NEW YORK — An ex-convict who made millions of dollars by subjecting his daughter’s former college classmates to forced labor and prostitution was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison by a judge who called him an “evil genius” who used sadism and psychological torture to control every aspect of their victims’ lives.
Lawrence “Larry” Ray, 63, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Lewis J. Liman.
“There is no reason to believe that Mr. Ray will stop criminal behavior with age,” Liman said, noting that the crimes began when Ray moved into his daughter’s home on the Sarah Lawrence College campus in late 2010. , a small liberal arts institution in New York.
THE CHARGES WERE FOR EXTORTION, CONSPIRACY, FORCED LABOR AND PROSTITUTION
The judge said Ray charmed his victims with his “exaggerated sense of self” and intelligence before “stealing their relationships, their self-esteem, their memories, and then their bodies” after convincing them they had poisoned him and owed it to him. .
“Through psychological terror and manipulation, he convinced them that what they knew to be true was false,” Liman said. “He beat his victims. He tortured them and sometimes starved them to death. He sexually degraded them to the point where they lost all self-worth.”
Once his vulnerable victims were diminished, Ray extorted them, forced them to work and sex-trafficked a woman, Liman said.
“He had the evil genius to take people who were young, not minors, and broke them… and then used them for his evil needs,” the judge said.
Liman announced the sentence after Assistant US Attorney Mollie Bracewell requested life in prison, citing Ray’s “unspeakable cruelty.”
When given the opportunity to speak, Ray expressed no remorse, but denounced his prison conditions and physical ailments.
“Being in jail has been horrible,” he said, noting that his father and both stepfathers recently died in the same week.
It happened in an apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Defense attorney Marne Lenox argued against a life sentence, saying the mandatory minimum of 15 years was sufficient, particularly since Ray has experienced harsh conditions in federal prisons.
She said her client still believes he is innocent and that his victims poisoned him.
Ray was convicted at trial last April on charges including extortion, conspiracy, forced labor and sex trafficking.
During the trial, a woman testified that she became a sex worker to try to pay Ray reparations after she was convinced he had poisoned him. She said that, over four years, she gave Ray $2.5 million in installments that averaged between $10,000 and $50,000 a week.
In a statement read aloud by a lawyer on Friday during sentencing, the woman said she had been subjected to “relentless sadistic torture” by a man who offered a “twisted, empty and broken version of life.”
Salt Lake police are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, after the young man was allegedly assaulted for his sexual orientation at an event center in the city last Saturday night.
“The experiences I had during sex trafficking haunt me today,” according to her statement. She said that Ray had forced us “to keep her mean for him. … Every time we tried to leave him, he mistreated us.”
One victim who spoke up said she was living a happy and exciting life as a sophomore college student when she met Ray “and it all went up in smoke.” She said that she had attempted suicide more than once.
Another victim said in court that she fears Ray will find a way to hurt her from prison.
During Ray’s trial, several students testified that they were drawn into Ray’s world as he told them stories of his past influence in New York City politics, including his role in ruining the career of the former New York City police commissioner. New York City, Bernard Kerik, after serving as the best man at his wedding years earlier.
Indeed, Ray had been a figure in a corruption investigation that derailed President George Bush’s 2004 nomination of Kerik to head the US Department of Homeland Security.
Ray was arrested in February 2020. At the time, then-US attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said an investigation was launched after a 2019 article appeared in New York magazine.
In imposing the sentence, Liman credited the victims willing to testify for doing justice for the type of crimes “difficult to detect and difficult to prosecute.”
“This case shows the strength of the human spirit and the dedication of law enforcement,” Liman said.
The judge said that Ray’s attempt to “extinguish lives” had failed and that the sentence he announced will ensure that Ray never harms another person again.
