The Backstory: Nxivm: A Hollywood sex cult

Hollywood, cults, sex, and crime. It all seems like the perfect set up for a Netflix multi-season series. But this is the real story of the rich and famous getting brain washed into a criminal sex club that ultimately led to convictions on charges of conspiracy, sex trafficking, child porn, and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cults, Sex, Hollywood, and crime kind of sounds like a
multi season series on Netflix, right, But in this case,
it's a true story of what happens when young, beautiful,
vulnerable people. In this case, all women look for I
don't know, sort of a life coach, but wind up
with a monster. I mean, you're just looking for guidance

(00:22):
from this guy and you end up with his name
branded on your body. I'm Patty Steele Nexium. How the
sex cult leader Keith Rinier reeled in his well known
and wealthy victims. He even owned daycare centers, perhaps to
lure in the next generation. That's next on the backstory.

(00:44):
The backstory is back Hollywood has always celebrated new, outside
the box ideas and personalities, so cults always have an
interesting home there. And it didn't just start with Charlie
Manson and his devoted followers. What's interesting is that at
the dawn of Hollywood, doctors in the East were recommending

(01:04):
their young, troubled patients moved to SoCal, both for chronic
health problems as well as mental health issues, a fresh start, sunshine,
blue skies, the ocean, not to mention a lot of gorgeous,
happy young people looking to reinvent themselves. It's the perfect
setup for a charismatic individual who claims to offer a

(01:25):
new and better way of living your life. What could
be better? A magnetic individual is leading you toward a
spiritual awakening in which you see everything in a whole
new light. At first, you feel ecstatic, and you'll do
just about anything to maintain that heightened sense of joy
and transformation. Among these groups, of course, there was the

(01:45):
Manson family, which went horrifyingly off the rails with their
murders of actress Sharon Tate and at least eight others.
There's the Children of God, which got underway in the
mid nineteen sixties and had devotees like the parents of
River and Water King Phoenix, who raised their kids in
the cult. The Children of God still has thousands of followers.

(02:06):
Earlier in the century, in the mid nineteen twenties, a
guy called Paramhasa Yogananda founded the Self Realization Fellowship. He
had devotees that included Elvis Presley and George Harrison of
the Beatles, And these cult leaders weren't all men. There
was a gorgeous young woman named Amy Semple McPherson who

(02:27):
arrived in Hollywood. In nineteen eighteen, she founded the International
Church of the Four Square Gospel. She claimed to have
healed thousands of people of all kinds of illnesses. She'd
speak in tongues and allegedly healed people in front of
her congregation. Her followers so loved her they built her
a huge temple what's considered the world's first megachurch, and

(02:50):
she was the first preacher to use mass media on
the radio in nineteen twenty three, in that medium's earliest years.
Historians say she was as popular in the nineteen twenties
as Princess Diana was in her time. While there was
plenty of dramas surrounding Amy back in the nineteen thirties,
there are still almost nine million members at well over

(03:12):
sixty six thousand of her churches. And of course there's Scientology,
which is billed by many as a religion and many
others as a cult. Scientology has a whole lot of
Hollywood members, most notably Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elizabeth Moss,
Nancy Cartwright, who of course does Bart Simpson's voice, and
even journalist Greta Van Sustern, but Keith Rainier and Nexium

(03:36):
took the whole cult thing in another direction. For Rainier,
it was all about sex. When he formed Nexium in
the late nineteen nineties, he said it was all about
helping people achieve executive success through self improvement. He made
it look like a mashup of Tony Robbins's self help
Empire and a business coaching seminar, but the organization was

(03:58):
more like a Pyramids scheme. If you took part, you
had to recruit new members in order to move up
the ranks yourself. Ranier called himself Vanguard. He claimed to
have an IQ of two hundred and forty. Einstein's IQ,
by the way, clocked in at a mere one sixty.
Nier attracted some high profile followers, like Smallville actress Alison Mack,

(04:22):
who became one of his top recruiters and enforcers, luring
other women into the cult. There was also another recruiter,
Nicki Klein, one of the stars from the TV show
Battlestar Galactica. They also attracted wealthy heiresses like Claire and
Sarah Bromfman, the daughters of the billionaire owner of the
Seagram's Liquor Empire. The sisters financially backed the cult's growth.

(04:46):
But on top of that, there was a secret society
within Nexium called DOS. The letters stood for the Latin
words dominus, obsequious, serrurium or master over slave women. Arnier
created it Alison mac ranit. The female recruits had to
hand over collateral, which included damaging personal secrets, nude photos,

(05:08):
or incriminating info as a way to keep them loyal.
They were basically blackmailed into obedience and forced to serve
as Raynier's personal slaves, and they all had to go
out and find slaves of their own and listen to this.
On top of that, all members had to strip naked
and be branded with Raynier's initials. Most frighteningly, Rainier and

(05:31):
the Nexium cult owned and operated eleven day care centers
around the world, perhaps to feed his child porn addiction
and to target the next generation of his slaves. How
did they get away with this for so long? Well,
Nexium had wealthy, powerful defenders. Journalists trying to take a
deep dive into what they were up to were hit

(05:53):
with lawsuits. Former members who spoke out were stalked, to
rast and threatened. But finally, in the late tens, it
started to crumble. Some of Nexium's highest ranking members left
the cult and they started talking. Then The New York
Times published a wild expos in twenty seventeen. It talked
about the branding rituals, the blackmail, and the psychological abuse.

(06:17):
Folks in Hollywood and in the business world freaked out.
The FBI got involved, and Keith Renier fled to his
Mexican villa with Alison Mack and Nicky Klein. Nicky then
blew their cover by posting on Instagram and accidentally showing
FBI investigators where they were. Ranier was arrested, along with

(06:38):
Alison Mack, Claire Bromfman, and other high ranking Nexium members. Finally,
after some pretty wild testimony, Rnier was convicted of a
racketeering conspiracy charge, also sex trafficking, possession of child porn,
and other crimes. He was sentenced to one hundred twenty
years in prison. Alison Mack pleaded guilty and got three

(06:58):
years in prison, while Claire Bromfman got six years for
bankrolling the whole thing. Nexium was finished, but reneered Today well,
he's locked up, likely for the rest of his life,
but similar to Charles Manson and even Amy Semple McPherson.
He still has a hold on a bunch of his followers.
They even rally outside his prison from time to time.

(07:21):
Nexium and Keith Rinier's story tell us something about the
need for vulnerable people to feel like they're wanted, that
they're part of something, even when it makes no sense
to the rest of us. Hope you're enjoying The Backstory
with Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get

(07:44):
new episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm me
if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.

(08:04):
Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to
reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions
on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at
Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele.
The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to

(08:25):
know