Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Smallville Actress Allison Mack Speaks the First Time About NXIVM | Crime Alert 6AM 11.12.25

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

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.

Crime Alert, hourly update. Breaking Crime News Now. I'm Drew Nelson. Allison Mack speaks out for the first time since her release from prison. It was a humid June morning in 2021 when Max sat in the backseat of a car headed to her 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 in Nexium, NXIVM. The so-called self-help empire turned sex cult run by Keith Reneery, once known for her. 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 Nexium, Mac said, quote, 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 43, Mack had served nearly two years of a three-year federal sentence before being released in 2023. 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 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 2001, she was just 19, earning

$40,000 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 Kristen Crook helped lead her into what would become the most destructive decision of her life. According to Mac, Crook began taking nexium's so-called executive success programs while they filmed in Vancouver and later urged her to try it. Crook has long denied any wrongdoing, saying in 2018, 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 were branded with Renary'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, Mack had moved to Albany, leaving her acting career behind. Prosecutors later said she became Ranieri's second-in-command, recruiting women into DOS under the guise of empowerment. Members were starved and forced into sexual submission. At sentencing, Mack sat in silence as victims read their statements. Like my poor mom, Like, I'm so sorry, you guys, you know, just like, it was more like, but I can take it, like, you know, but like, fuck you guys, like, I'm so sorry. Now 65, Keith Ranieri is serving a 120-year sentence for sex trafficking, racketeering, and related crimes.

Mack cooperated with prosecutors providing recordings and testimony that helped convict him. More crime and justice news after this. The founder of 1-800-411 Payne is arrested after allegedly bringing a loaded gun onto a Miami-Dade high school campus. Deputies say 59-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 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. Administrators 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, 411 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 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 years-long investigation into one of St. Clair County's most disturbing cases. Amanda May Mason, age 33, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 20th. 18 death of her son Matthew Mason inside their home in Port Huron Township. Babysitters discovered Matthew

unresponsive in his bed on February 18th of 2018, 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 Huell, now 28. 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 Hull regularly beat the boy and that Mason hid his injuries from child protective services between 2016 and 18. 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 timeout. She told the judge she allowed an environment where Matthew was systematically abused and later helped Hool conceal the manner of Matthew's death. Court records 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 Hul 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 Hul when his trial begins early next year. Mason remains in custody at the St. Clair County Jail and faces up to life when she is sentenced. For the latest crime and justice news, follow Crime Alert hourly update on your favorite podcast app. With this crime alert, I'm Drew Nelson.