Masterson witness fears for safety as investigation drags on and on

Amy Zimmerman at the Daily Beast dropped a bomb on the Danny Masterson story last night. She revealed that the LAPD and Los Angeles District Attorney’s office have copies of letters written by the mother of one of Masterson’s accusers — the woman we’re calling “Victim B” — and those letters suggest that in 2004 the Church of Scientology was persecuting two different women who had made rape allegations against Masterson. One of the letters, in fact, was addressed to church leader David Miscavige.

“I have seen [the documents] and believe these are 100 percent authentic,” actress Leah Remini told the Daily Beast. “These match exactly everything I learned in Scientology and are consistent with my understanding and experience about how Scientology treats victims of crimes. I believe that there are many more documents contained in Scientology files that are required to be kept by Scientology. Those documents would support every aspect of what these victims recounted.”

The letters also corroborate what we’ve previously reported about the allegations made by two of the four women who have come forward in the LAPD/LADA investigation. We have written at length about what Victim B alleges she experienced on an April night in 2003 at a party at Danny Masterson’s house, and the punishment that the Church of Scientology later put Victim B through, requiring her to spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive interrogations.

The church denied to the Daily Beast that it persecutes victims who report crimes by fellow Scientologists. “The Church adamantly denies that it ever ignores any allegations of criminal behavior, especially at the expense of alleged victims. What is being stated is utterly untrue. This has nothing to do with religion. This story is being manipulated to push a bigoted agenda. The Church follows all laws and cooperates with law enforcement. Any statement or implication to the contrary is false.”

The current investigation got going in the Fall of 2016 when three of the victims came forward (one of them was Victim B, who had first gone to police in 2004). We revealed in March 2017 that the investigation was going on. The LAPD initially handed off its investigation to DA Jackie Lacey’s office in April 2017. More than a year later, there is still no word at all about whether charges against Masterson are going to be filed.

In the meantime, as we explained recently in a lengthy piece about one of the accusers, Chrissie Carnell Bixler, and her husband, rock musician Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the accusers have reported instances of harassment to the police, including the mysterious death of Chrissie and Cedric’s dog.

We can now report that a key witness in the investigation — a witness we first quoted in our initial March 2017 story — has been undergoing frightening harassment in recent weeks, and is afraid for their safety.

This same crucial witness was quoted at length in Zimmerman’s story last night, providing key details about what they saw at the 2003 party at Masterson’s house when Victim B came down from Danny’s room. “At some point about an hour or an hour and a half later I recall seeing [Victim B], who came up to me…and she said, ‘Oh my God Danny just raped me.’ Her hair was still a bit wet and she had bare feet. I remember feeling shocked and then Luke saying ‘no that’s not what happened!’…I remember trying to help her as well get some water in the kitchen and she was sort of was stumbling around and Luke and Danny wanting to get her back upstairs… They didn’t want me to interfere though and I remember thinking that they would get her back upstairs and she would sleep it off and be better,” the witness is quoted as saying from a report made to the LAPD.

One of the things that stunned us about this investigation was that although we spoke to this crucial witness for our March 3, 2017 story, they were only then called in for the first time for what they said was a brief and rude interaction with the LAPD. They weren’t interviewed again, at a proper length, until May 2018.

“This has been emotionally exhausting these last 18 months. But I knew what I had to do and I know this is going to help a lot of people,” the witness told us last night.

Just the night before, the witness was in a panic, telling us they had received some frightening text messages and then a strange person had showed up at their house — and they were unable to get through to the LAPD detective handling the investigation.

“[We] were talking on the back patio. [We] heard a car door slam across the street from our front yard. I went out there to go investigate with a flashlight. Some white dude with scraggly long hair and glasses in a 2008 white Dodge Durango just stared at me. He looked back to his phone while he was on it. Stared at me a second time. I went back to grab my camera and he took off.”

The witness allowed us to see the frightening texts, which included a reference to their actual address and that they teach acting and dance classes at the house…

 
The witness’s neighbor spoke to us as well, saying that the truck had been parked outside the witness’s house on at least the last two nights.

“There’s been a white truck out here the last couple of days, and he’s been mad-doggin’ the house. If you go out there, he just tries to stare you down. The guy is definitely watching the house,” the neighbor says.

The witness says other cars have been seen there, and their trash has been dug through, all of which they have reported to the police. But if these are attempts to intimidate them, the witness says it isn’t going to work.

“I told Chrissie earlier. I’ve had it. I’m in this for the duration. I’m going nowhere.”

 
OUR PREVIOUS DANNY MASTERSON COVERAGE

Mar 3, 2017 LAPD probing Scientology and Danny Masterson for multiple rapes, cover-up
Mar 8, 2017 Danny Masterson: Victim C gets support from a veteran actress, but will LAPD answer the call?
Mar 11, 2017 Source: Scientology made Danny Masterson’s Victim B search past lives to explain being raped
May 9, 2017 Danny Masterson hires Michael Jackson criminal defense attorney Tom Mesereau in rape probe
Nov 1, 2017 Hey, Netflix, why does Scientology actor Danny Masterson still have a job?
Nov 2, 2017 Read the threatening letter Danny Masterson’s attorney Marty Singer sent a victim’s husband
Nov 26, 2017 EXCLUSIVE: Scientology interrogated Danny Masterson and accuser, didn’t notify LAPD
Feb 14, 2018 Prosecutors prepare charges carrying life sentence for Danny Masterson
Apr 27, 2018 Strange days for a woman accusing Danny Masterson of rape — and for her rocker husband

 
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CORRECTION

On Thursday, we posted some explosive tweets that had been made public by a young woman who went by the name “Z.” We had previously exchanged messages with Z, who for months had been making parts of her story public, that she was fighting with her Scientologist mother about leaving the church. We told her then that we planned to write about her story at some point, and we explained that her public postings made any attempts at privacy somewhat complicated. Last week, Z made even more explicit what was going on in her life in some stunning new tweets, and we communicated to her that we would be delinquent if we didn’t comment on those tweets here at the Bunker, and that we planned to add some limited details of who she is for readers trying to understand what was going on. After we posted that story, however, her friend Aaron Smith-Levin complained that although posting Z’s explosive tweets was fair game, adding those additional details for context ahead of her ‘Scientology and the Aftermath’ episode was a step too far. After thinking about it for a couple of days, we think Smith-Levin has a point. While Z’s tweets tell a dramatic story on their own, we understand that she wants to save those basic contextual details for the show. So we’ve taken those down, and we will continue to look forward to seeing her tell her full story on Leah Remini’s series.

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on July 8, 2018 at 07:00

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