Quentin Hubbard’s suicide: A Scientology-based explanation so insane it might be true

Clearwater, October 1976. Every evening at the Fort Harrison Hotel’s Lemon Tree restaurant, which had been converted to the officers’ dining room, we get together for dinner. There are four of us sharing a booth along the wall, the seats and backs covered with shiny lemon green plastic.

There’s Karen De La Carriere, a brilliant Class XII auditor, who sits next to my husband. Across the table I sit next to Quentin Hubbard, also a Class XII auditor. My husband and I are honored to be in such company, and a bond develops between the four of us with easy conversation and good humor as we exchange the “skinny” about what’s going on at the base.

I am eight months pregnant. This is a rarity in the Sea Org. It is only since we left the Flagship Apollo and arrived at the new “Flag Land Base” last December that Sea Org women are allowed to bring a child into the word while remaining at the base. So I doubt that Quentin, who has spent the last eight years of his young life secluded on the Apollo, has ever seen a pregnant woman close up. He seems fascinated with the whole business. He likes to rub my tummy and feel the baby kicking energetically.

But one day, Quentin is a no show at dinner. I’ve seen him driving out of the garage in his big white car, which made me realize that he has grown into a man. He’s now 22. He’s not the first person at Flag who has recently disappeared, far from it. Since he’s LRH’s son, I assume he’s gone to join his family “over the rainbow.”. That’s our code phrase for whatever place Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is occupying at the moment with his entourage. We do know that when we moved off the ship to Daytona, and from there to Clearwater last fall, a lot of our shipmates never joined us here, so we assume they’ve all gone “over the rainbow” too. In my imagination that probably means Southern California, since that is another epicenter of our Scientology world, and it’s warm there. LRH does not like cold climes.

So there was no goodbye, no indication that Quentin had other plans or that something momentous had occurred in his life. He just stopped showing up at dinner one day. I missed him. I knew better than to ask questions.

On October 27, late in the evening, our son was born. After a few days we took him home. “Home” to us was room 668 in the Fort Harrison, where my husband and I had acquired a tiny yellow crib and yellow changing table to take care of the new baby. By some quirk of karma, while I was CS-3 I had written a Flag Order which granted one month leave to every new mother in the Sea Org, since Sea Org units aside from the Apollo were allowed pregnancies. Lucky break. I had decided that while I was off post, I would take the opportunity to read my basic books. My post at the time was that of a Guardian Office Project member, and my project consisted of spending my days at the local library researching the names of persons who had been maligned by the St Petersburg Times, one of the arch enemies of the Church. (But that’s a story for another day).

So I was immersed in Dianetics one evening in November when a loud knock at the door got me up, and Karen stormed into my room. She didn’t mince words. “Quentin is dead,” she blurted out. We were both in shock. She had no further details that might help us process what had happened, then or in later days. I guessed that Karen knew more than she was letting on, for she was clever and well connected, but the unwritten rule was “need to know,” and I didn’t pry. A few days later, I learned that Quentin had been in his car in Las Vegas, and that it was probably a suicide since there was a hose running into the cab from the car’s exhaust.

I was devastated. A disturbing thought nagged at me, and when I eventually shared it with my husband, I found he’d had thoughts along the same lines. Could it be that Quentin, having found that he liked both of us, had decided he’d drop his body and assume the body of the baby I was carrying, about to be born? As devout Scientologists and loyal Sea Org members, we of course believed unquestioningly in the existence of past lives, and in the fact that as an OT, Quentin would be able to knowingly choose his next body and identity. There was nothing to be done about this, but there arose in me a welter of emotions, sorrow at Quentin’s death, empathy for the sadness and despair he must have felt yet hidden so well from us, yet also a strange calm that he had chosen his own path.

 
I have never properly grieved Quentin, because so much about his life and his death was shrouded in mystery and deliberately hidden from his fellow Sea Org members. His death had a profound and lasting effect on me, just at the moment where I myself became a mother. Besides, a display of grief was not encouraged in Scientology, and even less in the Sea Org, where it would be labeled as “case on post” – since one was always on post. The attitude was, one session to run it out, and you should be fine, thanks to the miracle of Scientology auditing.

So now I have set out to better understand him, clawing at my own memories and dredging up every scrap of documented public information I could find, and from these two sources to write for him a proper eulogy, which he so richly deserved and was so resoundingly deprived of.

I arrived on the ship in October 1969 at age nineteen, and Quentin had moved aboard with his family in November 67, so he was always present in the background of my life aboard. We never got close, even though I was only four years older than he was, for we moved in different circles, he in tech and me in management. This made me appreciate him all the more when I did get to know him well in Clearwater.

Quentin was born in January 1954 in Phoenix, just a month before the Church of Scientology of California was incorporated. The family soon moved to Washington DC, then on to London, back to Washington in late 57 and then finally again to London, where Saint Hill Manor became the family home in 1959. Quentin was raised at Saint Hill, right in the midst of the action: Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, new Hubbard Guidance Center with the Power Processes, then Clearing Course. Quentin moved with his family onto the newly acquired Royal Scotsman in late 1967 in England. LRH had left Saint Hill in December 1966 to “research” the OT levels, and returned to captain the new ship down to the Mediterranean one year later. Safe to say that growing up, Quentin was steeped in the tech from a young age, and likely was a graduate of the first Class VIII course given on board in early 1968, made infamous by its overboarding penalties. The Scientology processes as they appeared over time, the organizations that were built up around these, and the Sea Org created to shield the founder and his groups from attacks, were all he knew of the world, all he would ever know.

My most vivid memories of Quentin were of him cruising along the prom deck, his arms extended out and swaying like airplane wings, with engine whooshing sounds to match. I often saw him do this from my nearby office, and I thought it was a bit strange. The boy wanted to fly airplanes, that is for certain. Unlike his two red-headed sisters, Quentin actually didn’t look quite as much like his father. He was closer in appearance, and perhaps in personality too, to his mother, with his pale narrow face, his gentle manner, and his ash brown hair.

But he was LRH’s oldest son from Mary Sue. His older half bother Nibs from LRH’s first marriage had spectacularly abandoned the movement around 1959 after devoting seven years of his life to it. He was in short order shot down in flames by his father and his step-mother’s Guardian Office, perhaps a strong cautionary tale for young Quentin, his would-be successor to the family enterprise.

Quentin became an advanced auditor at a remarkably young age, and that was his position on the ship almost throughout the six years I was there. In the fall of 1972, a spectacular event was held at the Hollywood Palladium with reportedly 3,800 Scientologists in attendance. Quentin, age 18, was featured as the poster child for the technical side of Scientology, with his sister Diana also featured. Safe to say, everyone in Scientology knew Quentin.

I have read many times the assertion that his father had said that Quentin was being primed to eventually take over the technical side of Scientology, but I actually never heard LRH say that in the years in which I was in close contact with him. He apparently said it to his messengers. Here’s Grady:

He had originally planned to have his oldest daughter, Diana, become the eventual leader over management and Quentin to oversee the technical side, however neither of them aspired towards doing such. His next solution was his faithful Messengers who he had known and trusted for years. (Janis Gillham Grady, Commodore’s Messenger, Book II)

Here is what we do know about a specific incident. First Russell Miller in Bare-Faced Messiah :

Quentin Hubbard, now twenty, began rehearsing with the dance troupe and enjoyed it so much he made the mistake of telling his father he would like to be a dancer. “Oh no you wouldn’t”, Hubbard replied. “I have other plans for you”. There was no further discussion, and Quentin was no longer allowed to perform. (p.325)

And Janis Gillham Grady, who was also a dancer in these early days of the Apollo Stars in addition to her messenger post, has this detail to add:

LRH asked the choreographer to let Quentin go because he had other plans for him. When she agreed, LRH told her, “I owe you one”. (Book II, emphasis in original).

I seems 1974 was a tough year for Quentin. First, he was assigned as Chairman on two different Committees of Evidence on fellow auditors, who were also his close friends. He felt forced to find them guilty and uphold their RFP assignment. (Grady Book II)

Then we have this heart rending incident recounted by unnamed ex Sea Org member interviewed by Lawrence Wright:

“You have to improve” he [LRH] barked at Quentin in front of the other auditors. “It doesn’t matter that you’re a Hubbard.” Quentin would sit there and smile, seemingly unfazed, as the others cringed for him. Privately, he confided, “Daddy doesn’t love me anymore.”

I was unaware of these events as they occurred in 1974, for the newly formed dancers’ troupe of the Apollo Stars musicians was the farthest thing from my cluttered mind, as were the troubles the auditors were experiencing. I do however vividly recall what happened shortly thereafter.

In late summer 1974, while we were at the dock in Funchal, Madeira, Quentin disappeared from the ship. There was huge concern and a search party went to look for him all along the long jetty and the treacherous rocky embankment which faced the ocean side. He eventually walked back on board on his own and went to his cabin.

Incredibly, I did not find out the true story until I read it in a book decades later, after I had left the Sea Org and gave myself permission to read whatever I liked, even though it occurred right under my nose as a Commodore’s Staff Aide, and even though I witnessed the unfolding of the drama. Quentin is missing, a search party is out, oh good, Quentin has been found — this was about as far as I got into the commotion. That is testimony to how preoccupied I was with my own post, and to how well information was hidden from the crew, even from us the higher-ups.

Arguably, Quentin’s difficulties could be considered a private, “case” matter, and so rightfully withheld from his shipmates. But the secrecy would also deprive him of the emotional support which might have done him a lot of good, for he was well liked on board.

Doreen ‘Doe’ Smith Gillham, who was the messenger on duty when Quentin returned, told the story after she left the Sea Org. Briefly, when Quentin returned, LRH send Doe to see his son. Quentin said he had swallowed a bottle of aspirin. LRH ordered him to drink a mustard drink, then he was confined to his cabin for three weeks while undergoing the recently developed “Introspection Rundown.” He was then assigned to the newly created Rehabilitation Project Force by his father, over his mother’s objections, “for this was not Quentin’s first attempt at suicide,” according to Janis Gillham Grady. (Grady, Book II).

It was very troubling for me to observe Quentin working on the decks with the RPF, as he was not exactly the “deck ape” type in terms of physique and fitness. No ethics order was published to clarify the cause for his assignment. I assumed it was related to his unauthorized disappearance in Funchal. How long he stayed in the RPF, I do not recall.

Sadly, Grady reports:

Quentin’s auditing in the RPF was thought to have handled him on being suicidal; however, he made another attempt later that year while on a leave of absence in San Francisco. He was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward until the Guardian’s Office found him, arranged his release and returned him to the ship. (Grady, Book II)

So much for Scientology having the tech to handle the insane and the clinically depressed. So much for compassion, to say nothing of fatherly love. So much for the perils of being closely related to the great L. Ron Hubbard.

When his parents and his siblings went west after the move ashore, Quentin remained in Clearwater, as an auditor in the Hubbard Guidance Center delivering services to paying Scientologists. It was at this time that I got to know him as a meal partner. He seemed light hearted until the very last evening.

Karen De La Carriere revealed in a 2013 video that Quentin had audited an “illegal pc” – someone who was not qualified to receive auditing – and had gotten into trouble. Dennis Erlich, the Cramming Officer who called in Quentin for correction the day before he left, published his account of the story in 1995.

Quentin: I think a lot of my father’s stuff doesn’t work. So I false report whenever I need to. Personally, I think my father’s crazy. [By this time, I had turned white and was sure that saliva was dripping out of my now cavernous mouth.]
Dennis: Uh…you know…I’m going to have to re- train you…don’t you? [hoping, beyond hope that it would be OK with him]
Quentin: That’s fine. [zoom goes the hand in the air]
Dennis: …from the bottom up?
Quentin: OK. [paying little attention now]
Dennis: Well… [glancing at my watch and praying it was dinnertime]… it’s almost four. Why don’t you come back tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to go over the folder more carefully [trying to give any excuse for delaying the ethics routing form and retrain order] . . . then we’ll get you started on your retrain. [said under my breath as he got up to leave]
Quentin: OK.

This exchange is both astounding and yet pure Quentin, as Erlich reports that Quentin was doing mock airplane gestures and noises all the while it took place. It would be quasi comedic if it were not so tragic. We will never know what was going through Quentin’s mind. Yet I recognize this precise moment. Whatever the trigger, suddenly you realize that you are done, and you wake up from the bad dream and the whole house of cards comes crashing down, and you are ready to say so and walk away, impervious to consequence.

If Quentin was willing, as he said matter-of-factly, to disregard the instructions to bring the CS-53 Correction List on his preclear to a floating needle, because he thought it didn’t work and would waste her expensive auditing hours, then he had already gone over the edge. If he was then willing to state that openly to the Cramming Officer, one can only assume he was aware of the consequences.

Was Quentin’s nonchalance for real or an act? Had he already decided to leave Scientology? Was this the instant where he made that decision? Was this about freeing himself from his father? He knew his statement would result in a cancellation of certifications and a complete retrain. He was facing one year or more of grueling full time study, 14 hours a day, with no time off and essentially no personal life. Was he casual because he never intended to submit to that, or simply because he was dissociated from reality at that point. Or perhaps he considered that full time study would give him a break from the intense pressures of auditing. Maybe he had he been deeply affected by the failures to improve of his difficult preclear, who was dying of cancer and held out her auditing as her last hope. Perhaps none of the above or a mixture of all of the above.

What is certain, is that Quentin blew the Sea Org the very next day or perhaps even the same evening, and never showed up in Cramming again. He just got in his car and drove off. As the son of LRH, who grew up in and with Scientology, as a Class XII auditor, this was the ultimate crime.

All along, even after I learned of his death in Las Vegas, I had assumed that Quentin was on his way to rejoin his family on the West Coast and ran into trouble of some kind, either personal or external. The truth was quite otherwise, as I found out post-Scientology

When Quentin “blew” from the Clearwater base, there ensued a massive hunt from the Guardian’s Office network to find him, unknown to me. At Flag itself, the Director of Internal Security Chuck Ohl (who was later to be my direct senior when I joined that branch of the GO) interviewed Karen to see if she could recall anything that might give a clue to his whereabouts or his intentions, since she had been his “twin” for mandatory daily auditor drills and so knew him well. Nothing there. Throughout the US, GO operatives were instructed to search all the usual places to find Quentin, dead or alive, including of course gay bars and air fields and flight schools.

Quentin had left a note saying he was heading for Area 51, the infamous and secret Air Force Base in the Nevada desert where high altitude spy planes had been secretly tested. Not surprisingly, there were also rumors of UFOs in the area. Is it any wonder that this area acted as a powerful magnet for the young man, who had been steeped during his whole life and his Scientology auditor training in a culture where space opera stories featured prominently as real past lives events?

After Quentin’s death, a messenger at the La Quinta ranch found letters which he had written to his father: “It sounded like Quentin had gone crazy. He was talking about people coming from outer space and what were we going to do about it.” Interestingly, the messenger knew that LRH had never replied to his son. (Miller)

We only know that Quentin went through St Louis, where he spent a day with aviation buffs, and got to ride in a corporate jet, as described by an eyewitness in an Underground Bunker report. Good for him. That seems to be the last time he was seen alive by anyone connected to Scientology.

But not only did Quentin want to die, he wanted to disappear utterly. He chose a telling spot to park his car for the last time, a side road at the end of a runway at the Las Vegas airport, from where he could see the planes land and take off. Before running the carbon monoxide tube into the cab with the engine running, he removed the license plate and hid it under some rocks nearby, and he stripped naked. Perhaps in his naivety he thought he would remain forever a John Doe and thus avoid causing a “PR flap” for Scientology. But he was soon discovered by police, unconscious with the car still running, so he did become a John Doe, lying in a coma in hospital for fifteen days, before he died, tragically alone. He was soon identified through his vehicle number, which linked him to his address at the Fort Harrison.

Then the GO set into motion an elaborate set of actions to “handle the situation.” Astonishingly, Quentin’s medical records were actually stolen from the hospital. A form signed by his parents was produced to authorize the release of the body, under the pretense that they were away in Ireland and could not attend – they were in fact at their ranch in La Quinta, California. The body was quickly cremated, and a Scientologist’s light plane was procured to spread Quentin’s ashes over the ocean. For anyone who asked, stories were put out that Quentin had been on holidays to take flying lessons and that he had died of encephalitis. Mary Sue reportedly asked for two additional autopsies and the cause of death was modified to “unknown.” Lies, deception, theft of documents, cover ups. Business as usual, then.

Quentin’s death was never publicly announced to Scientologists. A blow from the Sea Org, homosexuality, a suicide. It would all have been entirely too much of a stain. There was no memorial, there was no celebration of his life with family and friends. He was just gone. Rumors started up that he had been murdered. How convenient.

We have two eyewitness statements about Hubbard’s reaction when he was handed the report of his son’s death on November 17, 1976. Doreen Smith could hear him yell at the top of his voice. “That stupid fucking kid. Look what he’s done to me.” Another version notes that Hubbard said “That little shit has done it to me again,” whereupon he threw the death report at Kima Douglas. It was, true to form, all about himself.

Was Quentin homosexual? In today’s world of fluid and non-binary gender identities, even asking the question seems inappropriate. But Quentin lived in a different era. My personal observation is that he had a gentle soul and an effeminate manner. But I well recalled reading the footnote in Science of Survival, published by Hubbard in 1951, where he categorically declared that all homosexuals were perverts and at 1.1 on the tone scale, which is to say in covert hostility. I remember that sweeping statement because reading it in the early seventies, I found it offensive even then. I just assumed that in the intervening quarter of a century, Hubbard had mollified his views.

Certainly, in 1951 the homophobia was a widespread social attitude. One is reminded of the tragic fate of the brilliant British computer scientist Alan Turing. “Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts. He accepted hormone treatment with DES, a procedure commonly referred to as chemical castration, as an alternative to prison.” He died in 1954 at age 41 from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as a suicide, or perhaps accidental poisoning. It took until 2009 for the British government to issue a formal apology.

Trouble is, everything LRH wrote he himself emphatically declared to be both true and unalterable – including the policy letters in which he made these claims. It was circular and iron clad. So the 1951 anti-gay pronouncement and later ones in the same vein are still etched in stone in the Scientology world.

In point of fact, growing up on the Apollo throughout his teenage years, as LRH’s son and heir apparent, Quentin’s sexual development would have been particularly stunted. Consider: anything he risked revealing in his auditing would have surely landed his preclear folder straight up to his father’s desk, who oversaw the case supervision on board. No privacy whatsoever. The same for any of his eventual sexual partners in their own auditing. He lived in a fishbowl, and anyone who associated with him lived in it alongside him. In addition, his choice of partners was limited to his shipmates, as was the case for all of us since no relationship with locals was permitted. And there were eyes everywhere on the ship, in the form of the Commodores’ Messengers who made it their business to know what was going on, and who was bedding whom.

Given the safe assumption then that his parents would know whatever Quentin was up to, would either his father or his mother have interfered with his choice of partners? On that point we have no doubt. Here is Janis Grady in her Book II:

A few females on the ship became close friends with Quentin. One moved into his cabin with him. They stayed together as a couple for nearly a year, until Mary Sue found out they were living together and ordered them apart. This girl then moved on to the Chief Engineer, then left to have an abortion. Mary Sue warned two other females on the ship, who had become good friends with Quentin, not to get too close. Quentin was a very social person with many friends, both male and female, but his closest friends were all female.

And then this from Lawrence Wright writing about Monica Pignotti, who was Quentin’s “twin” co-auditor on the RPF in 1974:

They never became intimate. Quentin told her that he had once become sexually involved with a woman, but when his father found out, she was sent off the ship. He knew that people regarded him as a homosexual, he said, but that was only something he told other women on the ship who were after him because he was Hubbard’s son.

These two version disagree, and the circumstances under which this young woman left the ship are unclear. Although Quentin seemed to think that she was sent off due to her relationship with him, Grady’s statement seems to imply that she had to leave due to being pregnant by her next boyfriend. It’s possible that Quentin was never told the truth about her departure.

Quentin’s original autopsy report showed seemingly incontrovertible evidence of homosexual activity. Perhaps one human being somewhere knows what actually happened. But more than likely, Quentin never revealed his identity to this random person.

 
Here’s the weird part. My son was born late in the day on October 27. Quentin was found in his car on the morning of October 28 around 8:30 am. He knew my due date when he left Clearwater. Could that be a mere coincidence? He was no doubt steeped in LRH’s stories about the between-lives implant, where the thetan after departing one body gets freshly implanted and then returns to earth to pick up a newborn body from a pregnant woman or a maternity ward.

Of course, I have long since stopped believing in those stories. But more to the point, did Quentin still believe in them on the day that he chose to die? We know that he still believed in the space opera stories of the Scientology world view, even though he had stated that his father was crazy.

Did he still harbor the hope that as an OT he was free from the between-lives implants and could consciously choose his next identity – if he chose to return to this planet at all? After all, that was precisely the meaning of the “total freedom” promise of Scientology, to which he had devoted his entire life.

Ironically, Karen De La Carriere ends her short video about Quentin with this printed statement:

After Quentin Died at least 2,000 women claimed their new baby in the late 1970s was the re-incarnation of Quentin Hubbard. Some Scientologists even used it as a scam to extort money.

 
The life and death of Quentin Hubbard was a tragedy of Shakesperean proportions. He had the misfortune of being born in an era where homosexuality was socially anathema, and worse still, within a quasi religious fundamentalist movement whose anti-gay scriptures were as extreme as they were unalterable. He had the misfortune of being born with the mantle of succession to that movement, which he never wanted and for which he was not temperamentally suited. He had the misfortune of being highly emphatic in a cult which despised empathy. He had the further misfortune of being raised in a completely closed vessel, literally and figuratively, so that he was denied any sane role models, any privacy, freedom of choice or even freedom of thought.

And most of all, he had the misfortune of being born the son of L. Ron Hubbard, a man whose extreme narcissism, paranoia, megalomania, greed and vengeful personality blossomed into an organization in his image. Yet Hubbard had the charm and cunning to paste it over with tall tales, elaborate tissues of lies, a gift of the gab, a touch of charisma, an unbridled imagination and endless evasive maneuvers. A man who saw his own son merely as a useful pawn in his own game, to be won at all costs.

Quentin was utterly trapped. He saw no way out. Objectively, he had no way out. He escaped the only way he knew how. A blow would never have sufficed, for he knew he would be hunted down by his mother’s Guardian’s Office and brought back. He’d already been through the RPF once. He was facing a complete loss of his identity as a star auditor, something he may or may not have wished for. He wanted to escape permanently from his Hubbard legacy. Seen in this light, his suicide makes perfect sense.

Yet in truth Quentin could have escaped in life, instead of escaping through death. His two younger siblings eventually did so, but only over a decade later in 1988, and only after their father’s passing. Only his older sister remains in oblivion within the Sea Org, although her own daughter too has escaped the cult. In a perfect world, or even in today’s world, Quentin could have left the prison his father had wrought for him and matured to be an airline pilot and to enjoy life with a partner of his own choosing.

It was not to be.

“Now cracks a noble heart”, says Horatio looking down at Hamlet’s dead body. “Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

— Louise Shekter

 
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Source Code

“I don’t know what number the GPM is back at the year 200 trillion. On some PCs it will probably be number 52; and on some PCs it’ll be number 31, don’t you see? So to get a consistent numbering, when we say the first GPM, we mean the one which is nearest or the latest formed one. It’s the goal of that one that you have to have, but some pcs have skidded their wheels. They’ve listened to speeches by the Democrats or they’ve they’ve looked over Australian legal procedure or something like that, and they’ve skidded their wheels. And they’ve gone back to the second GPM and are living this life in the second GPM. You understand that? They’ve met an oppterm, let us say, in the second GPM of sufficient magnitude to cause them to be the terminal of the second GPM. You understand? That’s horrifying, isn’t it? Well, I’ll tell you why it’s horrifying. Because if you found the goal that they are living at this moment, it wouldn’t run. That makes some PCs more difficult to find goals on than others. You follow that? Now, what is more complicated is that the first GPM may or may not be fully formed. You may have only the first eight items of the first GPM formed, or you may have only the first 16 items of the first GPM formed because of course the PC normally is forming these things progressively as you move on up the track. Well, as we were saying last night, it is really too bad that we didn’t have somebody at various points of the track, and he took a gun and he said, ‘Everyone will now postulate his 65th GPM goal’ —bang! You see, and we all did it at once. Only it didn’t work that way. Some fellows postulated theirs thousands of years ago, some billions of years ago, and some trillions of years ago. So this of course makes it an uneven number.” — L. Ron Hubbard, March 21, 1963

 
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Avast, Ye Mateys

“Vixie is OK. She was taken to the vet this morning. Her leg isn’t broken. It was a torn ligament. Mary Sue gave her a touch assist last night. Vixie went totally anaten. The pain shock was in her shoulder and went up to her head which she for awhile refused to permit to be touched. The touch assist was done on both sides of the body (other leg too) and near and far areas. You wear thick gloves in giving a dog or cat a touch assist as they snap and scratch and disassociate. The swelling went down and she came up to growl tone. On return from the vet she got a bone and sat in the foyer where she could bark at people.” —The Commodore, March 21, 1970

 
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Overheard in the FreeZone

“The hidden datum about thetans is that at static there is only one thetan. There is only one of us. All thetans are one beingness, divided against itself. Because there is only one of us at the top of Filbert’s Expanded Tone Scale, any aberative incident which happens to one of us in the presence of another one of us has to be erased also from that point of view, because that other person’s viewpoint is YOURS too! We experience everything that happens around us from the point of view of everything there. But even there’s more. If for example a person is involved in an automobile accident, to achieve total erasure (not merely partial and a release) it would be necessary to assume every viewpoint possible. This would be what looks like madness from a human perspective: the driver of car A, the passenger in car A, the driver of car B, the French poodle in the front seat of car B, the pedestrian who was gazing into a shop window and heard the crash behind her, car A, car B, the pavement, the sky, the buildings, the lamp post, the stop sign (especially the ‘stop’ sign, ha ha!), the sparrow flying past, the tree growing nearby — Get the picture?”

Past is Prologue

2002: Scientologist John Mappin has lost a case in the U.K. for defrauding a gossip columnist, claiming that he would produce a film based on the writer’s life. From The Guardian: “Benjamin Pell, better known as ‘Benji the Binman,’ has won back the 77,500 pounds he was hoodwinked into paying to finance a bogus Hollywood blockbuster about his life, following a high court ruling this afternoon. Mr. Pell brought an action for fraudulent misrepresentation against John Mappin, an heir to the Mappin and Webb jewelry empire, claiming he had been ‘duped.’ He made four separate payments totaling 77,500 pounds so as not to miss this ‘unique opportunity to work with one of the biggest names in Hollywood.’ His counsel, Marion Smith, said: ‘He believed there were going to be Hollywood writers on the case, for it to be picked up by a Hollywood studio, cast with big-name actors and a Hollywood film resulting.’ In fact, the ‘well-connected Hollywood film-maker’ was a friend of Mr. Mappin called Iain Jones, who turned out to be a hairdresser. Mr. Jones, she claimed, had never directed or produced any film at all, but had been credited with hair design on three Quentin Tarantino films – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and White Man’s Burden.”

 
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Random Howdy

“So when some little kid says ‘goo goo ga ga’ during an auditing session the auditor tells the parents that junior was speaking in a whole track alien dialect?”

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

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Next pretrial conference May 31. Trial scheduled for August 29.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Last hearing was on January 18, referred to grand jury. Additional charges also referred to grand jury after January 5 assault while in jail.
— Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay sentenced to 9 years in prison. Jeff’s sentencing to be scheduled.
— Hanan and Rizza Islam and other family members, Medi-Cal fraud: Pretrial conference March 25 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next pretrial conference set for April 8.
— Joseph ‘Ben’ Barton, Medicare fraud: Pleaded guilty, awaiting sentencing.
— Yanti Mike Greene, Scientology private eye accused of contempt of court: Hearing held on February 15, awaiting ruling.

Civil litigation:
— Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Eleventh Circuit affirmed ruling granting Scientology’s motion for arbitration. Garcias considering next move.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Valerie’s motion for reconsideration denied on March 15.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Scientology has said it will file an anti-SLAPP motion.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Third amended complaint filed, trial set for June 28.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: Trial concluded, Cannane victorious, awarded court costs. Appeal hearing held Aug 23-27. Awaiting a 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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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, including our four days in Los Angeles covering the preliminary hearing and its ruling, which has Danny facing trial and the potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison.

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] ABCMouse honcho gives Scientology another $10 million — for construction of ‘LRH Hall’
[TWO years ago] Scientology and the coronavirus: Keeping the orgs open as ‘essential services’
[THREE years ago] That feeling when Scientology tries to creep you out as a recruiting strategy
[FOUR years ago] Kirstie Alley goes OT 8, celebrates her ‘confront’ level on Scientology’s cruise ship ‘Freewinds’
[FIVE years ago] Reza Aslan is already being dishonest about indie Scientology ahead of CNN episode
[SIX years ago] No longer working for Monique Rathbun to sue Scientology, Ray Jeffrey opens up
[SEVEN years ago] ‘Going Clear’ subject Tom DeVocht reveals new info about Tom Cruise and Scientology’s leader
[EIGHT years ago] Video Vault: L. Ron Hubbard at his campiest, in 1960’s State of Man Congress!
[NINE years ago] The Mother and Child Reunion: Another Dianetics Nightmare
[TEN years ago] Battlefield Earth: Still Making the World Safe From Scientology Nearly 12 Years Later

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 21, 2022 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

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, 1995-2021 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2021), 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…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

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