ALBANY — A new documentary on NXIVM explores the history of the shadowy, cult-like organization and raises questions about the fates of several women who came into the thrall of the Capital Region-based group and its co-founder, Keith Raniere.

Scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, on the Investigation Discovery channel, the two-hour special "The Lost Women of NXIVM" is hosted by Frank Parlato, a Buffalo-based writer initially hired to do public relations for NXIVM. He ultimately broke with the group and became perhaps its most damaging critic. It was Parlato who in 2017 reported that a group of women within NXIVM had been branded with Raniere's initials as part of their membership in a secret "master/slave" club within the larger organization.

Parlato's revelations led to reporting in The New York Times and other outlets, including the Times Union, that ultimately prompted an investigation by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. Raniere, who was arrested in Mexico in March 2018, was in June found guilty on all counts in a sex trafficking, forced labor and racketeering trial. He faces up to life in federal prison at his sentencing, currently scheduled for Jan. 17. Five NXIVM insiders, including Seagram's heiress Clare Bronfman and the group's president Nancy Salzman, pleaded guilty to felonies in the months leading up to Raniere's trial.

"The Lost Women of NXIVM" follows Parlato as he crisscrosses the nation from the Knox Woods townhouse development in Halfmoon to Alaska and the Florida Keys, where he conducts the first on-the-record interview with Kristin Keeffe since her break with NXIVM in 2014. The former longtime NXIVM insider had a son with Raniere.

"I was very determined at a young age to understand spirituality, and I always thought that would be walking with God," Keeffe said on the documentary. "I never thought that might entail walking with the devil."

The program — which also includes an interview with Times Union Investigations and Capitol Bureau Editor Brendan J. Lyons — explores the October 2002 death of 33-year-old Gina Hutchinson, who was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in a Buddhist monastery in Woodstock. The Times Union reported in 2012 that Hutchinson's sister, Heidi, learned in 1984 that her underage sister was allegedly having sex with Raniere, whom she once saw crawl out of sister's room.

"It's all very suspicious. She was a gentle soul," Heidi Hutchinson told Parlato of her sister's death, which was determined to be a suicide. She was skeptical her sister would choose such a violent method to take her own life. She says if possible she would apologize to her late sister for not keeping Raniere away.

"Once he went out that window that first night, he should have never come back in," Hutchinson tells Parlato. "I should have slammed that window shut. ... I just didn't recognize him for the monster that he is."

Parlato stages a demonstration in which a woman with a similar build tries to pull the trigger of a shotgun similar to the one used in Hutchinson's death and in the same manner. The woman can't reach the trigger with her hands.

The documentary includes a video — shown during his trial — in which Raniere says some children are "perfectly happy" having sex with adults and that the age of consent in some countries is 12. Testimony at Raniere's trial alleged he was sexually involved with a Mexican girl when she was 15 years old. She later became part of his secret "master/slave" group.

In that group, known as DOS ("Dominus Obsequious Sororium," Latin for "Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions") he forced his "slaves" to live on 500-calorie-a-day diets. Parlato says in his narration that Keeffe, like many of the women in Raniere's inner circle, kept herself so skinny that she wasn't even aware she was pregnant until just weeks before her son was born. She describes her discovery of financial wrongdoing by NXIVM that seven years later led her to leave the group with her son and "nothing but my pocketbook."

On camera, she says her first stop was a police station, where NXIVM's attorneys quickly located her. Speaking of her decision to go to the authorities, Keeffe said she knew that, "In Keith's mind, that was nuclear war. ... I knew I was being hunted like an animal."

Keeffe, who did not testify at Raniere's trial, says she became "the primary whistleblower" and provided information to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security — who, she claimed, told her to "back off or you're going to get killed."

Keeffe also talks about being tasked with conducting an internal NXIVM investigation into the death of Kristin Snyder, who disappeared in Alaska in February 2003 after several months of involvement with the organization. Alaska State Police investigators believe Snyder drove her Toyota Tacoma to a campground along Resurrection Bay in Seward, paddled her kayak into the bay and intentionally capsized in the glacier-fed water. Neither her body nor the kayak were recovered. Snyder left behind a note scribbled in a spiral notebook found in her truck that said she had been "brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off" during her NXIVM training.

Keeffe says that she still believes Snyder is alive, and that the official investigation into her disappearance "isn't real." No one has faced charges connected with Snyder's disappearance.

In Alaska, Parlato interviews Snyder's domestic partner, Heidi Clifford, who tells him that in the days before her disappearance, Snyder "reported to me that she was pregnant with Keith's baby" — something that Snyder, in the midst of what Clifford describes as a "psychotic break," repeatedly shouted during a NXIVM training session before she was hauled out by staff.

Clifford said she never revealed Snyder's possible pregnancy to the Alaskan authorities. Matt Malone, who did IT work for NXIVM, tells Parlato that Bronfman told him Snyder had been impregnated by Raniere.

A document expert who was given Snyder’s farewell note and a Valentine’s Day card she gave Clifford tells Parlato, “I would not say they’re the same,” but acknowledges that a larger sample of her handwriting would be needed before she could state more conclusively that Snyder’s hand produced the farewell note.

Raniere's attorneys did not respond Friday to the Times Union's request for comment on the issues raised in the special.

The program also features an interview with Roger Stone, the self-described political dirty trickster who briefly worked for NXIVM more than a decade ago.

"I saw complete mind control," says Stone, who was recently convicted of lying to Congress about his outreach to Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential election. "I saw total blind loyalty."

Recent NXIVM coverage:

Mexican slaughter victims were from NXIVM recruiting ground

NXIVM Exposed: A post-trial podcast

Sentencing dates set for two NXIVM figures

NXIVM leader Keith Raniere won't be sentenced until 2020

Full Times Union coverage of NXIVM