DA wants Toronto woman to testify as fifth accuser in Danny Masterson retrial

 
According to a defense motion that is going to be heard today in the Danny Masterson criminal case in Los Angeles, Deputy DA Reinhold Mueller is planning to add a fifth accuser in Masterson’s retrial, which is scheduled to begin jury selection on April 11.

And the woman Mueller plans to call to the witness stand is someone you first heard about here at the Underground Bunker in an October 2021 story.

Kathleen Jenkins told us that she believed the That 70s Show actor assaulted her at a ‘Dracula 2000’ cast party, something she had never reported to law enforcement.

After that story was published, however, Jenkins did report her allegations to Canadian authorities, and now Mueller wants her to join the three Jane Doe accusers and Tricia Vessey (Jane Doe 4) in the retrial.

Like Vessey, Jenkins would be included as a “prior bad acts witness,” but Masterson will still be facing the same three forcible rape counts based on the allegations of Jane Does 1-3 that he did in the first trial, which ended in a hung jury and mistrial on November 30. (If he’s convicted of all three counts, Masterson faces 45 years to life in prison. He has maintained his innocence.)

Defense attorney Philip Cohen is opposing the inclusion of Jenkins, complaining that her allegations are 23 years old and are significantly different than what the other women are saying.

In his motion, he spelled out what she will testify to:

According to discovery provided by the People, Kathleen J. learned of the allegations against Masterson in 2021, after which she communicated with two Jane Does and a reporter. She was eventually put in touch with law enforcement and now alleges a 23-year-old sexual assault.

Kathleen J. would apparently testify that in 2000 she was at a wrap party at a hotel in Toronto, where she had been working on a movie. Cast members of a different movie were having a party in a suite in the same hotel, and Kathleen J. accepted an invitation to join them. She was with her then-husband (now ex-husband) and two stepdaughters. She says she drank wine with her family at dinner but drank nothing at her own wrap party and nothing at the second party in the hotel suite. Kathleen J.’s husband was on a balcony smoking and she was sitting on a couch when Masterson approached her and offered her a vodka and orange juice. Kathleen J. says that after consuming the drink she began to feel lightheaded and said she needed to go to the bathroom. Masterson led her to a door and into a bedroom.

Kathleen J. claims that Masterson guided her to a bed, removed her nylons, and penetrated her vagina with his penis. She says that while this occurred, she felt like she could not move. The next thing she remembers is walking down the hotel hallway, where her 17-year-old stepdaughter came out of another room. They both returned to their separate hotel rooms. Kathleen J. got into bed with her husband, who was asleep. She had pain in her vaginal and anal area. She did not discuss the incident with anyone.

Kathleen J. says that several months later she and her husband were watching the movie that Masterson had been filming in Toronto. She became upset and disclosed the incident to her husband. Years later, she disclosed the incident to a girlfriend. She did not report the incident to law enforcement until October of 2021, after she communicated with the other Jane Does and a reporter.

Cohen complains that the defense only heard about the DA’s intention of calling Jenkins in a March 6 email, and he says that isn’t enough time for Masterson’s defense to investigate her claims.

One thing the defense intends to do, he says, is “obtain written notes kept by Kathleen J. and a reporter with whom she apparently spoke.” Also, that they plan to call that reporter to the witness stand.

In 2021, Masterson’s prior defense attorney, Tom Mesereau, tried a similar gambit, serving us with a subpoena and asking for us to turn over any notes on our reporting in this case, which goes back to 2017 when we first broke the news that Masterson was under investigation.

Our attorney Scott Pilutik easily got that subpoena quashed, and we have a feeling that Judge Charlaine Olmedo will have a similar amount of patience for any attempt by Cohen to get access to our documents.

In his motion, Cohen also reiterated a long list of restrictions he’d like put in place for the retrial, most of which he also asked for the first time around.

For example, he wants any mention of the Church of Scientology kept out of the retrial, a request that was denied in the original trial. Similarly, he wants Tricia Vessey to be prevented from testifying, something that the prosecution overcame last time.

Cohen also wants to keep out any testimony that the accusers were drugged by Masterson. The prosecution did keep out any direct allegations of drugging in the first trial, but still got in plenty of testimony which implied that the women had suddenly found themselves suspiciously intoxicated after Masterson had served them drinks.

Another change Cohen wants in the retrial is to prevent Jane Doe 3 from testifying about the December 2001 “unconscious sodomy” incident that appeared to cause some confusion with the jury. It was that incident, when she woke up to find that she was bleeding and that Masterson admitted to having anal sex with her while she was passed out, which motivated her to report him to the Church of Scientology, she testified.

But it was an earlier, November 2001, incident that her criminal charge is actually based on, and that is very different: She testified about yanking Masterson’s hair in order to get him off her when he wouldn’t stop having unwanted sex with her.

Cohen argues that the two separate incidents were confused by the jury, and he wants the unconscious sodomy excluded since it isn’t being charged.

He goes on to list numerous other “inflammatory” statements by the Jane Does that he wants excluded, most of which were also kept out of the first trial.

Also at the morning’s hearing, we’ll be interested to see if there is any suggestion of the trial start date being moved back to later in the month of April. We’ve heard that this might be a possibility, but for now jury selection is still scheduled to begin on April 11.

 
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Technology Cocktail

“Brainwashing—that’s the biggest joke of this half-century, brainwashing. A fellow will talk out enough havingness to throw himself into an introverted condition. You’ve got his mind concentrated upon his bank, and now you make him talk, and out goes the havingness. And he goes right on downscale with great speed.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1957

 
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THE PROSECUTION OF DANNY MASTERSON

We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links as Danny faces a potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison. NOW WITH TRIAL INDEX.

THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

[1] Marc Headley [2] Claire Headley [3] Jeffrey Augustine [4] Bruce Hines [5] Sunny Pereira [6] Pete Griffiths [7] Geoff Levin [8] Patty Moher [9] Marc Headley [10] Jefferson Hawkins [11] Michelle ‘Emma’ Ryan [12] Paulette Cooper [13] Jesse Prince [14] Mark Bunker [15] Jon Atack [16] Mirriam Francis [17] Bruce Hines on MSH

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

[18] Trial special with Chris Shelton [19] Trial week one [20] Marc Headley on the spy in the hallway [21] Trial week two [22] Trial week three [23] Trial week four [24] Leah Remini on LAPD Corruption [25] Mike Rinder 2022 Thanksgiving Special [26] Jane Doe 4 (Tricia Vessey), Part One [27] Jane Doe 4 (Tricia Vessey), Part Two [28] Claire Headley on the trial [29] Tory Christman [30] Bruce Hines on spying [31] Karen de la Carriere [32] Ron Miscavige on Shelly Miscavige [33] Karen de la Carriere on the L’s [34] Mark Bunker on Miscavige hiding [35] Mark Plummer [36] Mark Ebner [37] Karen Pressley [38] Steve Cannane [39] Fredrick Brennan [40] Clarissa Adams [41] Louise Shekter

 
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Source Code

“The art of Sec Checking is very, very well established. It’s one of the finest arts that we have. But it is to a large degree an art. It is restimulating the material to be picked up. And then picking it up….All right, now we’re going straight into the questions here, and the first question I’m going to ask you is: Do you know any communists personally?” — L. Ron Hubbard, March 27, 1963

 
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Avast, Ye Mateys

“Our ship has become rather shabby. We are improving that fast. We are improving our crew appearance. We are getting a lot done. We have a lot to do. We have gone through a period of floods of new recruits. They aren’t new recruits any longer. Do your own job with initiative, snap and pop and we’ll make it all the way. We right now have lots of good, able people. We have a lot of good, effective programmes. We can make a go of it all right.” — The Commodore, March 27, 1969

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“We apply LRH tech to genuinely help people and many of us have done this for decades. It seems to me that the admin here is more fixated on controversy than any real and genuine interest in helping people improve conditions in their lives or in the world. So unless I see some immediate improvement in the quality of his posts, which evidently I don’t expect, I shall be exiting this group in the near future. This group is a front for the admin’s unresolved controversies and undermining the integrity of the Independent Scientology Field and those genuine Independent Scientologists who dedicate their lives to helping people improve their lives by applying LRH principles, daily, weekly, monthly and year on year, consistently over time.”

 
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Past is Prologue

2002: The St. Louis Post reported that Scientology’s Applied Scholastics program has purchased a former retirement home in St. Louis, Missouri to be its new headquarters. “A nonprofit organization promoting the teaching methods of L. Ron Hubbard, is moving its world headquarters to Villa Gesu, a former retirement home for Catholic nuns. Applied Scholastics International bought the complex from the School Sisters of Notre Dame in October for $2.9 million. For the previous 70 years, the 55 acres of brick buildings and rolling hills overlooking the Mississippi River had been home to infirm and elderly sisters who needed regular nursing care. The last of the sisters moved out at the end of the year. Bennetta Slaughter, chief executive of the organization, says she expects the facility to be up and running in the fall, although no date has been set. ‘We don’t even have design plans finished, frankly,’ she said. ‘We have a bit of a runway before we’ll be there.’ Asked about the relationship between the Church of Scientology and Applied Scholastics, Slaughter says there is none. ‘Obviously they’ve been very kind to the organization in terms of support,’ she said. ‘But we get our employees from the same place every secular corporation does. We advertise in the newspaper.’ Because the organization’s Los Angeles center will remain open with much of its current staff, the St. Louis headquarters will hire most of its employees locally. Teachers from throughout the country will come to the St. Louis center for short- and long-term courses, and although some will be able to stay in dormitories on the campus, most will stay in hotels.”

 
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Random Howdy

“In a country that supposedly has 3 million-plus Scientologists they could only muster a few hundred in Portland. How much more farcical can this crap get before the remaining few wake up and screw?”

 
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Mistrial declared November 30. Retrial scheduled, jury selection begins March 29. Next pretrial hearing: Feb 16.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Next pretrial hearing Feb 13.
— Rizza Islam, Medi-Cal fraud: Trial scheduled for March 1 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next status conference Feb 13.

Civil litigation:
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Complaint filed April 28 in Tampa federal court, Scientology moving to compel arbitration. Plaintiffs filed amended complaint on August 2. Hearing November 17 to argue the arbitration motions, awaiting ruling.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Selection of arbitrators underway. Next court hearing: March 15, 2023.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place at least through February 7.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: New trial ordered after appeals court overturned prior ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

 
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SCIENTOLOGY: FAIR GAME

After the success of their double-Emmy-winning, three-season A&E series ‘Scientology and the Aftermath,’ Leah Remini and Mike Rinder continue the conversation on their podcast, ‘Scientology: Fair Game.’ We’ve created a landing page where you can hear all of the episodes so far.

LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH

An episode-by-episode guide to Leah Remini’s three-season, double-Emmy winning series that changed everything for Scientology watching. Originally aired from 2016 to 2019 on the A&E network, and now on Netflix.

SCIENTOLOGY’S CELEBRITIES, from A to Z

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

 
Other links: SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks. Scientology’s Ideal Orgs, from one end of the planet to the other. Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society. Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in a weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Scientology wants you to forget Laura D got her files because 259 ‘ministers’ had access to them
[TWO years ago] Why the upcoming ‘prelim’ is a nightmare for Danny Masterson — and for Scientology
[THREE years ago] Scientology’s founder: ‘WE are going UP while the world is coming down!’
[FOUR years ago] The Mike Rinder bobblehead: Turning the tables on Scientology’s smeary harassment
[FIVE years ago] Scientology’s secret vaults get their star turn on the new TV network, and it’s nutty!
[SIX years ago] Reza Aslan’s ‘Believer’ episode about indie Scientology lived down to all expectations
[SEVEN years ago] Scientology’s European mouthpiece speaks at DC event honoring Marco Rubio
[EIGHT years ago] ‘Going Clear’: Spanky Taylor on John Travolta, Priscilla Presley, and escaping Scientology
[NINE years ago] Ryan Hamilton jumps on Narconon’s answer in Nevada drug rehab lawsuit
[TEN years ago] LEAKED AUDIO: David Miscavige Declares Scientology’s Golden Age at LRH Birthday Event
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology’s Concentration Camp: Where Can Miscavige Put “The Hole” Now?

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 27, 2023 at 07:00

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Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2022 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2022), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 15 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

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Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele

 

Tony Ortega at The Daily Beast