Warren Marston knew Diane and John Colletto personally and was their close friend for many years. On a comment on Marty’s blog, Warren provided some personal details about the Collettos. I hope you and Warren don’t mind that I post his comment here – it’s really worth a read for anyone who wants to know the full story:

“Warren Marston | June 15, 2013 at 6:38 pm | Reply

This thread has focused on a very real problem in the Church – the generally poor, and sometimes truly awful, quality of course supervision that has occurred, and the suppressive attitude with which far too many Sea Org members have treated the public and each other. But there’s a second issue – the truth of this guy John Colletto as an individual Scientologist.

There’s a huge outpoint in the comments on that second issue. Other than Marty’s initial report, no one chiming in on what a horrible person John Colletto was has claimed to have had ANY personal experience with him at all. They’ve just dubbed in various details, and jumped on the bandwagon to vilify him, without knowing him even a little, or having any actual data other than from Marty. This is in spite of the fact that LRH insisted that (1) successful data evaluation requires data of comparable magnitude, and (2) good management requires data from multiple viewpoints. Therefore, I offer the following.

I actually DID know John Colletto. In fact, I knew him EXTREMELY WELL, both personally and as a fellow staff member. He and his wife Diane were among my closest friends. And, I can tell you that John Colletto was absolutely NOT the person imagined in the comments here. In fact, most of the time he was the OPPOSITE of that guy. He had no trace of the “Sea Org valence,” and left the S.O. largely because he COULD think for himself. Most importantly, he was completely non-robotic, and highly effective, in his application of Standard Tech.

Yes, he did end up killing his wife and himself, and that can’t be justified. But the story of John and Diane Colletto is far more complex and instructive than the one-dimensional picture painted in this thread. It was a veritable Greek tragedy.

Do you want the truth? Can you handle the truth? If so, read on.

I met Diane Hertz in Berkeley in 1969, and John Colletto a few months later in San Francisco, before they met each other. We became good personal friends outside of orgs, and remained so until they died in 1978. Diane’s mother Polly Hertz lived next door to me for 30 years. When she got Alzheimer’s several years ago despite being OT 5, I became her geriatric care manager, and saved her from psychiatric commitment twice.

Unless John was quickied through the Class 8 course and the Pro Course Sup course during the Spring of 1978, he never became a Dean of Technology. He was Class 6, OT 3, and until 1976 was the Senior C/S at Bridge Pubs. His wife Diane was the Distrib Sec at Bridge, and the editor of the Auditor journal. In 1976 John left the Sea Org, but remained married to Diane, and started the Los Feliz Mission in their one-bedroom apartment just a few blocks from the PAC base. He asked me to be his Deputy ED and Distrib Sec, which I did, and we worked together at the mission for about a year, until we couldn’t stuff any more students into the apartment. I then went on to head up the LA DMSMH campaign under Diane at Bridge.

John was a GREAT mission holder, who cared deeply about his students and pc’s. He was their friend and mentor, who guided each one with excellent judgment, using whatever LRH ethics, tech, or admin would help with the particular ruin that person needed and wanted handled at any given time. His students and pc’s got great wins, and went up the Bridge. He was a bit on the serious side, but I never saw him handle anyone the way Marty describes. I was trained and experienced as a course sup and student debugger myself, and filled in when John had to audit during regular course hours. If any of his students had been suffering from out-tech sup’ing by him, I would have detected it, and I didn’t. John also audited me a little, and did just fine. He was present, friendly, in comm, and displayed good conceptual understanding and judgment – not low-toned or robotic at all.

The proof of the high quality of John’s tech delivery was the fact that his students and pc’s kept coming back for more. In the year we worked together we started 15 people on the Comm Course, of which 12 continued. Of the 3 who didn’t, one was an obvious SP, who we refunded in the middle of the course and sent on his way. Two others were quite PTS, and we sent them to the LA Org as required by LRH policy for missions. Of the 12 who did continue, ALL 12 completed the Student Hat, HSDC, Life Repair, and got onto an R3R co-audit. Half of them joined staff, either at our mission or one of the local orgs. And several of them reached OT levels in later years. Could the guy described in the comments on this thread have achieved that? No way.

Over the next 30 years the mission went through a number of ownership changes and physical moves, and ended up as the Foothills Mission in Montrose, which at one time, before it’s FSMs got ripped off for the Pasadena Ideal Org, was one of the largest missions in the world.

Despite the great job John did at his mission, he did have a case. Physically, he was a mesomorphic, high-adrenal Sicilian you’d definitely want on your side in a street fight. When sufficiently restimulated he could get angry. That happened rarely, and I never saw it during his post hours. But it did happen, and the frequency increased over time. He eventually had a psychotic break, murdered Diane, and commited suicide. Nothing can justify that, but it’s a separate issue from his basic goodness and professional competence, which were very high. Also, certain facts should be known to put his dark side in proper perspective.

Marty mentioned that Billy Kahn was the Sea Org recruiter who promoted that Bridge had a Dean of Technology handling staff enhancement. Actually, Billy was the HAS, in charge of ethics as well as recruitment. He was also Diane’s step-brother, quite 1.1, and a promiscuous practicing homosexual. On recruiting missions he’d have casual sex with wog guys he picked up, and on occasion even hit on guys he was trying to bring into the Sea Org. Once when he was drunk at a family Christmas party he hit on me, despite knowing that I was straight.

Because of the family connection through Diane, John knew about Billy’s 2D scene going back many years. And as Senior C/S for staff enhancement at Bridge, he was determined to either help Billy or at least get his dramatization restrained, as it was destructive to the org and a potential big PR flap. This missed Billy’s witholds tremendously. He had to dead agent John, and as HAS was in a position to do so. He began third partying John to Diane.

John and Diane had already been having some difficulties in their marriage, but could always restore ARC and their love for one another through simple communication. But Billy regarded John as his enemy, and had power as the senior ethics terminal in the org. He began telling Diane to solve her marriage by ending it, and heaped third party on her about John in an effort to convince her to leave him. This naturally upset John. He and Diane would then talk it out, and all would be well again. But Billy kept repeating his black PR campaign, resulting in Diane separating from John several times, which aggravated John even more. He handled the situation with communication each time, but the situation kept escalating, even after he left the Sea Org in 1976, because Billy just wouldn’t leave it alone.

While this was going on, the Sea Org began its initial campaign to bring the missions under control. John had built his mission from scratch, in his own name as the sole proprietor, as was allowed in policy at that time. He owned his mission and all of its assets, lock, stock, and barrel. But S.O. Missionaires accused him of embezzlement because he kept cash reserves derived from mission GI in a bank account under his own name. I have no information that Billy had anything to do with this attack, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. John’s mission charter was revoked, and the mission was taken over by one of his graduates.

John then decided to go back into the Sea Org, which resulted in his receiving repeated, out-tech, gang-bang sec checks while unsessionable at 3 am. As a direct result of this suppression, he began having what he described to me as “mini psychotic breaks” in which it seemed to him that his OT 3 case had come back. THIS WAS ABOUT 6 WEEKS BEFORE LRH ANNOUNCED NOTS!! Not understanding what was happening to him, and dubbing in that he must have made no case gain on OT 3, John began to wonder if he might be an SP.

John would pull himself out of this growing psychosis, but the restimulation he was under continued to push him deeper into it. Finally he just gave up and let the dramatization take over. He stole a gun from one of his former students at the mission, shot Diane, and escaped. The next day he called the student, apologized for stealing the gun, and said that he was “the worst suppressive in the history of the universe,” because of what he’d done. Then he killed himself.

Afterwards, he visited me several times, always in the mock-up of a ghostly rotting corpse, alternating between evil intention and utter, self-imposed, guilty agony. The G.O. forbade me from attending his funeral in his hometown, and threatened me with declare if I did. Diane was original Full OT 7 and in good case shape. She rather smoothly went on to pick up her next body. When she got old enough, she rejoined the Sea Org.

Had NOTS been known and available at the time, and John not gotten suppressive sec checking, he could and would have handled his case, and the tragedy that befell him and Diane would not have happened. And it WAS a tragedy, because they were both outstanding at their respective hats.

A few weeks later, I heard that in order to handle Billy Kahn for his role in what had happened, LRH created the RPF’s, RPF’s, RPF, with Billy as the sole person assigned to it. The rule was this: RPFers could not talk to anyone outside the RPF. Those on the RPF’s RPF could not talk to anyone, on or off the RPF, other than themselves. And those on the RPF’s RPF’s RPF (Billy) could not talk to ANYONE, EVEN THEMSELVES, ESPECIALLY NOT THEMSELVES. Billy blew before completing the program.

We’ve all been suppressed by the Church. That makes us prone to see enemies, and to jump on the band wagon to condemn others. But we’re all basically good, too. And we need to pull together if we are to get anything done. John Colletto’s story is an extreme version of what we’ve all been through in one way or another. We have cases. Out-tech and other forms of suppression can at times drive us to become our worst selves. But that’s not who we really are, and we must never forget that.

If I’d been allowed to attend John’s funeral, I would have told him to go ahead and suffer for as long as he felt necessary, but then to come back, get cleaned up, make his amends, and get back to helping people, because as HIMSELF he was really, really good at it.

If anyone’s interested, I was angry when I started writing this. I’m crying now as I finish it.”

“http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/dean-of-technology/#comments

Yes. The tragedy of incompetent “tek” – everything from “curing” John(we knew him as “Joe”) by submitting him to the RPF and coercing Diane to divorce him, to the incompetent handling of this violent situation by physically rushing after an armed man who’d had a psychotic break and had kidnapped his wife. Tragic endings for all.
A normal person or group would have contacted police at the first threat of violence by Joe, but that’s just not Hubbard’s way of doing things.

Hello Charlene,

Thank you for adding your insights from that time. Of course, a plan gone wrong would never be included in the official police report. GO/OSA have always been the enforcers of the alternate reality Scientology is bent on creating to clear us all and save the planet…at all costs. Laughable most of the time. Deadly way too often.

Hi Marta. Thanks for writing this. Yeh, I was there, too.

I am so happy to finally see an epitaph to Diane. She was well-loved and her death was tragic. The entire handling of John and the incident was tragic.

Marty’s story is embellished and he cleverly omits the fact John had blown the RPF weeks earlier, was staying at a local hotel around the corner of the complex, and that Marty had been assigned to drive Diane safely home, back to her berthing at the Hollywood Inn. Marty was, instead, trying to catch John by repeatedly driving slowly around the complex block with Diane in tow as bait.

According to Jeff Porter’s story at the time, at one point, John had Diane alone in the car and threatened to shoot her if anyone got closer. John said he just wanted to talk to her. According to Jeff, Diane said not to worry, she’d be fine and agreed to talk to John. Mark/Marty ignored this and ran after him anyway and Jeff tripped him to keep him from getting shot. Mark/Marty still went after them and caught up with him. Andre Tabayoyon witnessed the shooting but describes it differently. (Andre was running up the street from the other side of the block, AOLA side)

The fact that John was on the RPF and a Scientologist was hidden from police in the report, according to Jeff Porter (Tony, you read the police report – is this true?).

Anyway – the whole thing was a botch by OSA, Scientology, Andre, Mark/Marty… everyone involved. A horrible, hideous travesty and loss of life. None of these guys had police training for handling this sort of situation. Instead of calming John down, physically rushing him probably got him more excited and defensive. He was already over the top after the RPF and losing his wife.

Two more lives needlessly lost because of scn.

RIP Diane. You were loved.

Did you have to handle the guy as an Ethics officer afterwords?

If I were the Ethics officer trying to handle the poor guy, I would probably write him an Ethics program just to get him to cognite and GTFO.

A few of you here mentioned how hopefully Scientologists will sober up and get out like some of us did. Well I still think about some of the poor people I knew when I was in Scientology. Already 50-60 year old but still live in a tiny apartment, no spouse, spending their days in the org and in some lowly part time job somewhere, not getting ANY better personally, trying to keep their heads low when high ranking SOs or CMOs pass by in their newly established Ideal Morgues… And I wonder what they do it for. For the memory of the gains they once got, long ago? Meh. Well I know some who defected, and it’s always good news.

Hi BTW! First comment here. Love Tony Ortega and his prolific writing on Scientology, love the commentators. Now lets keep me a secret from the DSA and OSA lest I’d be forced to disconnect from some precious family members.

It’s first hand stories like this that make Tony’s site must reading. I cannot believe what comes out of the Sci’s mouths.

actually it’s an old bartending shirt from the Hilton Hotel on Clearwater Beach… and I don’t believe I’ve ever met a female Sea Org Member… whatever that is….

I really, REALLY apologise for being mean about your shorts and shirts! See, BuryTheNuts2 – that’s what happens when I pluck up the courage to speak my mind…I get caught out! Can you please pretend you didn’t read it, dearest Jimmy? 😀