Last Podcast On The Left - Some Place Under Neith / Episode 2: Shelly Miscavige Pt II - Org Crossed Lovers

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Find "Some Place Under Neith" right here on Spotify.---In Part 2 of Shelly Miscavige, Natalie and Amber discover how her husband David Miscavige found his way into Scientology, and when & where it led to their star-crossed meeting. Then they discuss how Shelly acted in her early years of marriage through the eyes of her niece, Jenna.

Some place underneath. Good day to you, Amber. Welcome to this episode of Some Place Underneath. It's part two of Shelly Miskovich and where she is. I know. She's in my butt. She's in your butt. Yeah, she's elephant in my butt.

Girl, why didn't you tell me that we'd have to do this whole episode? Hey, Shelly. Hey, Amber. She seems fine. She's doing good. She's got a little summer cottage in there. It's warm down there. Oh, well, OK, then we don't even need to worry about her anymore.

I think your butt's a perfectly lovely place to be. Yeah, it's just her and some Japanese guy that thinks the war is still going on. Oh, man. You just not going to tell them? No. No, it's funny. Well, that's cruel, but I get it. So, well, we'll just, I'm going to just in case she is not doing OK in there,

let's continue to look down the pathway of her life. You've been seeing the Scientology Center in the Valley, right? I've seen. I don't know about the one in the Valley. I'm still getting used to the neighborhoods in California. Yes, I have been here for three years, but it's just so vast and strange. It is wide. Yeah, and I can see how cults thrive here because it's a lot of like,

oh, how can I make money and not pay taxes and get pretty girls on my side? And also the need that we all have for constant validation. Yeah, just somebody who will applaud you and tell you that you're special and give you different little awards and medals and sometimes you get a fun sash. Yeah, because like Hollywood Studios, they're not doing that. No. One of the main goals usually of an actor is to get a little shiny award. So if you can do that without having to succeed and have the talent

and drive that it takes to get to the Academy Awards or whatever, I could not give a shit. Personally, I don't care about the awards. I feel stupid about it. I don't think anybody does. I think actors do. Yeah, oh yeah. And that's about it.

But I like acting. I like doing the movie side of it, but the awards make me feel like an idiot. I would be down to wear the dresses though. Yeah. I do love watching those dresses. I mean, I'm a big fan of just wearing dresses to whatever. You know, overdressed is just a foolish term. I agree.

I dress way too much up for everything usually. Either that or I look like a rag person. There's no real in between for me. I do like the Scientologies, those little girl uniforms, even though they were sexual, to the socks, to the knees and the little shorts. Yeah. Because the ones around LA, I mean, they dress like cater waiters. That was really the last bastion of any ability they had to make fashion choices for themselves.

Now they just wear, either they wear very plain clothes or they wear sailor outfits. It's so weird. I mean, if I'm going to start a cult, like cool outfits, number one. Right. It's the don't tell mom, the babysitter is dead method of survival and getting people to do what you want. Instead of the school uniforms, you get fun outfits like a sexy boy scout and a sexy nurse. Shoulder pads.

Lots of shoulder pads and polka dots. Yeah. Neon colors, I'll always be down for a thigh high tight or a thigh high sock with a little chuck tailor. Oh, I'm joining that call. Right? Yeah. Absolutely.

Exactly. And that, you know, maybe that's one of the reasons that they got those Commodore's messengers to really lock in during that time and not rebelled too hard is like, you still give them a little bit of like what they want and keep them there. And so, you know, with Shelly on that boat, we left off where she and the other Commodore's messengers and the other people on the boats were giving up their life at sea and they had docked the boats in clear water. And that is where to this day, the Sea Org flag place still exists, even though Sea Org

members are all over the place. But that is the place where Shelly first made contact with Mr. David Miscovich either there or over in La Quinta, which was right in the same area. And we'll get to that in a second. I wanted to do a little bit of a breakdown of where David came from because even though this is about Shelly, we kind of have to understand how they got to this terrible place together. Yeah, they locked eyes and fell in love immediately or was it a slow courtship? I do think that it was very much a transactional thing.

Like a medieval marriage? Yes. But I think on their own terms, I think both of them had such eyes for greatness. And they wanted to achieve these things. They were like, that's another person that will do this with me. So I don't know if there was a lot of passion or less. And I don't know. I couldn't be wrong.

They might have had crazy ass sex. But if the sex is too good, I'm giving up that cult. You know what I mean? Because I'm with you, baby. I love you. You made me come. Yeah. You know, like the call leader, you don't make me come.

Bye. Yeah, I imagine he wasn't pleasuring her very much because I think that it gives you a sense of yourself and a sense of power within yourself. And I think maybe that will give you like courage to leave. So I don't think he could really, he didn't, not that he probably could anyway, but I don't think he took her all the way to orgasm ever. Do you think women in Scientology never come? I can't imagine how.

How? So sad. It seems like they experienced such little joy in general. They're mean. They're very mean, but they're also hungry all the time because they don't really get, especially in the Sea Org, they don't really get a lot of food. They get punished for everything. They don't really have any pleasures.

Give that girl a stake in an orgasm. Come on. Seriously. Well, we're working on it. If you would just let her out of your butt. Come on, Jelly. Get out of here. I don't want it.

It's warm down here. You know, she's right. She's right. It's probably very cozy. They love little cozy nooks too up in Big Bear and stuff, which is very sadly where she's probably being held captive. Big Bear? Well, close to Big Bear.

Big Bear is very beautiful. Yeah. The Scientologists have really taken advantage of that landscape for a long time. Man, we gotta take that back. It's such a quaint little town. We can go get a cottage cheese or something. I don't know. A little spoon, a little spoon.

Yeah. We definitely know about farm things. Can you tell? So, okay, let's go back to David Miscovich. Let's spiral back into where he came from. We know more about him, like I said, because his niece, Jenna Miscovich Hill, came out with a book as well as his father, Ron Miscovich Sr., who was the one who actually introduced his family to Scientology to begin with.

So David Miscovich was born with a twin sister in a Polish-American family on April 30th, 1960. They were born in New Jersey. So these are like, you know, this is North Jersey, Philly people, just like salt-of-the-earth fuckers. And his mother, Loretta Angie Otto Miscovich, was born January 1936 in Ashland, Pennsylvania. She met David's father, Ron, in high school and got, whoops, pregnant. Oh, no.

Right after graduation with David's older brother, Ron, Jr. Was it a shotgun wedding, do you think? Yes. So to keep out of wedlock pregnancy a secret, they quickly got married, which is a tradition in my family as well. It's how many of my aunts and uncles and parents were born. Mine too, my brothers. Every time they show me a picture of this new girlfriend, they're like, look at my girlfriend,

she's hot. I'm like, oh boy, that's going to be my sister-in-law. Well, you know, it's just nice, just nice that they're caring about that baby, right? Anything ever goes wrong whenever you get married because of a pregnancy. Sometimes it works out great though. So they did that at a time where there really didn't, there wasn't a choice, they just, if you got somebody pregnant, then you got married. You got to.

So they started a little family together and she was mostly housewife, but she was trained in nursing, which she wanted to be later on in her life. But we find out in these books that she really wasn't permitted to because she was the mother of the chairman of the board of Scientology. So there was a lot of weight that was carried with that name later on. So David's father, Ron Miscovid, she was born in January of 1936 in Mount Carmel, PA. And after he married Loretta, he worked as a salesman, the kind where you like go to door to door and you call people and stuff, but he ended up being really good at it.

However, that job tip like took him away from home a lot and Loretta didn't really like it. They had a pretty openly shitty marriage. And Ron actually, I don't know how to feel about this, but he openly discusses about how he used to hit her in front of the kids in his book. Oh my God, Ron and Loretta, what an abusive marriage. Doesn't it, don't the names sound like they would be abusive? Yeah, you shut up Loretta, you get out, you stop drinking Ron, you come home, you come

home and you deliver an onion. And in Ron's book, from his perspective, he said it was very mutual. We won't know about her side because she passed away. He's a graphic killed her. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of really weird shit in this family, but according to Ron and his book, they were both very bad to each other and it wasn't just him. So we don't know, but he credits the struggle with his family along with his own curiosity and sort of disinterest in maybe traditional religion or family therapy as what made him

very attracted to Scientology. And he brought his family into it in 1969, which is right around the time we were talking about with Janice Grady being on the boats and whenever the Barnett family, Shelley's family was also like getting really intrinsically tied into Scientology. So he first heard about Scientology from a sales colleague at a convention. So just some random dude he met and was like, maybe you've ever heard of Dianetics and he's like, what's that? And then he goes, oh, wow.

And it's really just Dianetics and all of that is, of course, just New Age stuff that he kind of cobbled together and then called it his own work, LRH, but he was also very attractive to people for his charisma. So it really worked. You know, he sold a product to people and people really dug it. And I get it because a lot of New Age kind of philosophy really appeals to me in a lot of ways too. Like the power of attraction and stuff, I really do enjoy that stuff and I think it

can be beneficial to you. Yeah. And there's some like scientific proof to that chip, you know what I mean? The problem comes in whenever there's a specific alive head of that going, this is my stuff and I made these ideas and you have to listen to me and nobody else and that always happens, you know? Yeah. Cult leaders all have to be super charismatic.

I saw a psychic. I went to a psychic in Arizona and he was not charismatic, something like older hippies. They're always mean. Yeah. And all they do is talk about money and I think it's because they didn't make it in their youth, you know? Yeah. There's also something, you could say there's certain generational things too of people who

came from a certain time period when money was scarce or, you know, I don't know, with the whole, you know, boomer situation we're going through. It's a little bit of a broad statement but, you know, that time period it became maybe from when they grew up, it became an idea of being afraid of not having enough so just needing more and more and more all the time. I don't know. But Ron was a very complicated man in a lot of ways so who the fuck knows why he did this other than I think it's actually, honestly, I think it's very simple to know why he did

it because he wanted slaves. Yeah. He wanted to control his wife as he had been doing and fuck this, it was both the same. If it was, you would leave. Right. And he also, LRH also has really strong ties to Aleister Crowley and like a cult stuff, which of course I don't care about, but he lied about it. He didn't talk about it ever and he abused his earlier spouses and did all kinds of weird

shit. Also, Del Close, I think, he was in that group. Yeah, possibly. Because they all, I heard a conspiracy, I mean, a story. It was told to me at a bar and I did no research on it so I'm just going to pass it off as truth. Sure. As you do.

Yeah. But it was L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley and Del Close, they're all hanging out and they said, how are we going to make all this money, how are we going to make money? And two guys were like, we're going to start a religion. And Del Close said, I'm going to start a comedy theater. That sounds totally believable because L. Ron is on record a lot saying that the only way you can make money is to start a religion. He was pretty open about it in his earlier years.

That's weird. And Del Close thought women were witches. What is it with these dudes starting religion making us not come? Come on. I don't know. But you know what? Jokes on him. Being a witch is cool.

See, David had three siblings. John Jr., known as Ronnie, was born in 57 and was active in the church until year 2000. His daughter, Jenna, Miss Kovic Hill, escaped the church and wrote a tell-all book called Beyond Belief, which we'll talk about quite a bit. David's twin sister, Denise, who is still inside the church, but has had a bit of naughty troubles at the same time. Yeah. She's still there, but she speaks out too much.

It's complicated. There's a lot of stuff about her abandoning her kids, and then she's got busted with like DUIs and so is her daughter. It's not great. But we still, again, we don't know much about her because she's still technically connected to the church. And it's another person who David may sort of be dealing with in a way that's not okay. Manipulating.

Yeah. And maybe kind of pressing her to stay hidden. The baby of the family, Lori, I can't find a lot of information about her, but she would have been born around 62 or so, and she's still in the church, another person who's kind of a mystery person. Just lost. Somewhere in there. Yeah.

Do you think they even have a social security number? I mean, I hope so because when they were born in the 50s and 60s, this was before they entered Scientology or like, you know, right beforehand. So like they were out in the real world at that time. So they should at least have a social security number, I fucking hope. So because they have this tax exempt church status, along with that comes religious laws where you can kind of just not have to report a whole lot about people in your church. Yeah.

You don't have to report it. You don't got to do taxes. Everybody gets a candy cane. It's fine. The family, according to Ron, was pretty dysfunctional, but he got them interested in Scientology with him. And initially Loretta was like, all right, I'll try this. David who was and remains to be tiny, had a lot of health problems and Ron applied Scientology

techniques to help David with his asthma problems, along with some other things. Again, this is very much of a new age spiritualism that's done throughout a lot of different techniques. So it's not necessarily specific to Dianetics, but it's a lot about like touch therapy and the power of the mind and just like addressing things in your head. It's just talking about like, just think about things more. It sounds like a lot of people weren't raised appropriately, but then someone approaches them and they're like, hey, if you think positive thoughts, that makes your whole world better.

And they're like, really? Yeah. Oh man, I hated myself this whole time. Yeah. I mean, sadly, that's pretty, pretty close. And a lot of these people like just like Ron were just curious about other things they wanted to experience the world in a different way. And they got taken in by it.

They got got. They got got. And it did help David. It seemed to work on a lot of levels, especially it's like those things you want them to work and they start working. It's crazy. Even back then, even though he was tiny, David wasn't tiny in personality. And according to Ron, he was super hard headed and aggressive from an early age.

So whether or not had anything to do with his weird dysfunctional family life at home could be debated. I don't know how bad it was because Ron's not going to probably open up about that. But either way, he faced trouble in school early on. Ron says, at home, David was subject to discipline of his mother and me in school, however, things were different. There, he was a wise ass who had the habit of taking verbal potshots at other kids. Eventually the other kids would tire of the abuse and try to put a stop to it, which apparently

resulted in what David wanted all along, a fight. Oh, sorry. It's always the bullies that get bullied the hardest at home. Totally. And he is a bully. And the way that Ron talks about it is through a father's eyes where he's kind of not accepting that his son was the bully. He's like, he's just trying to fight against the bullies by being a bully.

It was just a girl in high school who would kill you if you stepped on her shoe, huge bully. And later on, I found out that her father was molesting her. Yeah. It's crazy how that works out. You got to do something with all that rage. So Ron says, ordinarily, the smaller kids are the ones who are bullied. In David's case, that was not always so. Often he came home with tales of a scrape he had been in that day.

Another negative trait that he seemed to possess early on was a habit of denigrating other people. So to me, I imagine David as a little kid, have you ever seen PCU? What's that? It's a 90s movie. Is it lots of like, we got some beer and girls? Is it like that? Kind of, yeah. Well, there's this character David Spade plays in PCU where he's this sort of bootlicker

kid who's super obnoxious. And I imagine David as that character, any of you have seen PCU, but if that character was violent, that's always what I imagine him as a kid. He was a super rule follower. He was openly against drugs and alcohol, was drawn to authority. He was a bootlicker until he was able to put the boots on and then he became the boot wearer and the other people had to lick him. You know?

That's what they want. That's what they all want. They do, always. And I really imagine the kids hated him. I can't imagine that he had any friends in school because he sounds unbearable. He's a nerd, man. But like a mean nerd. I always say if you're ugly, you got to be nice.

You got to have some kind of talent. Ugly people and you're mean. Come on, man. Yeah. Offer something to the table. Seriously. Well, so again, this is one of the reasons I think that David was attracted to Scientology so young.

And the family was, they didn't like participate in religion otherwise. They had like first communion and all that stuff. So they were engaged with the Catholic Church and there was a lot of talk and still kind of is at the time that you could still be like a Catholic and be a Scientologist. They tried to separate them, but the more and more they tried to get that church moniker, they pulled away from that a lot more. But at the time they were like, yeah, you're a Catholic. Come on.

Come, you can do both. And so like I said, he had asthma and he suffered from severe allergies because he was this little weakling baby. But he was really determined to play football and sports or I think more likely Ron wanted him to play them. But in his book, of course, Ron's like, David wanted it and I'm like, I don't know. So Ron would like do stuff like fill his pockets with metal plates so he would meet the weight minimum to play football and shit when he was a little kid.

So his dad was definitely, I don't know if he was overbearing, but he had a lot of thoughts about what his kids should do. And then once the family was like really on board with the Scientology thing, Ron ended up selling their belongings, they put their furniture in storage and they took his family to study in England at St. Hill, which is the place where we first, whenever Janice Grady first saw Shelly's mom, we talked about St. Hill on the first episode. It is the place in the UK where a lot of people from around the world came to study with LRH. And so Ron and his family, including David, went and did that and David was 12 years old

at this time. It was 1972. So young. I just can't get over the kids in this thing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild.

They just did not, there was no overseeing of how these kids are treated at all. So they stayed for a year and they studied and they, I think kind of went to school, but I don't, it didn't seem like that was a priority. And then they went back to the US about a year after that. And the family sort of started getting split on how interested they were in Scientology. So Ron was obsessed with it still. And he, I feel like Ron kind of just like didn't really want this family because when he was over in St. Hill, he got to play jazz and he was in a band and he was getting all

this pussy. I don't know if he was sexual. I don't think he was cheating. And these are speculations about Ron. He seems like a perfectly nice man, but he was really into the whole vibe with the Scientology in the UK. Loretta was not super into it. And she didn't really like the back and forth.

She wanted the kids to have a normal high school experience and everything. Cause they're, you know, they're getting towards their teens or they're in their teens. And she wanted them to have like sort of a more American dream life. Yeah. That she never had. Cause she got, you know, knocked up and then sold off into marriage, not sold off, but she had to get married. Right.

Right. Totally. But David really was, he didn't really have to be encouraged to keep doing it. He really took to the rules and the part of it that's like analyzing people in the grading system. That was like, he was like a pig on shit with that stuff. He didn't really need to be pushed into it. So within a year, Ron had convinced all of them to go back to the UK against really what

Loretta wanted to do. That's so bad. And that whole like, what he said, like sizing somebody up, I hate that. And that's something not necessarily meant. A lot of people do. And they're always like, who's the alpha? I'm the alpha. Are you the women do it too?

Oh yeah. Totally. I'm the alpha. I'm the head. Right. And there's a certain level of that that's probably just like human nature, but these kind of organizations take that up to like the umpteenth level. And you know, part of being a Scientologist is getting audited, which means you are being

forced to tell your darkest secrets to a random person. And that are used against you later. Yeah. Yeah. They record them all the time, no matter what, which is, there's a lot of evidence to say that's why John Travolta hasn't really left is because they have something on him. But they also made him famous. So what are you going to do?

Yeah. I mean, he definitely feels like he owes them something it seems like. So during this time period, David became an auditor because again, with Janice and her stories on the ship, they treated kids like adults. They were expected to behave like adults. And so even though David was still in high school, I think he was about 15 at this time. He became an auditor, which means he was auditing grown ass people, asking them about like their sex lives and stuff, but they eventually, Loretta kind of got her way and they ended

up getting back to Philadelphia when David was in high school. At this time period, David's about 15, he's 15 when they get back to Philly and David's not happy at home. So Ron says, one day I came home to find him lying on his bed and looking none too chipper. Teenagers can get like that. When he was nearing his 16th birthday, still it was pretty unusual for him. Maybe he'd had a rough day at school. Maybe a girl had turned him down.

I figured I'd talk to him a bit and we'd straight now whatever was eating at him. What's up? I asked dad, I can't take it anymore. He said, how do you mean? Look it. Actually, his voice probably like, look it all the kids around me are taking drugs. That's the way it is. I don't want to do this anymore.

I want to go help Elron Albert. Did he really say that? I don't think that kid said that. I don't know. I believe David did it. Really? Daddy, I don't want to do drugs. I want to go help Elron.

Oh, wow. I'm telling you a bootlicker, man. Yeah, what a psycho. So Ron says, I certainly was not expecting that. What he was telling me in essence is that he wanted to drop out of high school and move away from home, away from his parents and his brother's sisters and join an organization that expected total allegiance and dedication to Scientology for the rest of his life. And as I would later learn, far longer, he didn't even have a driver's license.

And here he was telling me he was ready to jump straight into adulthood. I looked at him. Now he was sitting upright. His tone was emphatic. I could understand his frustrations. He must have been feeling. So he goes on to talk about how David tried to convince him by saying like, high school is like, these kids don't care about anything.

I want to help save the world. I want to do something important. And so he asked his dad if he can drop out of high school. And because Ron is believing in the cause at this point, he said, OK, I'll help you drop out of high school. That's bad parenting right there. It's not great parenting. But Ron, in defense of him, I do think that he thought he was doing something that was

good, that he was proud of his son, because in his mind, Scientology was supposed to be helping the world. The reason a lot of people got in was because it was a scary time in the 60s. There was all kinds of threats coming from everywhere and stuff was changing really quickly. And people were looking for an answer. I really actually feel like there's some similarities to stuff like the way that QAnon makes people feel accepted. Yes.

And they're seeing the truth. Yeah, and they're outing these people because they're all pedophiles and like, don't you want to save the children? I want to save the children. I don't want you to see children get molested. Yeah. You know? And if you were just like this, if you join this, the kids will stop being molested.

Right. Regardless of the fact you're accusing like innocent people of it and all that, and there's like no truth to a lot of what you're saying. It's not actually helping any kids because you're like misdirecting it to people who aren't molested. You know, that stuff is a little bit, it gets lost. It gets lost. There was like a truck full of children found recently.

Yeah, nothing to do with QAnon because it wasn't one of Trump's enemies, so they didn't care about it. They didn't care. I mean, this is like literally right there, guys. Look at this. Right here. You're stuck. Yeah.

No, they've done. Actually, there's been some really huge breaks and finding a bunch of exploited children recently, which is really nice and very optimistic, I guess. So yeah, I mean, this is one of those things that validates you and it's, he really liked the whole award system and the cults, and so he dropped out on April 30th, 1976. It was his 16th birthday, and he dropped out of school. Wow. 70s were also a different time.

Like I look at people in high school, their photos in the 70s, they look like full-blown men. They're tired already. They're just like, ugh. You know, they're already smoking four packs a day and everything. Not that I wasn't smoking in high school, but... Yeah, but they look like they have a mortgage. You know what I mean?

Yeah, totally. And when I was 17, I was like, hey, guys. I am currently still like that, like, hi. Even though I own a house now, I'm still like, what's a mortgage? Because we're millennials are useless in a lot of ways. So at this point, when he, okay, so when he drops out of school, Shelly's been on the Apollo for multiple years. It was well on her way for being groomed, like the perfect specimen to be the wife of

a high-ranking Scientologist. I don't think she was directly being groomed for that purpose, but she displayed all of the traits that would make her a good side piece to the COB that will eventually become. So yeah, again, this is the point in the mid-70s, wherever everything was moved back to land. So David never actually saw the water. He just wore the sailor outfit, which is hilarious. That's so silly. Sailors are pretty funny.

I sat next to one on the airplane, and it was just so funny and his little sailor outfit. He had his little outfit on. That's nice. He had his little bow tie and the little pants, like he's about to do a tap dance. They do. You know, Broadway has really ruined us, too, or it's like, I just see that as like, oh, that's on the town. That's so fun.

Men's outfits can be very campy. Oh, yeah. They're so cute. I love it. Like, the camouflage is so cute in their little camouflage. They are. And then they get on the plane first. They do.

You know? The pilot's outfit with a little bird on it. Yeah, they got the little wings. Yeah, little hats. It's cute. The jaunty hats. Oh, my God, the hats. And that cowboy hat.

That's fun. Little spurs on the boots. It's cute. Keep it up. I know. I love it. Have fun with your authoritarianism. Fucking do it.

Okay. So, David joins the Sea Orc, which means he leaves his family and he goes off to do this shit. I think he initially starts in Florida, but very quickly, oh, yeah, he does. So he starts in Florida and he becomes a Commodore's messenger because at this point, now that Elron is elsewhere, he's not in clear water anymore, he's doing his own new things in the West Coast, mostly because he just wanted to live in the West and have people build him a house.

But he's like, no, I'm doing projects over here. So because of that, the Commodore's messengers become less sexualized and it becomes more of boys can do it too and they're wearing like the ugly outfits instead of the cute outfits anymore, which in a way is good because they're very young, but you know, that sucks for them. They have to wear these gross outfits. Yeah. It's just a white shirt and black pants.

I mean, come on, people. I know, right? So even after LRH left, the Commodore's messengers, if you will call, had a lot of power in the org. They were still the mouthpiece for whoever was in charge at the time. So they still carry messages for people and they're still allowed to yell at people. So like, David, love that, it was really fun for him. So he immediately started wielding power, but he like followed the rules to a tee.

He didn't let that desire for power overtake his ability to follow instructions. He reminds me of some monk in a movie, you know, the one that like self-flags themselves. He might do that. Yeah. We have to follow the rules, guys. And they like go through the church rankings very quickly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally. He was like some sort of whipping to himself, maybe to like, he has an ore, like a sailor's ore and he puts himself in the butt with it every night. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he was doing so well in the organization, by 1977, a year later, he was promoted and

moved to the new secret location in La Quinta, California, where he finally got to work with LRH. And LRH immediately noticed his dedication and started bringing him along to assist him in a lot of stuff. So LRH definitely, even though LRH didn't give him Scientology, he was very favored. David still kind of stole it at the end of the day, but he was a golden child within the organization. And they already assumed he was going to move to high ranks like very early in his life.

This is where David and Shelly's love collides in La Quinta, California. Ooh. Because Shelly was also, again, if you recall, I don't know if she was a bootlicker, but she... Obedient. Very obedient, very rule following. Not a lot. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun as a kid, but also she was abandoned by her family at

11. So I'm not really going to blame her for that. She was just trying to survive, you know? And as a little kid, if you got grownups telling you what to do, you'd do the shit. And she did it. And so she was highly regarded within the community. And she also got put on that secret location in La Quinta because of that. There's so little information about this time period.

We have some from the people who've been talking to like Leah Remini and stuff from that time. They have a little bit of info about this, but because it was so secretive, even Ron David's father doesn't know much about this time. He didn't even know David had left Clearwater until months later, because they had such little communication. And there's no longer your father, really, in this thing. It's just like, there's just another person. Yeah.

He definitely... The father-son relationship was definitely never the same after that, and it didn't really exist in a lot of ways, because David became the boss daddy of everybody. Oh, my God. The son became the father. Do you think the son, like, told his dad what to do? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ron writes all about it in his book. He was held captive, essentially, by his son for years. He had to escape. Shouldn't have let your son not graduate from high school. That's a good lesson for all of us out there today listening. Try to make your kids graduate high school. I barely did, but I did it. You did it.

But fortunately for Ron, David had no children because Scientology doesn't like kids. So at least he didn't have to worry about that. So it wasn't this time that they met and connected and went, you are good for what we want. And now the person went, okay, yes, let's do that. And they started a relationship, literally, because they didn't see other human beings. They had a handful of people they could essentially choose from if they wanted to be in a relationship. I mean, things are crazy when you don't see other people. Like, during lockdown, I masturbated to a guy wearing a bowling shirt.

You know? You know what I mean? I'm so sorry to hear about that. Yeah, I need to be around men again. Oh, that's rough. Let's find you some dudes. I know. I'm on hinge.

Is that... It's a dating site. I know the name. It's, it's fine. Is it Tinder-ish? It's Tinder-ish. It's less hookup and a little more relationship-y. Oh, okay.

I think Tinder was a little too... It was just a little too... Here's my dick, bitch. You know? And I was just like, maybe like say hello. That's nice. So at this time, Janice Grady, the woman on the boat, the boat woman, she's been interviewed quite a bit about this time.

And this is, we're in a situation where we're only learning about David and Shelley from other people's stories about themselves and them in sort of the peripheral view of their own stories. So for the Daily Mail, Janice says, there was a group of younger girls and there was not a big selection of guys. The two best guys were probably Dave Miscovich and Mark Yeager. One was short, one was tall, but there wasn't a big selection of guys and I remember a bunch of girls competing.

He had Dave. When Shelley finally got him, her attitude towards the other girls about all of it was very much, well, you're just upset because I got Dave. I mean, she's right. They all wanted to get her. And didn't they treat her not so good? Yeah, but I think in the way that they were... She was just a younger kid and she was annoying.

You know? Like, I don't think she was like a piece of shit or anything. I think they were just like teenage girls who were mean. Yeah, that's natural. Yeah. So, she goes on to say that, of course, doesn't go over well with the other girls. They moved on and married other guys and were happy, but she would constantly still bring it up.

She was moody and a jealous type of person, which I know, it's like Janice is seeing this from her perspective, but I can understand how she would feel that way just... Can you imagine the amount of pressure that was put on you at that young and just trying to understand who you are and now you're just forced into this like corner with these... It's a handful of people and you have to try to make a good impression and find a partner and stuff within all of this and she's never been around any other human beings. She doesn't know what she wants or who she is or what else is out there. No, because at least with like Janice and all of these kids, Janice was also very young,

but not as young as Shelly when she started all of this. Shelly was so fucking young and it's weird because based on what year she's supposed to be born and the year that Janice talks about when she came on the ship, she would have been 11 or 12, but we find out later in Jenna Miskovich's book, Shelly tells Jenna that she started becoming a Commodore's messenger at nine. So I'm wondering if maybe there were some lying about her age aging her up so that she could come on the ship. I wonder if she's actually younger than we think and she actually started doing Commodore's

messenger ship duties when she was nine years old, which is so fucked up. So I mean she got married off and she was like what, 16, 19? Late teens I think. I think she was at least an adult. But this is in the 70s, 80s. Yeah, let's see. So they started dating in 78 and 79 Miskovich was 19. So she was born in 61 and they started dating in 78, that's 17, unless she was lying about

her, her family was lying out about her age and she was 15. That's a Loretta age marriage right there. It really is. It is a Loretta, called a Loretta. 79, Miskovich was 19 and he advanced to the supervisory position of action chief, so many titles. What does that mean? Because you just want to feel important, like I'm the action chief, I'm a thing that's

a little bit above you. Exactly. So that's part of the Commodore's messenger's org. So his new job, I guess, was to send out teams or missions to investigate reports. Hubbard was getting about poor management. So essentially it was a tattletale group which was right up his alley, I'm sure he was psyched about it. He would go and inspect complaints that were happening in different sections and then be

able to, he'd probably be able to punish people and do stuff like that. So he loved it. I bet he was the hall monitor. He would have been had he stayed in high school probably. Well, Janice's husband, Paul, worked with Miskovich and got along with him so well that when he and Janice married, they asked Miskovich, who worked on church's educational and promotional movies to be their photographer, the couples actually vacationed together after he and Shelly started dating.

They would ski at Big Bear and lodge first in a cabin and later in condos bought by the church. So there were moments in time where they were given rewards for things. They mostly lived terrible lives, but then they would get like, there would be like church holidays and then they would have this extravagant experience and then go back to like this grunt life where they're like literally doing manual labor all day. But they did. They had these times where like in Big Bear, they buy the church owned property there and

they would allow higher up members to go do stuff. So they spent time together and Janice recalls Miskovich actually being fun company and Shelly was always aloof. I feel like Janice just isn't like Shelly, but she was aloof according to a lot of people. She was shy and quiet and reserved and she didn't really know how to communicate with people. I wonder why. But in Ron's book, he says, one of Hubbard's original messengers aboard the Apollo was

a young woman named Michelle Barnett. She and David became attracted to each other and married at the end of 1980 when she was 19 or 17 and David was 20. Loretta and I did not attend the wedding since it occurred at the confidential sea org base out in California, which this was very common. People miss their kids' weddings all the time. Loretta kind of actually encouraged the parents to miss it because he wanted to be the daddy to everybody.

It's gross. I bet she didn't. Did she even have a wedding dress? You know? They did actually. Oh my God. I got to show you. They have some rad weddings there because they're very 70s.

So it's all these like huge sun hats and shit. No, I'm actually, I kind of feel their wedding vibes a little bit, which is, it's crazy even back then before like you could look at on the internet, they're, they could still, even though they were so removed from society, they still could like figure out trends and like cute clothes kind of, they just never were allowed to wear them except like weddings and stuff. They would be able to express themselves weirdly. So he goes on to say, but when we finally did meet Michelle, which was after their wedding,

we both liked her immediately. She was known to everyone as Shelly and for many years she was David's closest confidant. As David attained more and more power, Shelly rose with him fiercely supportive of her husband. She adopted many of David's characteristics as time went on. While my interactions with her were very cordial, I have to say our relationship was rather distant even after many years as a daughter-in-law and father-in-law. So we're going to see that as well with Jenna's stories where she kind of has to take on David's personality in a lot of ways, almost without any choice in order for her to remain dedicated

to this thing that she has to still fully believe in because she's dedicated her entire waking life to it. She has to adhere to David's progressively more crazy attitudes towards things. And this is, Ron mentioned that there and Jenna talks about it quite a bit. She actually had a very different relationship with David and Shelly, Jenna, partly because she was a child, I think, and partly because her mom and dad held high ranks in Sea Org. So she didn't get to spend time with them. They were pulled apart because Elrondon and Lake families to be together.

She felt kids were distractions. So just like Shelly, David, and then Jenna in the next generation, she was pulled apart from her family. I guess how would you know how to raise kids if you weren't raised? Totally. And they didn't really have a choice anyway. They weren't given an option. They weren't, quote, quote, quote Asian marks encouraged to not have their kids near them,

but there really wasn't a choice. So she actually got the advantage of a child looking into their relationship because she saw David and Shelly more as the top ranking people. Jenna Muscovitch, by the way, is David's niece again, Ron, senior's kid. She was born February 1st, 1984. And at the age of eight, she was already separated from her family. So we're going now into the early 90s, mid 90s. So she signed her own billionaire contract at SeaOrg, effectively agreeing to follow

their rules for life, which, of course, it's not a binding contract, but it's a mental contract. Yeah. Usually your own mental restraints are worse than chains. What am I going to say? I got it. I got it, girl. The connections you make through your brain are much more effective sometimes than physical

restraints. Yeah. Like leaving a small town. You know, yes, it is financially hard to do, but going and meeting new people and getting on that bus, no way, people don't do it. I didn't leave Pittsburgh until the age of 23 because nobody did it around me, so I didn't know that I could. And I was like, one day I was in such a shitty relationship, I was like, oh, I can just go

to another city? Yeah. Whoa. It was very, it was out of desperation, but sometimes, you know what, thanks to that guy for being a scumbag. Yeah. Yeah, desperation creates great things. You can, yeah.

So I say abuse people to challenge them. You see somebody struggling, tell them they're a piece of shit, see if they can fight the way out of it. Yeah. Well, that is sort of David's methodology, no, is that a word? Methodology. Yeah. Within the church, it seems.

He seems to really enjoy that idea of just beating people down as far as they can go and then you only have nowhere to go but up, you know? So she was, she was raised, Jenna was raised away from her family and was actually one of the first kids on one of their kid farms because they had child farms called the Ranch in California. They grow baby carrots there. I mean, technically they do because they're the kids, the Sea Org members, children who were also considered quote unquote unquote, Sea Org members were tasked with making their

own, they had to build their own house basically in the middle of the fucking desert. So this ranch she was on as a kid, like there was like, you know, a huge group of children and then a couple of adults and the kids were like moving the rocks and like putting the houses up. And, you know, there's a, to an extent, I think it's good for kids to work but this is like child labor, 12 hours a day. At least it's a valuable skill, do you know how to build a house? Exactly.

A lot of adults that don't know how to do shit. Right? Janice and Shelly, they learned how to sail a boat. So what is everybody complaining about? So yeah, they were out there and so because of the fact that David and Shelly were already at the point where they were running things, she saw them more than she saw her parents. Just by the way, she was 16 when her father and mother left Scientology in 2000. So Ron Sr., her father and David's brother and her mother are out of Scientology as well.

She didn't escape until 2004, but she did get out and wrote this book because Jenna's mom was her mom. Her mom was intentionally kept away, like we said, since David and Shelly ran the whole kid in Kaboodle, she actually had far more interactions with Shelly than her mom. And she still only saw her every few months she saw Shelly. She's our mom, I think like three times over three years or something at one point. So sad. Can you imagine breastfeeding somebody and having them in your womb and then being like,

all right, bye. Peace. Work on this child farm. You just, man, you get your brain so twisted up in it. I get how it happens. I really do. I've made terrible decisions that I thought were good, but yeah, the whole leaving your child thing is, that's pretty hardcore.

Jenna says, and Shelly had really taken a liking to me, and I liked her too. When we would talk during the meals or out by the pool during festivities, she would always ask me how I was doing. She taught me about nutrition, something she was very much into, which helped me at my post. She was a no-nonsense type of person, but was also caring and loving and had a good sense of humor. So Jenna actually had a very pleasant childhood experience with her.

But I will also add to that she didn't have a lot to base it on. So I think just somebody smiling at her and talking to her at all was like, oh my God, she's awesome. Oh my God. What an amazing lady. Shelly does sound, in a lot of ways, there's a lot of really positive stories. Lee Remney also was very good friends with her, but she was so refused a chance to develop a personality.

It's just really hard to be anything but sort of a robot. But Jenna really, she had a good time with her. She would see her at these festivities and stuff, which I was talking about earlier where they would just be doing camp labor all day, all day, 12 hours for months. And then they would have an event, and then they would be able to go to a pool. And that's when she would see her Aunt Shelly's in those days where she wasn't just a mule. Using her fingers to the bone, child. And Shelly took a lot of interest in her.

She would ask her about her studies, which the studies were all Scientology. She wasn't really getting any schooling. Yeah, she's not looking at butterflies or anything. No, no, no, no, they're not like learning science. Don't be silly. Not in Scientology. They're not learning any science. It's all Tology.

She says, I was happy that Aunt Shelly took such an interest in me with my mother gone so much at the time. It felt reassuring to have an older female relative who gave me sincere attention. She would talk to her about even stuff like putting makeup on and skincare and stuff. To me, it felt the way Jenna talks about her. It's a little more sisterly than motherly, but I mean, it's better than nothing. Yeah, girls need that. Someone to show you how to put makeup on and what to take and how to respect yourself.

Totally. But even though Shelly didn't really have a good perspective of that, at least it was some form of communion with somebody else, but Shelly didn't really know how to take care of herself either. She couldn't give Jenna any good advice because she didn't have any good advice to give. We'll just say that. But another interesting thing about Jenna is that she saw her uncle David from a very unique standpoint because I've read so many, so many books and watched so much about him.

And no one has ever said a nice thing about him except for Jenna. She has some positive memories of him and it would confuse her whenever when she was very young, she knew people were afraid of him, but he didn't treat her like that when she was young. Again, she has very little to go on as what good treatment is, but he didn't call me a con. Exactly. He would tell me a joke and he'd buy me a present at Christmas, things like that.

So for a long time when she was a kid, it was hard for her to put Aunt Shelly and Uncle David into an appropriate place in her head because they were nicer to her, nicer than most people, but everybody obviously was very afraid of them at that point. And so she didn't really know how to perceive them. This is the only positive stuff I've ever heard about him. She wrote, for all that he was the head of church and a powerful figure who inspired fear, moments like these where he would show her kindness or give her a present or something, showed a normal side to him.

There were times when I could tell he just wanted to be a fun, normal uncle, an uncle goofing around with his niece and in these moments, it was almost possible to see some sort of longing for a family, a humanity that was hidden much of the time. From how he treated me, it seemed apparent that he didn't want me to be afraid of him in the way that most adults were. Sadly, those tender moments were going to become fewer and far between. As the years went on, I saw that side of him less and less and perhaps, given how he eventually seemed to change for the worst, it eventually ceased to exist entirely.

But I never forgot Uncle Dave's gentle human side. Oh, he's probably nice to her because she's like a little kid. It is hard to really mean the little girls. I don't know what cold monster it can be like, get over there you fucking little girl. They do it though and this man, I mean, the story she has about being on the ranch as a kid is, it's not, it's upsetting, it's pretty upsetting. She didn't get molested as far as we know, but other people did. Wow.

Yeah. And so it's really hard to gauge whether it was her getting older and her willingness to like question things and push back or if it was just because things with Scientology were beginning to spiral so much, but her relationship with Shelley and David deteriorated over time. I think it's a little bit of both. She's kind of losing his grip on stuff. This is late nineties.

He's been in charge for a while and it's difficult. There's a lot of backlash coming at him from outside. He's trying to cover up deaths and stuff. It's a lot of work, a lot of work to cover up deaths. And so he's getting stressed out and then Shelley's basically a reflection of him. So in order for her to keep that, this delusion going, she has to keep going with him down this road. And so they're getting more tense.

They're getting more stressed out. They're becoming crazier. And also Jenna is the kind of person who just wanted to question things and didn't understand why she couldn't ask questions. She didn't understand why she couldn't do simple things. And she tried to push back a little bit and that is not okay to them, especially having the mischievous name like, ooh, you don't get trouble. It's like a kingly son who's supposed to be set up for the next king position.

Totally. And she's going, are you, you're an asshole. You can't do that. That is, you are not allowed to speak to the COB or the assistant COB like that in Scientology. It's like the worst crime. I don't think I would have been able to be a Scientologist. Even raised in it. I was a little brat.

Good. I mean, that's a useful skill to have in this world. But you get punished for it if you can't get out. I mean, she was. One of the contributing factors that really I think changed their relationship is Jenna's mom was punished for a few things, but she ended up having an affair and some other stuff, which is a punishment, something that's punishable in Scientology. Really?

Cause now they're breaking up the relationships. Yeah. It's just all kinds of nonsense, but she was put into RPF, which if you're not familiar or you forget because of all of the initialisms that they have, it's the rehabilitation project force, which is where they, it's the punishment camp for Sea Org members who've done something bad. People can end up there for years because you basically have to atone for your sins. It's where a couple of people have died or committed suicide.

You're kept in even worse slave labor conditions. You are fed scraps. It's really bad. They're treated like dirt, essentially, and you have to atone for your sins, but they have some other stupid word for it. Jenna's mom got put there and she was conditioned already to that point to not be scared really, because especially she didn't really know her mom, but no matter what, she's 12 when this happens.

It's going to put a strain on her relationship with her family and Shelly was still very adamant about the teachings of Scientology at this point and over time became more aggressive and defensive towards Jenna as she questioned or wanted to defy orders. So Jenna's this kid trying to come to grips with it. Her mom is going to a punishment camp, for God knows how long. And the way that Shelly reacted to it, Jenna says a few minutes later and Shelly opened the door, hey, I heard you took the news like a champ. She said, good for you.

She gave me a hug and walked outside. Your mom is okay and she's going to be okay, Shelly told me. She's always claimed to be the strongest woman on the base. She will be fine with the messed work they have given her at the RPF, which is some other initialism. When I told Aunt Shelly that I was worried about my mom and that I didn't want her to be sad, she became much less complimentary. Did you know Shelly continued that the reason your mom wanted to send you back to flag for

your auditing classes was that she was looking for a way to stay in touch with Dawn, the many she was having an affair with. Those words landed hard. I didn't know if they were true or just an exaggeration. They tried to explain why the RPF was the right place for my mom stating that she had a history of this and it was making it clear that Shelly strongly disapproved of my mother's behavior. Shelly and I also talked about my future.

This is the mental games that she's being woven into now, Jenna. Shelly said that she was excited about me becoming a messenger because she wanted me to get through my training so I could come back and work at Intel or enter at one of the buildings that Shelly was at. I love that she envisioned me working where I had always dreamed and I would be. We talked for an hour or two. She told me stories of growing up and working for LRH and what it meant to her to be a messenger for him at the age of nine.

Our time together ended and we hugged and said goodbye. I really fully believe that Shelly believed everything she was saying. I do because I think in order to not go insane. Yeah, and that's all you've been taught. Yeah. She wasn't just going through the motions. I don't think at this point because she would talk to Jenna about this stuff when she was alone.

It would be different if she was saying it in front of David or in more pressured situations, but Jenna holds on to the fact that Shelly really believed in what she was doing and really was encouraging Jenna. It turned into this thing where you realize she's nice to you if you're willing to play by the rules. She's very familial to you, but if you want to push back, then it's almost like Shelly needs to then question everything she's ever done and that would be a lot. Yeah, she can't do that.

It's much easier to be like, no, you're wrong, as opposed to like question everything you've ever thought. Right. So yeah, Jenna really thinks that Shelly was still in it to win it at this point. And this is before the very worst of it because by what we can tell, the very worst things come towards the last couple of years that we see Shelly. So we're not quite there yet. Because she's not questioning yet, so of course she's not going to go missing yet.

No. There's no reason for her to go missing if she's like, wants to obey the rules. Yeah. So at some point, something happens. Yeah. And she's really still at this point, she's pushing Jenna to be a good auditor. She's talking about how important it is. They're the only people who can help save the world.

She still really feels this way. And I'm saying all this because I don't want to demonize Shelly at all. I want to show her as a human being. We've only known her as this victim character. And it's good to remember that even if somebody's maybe sometimes a jerk that they're still worth, they don't deserve to be just erased from the earth. And she was a person. She was a flawed person and a person who has severely abused her whole life.

And she's never been given a chance. You know, you could say like there's other people with her certain experiences in Scientology who managed to get away. But the fact that she was so brainwashed, so young and she was under the iron fist of her husband is a unique experience. Anything else is that level of pressure on them in this world. Jenna saw marked change in Shelly after the death of Lisa McPherson. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in part three, but she died.

Lisa McPherson died under the care of Scientologists who didn't bring her to receive necessary treatment after a car crash. Yeah, because they don't like doctors in hospitals because doctors are like, Scientology, what do you mean, Xenu? That's not real. Right. They'll be held accountable for things. And also it goes against their mystical thinking of you can just wish things away and they

take the whole power, like the draw, especially after LRH was gone, they really use the idea of law of attraction and that kind of stuff, taking it at surface value, like they make it very literal in a lot of ways, which is not how that works. It's such a weird religion because usually religions are like hippie-dippy, like we're all in this together, but this is just like, no, I'm better than you and I'm the alpha. But you then go like, thank you for telling me I'm garbage. That's very much what Scientology is. So after this crash happens and the death happens, instead of expressing grief or shame

about the incident, Shelly reacts with rage and fear over the potential bad press this could give David and the church. So I think things are really spiraling out here. I think David's spiraling out and so Shelly is spiraling out. This is, again, they got away with it because it fell under all of these things under religious clauses that it was part of their religion. They didn't have to get her treatment and they walked away scot-free. They got no charges for it.

So this woman died under their watch. So at this time, whenever Jen is trying to talk to her aunt, she's about 15 or 16 at this point, she's getting a lot of this sort of side of Shelly where Shelly is really panicking about stuff and she doesn't have time for Jenna's questions about why can't she just be a normal human. So there was a real turning point around this time and her book generates, and Shelly came into the room accompanied by the CEO, Olivia and Mr. Rathburn. They all stood at the side of the room, crossed their arms and looked at me and Shelly was

especially furious. Jenna, I have been like a guardian. No, a guardian angel to you. She began. I have continued describing her generosity. I have given you my time, looked after you, and all you have done is take advantage of it. Next, she started with her opinions of me.

You have been completely outrageous. What do you do? You find some loser and start acting like him? Apparently, she was referring to Martino, who was Jenna's boyfriend at the time, who was not high enough in the ranks to be approved to be her boyfriend. What a weird thing, anyways. So she went on and on telling me how the only person on the planet allowed to call this one base is Uncle Dave.

She cited my long history of running to my parents whenever I felt like it, violation one, and distancing them from their jobs, violation two, and being so needy and entitled, which is insane. I tried to say that I've only seen them both once in the last three years, so how could this be true? But she cut me off. Don't you dare backflash me, she commanded, backflashes the Scientology term. She continued with her grievances using my petition and anything else she heard about

my behavior. I was grossly out ethics, another Scientology term, for having sex in an auditing session. I know, good for you, girl. Good for you. She sounds like a real cracker. I like it. Yeah, I mean, she's Spitfire. Yeah, Spitfire.

I had always been unethical and uncooperative with my auditors, and now I was even getting into physical fights with them, punching Olivia and spitting at Melinda. Now, these things are all happening because they are literally physically holding her down and stuff when they're questioning her. This is Jenna. So she's getting in trouble because she's like going, I have human rights, and she got punished for it. So this Shelly is now just like going off on her.

She's saying throughout her rant, she had been looking at me with fury, and finally I began to cry. Yes, acting like a baby, she said angrily. Because she never had a child, of course, she's acting like a baby. Yes. So we're at this point where we're getting close to the end of Shelly's days as a quote-unquote free person. Yeah, this would have been right around like 98, 99 when all of this is going on with Jenna.

And so she kind of loses contact with Shelly at this point because along these same lines, Jenna is trying to make her own decisions about who she wants to marry and stuff. She ends up marrying somebody else within the church who she very fortunately escaped with and is still married to. Wow. Yeah. They got kids and everything. It's nice.

But this is where her and Shelly completely start to be cut away from each other. And this is also where Shelly completely starts removing herself from normal quote-unquote normal Scientology stuff. She can't even be around other Scientologists because they're not Scientology enough for her or she's just breaking. I feel like she's starting to break a little bit. I feel like she's starting to crumble and so David's taking note of this and acting accordingly.

Yeah, you can't have your wife have a breakdown on TV that'll make your whole religion look bad. Exactly. So we kind of, Jenna and Shelly are kind of separated at this point, but Leah, for her part, steps in around this time and talks about her relationship with Shelly, which is where we're going to end today. Leah is also somebody who came into Scientology very young because of her mom, but she moved up in the ranks and because she became kind of successful as an actress, they really latch

on to celebrities. So she got pretty far up and she ended up becoming friends with Shelly as an adult. And she writes in her book, I first met Shelly when we both attended a Tom Cruise movie premiere because of course, she invited me to sit with her and we quickly hit it off. Afterwards, regularly exchanged cards and gifts at holidays. I remember she was so grateful when I had my makeup person get her ready for Celebrity Center gala. Meanwhile, she stuck her neck out for me when I brought a friend who was not a Scientologist

to the Celebrity Center. Oh, I'd love that. So Leah goes on to talk about how she, I know, right? Yay. She goes on to talk about how she helped her with Scientology related things. Leah at that point is looking at things through Scientology lens, but it's very similar to what Jenna was saying, which is she found Shelly very kind and giving, but it was very conditional to specific to Scientology shit.

Yeah. Only if you're obeying the rules. Right. So she's like, oh, she's super kind because she helps me get a friend into the Celebrity Center. If you said you were having a question about something in Scientology, she probably wouldn't have been as friendly. So I just want to end it with this final quote from Leah's book and we'll take up from,

man, I'm going to have to spend some time talking about the Tom Cruise aspect of this whole story because it is wild. Yeah. He's the God of Scientology. He's the Zinu, really. Well, according to Tom, it's LRH, then under LRH is David and under David it's him. So he's number three, but that's only because he considers David and LRH gods. So I'm going to end this before we pick this up next week for the final part.

We're going to go to Leah's world where she experienced this Shelly as an adult and the first time she noticed Shelly's absence, which was at Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' absurd Roman wedding. So that was the first time that she noticed that, and this was in 2004. This is when she first noticed, hmm. So Leah writes, my confusion and anxiety about what was going on with my church only increased that night when David Miscavige was one of the guests at this three-party for the wedding. The bizarre part about him that evening was that his female assistant, Larisse Stuckenbrock,

was sitting next to him like she was his date. It would have been okay if she had stood off to the side ready to assist him when needed, but this was just weird. She was in that seat and that should have been reserved for his wife. Where was she anyway? Strange not to have your wife, who was also the COB assistant at an event like this. So we're going to pick up and finish off this saga next week. It's a doozy.

There's a lot. You've done a lot of research in this. Man, it goes back far. Lots of abuse. Yeah. Lots of abuse and people leaving their families to do this thing and then not knowing how to raise their kids. Well it's so hard to not, as you're telling Shelly's story, to not go off into multiple

different directions of other crimes that are actively happening at the same time. As I'm telling the story, it's like, oh, but I need to talk about this, but I'm like, no, that's not Shelly. That's not Shelly. Yeah. Can't do that right now. No one's having a good time here. They're like, oh, they smiled at me.

They were a kind person. Yeah. It's important to take note when people are like, they were a kind person. So that means they didn't have kindness around them very often. Absolutely. And very fortunately, Jenna, I think is doing very well outside. Ron is also, he seems very happy, and the people mostly who have escaped are at the point where they're not getting stalked.

Like they used to be, I think there's just a lot of power loss. I don't think there's very many members left in Scientology, but it used to be where they would torture people who left, who became suppressive or who blew. There's all these, I can't, the fucking terms, oh my God. Yeah, you're supposed to like, when you change someone's language, you change someone's thoughts. And they do it. But yeah, now, you know, I'm very happy to hear that Jenna is okay. And maybe someday, Shelly will peer out of your butthole and want to face the world.

I know. Come out here, Shelly. Come on. People want to say hello. Okay. Oh, she said okay. She's coming out. We did it.

Yay. So thank you for joining me and letting me scream at you, Amber. I love it. She's so entertaining and thoughtful and a lot going on here, man. Yeah. No, thank you for your input and thank you for listening, everyone. Check us out next week. And I'm Natalie Jean.

You can find me at the Natty Jean and everything and Amber. Amber Smelson. Go look her up. She's got some good cookings. Thanks. Bye. Bye, y'all.