Johnny Lewis Vying with Luka Magnotta for Title of Wackiest Scientology Madman

We were intrigued when we learned that several years ago, Canadian murder-dismemberment suspect Luka Magnotta had professed to be a Scientologist, and wrote in a blog post, “I wished every night that Tom Cruise would adopt me.”

As far as we could tell, however, Magnotta’s actual involvement with Scientology was either exceedingly tenuous or nonexistent.

That isn’t the case with Johnny Lewis. The Sons of Anarchy actor was a second-generation Scientologist, the child of prominent church members of the highest order (they’re OT8’s), and he also had extensive involvement with Scientology’s troubled drug rehab program, Narconon.

And as for his suspected crimes, he’s giving Magnotta — who carved up a friend on camera and mailed his body parts to different recipients — a pretty good run for his money.

You’ve probably heard some of the particulars. Lewis, 28, is suspected of brutally killing his 81-year-old landlady and also ripping apart her house cat. He then either accidentally fell or purposefully jumped off a roof and ended up dead of the fall. Drug use is, not surprisingly, suspected.

Scientology researchers have been working overtime to dive through Lewis’s past, and they’ve come up with all sorts of interesting things.

— Marc Headley pointed out that Lewis was a frequent participant in Scientology’s internal films: “When I worked at Golden Era Productions, we shot many projects with Johnny. He was the star of the Film TR-5 – Why TR’s.”

— Johnny’s father, Michael Lewis, is an OT 8 with a 30-year history of Scientology course completions. And so is his mother, Divona.

— Johnny was becoming increasingly unhinged this year, as his criminal history shows. But he also had a history of involvement with Narconon, appearing at a 2004 event to promote the drug rehab program, saying that his mother had used its teachings to keep him off drugs. Narconon has been much in the news lately after three deaths occurred in nine months at its flagship facility in Oklahoma, the last in July. Multiple local and state agencies are investigating the center. We’ve reported that Narconon uses deception to lure in unsuspecting patients who think they’re going to get drug counseling but instead get Scientology training. The connection to Lewis is only going to make things even tougher for Narconon at a moment that it’s already under intense scrutiny. Is it any surprise that the church is scrubbing its websites of any mention of Lewis as fast as it can?

— Karen de la Carriere pointed out that Sons of Anarchy‘s top producer is John Linson, who is not a Scientologist, but Linson’s sister, Jenny Linson, is very much a well known church member. She provided some of the most entertaining theater on the final night of Anderson Cooper’s 2010 four-part series on Scientology, which featured the wives of defected church executives.

And that has us wondering, with Jenny’s brother running the show, and Johnny Lewis on the cast, are there any other church members on Sons of Anarchy? Here’s the cast list. We’re too lazy to check it, but we figure our eagle-eyed fellow Scientology Watchers can scan it and tell us what they think in the comments!