ALBANY – The nine U.S. citizens slaughtered in an ambush Monday were from a Mormon community in northern Mexico where NXIVM recruited teenagers for a “girls school” to live in the Capital Region under the care of a high-ranking “slave” for Keith Raniere.

The Mormon community’s ties to the disgraced NXIVM leader’s cult-like organization were revealed in May during the testimony of NXIVM defector Mark Vicente, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles who once lived in Knox Woods, the same Halfmoon townhouse complex as Raniere.