Stolen Youth · Salman Rushdie · Niecy Nash
Plus: How crime coverage misled us about bitcoin
the true crime that's worth your time
I was skeptical about the need for Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence. Didn’t “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence” cover everything? I mused. But there are great rewards to be found in the three-episode Hulu series from Zachary Heinzerling, a director whose career to date has centered around advertising and music-related fare.
As you know, either from New York’s wall-to-wall coverage over the last few years or from the strange story’s inevitable pickup by other outlets as the story came to light, this is the tale of Larry Ray, a man convicted of securities fraud who, upon his release from jail, started living in his daughter’s dorm at tony university Sarah Lawrence — and from there, started what coverage has made clear is a cult of personality (if not a plain old standard cult) among several students that included mind control, abuse, sex-trafficking, forced labor, and more.
Ray, who was convicted in 2022 and sentenced last month to 60 years, seems like an improbable cult leader on paper, one of the many aspects of the story that might tempt you to pass it up. Even when reading New York’s initial article on the case, an excellent and thorough piece of reporting from Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh, you might be tempted to blow it off. Students at a fancy, expensive, presumably sheltered-from-the-real-world school who followed a weird middle-aged white guy to a one bedroom in a high rise, then to a farm in New Jersey? How plausible is this, really?
But Heinzerling’s approach makes Ray’s evolution from friendly dad figure to wannabe Jim Jones surprisingly understandable, even if you never went to an elite university with dorm visitor policies as apparently lax as Sarah Lawrence’s. Told solely in the voices of Ray’s victims, we see in the first hour how deftly Ray exploited the insecurities of the types of students Lawrence specifically caters to — “the outsiders,” as one former student says, “kids who are different.”
Being an outsider or different is arguably what can make a creative person a success, but it also makes them extraordinarily vulnerable, the show’s first episode forced me to recall, sometimes painfully. From my comfortable perch as a 51-year-old with a decent set of accomplishments under my belt, I’d forgotten how much of a raw nerve one is at 18-19-20, when you’re out kind of on your own and seeking your own way.
Add to the usual insecurity and lack of self-confidence one has to an environment designed not for the cheerleader or prom king but for the quiet kid with the book or paintbrush, and you’ve got a perfect storm for a person like Ray to exploit, Heinzerling illustrates, putting to rest the natural skepticism we might all have that some rando in a dorm was somehow mind-controlling high-performing students.
The second episode is the most painful one, as we follow the standard cult narrative arc from buildup to tear down. Blessedly, Heinzerling hustles past some of the worst and most abusive of Ray’s acts, allowing the copious amount of video — much of which Ray filmed himself — to underscore how young, physically powerful men seemingly allowed this older, likely weaker guy to rough them up. Accounts of sexual abuse and coercion are dealt with concisely, not exploitatively. You feel the impact and the oomph, but you don’t feel like you need a shower.
What gets more screen time — and, arguably, is more important for audiences to internalize — is Ray’s practice of eliciting false confessions from the students who he was exploiting. Again and again, we are shown remarkably convincing video of these folks confessing to a panoply of oft-ludicrous crimes they never committed in an effort to gain Ray’s approval, to end a hours-long interrogation, or because — as many admit — Ray was so adept at manipulating them that they actually believed what they were saying, in the moment. For anyone who still fails to believe that false confessions while in custody are a phenomenon, this is required viewing.
After the second episode covered New York’s expose on Ray’s activities, the subsequent law enforcement raid on his homes, and the way many of his followers started to see how they’d been misled, the third episode seemed extraneous at first, but I urge you to stick around. Unlike the postscript treatment we often see regarding victims, the final hour is devoted to the few who still “believe in” Ray, and the attempts at healing from those who don’t. We talk about centering the victims, and in this case, it actually happens — though we hear Ray’s voice (as we did throughout) in recordings, the voices of those who survived him, and are rebuilding their relationships and lives are far louder. — EB
All three episodes of Stolen Youth are available on Hulu as of Feb. 9.
Please forgive me for failing to recall which of you requested a first-person narrative from Salman Rushdie on his recent attack. I thought of you, whoever you are, when I was served an ad for Rushdie’s recent appearance on the New Yorker Radio Hour, a podcast from the estimable magazine that I rarely listen to because the whole pretentious “Radio” thing in the title pisses me off that much.
I swallowed my branding distaste to listen, and I’m glad I got over myself: Rushdie, who speaks with longtime NYer editor David Remnick (who could afford to talk a little less when he has a super-famous person on the next mic, just saying) is as much of a quiet badass as you might hope, contextualizing his stabbing within the years he’s spent in hiding and on the run since Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa against him in 1989.
This was his first interview since his August stabbing, and it’s a relief to discover that he came through such serious violence with his faculties — and sense of humor — intact. That’s not to say the 75-year-old author is good as new: he says he’s lost sight in one eye, has a hard time writing (he’s in “hand therapy,” he says), and has dreadful nightmares many nights. But, “considering what happened,” he says, “I’m not so bad.” If you’re interested in the right way to center a victim, this is a good place to start. — EB
I also found some true crime in an unexpected place this weekend. I think I mainly listen to Wired’s Gadget Lab podcast because I so enjoy the interplay between hosts/tech writers Michael Calore and Lauren Goode, but the show is always sheer, fun entertainment for me, never work. That is, until this week, when the guest is Andy Greenberg, whose book Tracers in the Dark came out late last year.
“They Thought They Were Invisible. They Were Wrong.” reads the NYT’s review of TitD, and that is truly the headline here when it comes to cryptocurrency, that mysterious-to-many form of payment described as “untraceable” by multitudes of reporters, writers, podcasts, movies, etc etc etc.
Because, as it turns out, crypto is actually “way easier to trace” than most more traditional forms of payment, Greenberg explains in a fun and accessible way. Wait, what, all those episodes of [CBS procedural of your choice] that goes on and on about how criminals use bitcoin on the dark web because they’ll never get caught are bunk! I’ll be damned.
Greenberg’s book, which I put on my reserve list mid-podcast, reportedly details a lot of the stranger tales of high-flying criminals brought down by all-too-traceable crypto, which is admittedly a potentially dry topic. But this podcast, which debunks basically every broadcast TV claim that bitcoin is how bad guys buy guns and drugs with no consequences, is a great listen for anyone who loves to snap “that’s not how it works” at the TV. AKA, all of us here. — EB
While I’m talking about podcasts, I should mention this interview with Niecy Nash I listened to this weekend. It’s a little old, from Jan. 17, and there’s a lot of general celebrity chat that isn’t our area of interest — though Nash is delightful, and fun to listen to.
Interviewer David Canfield didn’t go much into her role in When They See Us as I might have liked, but this is a podcast about the current awards season, so that means Nash’s role as Glenda Cleveland in Monster is front-and-center.
Canfield does indeed ask Nash about the concerns raised by the families of Dahmer’s victims, which she’s been asked before, and Nash remains steadfast in her insistence that her portrayal helped give voice to the survivors in a way they haven’t been heard before. Listening to the podcast, I do feel like Nash believes what she’s saying, but I’m still not sure I’m convinced. If you listen to her arguments in the show, will you please let me know what you think? — EB
Thursday on Best Evidence: Sarah on On Patrol.
What is this thing? This should help. Follow Best Evidence @bestevidencefyi on Instagram, email us at editorial at bestevidence dot fyi, or call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.