Even before a sweat-lodge retreat led by guru James Arthur Ray claimed its third victim over the weekend, his seminars were already tainted by serious injury and even suicide, The Post has learned.
Ray — billed as a motivational prophet in the flick “The Secret” and touted by Oprah — is at the center of a murder probe after two people, including Kirby Brown, a 38-year-old upstate woman, died at an Oct. 8 “sweat-lodge” event he led near Sedona, Ariz.
A third victim, Liz Neuman, 49, from Minnesota, died Saturday from injuries sustained at the event, and her family plans to sue.
Ray’s past seminars are also peppered with horrific incidents, public records show, including:
* The July 2009 suicide of a Minnesota woman who jumped three floors to her death from a San Diego mall balcony.
* A May 2005 event at Disney World, where a New Jersey woman shattered her hand after Ray allegedly bullied her into performing a ritualistic board-breaking exercise
On July 25, just 10 weeks before the sweat-lodge deaths, Colleen Conaway, a typically cheerful 46-year-old from Minnesota, made her fatal plunge at the California mall.
Like the victims in Arizona, Conaway had no identification on her when she died, according to law enforcement.
After the jump, Ray and his staffers left the mall knowing that Conaway was missing from the group, according to authorities.
“I had just talked to her two days before, and she was still the sister I knew,” said Lynn.
“I can’t even comprehend what changed, what went on in those two days that would cause her to do this.”
In the Disney World incident, a 2005 negligence lawsuit charged a “reckless” Ray pushed seminar attendee Diane Konopka to smash the board to “overcome . . . self-esteem issues.”
Repeatedly unsuccessful, the “humiliated” and “extremely exhausted” Konopka felt “she had no choice” but to do what Ray demanded, the suit says.
The guru settled in 2007 for an undisclosed sum.
After the sweat-lodge tragedy, Ray quickly left town and has declined to be interviewed by police.
A spokesman for Ray declined comment.