NEW YORK (AP) — A person who moved into his daughter’s faculty dorm and charmed her schoolmates with tales about his knowledge was once convicted Wednesday of fees that he exploited the close-knit team, the usage of threats and violence to counterpoint himself with hundreds of thousands of greenbacks.
Lawrence Ray, 62, was once convicted at an ordeal the place weeks of testimony chronicled his psychologically manipulative dating with younger other folks he met in fall 2010 at Sarah Lawrence School, a small New York liberal arts college. Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm after completing a jail stint for a securities fraud conviction.
Sentencing was once set for Sept. 16 on fees together with racketeering, conspiracy, compelled hard work, intercourse trafficking and obstruction of justice. Ray, who stood along with his palms at his facet and confronted the Long island jury as responsible verdicts have been returned on 15 counts, may withstand existence in jail.
After the decision was once learn, Ray was once returned to custody, the place he were since his early 2020 arrest.
His legal professionals declined remark out of doors court docket and didn’t instantly go back e-mail messages in quest of remark.
In a commentary, U.S. Legal professional Damian Williams mentioned Ray had modified “a bunch of pals who had their complete lives forward of them.”
“For the following decade, he used violence, threats, and mental abuse to check out to keep watch over and smash their lives,” Williams mentioned. “He exploited them. He terrorized them. He tortured them. Let me be very transparent. Larry Ray is a predator. An evil guy who did evil issues. These days’s verdict in spite of everything brings him to justice.”
Jurors concluded deliberations lower than an afternoon after receiving the case following a monthlong trial that featured testimony from a large number of sufferers who typically referred to Ray simply as “Larry.” Some testified that Ray had made them consider that they had poisoned or in a different way harmed him and so they had to pay him again.
One girl testified that she turned into a intercourse employee to check out to pay reparations to Ray after turning into satisfied that she had poisoned him. She mentioned that, over 4 years, she gave Ray $2.5 million in installments that averaged between $10,000 and $50,000 a week.
Ray’s legal professionals maintained he was once victimized via former pals who fabricated their tales.
Ray didn’t testify. Two times, the trial was once interrupted as he was once taken to the health center in an ambulance for undisclosed diseases.
A number of scholars testified that they have been drawn into Ray’s global as he instructed them tales of his previous affect in New York Town politics, together with his position in ruining the profession of former New York Town Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik after serving as the most productive guy at his wedding ceremony years previous. Ray had, if truth be told, been a determine within the corruption investigation that derailed Kerik’s nomination to steer the U.S. Division of Hometown Safety.
Probably the most scholars agreed to reside with Ray in the summertime of 2011 at his Long island one-bedroom rental, the place his sinister facet emerged as he began to say that the scholars had poisoned and harmed him or his assets.
To make amends, they testified, they did what he requested, together with turning over cash. One guy mentioned he gave Ray over $100,000.
Prosecutors mentioned the cash was once by no means sufficient. Thru threats and violence and videotaped “confessions,” Ray tightened his grasp at the younger other folks, together with forcing them to to landscaping and different paintings on the Pinehurst, North Carolina house of his stepfather for weeks in 2013, they mentioned.
The abuse culminated in October 2018 when Ray for hours time and again abused the girl who gave him her proceeds from intercourse paintings, forcing her to be tied bare to a chair whilst he berated her, choked her with a leash and made her concern for her existence via striking a bag over her head, prosecutors mentioned.
Ray performed his crimes with assist from his daughter and Isabella Pollok, a girl who has pleaded now not responsible to prison fees, prosecutors mentioned. Her trial is about for later this yr. The daughter has now not been charged.