Speaker 1: Cults, Sex, Hollywood, and crime kind of sounds like a
Speaker 1: multi season series on Netflix, right, But in this case,
Speaker 1: it's a true story of what happens when young, beautiful,
Speaker 1: vulnerable people. In this case, all women look for I
Speaker 1: don't know, sort of a life coach, but wind up
Speaker 1: with a monster. I mean, you're just looking for guidance
Speaker 1: from this guy and you end up with his name
Speaker 1: branded on your body. I'm Patty Steele Nexium. How the
Speaker 1: sex cult leader Keith Rinier reeled in his well known
Speaker 1: and wealthy victims. He even owned daycare centers, perhaps to
Speaker 1: lure in the next generation. That's next on the backstory.
Speaker 1: The backstory is back Hollywood has always celebrated new, outside
Speaker 1: the box ideas and personalities, so cults always have an
Speaker 1: interesting home there. And it didn't just start with Charlie
Speaker 1: Manson and his devoted followers. What's interesting is that at
Speaker 1: the dawn of Hollywood, doctors in the East were recommending
Speaker 1: their young, troubled patients moved to SoCal, both for chronic
Speaker 1: health problems as well as mental health issues, a fresh start, sunshine,
Speaker 1: blue skies, the ocean, not to mention a lot of gorgeous,
Speaker 1: happy young people looking to reinvent themselves. It's the perfect
Speaker 1: setup for a charismatic individual who claims to offer a
Speaker 1: new and better way of living your life. What could
Speaker 1: be better? A magnetic individual is leading you toward a
Speaker 1: spiritual awakening in which you see everything in a whole
Speaker 1: new light. At first, you feel ecstatic, and you'll do
Speaker 1: just about anything to maintain that heightened sense of joy
Speaker 1: and transformation. Among these groups, of course, there was the
Speaker 1: Manson family, which went horrifyingly off the rails with their
Speaker 1: murders of actress Sharon Tate and at least eight others.
Speaker 1: There's the Children of God, which got underway in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen sixties and had devotees like the parents of
Speaker 1: River and Water King Phoenix, who raised their kids in
Speaker 1: the cult. The Children of God still has thousands of followers.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the century, in the mid nineteen twenties, a
Speaker 1: guy called Paramhasa Yogananda founded the Self Realization Fellowship. He
Speaker 1: had devotees that included Elvis Presley and George Harrison of
Speaker 1: the Beatles, And these cult leaders weren't all men. There
Speaker 1: was a gorgeous young woman named Amy Semple McPherson who
Speaker 1: arrived in Hollywood. In nineteen eighteen, she founded the International
Speaker 1: Church of the Four Square Gospel. She claimed to have
Speaker 1: healed thousands of people of all kinds of illnesses. She'd
Speaker 1: speak in tongues and allegedly healed people in front of
Speaker 1: her congregation. Her followers so loved her they built her
Speaker 1: a huge temple what's considered the world's first megachurch, and
Speaker 1: she was the first preacher to use mass media on
Speaker 1: the radio in nineteen twenty three, in that medium's earliest years.
Speaker 1: Historians say she was as popular in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: as Princess Diana was in her time. While there was
Speaker 1: plenty of dramas surrounding Amy back in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: there are still almost nine million members at well over
Speaker 1: sixty six thousand of her churches. And of course there's Scientology,
Speaker 1: which is billed by many as a religion and many
Speaker 1: others as a cult. Scientology has a whole lot of
Speaker 1: Hollywood members, most notably Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elizabeth Moss,
Speaker 1: Nancy Cartwright, who of course does Bart Simpson's voice, and
Speaker 1: even journalist Greta Van Sustern, but Keith Rainier and Nexium
Speaker 1: took the whole cult thing in another direction. For Rainier,
Speaker 1: it was all about sex. When he formed Nexium in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, he said it was all about
Speaker 1: helping people achieve executive success through self improvement. He made
Speaker 1: it look like a mashup of Tony Robbins's self help
Speaker 1: Empire and a business coaching seminar, but the organization was
Speaker 1: more like a Pyramids scheme. If you took part, you
Speaker 1: had to recruit new members in order to move up
Speaker 1: the ranks yourself. Ranier called himself Vanguard. He claimed to
Speaker 1: have an IQ of two hundred and forty. Einstein's IQ,
Speaker 1: by the way, clocked in at a mere one sixty.
Speaker 1: Nier attracted some high profile followers, like Smallville actress Alison Mack,
Speaker 1: who became one of his top recruiters and enforcers, luring
Speaker 1: other women into the cult. There was also another recruiter,
Speaker 1: Nicki Klein, one of the stars from the TV show
Speaker 1: Battlestar Galactica. They also attracted wealthy heiresses like Claire and
Speaker 1: Sarah Bromfman, the daughters of the billionaire owner of the
Speaker 1: Seagram's Liquor Empire. The sisters financially backed the cult's growth.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, there was a secret society
Speaker 1: within Nexium called DOS. The letters stood for the Latin
Speaker 1: words dominus, obsequious, serrurium or master over slave women. Arnier
Speaker 1: created it Alison mac ranit. The female recruits had to
Speaker 1: hand over collateral, which included damaging personal secrets, nude photos,
Speaker 1: or incriminating info as a way to keep them loyal.
Speaker 1: They were basically blackmailed into obedience and forced to serve
Speaker 1: as Raynier's personal slaves, and they all had to go
Speaker 1: out and find slaves of their own and listen to this.
Speaker 1: On top of that, all members had to strip naked
Speaker 1: and be branded with Raynier's initials. Most frighteningly, Rainier and
Speaker 1: the Nexium cult owned and operated eleven day care centers
Speaker 1: around the world, perhaps to feed his child porn addiction
Speaker 1: and to target the next generation of his slaves. How
Speaker 1: did they get away with this for so long? Well,
Speaker 1: Nexium had wealthy, powerful defenders. Journalists trying to take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into what they were up to were hit
Speaker 1: with lawsuits. Former members who spoke out were stalked, to
Speaker 1: rast and threatened. But finally, in the late tens, it
Speaker 1: started to crumble. Some of Nexium's highest ranking members left
Speaker 1: the cult and they started talking. Then The New York
Speaker 1: Times published a wild expos in twenty seventeen. It talked
Speaker 1: about the branding rituals, the blackmail, and the psychological abuse.
Speaker 1: Folks in Hollywood and in the business world freaked out.
Speaker 1: The FBI got involved, and Keith Renier fled to his
Speaker 1: Mexican villa with Alison Mack and Nicky Klein. Nicky then
Speaker 1: blew their cover by posting on Instagram and accidentally showing
Speaker 1: FBI investigators where they were. Ranier was arrested, along with
Speaker 1: Alison Mack, Claire Bromfman, and other high ranking Nexium members. Finally,
Speaker 1: after some pretty wild testimony, Rnier was convicted of a
Speaker 1: racketeering conspiracy charge, also sex trafficking, possession of child porn,
Speaker 1: and other crimes. He was sentenced to one hundred twenty
Speaker 1: years in prison. Alison Mack pleaded guilty and got three
Speaker 1: years in prison, while Claire Bromfman got six years for
Speaker 1: bankrolling the whole thing. Nexium was finished, but reneered Today well,
Speaker 1: he's locked up, likely for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: but similar to Charles Manson and even Amy Semple McPherson.
Speaker 1: He still has a hold on a bunch of his followers.
Speaker 1: They even rally outside his prison from time to time.
Speaker 1: Nexium and Keith Rinier's story tell us something about the
Speaker 1: need for vulnerable people to feel like they're wanted, that
Speaker 1: they're part of something, even when it makes no sense
Speaker 1: to the rest of us. Hope you're enjoying The Backstory
Speaker 1: with Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get
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Speaker 1: if you have a story you'd like me to cover.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,
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Speaker 1: Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We
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Speaker 1: on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to
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