Sarah Lawrence School sex-cult chief Larry Ray was convicted Wednesday afternoon on all counts by a Manhattan jury — ending a yearslong prosecution launched after the fiend’s tyrannical abuse of a bunch of younger individuals was uncovered in a magazine article.
Ray, 62, faces life in jail when he's sentenced by Manhattan federal Choose Lewis Liman in September.
The convicted intercourse trafficker stood and confronted the jury, showing impassive because the foreperson repeated “responsible” to the 15 counts.
The panel deliberated for about 5 hours after being given the case Tuesday night.
All through the monthlong trial, prosecutors and victims painted Ray as a calculating predator who asserted management over a bunch of school college students and others to counterpoint himself because the chief of a prison group he dubbed “The Ray Household.”
“When his victims had been fully subdued, after they had been below his management, he dedicated crimes to get them to pay — extortion, compelled labor, intercourse trafficking, obstruction of justice, monetary crimes,” Assistant US Lawyer Mollie Bracewell instructed jurors in her closing argument.
“The defendant did all of this for management, for his personal greed, and to extend his energy, to cement his place within the organized group that he led.”
Ray’s abuse started when he moved into his daughter’s on-campus dorm on the prestigious Westchester County faculty in 2010 after he was sprung from jail in an unrelated case.
Virtually instantly, Ray started grooming his daughter’s mates, wowing them with fantastical tales about his supposed involvement in abroad army operations and his mates in regulation enforcement and politics, prosecutors mentioned.
In the summertime of 2011, numerous the scholars moved into an Higher East Aspect one-bedroom condo with Ray, the place his abuse and management over them elevated, the feds mentioned.
For practically the following decade, Ray extorted his victims and compelled one in every of them into prostitution whereas laundering the proceeds of the scheme, which totaled tens of millions of dollars.
Federal authorities started investigating Ray after a 2020 New York Journal article drew the curtain again on his relationship with the previous Sarah Lawrence college students.
Ray subjected his victims to bodily, psychological and sexual abuse, prosecutors mentioned at trial. Ray recorded confessions his victims made by which they copped to damaging his property, plotting towards him and poisoning him and his household — then used the mea culpas as blackmail.
Ray carried out his prison enterprise with the assistance of Isabella Pollok, a former pupil who turned his co-conspirator, the feds alleged.
Ray’s most profitable scheme was gathering cash that sufferer Claudia Drury earned whereas working as a prostitute at his route, she testified at trial.
For about 5 years, Drury labored seven days every week, assembly monied shoppers who paid her exorbitant quantities of cash in alternate for intercourse, she mentioned.
Drury turned over about $2.5 million to Ray that she earned whereas escorting and dwelling in varied Manhattan inns, the place she would meet her shoppers.
When Ray felt threatened that Drury was slipping from his management, he and Pollok confronted her on the Gregory Resort in Midtown, the place he tortured her for hours over the course of an evening, prosecutors mentioned.
He ordered her to strip bare, handcuffed her to a chair and tried to suffocate her repeatedly with a plastic bag, Drury instructed jurors.
“I used to be terrified. I used to be trembling. You may’t breathe. You need to breathe rather a lot. That simply makes it a lot worse,” she testified in March.
Ray additionally doused Drury’s bare physique with water and moved her chair over to an air conditioner within the room, she mentioned.
Through the hours-long torture session, Ray and Pollok paused to eat hamburgers that they had ordered from a close-by diner, Drury testified.
The torture session was highly effective proof that Ray had dedicated virtually the entire crimes he was charged with, Bracewell instructed jurors in her closing argument.
“Women and gents, this single evening of crime tells you virtually all it's good to know. However, as we'll cowl and as you will have seen, there may be a lot extra,” she mentioned.
In an announcement, US Lawyer for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, hailed the decision.
“Let me be very clear. Larry Ray is a predator. An evil man who did evil issues. At the moment’s verdict lastly brings him to justice,” Williams mentioned.
“This verdict wouldn't have been potential with out the victims who testified in court docket. We're in awe of their bravery within the face of unimaginable trauma,” he added.
All through the trial, Ray’s protection workforce tried to undermine his accusers’ credibility and painted them as a bunch of “storytellers” who embellished tales about Ray as a result of they had been jealous of him or in any other case wished to break him.
In her closing argument, Ray lawyer Marne Lenox attacked Drury’s account of the evening she was tortured by the defendant, claiming it was fiction.
“There was no assault within the Gregory Resort. It by no means occurred,” Lenox mentioned.
Ray has been locked up within the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Heart since his arrest in 2020.
Pollok was subsequently charged for her alleged position within the enterprise and has pleaded not responsible. She’s scheduled to go to trial later this yr.
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