see their friends that night, so that was a very high honour….

“One of the main purposes of her party was to bring together people from both sides of the aisle. Something that was nearly impossible when the Trumps were in office. ’This was a very difficult administration. The feelings ran so deep you couldn’t have a civil discussion at a dinner party.’”

Back to the Washington Post obituary:

“Mrs. Cafritz cultivated relationships with first ladies Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton. In the 1990s, Mrs. Cafritz and her husband were joined as inaugural party hosts by Vernon and Ann Jordan, power brokers in Washington’s Democratic establishment. Their final inaugural party took place in 2013.

“For 25 years, Ann Jordan and Mrs. Cafritz also co-chaired the annual dinner after the Kennedy Center Honors, for about 1,600 guests. This year’s Kennedy Center Honors… will be dedicated to Mrs. Cafritz….

“She also served on the boards or advisory committees of … the National Gallery of Art, the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Ford’s Theatre, the National Institutes of Health Foundation, the White House Historical Association, the French-American Cultural Foundation and Sasha Bruce Youthwork….

“Mrs. Cafritz was born Anita Marie Boffa in Westport, on Nov. 2, 1929. She grew up in Norwalk, Conn. Her father was chairman of a finance company, and her mother was a homemaker.

“She acquired the nickname ‘Buffy’ from her last name and was a 1947 graduate of the private Rosemary Hall … in Wallingford, Conn. She graduated in 1949 from Colby Junior College … in New London, N.H.

“She settled in Washington in the early 1950s. Her first marriage, to lawyer Charles L. Wilkes, ended in divorce. Her second husband, William Cafritz…  died in 2014 after 55 years of marriage.

“Survivors include a son from her first marriage, Charles ‘Sandy’ Wilkes, who was adopted by William Cafritz, of Kensington, Md.; three granddaughters; and a great-granddaughter.

“Mrs. Cafritz lived in Bethesda, Md., where she was a regular parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church.”

Her husband, William died on August 27, 2014, two years before Pam, passed away.

From an obituary of Buffy’s husband we learn Bill Cafritz grew up in Washington, DC,  where he attended Sidwell Friends School and graduated from Devitt Preparatory School.  As a member of the 88th Infantry Division in Italy, he was wounded in combat as his unit fought to take Monterumici. He was awarded a Purple Heart.

After his discharge, he attended The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania and then began a career as a real estate developer and investor. His projects included single-family communities, garden apartments, retail centers and industrial parks. He was president of The Washington Performing Arts Society, a director of Kennedy Center Productions, Inc., and chairman of the Dacor-Bacon House building committee. He was a founding trustee of Washington Real Estate Investment Trust, a member of the executive committee of the District of Columbia Building Industry Association, and vice president of the Suburban Maryland Builders Association.

While Bill and Buffy achieved success in DC, their daughter Pam achieved success as a socialite and leader of her own community, the NXIVM community, in Albany, New York.

Pam was the top wing-woman and harem leader for her master, Keith Raniere, the founder of NXIVM, who is now in USP Tucson, serving a 120-year sentence for sex trafficking, racketeering, and other crimes.

Raniere and Cafritz met in Colorado while both were on ski trips. Pam was engaged to be married. But before the weekend was out, Raniere laid on the charm and laid Pam, who then immediately joined his harem. She was part of his 1990s Consumers’ Buyline Inc. venture, an MLM buyer’s club, Raniere claimed on his bio, which made him worth $50 million by age 32.

He failed to mention that by age 36, the NYS Attorney General had accused CBI of being a pyramid scheme, and the company went bust owing thousands of members money.

To settle with the NYS Attorney General, Pam, Raniere, and another of his harem, Karen U., signed a consent agreement with no admission or finding by NYS of wrongdoing, agreeing to pay a $40,000 fine and never engage in an illegal pyramid scheme for life [a basically meaningless clause since no one is permitted to engage in illegal pyramid schemes anyway.]

[The exact language in the consent decree was the trio were “permanently enjoined from promoting, offering or granting participation in a chain distributor scheme in the State of New York in violation of GBL § 359-fff; – the point being is that everyone is permanently enjoined from violating GBL § 359-fff].

Pam Cafritz served long and well for Raniere, logging in about 30 years before dying.

She cofounded Jness with Raniere and another harem woman, Mariana.  Jness, a women’s group within NXIVM, taught women how to live according to Raniere’s view of the female gender.

Cafritz was also the legal owner [Raniere never liked to have anything in his name] of the Society of Protectors, a men’s group that taught men how to live according to Raniere’s view of the male gender.

For more than a decade, Cafritz and Mariana lived with Raniere ménage a trois in a townhouse on Flintlock Lane in the Knox Woods subdivision in Half Moon NY. Even when Raniere was away, servicing other members of his oft-changing harem, the two women shared the same bed.

[I have seen their bedroom and it is remarkably small — about 10 x 11] 

Raniere visited other harem members at their homes or invited them to his “Executive Library,” a townhome which, in addition to a number of books on a shelf, had a grand piano, a warm and foamy hot tub, and a bed above in a loft. A lot of women came to his lair and got sexual satisfaction from their Vanguard, satisfaction being defined as pleasing their Vanguard and, if possible, eliciting his curative and spiritually-wondrous ejaculate sprayed upon their person, which marked them as his and his alone for the rest of their lives.

One of Cafritz’s main roles as a NXIVM socialite was to keep women of the harem from leaving when they got upset, which they often did, because they were unhappy being one of 20 plus sister-wives. Pam was fond of advising women that they had “jealousy issues,” that they should not seek to own Keith’s penis, that touching his penis was not different than touching his elbow, and that sex was not different in terms of exclusivity than playing tennis.

“You would not be jealous if Keith played tennis with another woman, would you?”

Pam’s motherly and nurturing persona often carried the day and kept many a harem woman in line for years. Her arguments were good as far as they went, but Keith, on the other hand, did not allow any of his harem to “play tennis” with anyone else.

He apparently freaked out when Cami had an affair with Robbie [as his texts, read in court, indicate] and when Daniela kissed Ben Myers [as she told me and testified later in court], his remedy was to have her go to her room and stay there until she healed her ethical breach [of agreeing that she should never kiss another man again so long as she lived], a task which took her almost two years in solitary confinement to apparently heal, healing it, it seems, by realizing at last that Raniere was a fraud, a louse and a coward scoundrel.

In addition to having a reported four abortions herself (for Raneire was a fertile man), Cafritz would arrange for other women of Raniere’s harem who got pregnant by him [hopefully] to obtain an abortion. It was claimed during his trial that Raniere had impregnated women dozens of times, requiring an equal number of abortions, less possibly two or three.

Two sons were born, Galyn, age 14 and Kemar, age 3, and the possible third one was Kristin Snyder who apparently refused to have an abortion. She disappeared just after she publicly claimed she was pregnant with Raniere’s child and was never seen again. Her death is listed as a presumptive suicide.

When Daniela, the woman who remained in her room for almost two years, became pregnant by Raniere, Pam Cafritz made sure she terminated the pregnancy. She got a medical abortion, without letting the doctor know she was an illegal alien, and permitting the dear girl to have it alone at her own home where her cries of pain and fear would not disturb Raniere’s blessed peace.

Perhaps Cafritz’s shining hour for Raniere was in 1992 when she allegedly assisted him in his efforts to induce a 12-year-old girl named Rhiannon to join his harem. Pam craftily hired the child to walk her dog which brought her to the townhouse she shared with Raniere, where Raniere could have closer contract with her and teach her grown-up things.

It worked.

According to Rhiannon, Raniere had around 60 sexual encounters with her when she was between 12 and 13.

In 2019, Rhiannon was willing to testify under oath at the trial of Keith Raniere but the judge ruled her testimony would be inadmissible because it was too prejudicial. Raniere was not charged with the statutory rape of Rhiannon.

In Novembert 2016, Cafritz reportedly died of renal cancer at age 57. She was one of the five closest women to Raniere.

Top Five Women Who Served Raniere the longest and were his inner – inner circle

Pam Cafritz [cancer, renal, died]

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Kristin Keeffe [cancer, cervical, in remission]

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Barbara Jeske [cancer, brain, died 2014]

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Karen Unterreiner [cancer, bladder, in remission]

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There is the possibility that long-term, slow poisoning may have been the cause of Cafritz’s death, as I point out in my Investigation Discovery film, the Lost Women of NXIVM.  She left Raniere $8 million in her will.

After Cafritz died, Raniere, Mariana, and Clare Bronfman used her American Express card, charging over $300,000 for which Raniere and Bronfman were charged and convicted of identity theft.

After Pam died, for weeks, Keith and his close associates kept it a secret from the NXIVM community, quite possibly because he needed time to arrange her financial affairs as if she were still alive and perhaps dispose of the body to avoid an autopsy.

It was believed that the $8 million Keith inherited from Pam was money that had been given to her from her wealthy family. A source close to Pam doubts it.

Keith Alan Raniere and Pamela Cafritz.

The source, who was a longtime member of NXIVM, and knew Pam intimately, said:

“No way Pam had gotten $8 million from her family. That was money Keith laundered over the years and put in her name at Key Bank in Clifton Park. While Pam came from a well-to-do family, they were disinclined to give her anything because of her relationship with Keith. They knew she would just give it to Keith and her family disapproved of her being in the cult and they hated what Keith did to her.

“Pam pretty much distanced herself from her family and they never gave her any lump sum of money.

“For years, they gave Pam an allowance. It was $20,000 per month for a long time. Then it went up. They did not want her to starve or live poorly but no way were they going to give her any big sum of cash.  They knew it would go to Keith. For years, the mother was brokenhearted. She planned for Pam to stay in DC and be part of the family business, their dynasty. Pam was engaged to marry a nice guy from DC – and then she went on a skiing trip in Colorado which is where she met Keith and he seduced her that weekend and she came back to live with him in Albany.

“Soon enough, the family realized what was going on. They read the Forbes article. They tried to get her to come home but no way was she leaving Raniere. So they put her on an allowance which she always placed at Keith’s disposal. She and him lived off that money at various times when he was comparatively poor. But Pam never accumulated $8 million and I think your readers should know that. It is nonsense that he inherited that money from Pam.

“I believe Keith, through his Mexican money-laundering operation, put the money into Pam’s account over the years. Pam never had any savings. She and Keith spent her allowance as they went. Her allowance did go up when she got cancer. They were giving her more per month to pay for her cancer care. I think she got about $40,000 per month for about a year before she died.

“When Mr. Cafritz died, Pam did not get an inheritance; her mother did. They were not going to give it to Keith. So I don’t know how in hell Pam had $8 million. I think it was the bulk cash smuggling they had done for years from Mexico. Some went to Nancy to hold onto in cash – and the rest was put into Pam’s account. You know Keith never put anything in his name. Of all the women, he trusted Pam the most, more than Nancy.  He had the most control over Pam. She would do whatever he wanted.

“She would get him women – and unlike some of the others in the harem who were jealous, Pam was never jealous. She loved to watch him have sex with other women and join in too. For years Pam lived with Mariana and groomed her to be part of their threesome. They would sleep in the same bed and have sex with Keith together all the time.  Pam would have no qualms about taking the money for Keith and putting it in her account. The government should ask Nancy about that. She might know that the $8 million was not Pam’s money but Keith did not tell Nancy everything either.

“I think the $8 million, or most of it was probably laundered from Mexico over the years, which Lauren Salzman, Nancy Salzman, Emiliano Salinas, Alex Betancourt, Edgar Boone, Clare Bronfman, and others brought to Keith.

“Alex and Emi had their own offshore accounts in Europe and I believe they secreted money for Keith as well. I doubt he has access to that money now…

***

Bill Cafritz died in 2014, before hearing the worst about NXIVM, but knowing he had lost his daughter to a cult.

Pam died in 2016, while her mother, Buffy, lived on, still active for several years.

As Daisy Prince wrote for Tatler in Jan. 2021, “This year, Buffy is not holding her party. She had it booked for the 18 January at the Hay Adams Hotel. ‘But when I saw this horrible pandemic taking hold, I canceled in May and said we would not be able to do it this time.’…

“Her plan in the future is to hold a unity party when it’s safe to gather again, maybe in the autumn of 2021. No doubt she will have bipartisan support for that one.”

Ironically, although Buffy was an advocate for unity, she could never reunite with her daughter, Pamela.

Now only Pam’s elder brother, Sandy, is left of the family of four to remember the little girl who grew up to be a striking young lady, who was engaged to one man, and planning to have a career in DC in the family business.

Then one fateful day, she went on a skiing trip, met a short, cross-eyed man, with square feet that barely seemed to fit into skis, who told her he was the smartest man in the world. She never went home, probably causing great grief to her family over the long years of her absence, but enabling this man who claimed he had so much to give to the world to become the Vanguard.

There are those who say had Pam not died, she would have been able to save Raniere from his prison fate. He would not have branded women or sought blackmail-worthy “collateral” to ensure he could enslave women or order his slaves to assign slaves to seduce him because Pam could always procure attractive, slender young women and girls for him, which is what they say was the real reason for DOS, getting young women for an aging Raniere, a task impossible to achieve without Pam.

DOS was Raniere’s undoing.

Raniere lost his best harem keeper when Pam died and nobody not even Allison Mack could wing-woman like Pam. Depending on how you look at Raniere, as good and great or monstrously evil, Pam’s death was either the worst or the best thing that ever happened.

May Buffy, Pam and Bill rest in peace.

Frank Parlato