Sex cult leader Larry Ray allegedly coerced his daughter’s college friends into obeying his sexual commands and supplying him with millions in cash. Prosecutors told a jury on Monday that Ray was a con man and urged the Manhattan federal court jurors to convict Ray of charges of racketeering, forced labor, conspiracy and sex trafficking.
According to ABC News, Ray’s lawyer, Marne Lenox countered the prosecution citing that his client was under attack and a victim of the young people he lived with.
“Everyone was out to get him, Larry believed,” Lenox said. Ray claimed and portrayed his daughter's friends as “storytellers”, and made him paranoid enough to believe they had intentionally poisoned him.
The defense presented only two witnesses in court that including forensic cell site analyst John B. Minor and Attorney Glenn Ripa, who was the subject of a hearing last Friday. Minor attempted to cast doubt on the credibility of maps provided by the government capable of tracking cellphone activities. Ripa's testimony was an attempt by the defense to introduce an “advice of counsel” using the lawyer's statements as he argued that Ray had acted in good faith for collecting “reparations” from the students which were considered to be legal.
While Ray also faces tax evasion charges, Ripa only testified to state that he told the accused how such reparations are not considered taxable income and that he understood alleged victim Claudia Drury had confessed to poisoning him.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, had testimonies of several men and women who were labeled as the “Ray Family”. Bracewell said Ray won the respect of students with his stories when he moved into his daughter’s dormitory. However, this quickly turned sour when started to get paranoid and terrified them to the point where he had convinced them they had poisoned him and that they owed him millions of dollars in compensation. In turn, he tried to use violence to coerce them to pay up and threatened them into following his every command.
One testimony came from a woman who claimed she paid Ray $2,5 million from her earnings while prostituting herself to compensate him for the criminal poisoning case. “Every single one of his actions was designed...to keep control over them,” Bracewell said. “He did so with fear, violence, manipulation, lies and schemes and he did so for years,” she added.
Bracewell continued to paint a bigger picture of Ray’s scam, saying how he was nothing but a con artist who made millions to sustain a lifestyle of luxury built around a made-up crime against him.
