Smallville Actress Allison Mack Speaks the First Time About NXIVM | Crime Alert 6AM 11.12.25

Smallville Actress Allison Mack Speaks the First Time About NXIVM in a CBC podcast. The founder of 1-800-411-PAIN is arrested after allegedly bringing a loaded gun onto a Miami-Dade high school campus. A Michigan mother accused of killing her 3-year-old son to “make room” for a baby with her boyfriend has admitted to the crime. Drew Nelson reports.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Alert hourly update, Breaking crime news. Now, I'm Drew Nelson.
Alison Max speaks out for the first time since her
release from prison. It was a humid June morning in
twenty twenty one when Max sat in the backseat of
a car headed to a Brooklyn, New York courthouse, wearing
a black dress that she had bought just for the occasion.
That day, the Smallville actress faced sentencing for her role

(00:22):
in Nexium and XIVM, the so called self help empire
turned sex cult run by Keith Raniery. Once known for
playing the sharp and loyal Smallville character Chloe Sullivan, Mack
was now branded a criminal. Victims called her a monster
in court, the judge called her an essential accomplice. On
the new CBC podcast Allison after Neum, Max said quote,

(00:45):
I don't see myself as innocent.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I think that I capitalized on the things I had,
and so the success I had as an actor, I
think I did capitalize on that. Yeah, and it was
a power tool that I had to get people to
do what I wanted.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Now forty three, Mack had served nearly two years of
a three year federal sentence before being released in twenty
twenty three. She has since remarried, begun a master's in
social work, and for the first time, is confronting the
contradictions of being both a victim and a victimizer. Mack
grew up in Long Beach, California, the daughter of an
opera singer and a Montessori teacher. She began acting before

(01:23):
she could read. By her late teens, she was living
on her own in Los Angeles starring in network TV
shows when Smallville began filming in Vancouver in two thousand
and one. She was just nineteen, earning forty thousand dollars
a week, and suddenly surrounded by fame and pressure that
she didn't understand. In the podcast's first episode, Mack recalls
how her co star Kristin Krook helped lead her into

(01:46):
what would become the most destructive decision of her life.
According to Mac, Krook began taking Nexiums, so called executive
success programs while they filmed in Vancouver, and later urged
her to try it. Krook has long denied in any wrongdoing,
saying in twenty eighteen she left Nexium years before the
crimes came to light and had minimal contact afterward. She

(02:07):
said she was quote horrified and disgusted by what emerged
about DOS. That's the so called secret sorority where women
were branded with rneri's initials. Max's first Nexium seminar was
held in a hotel in Vancouver. Soon after, she accepted
an invitation to fly by private jet to Albany, New York,
where she would meet Ranieri for the first time. She

(02:29):
says the meaning left her disoriented yet captivated in a
way that she described as ground shifting. Within a few years,
Mack had moved to Albany, leaving her acting career behind.
Prosecutors later said she became Rhannieri's second in command, recruiting
women into DOS under the guise of empowerment. Members were
starved and forced into sexual submission. At sentencing, Max sat

(02:52):
in silence as victims read their statements.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
My poor mom, Mike, I'm so sorry, you guys, you know,
just he was more like but I can take it,
like you know, but like you guys think, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Now sixty five, Keith Rniery is serving a one hundred
and twenty year sentence for sex trafficking, racketeering and related crimes.
MAC cooperated with prosecutors providing recordings and testimony that helped
convict him. More crime and Justice news after this. The

(03:28):
founder of one eight hundred and four to one one
PAINT is arrested after allegedly bringing a loaded gun onto
a Miami Dade High school campus. Deputy SA fifty nine
year old Robert Cash Lewin of Southwest Ranches was taken
into custody around noon on Saturday at Miami Coral Park
Senior High School in the Westchester area. According to the
Miami Dade Sheriff's Office, Lewin was seen sitting on the

(03:50):
gym bleachers with a handgun tucked in his waistband. When
he bent over, the weapon became visible, and a student
snapped a photo that was sent to an assistant principal.
Administrator's alerted law enforcement, who found Lewin sitting inside a
black Lincoln Navigator in the school parking lot bearing a
vanity plate referring to the legal service four to one
one PAIN. Deputies ordered him out of the suv and

(04:13):
conducted a pat down, discovering the gun, an extra magazine,
and a knife. Lewin told them he had brought the
weapon to school quote by accident. He was arrested on
one count of possession of a firearm on school property,
and the gun and magazine were impounded as evidence. As
of now, Lewin does not appear as an inmate on
the Miami Day Jail website. A Michigan mother accused of

(04:35):
killing her three year old son to quote unquote make
room for a baby with her boyfriend has admitted to
the crime, ending a year's long investigation into one of
Saint Clair County's most disturbing cases. Amanda May Mason, aged
thirty three, pleaded guilty to second degree murder in the
twenty eighteen death of her son, Matthew Mason inside their
home and Port Huron Township. Babysitters discovered Matthew unresponsive in

(04:59):
his bed on f February eighteenth of twenty eighteen, prompting
an investigation that went cold for years. Authorities reopened the
case this year after what they called quote significant new developments,
leading to the arrests of Mason and her then boyfriend,
Maurice Hoole, now twenty eight. Investigators and prosecutors said the
pair killed Matthew as part of a plan to quote
make room for a child that the two of them

(05:21):
could have together. Assistant prosecutor Joshua Sparling told the court
that Houle regularly beat the boy and that Mason hid
his injuries from Child Protective Services between twenty sixteen and eighteen.
Sparling said the child was locked in his room for
hours without food or water, and died of blunt force
trauma and possible suffocation. During her plea hearing, Mason admitted

(05:42):
to shoving her son's head into a wall during what
she described as a quote military style time out. She
told the judge she allowed an environment where Matthew was
systematically abused and later helped Houle conceal the manner of
Matthew's death. Court record show she also admitted to lying
to investigators and covering up earlier child Protective Services visits

(06:02):
that could have saved her son's life. Both Mason and
Hull were charged with first degree murder in April. They
initially pleaded not guilty, but Mason changed her plea as
part of an agreement requiring her to testify against Hule
when his trial begins early next year. Mason remains in
custody at the Saint Clair County Jail and faces up
to life when she is sentenced for the latest crime

(06:23):
and justice news. Follow Crime Alert's hourly update on your
favorite podcast app with this Crime Alert. I'm Drew Nelson