Lawrence Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm at Sarah Lawrence in 2010. Larry, as he was known to those around him, had just got out of a New Jersey prison, where he had been spent six months on child custody charges. His daughter Talia, a student at the liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York, had talked him up to her friends. She brought up Lawrence often, describing him as a hero, “practically James Bond”, a former roommate says in a new Hulu documentary. When the time came for Larry to be released from prison, Talia told her roommates he would be moving in with them. The group was accepting and willing to help.
The rest of the saga is well known to true-crime followers. From Talia’s dorm at Sarah Lawrence, and later from another location in New Jersey, Ray weaved a powerful web of coercion, recruiting his daughter’s roommates and acquaintances into a cult of his own making. The story was first explored in a New York Magazine article published in 2019, with the headline: “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence – What happened to the group of bright college students who fell under the sway of a classmate’s father?”
