Frank Parlato
I ask for evidence, hard evidence, and Suneel provides rank conjecture: “How do we know the photos shown in court were of Cami?”
It’s incredible to assert the photos were not Cami, or that the prosecution would knowingly present photos of someone else thinking they could get away with it.
As one of our Frank Report commenters wrote to Suneel:
“You need a therapist, dude. You have seriously lost it. You have 0 evidence and 100% speculation. In ESP speak, your life issues are strongly showing up. You need help. I am stunned that someone who had spent so little time in ESP could have adopted the garbage so strongly. Get help now! It doesn’t need to be from an exit counselor or a therapist specializing in cults, but really any good professional therapist certified by APA would do.”
I admit, the child porn pics of Camila might have been identified by her sister Daniela. But, as Pyriel wrote, “Has it never occurred to Suneel that the photos of Cami were probably identified by Daniela during talks with the FBI?”
Or Clifton Parker: “That was exactly my (commonsense) thought as well. Witness interviews with Daniela, Lauren, Nicole…. maybe even Sarah Edmonson.”
Yes, it would have been better if Daniela identified them in court rather than an FBI agent who never met Camila. But they were identified. And the Cami photos proved two predicate acts in his racketeering charges: possession of child porn and exploitation of a child.
Still, these photos are either Cami or not. They are either dated correctly or not. All of this could be proven, but absent a Rule 33 motion for a new trial, showing new evidence that the dates were tampered with, or the nude pics were someone else, or they were not found by the FBI or planted by them later, outside a legally authorized search warrant, it has been proven – at trial.
I admit, in his latest screed, Suneel makes a few good points. His point about EXIF data being easy to change is reasonable but proves nothing. EXIF data can be changed, but there is no proof it was changed.
Suneel provides as proof nothing more than the FBI Examiner Brian Booth testified at trial that EXIF data is hard to change when it is actually easy to change.
But a commenter, IT Man, clarifies: “EXIF data is easy to change, BUT is very difficult to change without leaving behind ‘data artifacts’ a fingerprint of binary 1s and 0. The EXIF file manager program will change the bit sectors differently than from the original program that saved the pic.”
Abelard added, “It makes me wonder if Frank should retract his previous statement about the FBI examiner misleading the jury about changing the data. Is it easy to rob a bank? Yes, its very easy to get a gun and go into a bank, which is the crime. But it’s really hard to get away with it, and basically every bank robber in history gets caught. So, most people would say yes, bank robbery is hard. I don’t think that is misleading.”
In answer to that, I might ask, what if the guy who robs the bank is also the guy charged with investigating the robbery?
Who would be responsible for detecting data artifacts [fingerprints]? If Cami’s photo’s EXIF data were changed by the FBI, as Suneel asserts without evidence, and there were fingerprints, who, other than the FBI, would have access to determine this? The photos are child porn. Were they shared in advance of trial with the defense to have them analyzed? Or was the FBI solely able to check for ‘fingerprints’ of changed EXIF data?
To use an example other than the bank robber: if a fox ate a chicken in the henhouse, chances are there’d be feathers left behind. But if the fox was also in charge of henhouse investigation, would he testify that feathers are hard to hide?
Yet Suneel, in his desperation, goes beyond the FBI and suggests Daniela might have provided the photos to the FBI and they planted them on the hard drive, which he says might explain why they ‘found’ the photos 11 months after they seized the hard drive.
Well, suppose somebody changed the EXIF data before the FBI seized the photos. As Erma Gerrd wrote, “We know full well that the Raniere gang was quite capable of… infiltrating spyware onto people’s computers (Edgar Bronfman’s, for one) …”
From the trial, we know Daniela was the one who did most of it. Someone who wanted to get even with Raniere – and Daniela was certainly one – might have been able to do so. The pictures of Cami were in Raniere’s library from the time he took them in 2005, until the FBI took the hard drive on March 27, 2018.
Between those times, Daniela had almost unfettered access to 8 Hale Drive and access to that hard drive between 2005 and 2010.
If Suneel’s conjecture is right, that Dani monkeyed with the hard drive or the photos, is it possible she could have changed the EXIF data and left fingerprints? Would the FBI not be able to determine data artifacts?
As I recall, the FBI examiner, Brian Booth, was never questioned about this: i.e., did the FBI check to see if the EXIF data had been altered?
Maybe the defense took his word that it is hard to change. But I think there is a far more likely reason:
It did not happen.
The defense knew the pictures were taken in 2005, when Camila was 15, and they were on the hard drive because Raniere knew it to be true and the lawyers were not willing to put up a false defense.
Yes, I agree with Suneel, it is puzzling that Camila’s photographs were identified by someone who never met her, when they had her sister on the witness stand, who laid the foundation for the pictures being pre-2007, because Daniela knew about an appendectomy scar not found on the pictures.
Yet this failure to insist on best identification was more likely not a defense failure but simple pragmatics. The attorneys for the defense knew that those were Cami’s pictures and did not dispute it because to do so would simply put more focus on it.
Suneel, keep in mind, the man accused of taking the pictures of the child, your glorious Vanguard, was sitting in the courtroom. You know this; you attended every day of the trial. He knew if he took pictures of the child or not.
This comment by Sherizzy says it well: “There is no way in hell that Raniere’s lawyers did not see an exhibit at trial. Defendants get to see all the evidence that will be used against them. Period.
“And do you honestly believe that Raniere’s topnotch lawyers would not confirm that it was Cami? That they did not confirm with Raniere that he had taken pictures of her at 15 years old?
“And that, if Raniere did not take those pictures, had no idea what they were talking about in court the entire time they were discussing the pictures and folder, that he would not, at the very least, write Agnifilo a sticky note about it?
“And do you really think Raniere’s lawyers would then fail to object to this evidence coming in? Oh wait, they did – because it was so old!
“And do you really believe that had Raniere not known anything about this picture because he never took pictures of 15-year-old Cami, he would not have ranted about it in his post-conviction diatribe?
“Please listen to how ridiculous and desperate you sound.”
Raniere could have handed his attorney a post-it note saying “Those could not be the pictures of this little child. Lord knows I never defiled her.” Or if it was planted evidence, he might have written during the trial, “I took the pics of the little girl, after I raped her, true, but these were planted because I did not leave them at my apartment. After all, I knew I was under investigation.”
As for the notion that FBI Special Agent Mike Weniger, who identified the Cami photos, was unable to properly identify her because he never met Cami, keep in mind he saw plenty of Cami’s photos.
He testified at trial that he saw lots of naked pictures; he also testified he looked at numerous naked pictures of Cami that were taken over the years, up to 2017.
This was not one photoshoot. Raniere was a regular photographer of naked women. He liked to pose them in a certain way, making sure two parts of the anatomy were always visible: the face and vagina.
I’m not so sure he did this for prurient reasons. I think he did it to have blackmail on every woman and child he bedded. [It was the blackmail of the child that ruined him.]
These are not flattering shots, by the way, as I heard them described by Lauren Salzman during the trial –“And so he took, I think, two pictures. But they were like – they were looking up at me from like the angle of – it’s like an up-close crotch shot, like – like vagina looking up where you could see my whole upper body and face,”
A former girlfriend of Raniere, who broke up with him in the 1980s long before he became the Vanguard, before he fudged an IQ test, conned Guinness into his inclusion so he could brag he was the world’s smartest man, and before he imploded Consumers’ Buyline, a woman who calls herself “L”, tells this story about the origin of this photo perversity:
It is my suspicion that the reason the FBI uncovered the Cami photos 11 months after they seized the hard drive is that agents had seen so many photos; they did not know all the players. They saw the photos in the studies folder – and recognized that these were not DOS collateral photos from 2015 and later, but photos of the old harem and – it’s just a guess – they thought they were legal and not coerced.
They did not study the “studies” folder carefully until later, when they learned more about the case and about Cami. Then they took another look and realized that though Cami was a longtime harem member, she was the youngest of the old group and, possibly from interviews with Daniela or Kristin Keeffe, the light bulb went off – at the time of these pictures, Cami was underage.
Let me prove it.
Even if you had never met him, would you be able to identify him in the following picture?
How about this one when he was perhaps about age 15?
To further prove my point, pick out which of the four people pictured below is Suneel.
Let’s do it again – which of these five is Suneel?
Again:
Even reasonable artistic likenesses are easily spotted. Which one is Suneel?
MK10Art’s painting of Suneel
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In Conclusion
Finally, I think somewhere deep inside, Suneel, you know the rascal raped Cami when she was 15.
L wrote something you might pay attention to: “Here’s the possible origin of his getting into statutory rape of underage girls. 1982/83: a graduate student friend of ours was dating a local teen. Thought she was of age, until her birthday came along and he discovered she was just then turning 16. He ended the relationship at once. Raniere was again very interested. That whole “jealousy of anyone having something he didn’t” syndrome. Plus, young naïve virgins are so much easier to bamboozle.
“I was one of those naïve virgins when I met him – just barely legal though, so nothing illegal about his initiating sex with me, just really shitty behavior since all of it was predicated with an ocean of lies aimed at my naivete. I walked away summer of 1984. He started raping underage girls. Heidi Hutchison can corroborate that timeframe with her discovery of his physical relationship with her underage sister.
So, Suneel, aspersions aside, what you have to do now is prove the photos were planted on the hard drive, or the hard drive wasn’t at 8 Hale Drive, or the photos of Cami were taken when she was 18 or older.
If not, your blessed Vanguard is lost. Long after you’re no longer a boy, and you come of age, in a decade or so, your Vanguard will still be in prison, for his family has longevity, and there he will live the rest of his life.
Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist, media strategist, publisher, and legal consultant.
“What an icon of humanity and nobility you follow, Suneel.”