The Rise and Fall of a Campus Cult
****Great news from Goodpods: This Is Critical made its list of recommended listening. The show with the cult - elite - *modest* - listenership is catching on at last!****
Three years ago, reporters Ezra Marcus and James Walsh broke the story of con man Larry Ray and the Sarah Lawrence students he exploited. On this week’s This is Critical, a week after Ray’s conviction, Ezra and James are here to explain what his crimes reveal about the figures we trust most.
Check out an excerpt below.
Virginia: It’s a big story today so I want to start with the occasion for this episode — and the back story. Basically, on April 6, last week, Larry Ray—a strange New York cult leader—was convicted in federal court for sex trafficking, extortion, conspiracy, and a bunch of other crimes.
The federal investigation into Ray — who started his cult in September 2010 — was kicked off by a story about him in New York Magazine, published in 2019 by my guests today, James Walsh and Ezra Marcus.
So that’s the peg. Now the backstory: Larry Ray, whose biography you’ll hear much more about, was in prison even before he started his cultic rampage in 2010. He was there for contempt of court.
In the midst of a prolonged and complicated custody battle with his ex wife, he’d refused to hand over custody of his two children. One of those kids— Talia — was a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville — very close to Manhattan — by the time he got out of prison.
Talia idolized her dad - and parroted his excon bafflegab about how he was innocent and an action hero and he’d only been sent to prison because he was targeted by a vast conspiracy. Larry Ray was excellent at this kind of snowjob storytelling and Talia, like so many of us, grew up enthralled by her dad. Even as a college student, she could be counted on to do whatever he asked. And she ended up bringing in a group of young adults whom he trafficked, abused, and defrauded.
There are a lot of young people involved in this story, all of whom were — and in one case still is — under Larry Ray’s spell. You’ll hear them referenced by name throughout the episode. Their names are in the public record, and some of them even testified against Larry at trial.
So this is to introduce you to the cast of characters. First off is Talia Ray, daughter of the cult boss, Larry Ray. She is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, perhaps because she brought other people to her father, who then abused them.
Isabella is next: She was Talia’s best friend, and is now Larry’s indicted co-conspirator. Isabella is still very much in Larry’s thrall. You’ll hear more about that.
Then there’s Daniel, another roommate who was in psychological turmoil at the time Larry came into his life.
Santos, another student at Sarah Lawrence, and a former boyfriend of Talia’s. He joined Larry Ray’s group — and so did two of his sisters, who were not Sarah Lawrence students.
And then there’s Claudia, a student who turned to sex work for years, at Larry’s behest, to make money for him.
James Walsh and Ezra Marcus, who broke this story back in 2019 in New York Magazine. James is a staff writer at New York, and the author of the book Playing Against the House. In his reporting, he spent some time with Larry and experienced Ray’s extraordinary manipulation skills up close.
Ezra is a freelance journalist and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, right around the same time as Larry Ray’s victims. For both of them, it seems like last week’s conviction was the end to a really heavy chapter, and I’m grateful that they were able to take some time to share the story with me.
James and Ezra, thank you for joining me on this critical.
Ezra: Thanks for having us.
Virginia: Well, this is a big week because Larry Ray, the guy you wrote about three years ago, has at last been convicted. Tell me about Larry Ray.
Ezra: Where to begin? He's definitely one of a kind.
James: Yeah. In my mind, there's two Larry Rays. Well, maybe three. I think there's the Larry Ray that his victims knew, which was this guy who started off as being very charming and fascinating and magnetic, and then quickly changes to become an abusive, extremely vindictive kind of control freak. There's the sort of Larry Ray in the media, which I think people say is the most evil person that they could think of. And even the U.S. attorney for the Southern District called him an evil man. And then there's kind of the Larry Ray that I got to know personally, and that Ezra certainly knows about it, which is somebody who's just exhausting and he's just kind of somebody who's out for himself and maybe even a case study in kind of psychoanalytics that's beyond my really my comprehension.
Ezra: I think it's also he's a very New York character. I mean, he's from Brooklyn, he's from Bay Ridge, and he's crossed all these lines. And as far as like part of New York civil society that he has participated in, he's been, you know, a Wall Street guy kind of on like the seamy side of Wall Street. He's been a political kind of fixer.
Virginia: Yeah, you write about how he was paling around with a pretty, shall we say “interesting” group of people. Like Bernie Kerik, who was commissioner of the NYPD in the ’90s and later convicted of tax fraud, partly because Larry informed on him, right? There’s Rudy Giulini, former mayor of NYC, later Trump’s fixer. Also Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union – Larry would sort of escort him around New York, right?
James: There is a Forrest Gump-ian quality there.
Virginia: Yes. Yeah. Forrest Gump of New York City. But I need to, I was going to say backup, but actually fast forward to why we're even talking about him. Like, tell us in a nutshell about Sarah Lawrence.
Ezra: Yeah. Okay, so in 2010, Larry gets out of prison. He's been there for three years and he goes to visit his daughter, Talia Ray, who is a Sarah Lawrence student, and he spends a lot of time visiting her in her dorm, which is like a kind of on-campus but freestanding house with eight bedrooms where she's living with, you know, some of the friends she met her freshman year, this is sophomore year. Talia had spent the prior year basically telling them about how her dad is this heroic character. I mean, she would describe him as like a political prisoner who went to prison because of a conspiracy. Basically, she was like, my dad's in prison because he exposed Kerik’s corruption. So, you know, her friends would hear these stories and basically thought that her dad was a good guy.
Virginia: Ok, so they’ve heard all these stories from Talia, then Larry shows up? What happens next?
Ezra: So yeah, basically, Larry moved in and he ended up spending the better part of a few months there and he sort of set up shop. He became a fixture in the living room. He would, you know, make dinner for the kids who live there. Tell them about his life. Talk about, you know, philosophy, what have you. And I think, you know, for some of these kids some of Talia's friends, some of them immediately talked to him and they were like, sort of like a cool dad character.
Hear the full episode here.