Cynbad asked this question on 4/26/2000:

I didn't get the connection. Was someone murdered? By who? How is Scientology involved? Please experts if you answer a question, see if you can add the basics so that someone just walking in here can know what your talking about. I've heard nothing about Scientology and murders.

desertphile gave this response on 4/26/2000:

Hi. It is Lisa McPherson, not "Linda." The Church of Scientology did not "murder" Ms. McPherson: they killed her accidently. Murder implies intent to homicide. Please make that distinction. The Church has not been charged with her death, either "murder" or otherwise. It is charged with practicing medicine without a liscence (which is self-evident according to their own testimony), and neglect of a disabled adult (which is also self-evidence according to their own testimony). Her actual death is being addressed in the civil suit, not the criminal one. The Church is not on trial for "murder."

The coroner has only five options available to her for the cause of death: "homicide," "accident," "suicide," "natural," and "unknown." The coronor first listed the cause as "unknown," and she changed it later to "accident." This changes nothing regarding both the civil and the criminal trails, since no one was claiming Ms. McPherson's death was anything other than an accident. It was never considered a homicide, nor a suicide, nor "natural" (i.e., old age). Oddly enough, many coronors list diseases under the "accidental" category and not the "natural" gategory.

To address your question of why they accidently killed her would take a great deal of time and effort for me to cover. I will briefly state why, and you can look over the web site at http://holysmoke.org/lm/lm.htm (which I just found a few days ago and has quickly become my favorate site).

The following is from sworn testimony from some of the Church members involved, and from Church logs taken of the events:

Ms. McPherson wanted to escape the Church of Scientology. She wrote to her mother (now deceased) that she was leaving and wanted to come home. The Church of Scientology learned of this, and tried to prevent her from leaving. She escaped one night in her car and was chased by another car, which resulted in a very minor "fender bender." Medical personale looked her over and found her fine, even though she asked them to take her to the hospital. When they would not, she took off her clothing and walked down the street naked.

That allowed the emergency medical team to take her to the hospital, which she did. Unfortunately her captors followed, and managed to talk the hospital into releasing her "in their 'care.'" Her captors took her back to her prison cell and placed her in isolation. They doped her up and tied her down.

Lisa McPherson went "Potential Trouble Source Type Three," which means the services she was receiving "drove her psychotic." A PTS-3 is considered a public relations liability, so such a person is hidden and put in isolation (called "baby watch" and "The Introspection Rundown"). They are released from isolation once they can write a cohearent request to be released. Ms. McPherson was not able to write such a request, but she certainly screamed it enough (according to Church testimony), and she fought like hell to escape her captors (also according to Church testimony). The reason they forced drugs down her throat was to keep her from harming herself and her captors in her struggle to escape. It appears that the last three dayes of her life she lay in a coma while the cockroaches fed on her body.

Ms. McPherson's body was covered with bruses caused by her fight to escape her Scientology "friends." One bruse on her leg turned into a blood clot due to dehydration and prolonged "bed rest." That blood clot broke loose and lodged in her lung, which hurried her death along.

The Church of Scientology sees the criminal and the civil trial as "religious persecution." The drugs they forced down her throat with a turkey baster was called "spiritual sustenance."

The cause of her psychotic episode was abuse and brainwashing done to her over a long time span before she showed symptoms of psychosis. Most mental illnesses are "kindled," which means that the disease caused by stressors is cummulative but does not express itself until after a tolerance threshhold is crossed damage-wise. The actual illness is specific to neural pathways being physically "rewired" by trama / stressors, where a particular type of synapse neurotransmitter is replaced by a different type. The more stress, the more the type is changed, and the more damage to the brain.

The Church of Scientology claims to believe that this damage to the brain does NOT occur (even though the evidence is quite conclusive that it does). Since getting actual help for Ms. McPherson would have "invalidated the Tech," no actual help for her was acquired.

The major reason why they did not call for help was because to do so would have "invalidated the Tech." They were willing to let Ms. McPherson die rather than show the citizens of Clearwater that their application of the Tech not only drives people crazy, but cannot "fix" them once it does. Please note that the Church of Scientology is what is known as a "squirreling" organization: they have extensively modified Hubbard's original Tech to where it no longer works.

The second major reason why they did not call for help is because the Church of Scientology claims to believe that mentally ill people must avoid psychologists and psychiatrists at all cost. This is because the mental health profession is evil to the core, and being controlled telepathically by space aliens. No, really. Church Scriptures tell of how 75,000,000 years ago the evil galactic tyrant Lord Xemu brought billions of people to Earth (then known as Teegeeack) and imprisioned them here--- with the help of psychiatrists. Those space alien psychiatrists are still here (located at "implant stations" on Mars and Venus) where they wait for the souls (called "Thetans") of the recently dead which they capture and send back to Earth. See http://www.xenu.net

(That is Church Scripture, which is available on the Internet as written in Hubbard's own handwriting.)

So you can see why they did not get help for Ms. McPherson and why they allowed her to die.

After she died, the Church of Scientology raided her bank account and withdrew most of the money. Nice guys, eh? There is some good evidence that Ms. McPherson was being used to launder money. She was being paid by the Church a huge amount of money, which she then "donated" back to the Church, making it tax exempt.

Her family has a civil suit against them for wrongfull death. The Church's own testimony shows that her death could have been easily prevented--- just by allowing her to walk out of the prison basement where she was being held.

If this does not answer your question, please feel free to ask for more specific information.

The average rating for this answer is 4.3.

Cynbad rated this answer a 5.

ok that is what i saw in your FAQ so I should have looked at peoples faqs first. i thought someone said she was murdered, so that clears that up. Thank you for the answer!