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Where Is Larry Ray, The Man Who Manipulated And Tormented Sarah Lawrence Students, Today?
After moving into his daughter’s Sarah Lawrence College dorm room, Larry Ray slowly exerted control over a group of students.
Larry Ray was once a calculated puppet master, controlling others through violence, humiliation, and manipulation, but today the 63-year-old sits in jail.
Ray was sentenced to 60 years in prison in January by Judge Lewis Liman, who called Ray an "evil genius" and his crimes "particularly heinous," according to previous Oxygen.com reporting.
Ray, who is the subject of Peacock's documentary "Sex, Lies and the College Cult," was convicted in April of racketeering conspiracy, violent crime in aid of racketeering, extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, tax evasion, and money laundering offenses after a decade of physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusing several of his daughter’s friends, reported The New York Times.
Prosecutors said the abuse began after Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College in 2010, then spent a decade using “sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse” to manipulate and control some of the students.
“Ray’s tactics included sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, threats of physical violence, physical violence, threats of criminal legal action, alienating the victims from their families and exploiting the victims’ mental health vulnerabilities,” prosecutors said in a statement announcing the conviction.
Ray often forced his victims to falsely confess to perceived grievances against him, including damaging his property, authorities alleged in the statement. He then used the videos to extort his victims and their family of money.
It took a jury just four hours to find Ray guilty on 15 federal counts.
Prosecutors wanted Ray to be sentenced to life in prison for his crimes, arguing in a sentencing letter to Judge Liman that "the defendant took sadistic pleasure in their pain and enjoyed the fruits of their suffering."
In addition, they requested that the judge order Ray to pay his victims back $5.5 million in restitution and pay another $761,000 in back taxes.
Ray's defense attorney Marne Lenox, however, asked the judge to be lenient with his sentence in light of the 63-year-old's troubled upbringing.
"The physical, sexual, and psychological abuse Lawrence Ray suffered as a child and through his young adulthood bears a striking resemblance to the conduct underlying the offenses he now stands convicted of," Lenox said in a sentencing submission obtained by ABC News. "Mr. Ray's traumatic childhood experience of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of his own family members undeniably shaped his adulthood."
To learn more about the case, watch the documentary “Sex, Lies And The College Cult,” streaming now on Peacock.
