Law&Crime Sidebar - Devil in the Dorm

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Law&Crime Network’s twisted series ‘Devil in the Dorm’ is free and live on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by actress Elisabeth Rohm, the six-part podcast dives into the horrifying sex cult case involving Larry Ray, a disturbing man, who moved into his daughter’s college dorm to prey on young students.LISTEN NOW: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/devil-in-the-dorm/id1667678268See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. This is a Law and Crime Network presentation. This episode contains themes and descriptions of sexual assault, violence, suicide, and self-harm. Listener discretion is advised. Your time in college is often referred to as the best years of your life. It's supposed to be a time of learning, not just about your chosen academic topic, but about yourself too.

Many young students leave their parents in their hometowns and experience the first taste of independence on the cusp of adulthood. This period in our lives leaves us vulnerable. We struggle to fit in and find our place in unfamiliar surroundings. But if there was one place for those who feel that way, it was Sarah Lawrence College. I often call the college the land of broken toys. One of the school slogans is, we're different, so are you. This is a quality of Sarah Lawrence College that one man exploited

to create what has all the hallmarks of a cult on campus in late 2010. My name is Elizabeth Rome. I'm an actress and a proud Sarah Lawrence College graduate. Composed from thousands of pages of transcripts, exhibits, scripts, exhibits, audio files, first-hand accounts, and contemporary research, this long crime production uses voice actors to give you an immersive insight into one of the most bizarre cases in recent memory. This is Devil in the Dorm.

Nestled in over 40 acres of woods and yonkers, New York, Sarah Lawrence is a self-proclaimed, prestigious, residential, and co-educational liberal arts college. The college was founded in 1926 and boasts a long list of successful alumni and a community of passionate and intellectual faculty members and students. The college website states, Our students share an enthusiasm for intellectual rigor, academic risk-taking, creativity in all disciplines, and original and interdisciplinary work. We are particularly committed to having our faculty, administration, and student body reflect the social, racial, and economic diversity that characterizes. our society. Sloanum Woods 9 is a co-ed dorm in a sloping two-story brick house with a wooden facade on the

tree-lined campus of Sarah Lawrence College. It's conveniently situated between the sports center and the theater. It was just one of 11 cooperative living units for the students on the campus, comprising four bedrooms upstairs and four bedrooms downstairs as well as a shared living room and kitchen. In September 2010, some of the students living in the dorm were anticipating the arrival of a new house guest. 20-year-old sophomore Talia Ray told her roommates, Claudia, Santos, Daniel, and Isabella that her father, Larry, would be coming to stay with him for a while. Talia was extremely close to her father. She called him Honeyboy, and he called her Honeygirl. Throughout her

freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, Talia had told her roommate's friends and then boyfriend all about her father. Her stories portrayed him as a hero, someone who fought against corruption and injustice and found himself wrongly prosecuted and convicted instead. Talia's roommate sympathized with her ordeal, and they knew how long it had been since she had seen her father, so they didn't think it would be an issue if he stayed with him for a while. Talia's close-knit group of friends consisted of her best friend Isabella Pollock, a psychology student who attended private Catholic school back home in San Antonio, Texas. There was also Santos Rosario, Talia's roommate and one-time boyfriend.

Quiet and creative L.A. native, Claudia Drury, also lived at Sloanum Woods Nine. She had come from a privileged background and she was raised by an artist mother and her father was a well-known author. Daniel Levin was a student from New Jersey who also called the college campus home and one of the residents of Sloanum Woods Nine who listened to Talia's relentless tales of her father's heroic past and persecution. He was drawn to Sarah Lawrence College for its unique slogan. we're different, so are you. Growing up, Daniel never felt like he fit in. But at Sarah Lawrence College, he recalled,

maybe I would fit in. Daniel wasn't that close to Talia, but Santos had been his roommate in freshman year and Santos had been dating Talia at the time. The small group of students all lived close to each other in hall-style dorms in their freshman year. The hall-style dorms were not desirable. They were cramped and had very little private,

So, for sophomore year, the group wanted to find a place of their own. The only way to do this was to secure a slot at one of the co-ed dorms which boasted separate bedrooms as well as a shared living quarter. Luckily, Talia took the lead as she always did and managed to get them housed at Sloan and Woods Nine. Talia was the oldest of the group and had shared her hardships with her newfound friends. According to Talia, she hadn't had the best start in life. She divulged how while growing up, her mother had taken her sister to keep her away from her father.

As a result, Talia said she bounced from shelter to shelter during the formative years of her life just to avoid living under her mother's roof. Talia even revealed that while growing up, she was the victim of generational abuse, first at the hands of her mother and then at the hands of her grandfather. Despite only being 20 years old, Talia had seemingly lived a life packed with traumatic experiences. her rough life had essentially rendered her incapable of small talk conversation in the common area was always deep and meaningful Daniel has written a memoir called Sloanum Woods 9

in which he details his experience in the dorm room that has been accredited as the birthplace of a cult Daniel wrote Larry we'd learned was an incredible human being he'd been a Marine and then spent years working for the defense intelligence agency He'd been a liaison for Mikhail Gorbachev when he visited the United States. He'd helped negotiate the end of the Kosovo War and had a letter to prove it, thanking him for his invaluable contribution.

He'd become close friends with Bernie Carrick, the police commissioner of New York, and was even the best man at Carrick's wedding. However, Talia informed us when Larry discovered that the commissioner was involved in some corrupt dealings, he went to the FBI. And just as Larry was taking the risk of going up against one of the most powerful law enforcement officers in the country.

Talia's mom divorced him. She then worked with Carrick to frame Larry for custody violations, landing him in jail and giving her an impenetrable case to take their two daughters. They'd all been told some variation of the same story about how Larry Ray had taken on the former New York City police chief, Bernard Carrick. Santos later recalled, She told me that her father was in jail on trumped-up charges

over some child custody thing and that he was a hero and he was only in jail like because of corrupt politicians and he was a good guy and the one who exposed Bernie Carrick. Claudia was told something similar. She remembers it this way.

Talia told me he'd been wrongfully in prison because he had exposed a plot to install Bernie Carrick as a director of Homeland Security, which would be the first step in like this overarching plot to sort of hijack the country and so on and so forth.

Talia had waited almost two years to see her father outside of the prison walls, and the day finally arrived on September 21st, 2010. 50-year-old Larry Ray walked into the common area with a few of his friends and introduced himself to Santos. I thought he was very cool, very smart, very composed, and very inspirational. The bald, middle-aged man didn't look like someone who had just spent 25 months, behind bars.

Claudia recalled the first time she saw Larry Ray. You know, he had just been released from prison and he seemed like remarkably well put together. Didn't seem upset or haggard. He was very friendly. Talia introduced him to Isabella, who was her best friend

and he seemed to take a lot of interest in talking to Isabella, like taking a lot of time. He seemed, you know, sort of very different from anyone. Like very magnetic and charismatic kind of personality. Larry immediately captured the attention of the college kids with stories of military valor,

which according to him included an integral role in ending the Kosovo War. I learned that he was a Marine, that he had some friends who were generals, that he had like all these sorts of friends in high places. I learned more about how he had taken down Bernie Carrick and exposed this plot that went to, like,

the highest levels of government, you know, rip up the Constitution and hurt America. I learned a lot about how he raised Talia. The group of young students were enamored with the patriotic and misunderstood man that stood in their kitchen and told them stories as he prepared food for them all. A home-cooked meal for homesick college kids was a rarity,

as were the takeouts that Larry paid for with a wad of cash. It quickly went from the students feeling obligated to listen to their friend's father out of politeness, to Larry being someone they sought out when they had a problem. Larry presented himself as a father-like figure, a mentor to the students, and he had a way of getting them to open up to him. He spoke a lot about inspirational things

like honesty, principles, and like honor and like science and philosophy. Santos confided in Larry about his personal issues, which included his relationship with his parents. Santos described his relationship with his mother as distant, but amiable. But he had conflicting feelings about his father, who had children with other women and something Santos saw as a betrayal of his mother. I ended up confiding in him a lot of issues with... that I have with my family, my depression that I struggled with in high school. He seemed very attentive and intelligent, and one of my roommates said she got a lot of value from confiding in him.

Larry reasoned with Santos and suggested that his parents were the root cause of the anguish he was feeling. And Santos appreciated having an older mentor to help him work through the difficulties many of us feel on the cusp of adulthood. Santos recalled what advice Larry had given him during their long talks. It was focused on being honest, being present, Being honorable, being clear-minded? Larry also developed a rapport with Isabella and spent a lot of time with her. Claudia remembered what that was like.

He, at first, he said he was just helping her through some psychological issues or emotional issues she was having. Later, I learned more about it that she had, you know, these deep-seated issues from being abused as a child. and he was helping her process them. She became suicidal, and he said he was helping her through that and helping her process her suicidality. Claudia was still skeptical about Larry's intentions and his constant presence in the dorm, but she saw a positive change in Isabella

that seemed to be as a result of Larry's influence. Before Isabella was, like, very, very reserved and very, very quiet. I don't know that I heard her talk like five times before meeting Larry. And when she met him, she started to open up more, talk to people more. She started to take care of her parents more. He got her like this coat that she really loved that was like significantly more elegant than her other clothing. So she seemed to like actually open up more after meeting him.

Then Larry moved from an air mattress in his daughter's bedroom to Isabella's bedroom. And Claudia's concerns quickly resurfaced. I was pretty freaked out at first. I didn't really know what to think. I thought it was weird. Didn't really know what to do. Claudia began confiding in her professors and classmates about her concerns and how she felt as though Larry Ray was having an inappropriate sexual relationship

with both his daughter, Talia, and his daughter's best friend, Isabella. Larry told the others that he was just helping Isabella through some psychological and emotional issues and that she needed someone with her. At first, he lay beside her and stroked her hair while telling her no one would hurt his baby girl, but eventually things became sexual. Larry acted as an intermediary between Isabella and her family back in San Antonio. He told them that she was on the brink of a mental breakdown as a result of childhood sexual abuse, and that if she went home for the holidays,

he believed she would take her own life. While the others went home over the winter break, Isabella stayed in New York with Larry and his daughter Talia. Very little changed as a result of Claudia's discussions about her roommate's father, and once the spring semester started, Claudia began to share her own insecurities with Larry Ray, who had quickly become an almost guru-like figure in Sloanenwood's 9.

So we went out to dinner and Larry asked, how can I help you? What do you want? The first thing I highlighted or brought up to him was having, like, growing up I would tell stories, like to my friends, like embellished things so that they would laugh or be entertaining. And I expected to grow out of it. But by college, I like hadn't and it was obvious to my friends. And it was, you know, I wanted to stop.

And I told Larry that. That was, I think, the first thing I asked him to help me with. Claudia disclosed that she had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And Larry told her that he believed she had something he termed harm OCD. He convinced her that she had compulsive and intrusive thoughts of harming others. Claudia also confided in Larry about more personal insecurities. I was very uncomfortable in my body I did not think of myself as someone

that anybody would even want to be with I was very uncomfortable physically with myself and I was like my interest in sex was more like as a means to become closer or like to, you know, an expression of how much someone likes me certainly not in and of itself

Over family dinners and during late-night family meetings, Larry began to speak to the college students about his life experience and how he had special training that could help them gain clarity and discipline. He told them that he could help them live better, more honest lives, that they had to be honest with him first. They had to tell him their deepest secrets and insecurities so he could resolve them.

Over time, a familiar face in the door, became Aban Goa Kachoa. Aban was Talia's boyfriend back in high school. By now, they were long separated, but they remained on good terms, and Aban had become close friends with Larry over the course of their relationship. Much like for the roommates,

Larry had become a mentor to Aban. According to New York Magazine after Abon dropped out of college, Larry encouraged him to join the Marine Corps, and after his enlistment, he saw extensive combat in both Iraq, and Afghanistan. Upon his return home,

he was left bereaved beyond consolation when both of his parents passed away. As Abon explained in a Facebook post on Veteran's, a charity to help veterans, he decided to take a year to address personal issues and was fortunate enough to have a mentor to help him through processing those issues. That mentor was Larry Ray.

And Aban was keen to introduce him to all of his fellow veterans, boasting of how he had provided him with immense growth. The group all considered Larry to be a kind, intelligent, and rapt listener, whom they all trusted with their deepest secrets. As the academic year came to an end in the summer of 2011, Daniel, the student poet, also sought out advice from Larry. In particular, he wanted some guidance about a deeply private matter, something that many young people struggle to come to terms with as they approach adulthood.

Daniel writes about questioning his sexuality during his college years in his book. And Larry Ray went to the unimaginable lengths to convince Daniel that he was not gay. Daniel was having relationship problems, and Larry Ray seemed to have all of the answers, according to his friends anyway. Larry's advice was blunt. He told Daniel to break up with his girlfriend and spend the summer with Larry and his roommates in an apartment on East 93rd Street. The one-bedroom apartment belonged to Larry's friend, Lee Chen. Larry and Lee had met back in 2005 at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Lee was going through a rough patch in his life. He'd been ordered to serve 80 days in the detention center for violating his supervised release on a suspected hacking-related offense. Lee was drawn to Larry and looked at him as a mentor-like figure, offering him advice on how to improve his life and make amends with his family. Larry divulged that he was going through a divorce and upon their release,

Lee allowed him to crash on his sofa at his apartment in the Waterford building at 300 East 93rd Street. Daniel conceded and in the summertime he began staying in the apartment in Manhattan, along with Talia, Isabella, Claudia and Santos. Daniel recalled in an interview with Evening Standard, I didn't want to go back home, and this was my alternative.

Since it was just a one-bedroom apartment, the living conditions were more than cramped, but the students made it work. Larry, Talia, and Isabella shared the double bed, while the others piled into the living room sleeping on inflatable mattresses or couches. Periodically, the students came and went, But Larry, Talia, and Isabella made the modest apartment their main residence.

On any given day, you could always be sure that at least one other person was hanging out at the apartment. Larry told the group of cohorts how he was professionally trained to evaluate people, and he held discussions that would last for hours on honesty and how to tell whether a person was good or bad. He divulged his approach to life, which he referred to as his quest for potential. Quest for Potential, or Q4P, was a concept that was developed by David Bernbaum, a New York jeweler and amateur philosopher. According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, Bernbaum ran his jewelry and secrets of the universe business from the same East 48th Street office in Manhattan.

The self-styled guru expanded on his theory in a YouTube video titled Summa Metaphysica. The video has not garnered much attention, but the concept featured heavily in Larry Ray's late-night sermons. As you may be aware, Summa takes a hitherto mundane concept, potential, that it sort of turbocharges it. Summa force multiplies it into potential to the infinite power. Our key term is quest for potential, infinitely iterated, meaning quest for potential within potential within potential.

Speaking with Larry made the impressionable young students feel a sense of importance. In a big city, it was easy to feel unremarkable. But one-on-one talks with Larry made them feel special, and they yearned for those moments, in the same way children act out in desperation for a busy parent's attention. Here was this worldly older male figure who wanted to know their deepest fears and insecurities, and it seemed as though only Larry could unearth memories

that felt as though they had been suppressed for years. Under Larry's faux therapeutic approach, the group of young adults began to expand on answers to the question of what was really wrong with them. At first, they would answer that they did not know, but eventually after prompts from Larry, they would divulge detailed stories of how their parents had seemingly damaged them in some way.

The root of their problems seemed to metastasized to every part of their lives, and Larry was the only one who expressed the ability. to take them away. Despite the crowded conditions of the one-bedroom apartment, each felt an inexplicable sense of longing to be there,

to be close to Larry, to gain more of his attention, to learn more about themselves, to learn to be more like him. Larry seemed to always be selfless with how he spent his time. He would disappear for hours to carry out covert work

for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and when he spent time with one of the group, they made sure it did not feel like a waste of his time. When the answers to Larry's questions seemed to bore or dissatisfy him, the answers would evolve. If they were told that their own reasoning was incorrect, how could they trust themselves? This solidified their need to learn from Larry.

They felt indebted to him. They felt as though he was the one sacrificing his time and money to help them by sharing his knowledge with them and giving them a place to sleep once the long rambling lectures reached a finale in the 15th floor apartment. Not all of the lessons were one-on-one. Larry would disclose each of their confessed insecurities

in front of their friends and peers in long, drawn-out group therapy meetings where he expected them to hold each other accountable for the flaws he was exposing. Larry taught them that everything they did was deliberate. If they upset him, it was an intentional act of sabotage against him and his daughter Talia, and they learned to accept his interpretation of events as the truth.

The unlucky member of the group to be called out for what most would see as a minor slight would quietly wait to be welcomed back into Larry's good graces, like a scolded dog who almost holds their breath while awaiting their owner's approval. Larry would order expensive takeout for everyone, which at times meant eight people, and then spend hours, teaching them how to dress, how to behave, what to eat, when to wake up, how to exercise, what to listen to, what to read, and what other people's intentions were. Instead of going home to visit their parents, as most sophomores would over the summer break,

the students stayed with Larry when he allowed them to. Larry then told them that they were all suicidal, and one by one each of the students admitted that they were. Some were being truthful, others did not want to go against the grain, in the one place they felt as though they fit in. Larry said it was his duty as a father to prevent them from taking their own lives so that Talia would not follow suit. According to Dan Levin, he told them,

Now you're all interconnected. You became interconnected the moment Talia brought you all together at Sloanum. I have to protect my daughter and to do that means protecting all of you. If any one of you goes through with your plans, if I let your impulse to hurt yourself get its way, then we'll have a domino effect.

At the end of that chain is tall, my honey girl. So you can believe me as a father, as a man, I will keep all of you safe. Peppered throughout normal conversation were Larry's statements to remind them how much he was sacrificing to help them and how much they needed the help. He encouraged them to admit their wrongdoings,

and before she left to study at Wadham College in Oxford, England for a year, Claudia put Larry's teachings into practice. Just over a year after she had met her roommate's father and became concerned about his behavior, Claudia renounced every word. On September 26, 2011, Claudia wrote an email to more than a dozen of her friends,

professors, and administrators at Sarah Lawrence College. Claudia wrote about her initial contact with members of staff at Sarah Lawrence about her belief that Larry Ray was a bad, dangerous, manipulative, and sexually deviant man. She said that her concern snowballed into an obsession, and between October 2010 and February 2011, she told friends and professors that she feared Larry Ray and that he had caused her mental and emotional suffering by telling her that she was going to have a schizophrenic breakdown.

Claudia said in the email, Now, a year later, I must tell you that every word I said about Larry Ray as a man and his relationship to his daughter, Taliah Ray, and her friend Isabella Pollock was a complete lie. I had no cause whatsoever to believe that the things I was saying were true. There was no observation I made that could reasonably and fairly support the lies I told about these three people. Larry was a dangerous manipulator and that Larry, Isabella, and Talia were having sex together. In fact, there was nothing any one of them did to me that could have made me honestly believe that they were anything but kind,

generous, and stable individuals. She said that her behavior had not only harmed Larry, Talia, and Isabella, but also the wider Sarah Lawrence community, and she wanted to rectify the damage she had caused and take accountability for the things she had said. Claudia said that she had gotten a phone call from Larry's ex-wife, Talia's mother,

Teresa, within two weeks of Larry's release from prison. Claudia claimed that Teresa told her a sympathetic story about how Larry was a dangerous man who had brainwashed Talia and abused her and her younger sister, Ava. Claudia said that as a result of the conversations she had with Teresa, she'd spoken with the police and taken part in the conspiracy that Talia and Larry had spoken about before. C-Ced into the email,

long list of recipients were Larry, Talia, and Isabella. That same day Claudia wrote to Larry, I finally understand what it means to manage the mind. The mind being what the brain does, but also what I do. In order to come forward with this, I had to manage my mind. To have a will is the same as managing the mind. I have gained so much confidence in my ability to be myself, exert my preferences and my strength as an individual.

I finally feel my strength as an individual and I am feeling it for the first time. I still feel the very faint stirring of doubt against myself, but I know with 100% certainty that I am a very strong person, a very good person, and someone who will continue to live by her strength and goodness. Some of the students returned to their studies.

Claudia and Dan went to England. Talia moved back on campus, but they all kept in contact with Larry. During that summer of 2011 spent listening intently to Larry's pre-dawned sermons that had begun over a family dinner, the lines between friendship, therapy, and something more insidious became blurred. But to the group, it felt normal.

It felt like home. Before long, Larry Ray's words of encouragement turned to actions, actions that would have a rippling effect throughout the decade that followed one night in their dorm when a 50-year-old ex-con moved in with a bunch of college kids. In the next episode, we delve deeper into the disturbing events that changed the course of the young students' lives and detail how they were lured away from the college campus by Larry Ray.

Executive produced by Elizabeth Rome, Rachel Stockman, Stephen Tolkien, and Sam Goldberg, edited by Brad Maybe. Researched and written by Adam Classfeld, Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Featuring the voices of Justin Black, Arkansas-based YouTuber and owner of the Disturbing Truth YouTube channel as Santos. Paula Barros, host of Cold Case Files podcast as Claudia. This is Long Crimes, Devil in the Dorm. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.