The Stolen Kids Of Sarah Lawrence

When Larry Ray visited his daughter at college, her roommates were happy to let him spend the night. Nine years later, they are still struggling to get out from under his grip.

- Ezra Marcus And James D. Walsh

I. Anyone who spent time with Talia Ray during her first year at Sarah Lawrence College heard her talk about her father. He was a truth teller, she’d explain, who’d been silenced by a group of powerful, vindictive men. He’d been sent to prison for his heroic efforts to save her and her younger sister from their abusive mother, and his incarceration was the result of deep-seated government corruption. Talia, who had grown up in New Jersey, was old for a freshman and had become the de facto leader of her group of friends, organizing their housing for the next year at Slonim Woods 9, a drab two-story brick dorm in the middle of campus. So in late September 2010, at the beginning of sophomore year, when Talia told her housemates that her father was getting out of prison and needed to crash with them for a while, they were mostly unfazed.

Within days of his release, Larry Ray moved onto Sarah Lawrence’s campus. He planted himself in the common area, cooking steak dinners and ordering expensive delivery for Talia and her seven housemates. While they ate, he told them stories in a nasal Brooklyn accent about his long and decorated history as a government agent, his former work as an international CIA operative, how he recovered Stinger missiles off the black market and engineered a cease-fire in Kosovo. He loved to preach the values of the Marine Corps and dropped references to his relationships with high-ranking American military officers.

Larry was of average height and overweight, yet he could be intimidating. He had a clean-shaven head and favored polo shirts cut to make his 50-year-old frame look hulking. His machismo was out of place on the liberal-arts campus. “Do you work out?” Larry would ask Talia’s friends. “Can you defend yourself? You look really weak.”