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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime al Art 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

(00:21):
her role 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. 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.
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

(01:09):
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
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

(01:32):
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
what would become the most destructive decision of her life.
According to Mac, Krook began taking Nexiums, so called executive

(01:53):
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
said she was quote horrified and disgusted by what emerged
about DOS. That's the so called secret sorority where women

(02:15):
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
says the meaning left her disoriented yet captivated in a
way that she described as ground shifting. Within a few years,

(02:36):
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
in silence as victims read their statements, My poor mom, Mike.

(02:58):
I'm so sorry you guys, you know, just like it
was more like but I can take it like you know,
but like you guys think, I'm so sorry. 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.

(03:20):
More Crime and Justice news after this. The 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

(03:42):
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 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

(04:05):
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 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

(04:26):
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 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.

(04:47):
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 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

(05:07):
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 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

(05:30):
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 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

(05:53):
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 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

(06:16):
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 and justice news, follow Crime Alert's
hourly update on your favorite podcast app with this crime Alert.
I'm Drew Nelson.