Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [121]
Instead, Slaughter phoned Lisa's chiropractor, Dr. Jeannie DeCuypere, and asked her to check up on Lisa. She also asked her husband, David, to drive over to Morton Plant, where he joined the other Scientologists in the waiting room. But after Lisa was taken to the Fort Harrison, the Slaughters had lost track of her, other than being informed by church officials that she was getting "rest, quiet, and relaxation," as Slaughter said.
"[Bennetta] cried a lot," said Cook. "I tried to comfort her some ... We were all a little freaked out."
The next day, the Clearwater police paid a visit to the Hacienda Gardens apartment complex, the church-owned property in Clearwater where Janis Johnson and other Scientology staffers lived, to question Johnson. Several other cops went to the Fort Harrison, where they questioned Alain Kartuzinski, Paul Greenwood, and Laura Arrunada. All four Scientologists maintained that Lisa had been a regular hotel guest who'd checked in for "rest and relaxation" and had suddenly taken ill.
Marty Rathbun, meanwhile, sought out Lisa's caretakers. Most of them were quarantined in an apartment at the Hacienda Gardens, where they'd been sent until it could be determined whether or not Lisa had died of an infectious disease.* Interviewing them was like walking into a disaster area, Rathbun recalled. "They all looked devastated, they lacked sleep, some of them had scratches and bruises from getting hit by Lisa, [and] all of them were extremely emotionally distraught, because each one of them put it on her shoulders that she had done something wrong."
Rathbun then interviewed Alain Kartuzinski and Janis Johnson, both of whom pointed the finger at each other for botching Lisa's care. Johnson, in particular, worried Rathbun. Having practiced medicine in Tucson for six years, Johnson had come under suspicion by the Arizona Board of Medical Examiners for abusing painkillers and other drugs, and had voluntarily agreed to withdraw from medical practice. In 1994, her Arizona medical license lapsed, and Johnson had never renewed it. How had she been posted to the medical liaison's office in the first place? And why in the world did Kartuzinski put her in charge of Lisa's health care? "It was the worst possible perfect storm of incompetence and irresponsibility," Rathbun later said.
Worse still was that Miscavige's handwriting was allegedly all over Lisa's auditing files. While Rathbun was interviewing the caretakers, another RTC official, he said, was charged with "getting rid of any evidence of Miscavige's handling of the deal."* Once that was accomplished, a night or so after Lisa's death, Rathbun and Tom De Vocht once again called Jason Knapmeyer to the West Coast building. Looking grave, Rathbun handed Knapmeyer a set of sealed folders with the name "Lisa McPherson" written on them. They were Lisa's preclear, or auditing, folders. "These need to go to Int," Rathbun said. Knapmeyer took the folders, got in his car, drove to the Tampa airport, and boarded a flight to Los Angeles. An OSA representative met him at LAX and took possession of the folders. Then he told Knapmeyer to go home. "Don't tell anyone about this trip," he said. The Messenger agreed and flew back to Florida on the next plane.
***
It was just after two o'clock on the afternoon of December 6, 1995, when Fannie McPherson's telephone rang in Dallas. "Fannie," a woman said, "it's Bennetta Slaughter."
"Bennetta?" Fannie had a bad feeling. "Is Lisa all right?"
There was a pause. "Fannie, Lisa's dead."
"She's what?" Fannie began to cry. "What in the world happened?"
Slaughter still had no idea; from what she'd been told, Lisa may have died of meningitis. But she did know that Lisa had died while in the Church of Scientology's care. Right or wrong, Scientology had to be protected from scandal; more than any other Scientologist in Clearwater, Slaughter, who'd spent the better part of two years networking tirelessly with local politicos