Lisa McPherson and the doctors: Hamstrung by the ‘spiritual’ needs of a thetan

Lisa McPherson’s first week under confinement at the Fort Harrison Hotel ended thirty years ago today.

On Saturday, November 25, 1995, Lisa was watched in her cabana room by caretakers named Heather Hoff and Rita Boykin. And they were also joined by a man named David Houghton.

Houghton was studying for his dentist board exam at the time. He would take his board exams in just a few days so that he could become the Flag Land Base in-house dentist. After finishing dental school, he had some knowledge of medicine in general, and on the evening of the 24th, he had a telephone discussion with a Scientologist doctor named David Minkoff about the woman who was being held in Room 174 because she had gone “Type III.”

They were aware that Lisa McPherson had been raving and had been violent with her caretakers, who had been with her 24 hours a day since she’d been brought to the hotel late on Saturday night the week before. They talked about how they might sedate Lisa, if that need arose. They decided that a liquid form of chloral hydrate would be best, but Houghton was unable to find any local pharmacies that carried it. So they talked again, and decided to get some liquid Valium to have on hand. They called in a prescription — not, apparently, in Lisa’s name — and Houghton went to pick it up that night and paid cash.

During the police investigation after Lisa’s death, Houghton was asked about the decision to pick up the Valium that night.

Q: All right. And when, if ever, was that Valium used on Lisa?

A: To my knowledge, it was never used.

Q: All right. And why is that?

A: Again, to my knowledge, Mr. Kartuzinski didn’t want her to have anything that heavy.

Q: And he was running the spiritual end of this.

A: Right.

Alain Kartuzinski was making the decisions about Lisa’s care, and he’d assigned a disgraced former anesthesiologist, Janis Johnson, to oversee that care. Kartuzinski had no medical training of his own.

Q: I find it very odd that — we’ll go back to the three doctors again — MD anesthesiologist [Johnson], a dentist [Houghton], and another MD in Florida [Minkoff] working in an emergency room and an infectious disease specialist, OK, and the three of these people, who are all medical people, put their heads together and they get liquid Valium, and they send a doctor to get the liquid Valium, and he pays for it out of his pocket, he brings it back to the hotel, and we’ve got a civilian, nonmedical person [Kartuzinski], who says, “Huh-uh. You ain’t giving it to her.”

A: It is what happened. I agree that does sound kind of strange.

Q. …Wouldn’t that give you the impression that this is the guy pulling the strings? If he can tell three doctors who’s already gone to all this trouble of getting the liquid Valium and carting it back and sending a doctor to get it with thirty dollars in his pocket, and they come back, and he pulls the plug on this thing, would that give you the impression he’s in charge?

A. Sure.

Q. Thank you.

A. I mean, he was definitely in charge of the spiritual side of it.

So, to review. On hand at the hotel there was a recently graduated but not yet licensed dentist, a former anesthesiologist who might have stopped practicing medicine in order not to be prosecuted for stealing drugs from a hospital to feed her habit but was still knowledgeable about medicines and treatments, and, at an area hospital but not on the premises, an actual ER doctor, all of whom were Scientologists. But they all deferred to the judgment of Alain Kartuzinski, whose only qualifications were that he was a senior case supervisor in charge of Lisa’s “spiritual” case.

Just so we’re clear.

On the afternoon of November 25, Houghton went to Room 174 on the suggestion of Kartuzinski, who wanted him to give Lisa some medications — aspirin and Benadryl — to make her drowsy and help her get some sleep.

“They were talking about wanting to get her to eat, drink, you know, that kind of thing, and I said, well, I can certainly get her to swallow something. That’s, you know…something I could do without getting bit or, you know, something like that,” Houghton testified, explaining that he’d pointed out how his skills as a dentist might come in handy.

He crushed the aspirin and took the Benadryl out of capsules and put it in some orange juice. He put the concoction in a large syringe with a curved plastic end big enough to allow the crushed aspirin to pass through. After getting Lisa down on her bed, he ran the liquid down the side of her tongue to the back of her throat.

“But then she got a taste of it, she really liked it. She just basically turned herself, got ahold of it, and started sucking this thing down,” Houghton testified. “She obviously enjoyed the taste.”

Houghton waited around for an hour to see what effect the drugs had. Lisa continued to walk around the room, talking incoherently like she had been all week. But then she did seem to get drowsy, and laid down on the bed.

His work done, Houghton left.

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Court initially rejects Danny Masterson habeas petition

We noticed on the court docket that the 2nd Appellate District has denied the habeas corpus petition that Danny Masterson submitted last week, indicating that it was “excessively long.”

We asked Masterson’s habeas attorney Eric Multhaup if that meant he could shorten the document and resubmit it.

“Yes, we are doing that now,” he replied.

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Bonus items from our tipsters

Wil Seabrook goes OT 8! And four new OT 8’s at the Freewinds this week! This planet will be cleared in no time!

Completions Update from the Freewinds

Happenings For the Week:

This last week there were 4 NEW OT VIII completions: Wil Seabrook, Cristal Logothesis, Melanie Baichtal and Mary Claire Beilhart from the USA!

Here is an excerpt from Cristal’s Success Story:

The New OT VIII sessions were absolutely out of this world. Every day, I’d wake up and feel like it was Christmas morning because I was SO EXCITED to go in session. And the wins on New OT VIII... unfortunately there are no words to convey them properly, but I’ll try: Up until that point, all my wins on the Bridge had been at thinkingness level. They happened in my head, and they impacted how I operated in the MEST universe.

On New OT VIII, I was able to experience wins at the level of knowingness. And these wins improved my theta universe. So, my space immediately got bigger. I started treating certainty as a commodity that I create and not some effect-level thing I have to somehow go looking for. My Affinity, Reality and Communication are now an infinite resource that I emanate and experience and cause others to experience at will. I don’t HAVE calmness or happiness. I AM those things.

My future is bright and full of endless happiness and I create it. I can move forward through life playing games of my choosing and contributing towards the motion of clearing this planet.

I feel like the luckiest person in the universe right now. I find it SO extraordinary that I somehow out of all the planets and stars in infinite time, I found myself here, on this tiny rock at the precise minute moment in time where the tech to go free was not only available, but had by whatever miracle pulled in a group of beings who are working shoulder to shoulder to go free and help others do as well.

Here is an excerpt from Wil’s Success Story:

On New OT VIII, I realized that my whole life had been like trying to find myself through this endless ocean of noise and static, and I was finally given the tools to cut through all of that noise and lock in on the signal and wavelength that was just me. And now here I am, a New OT VIII!

Back when I was confronting life with all of my case intact, confronting present time and the future was intimidating and very serious and often overwhelming.

Now, my ARC for the environment and my ability to postulate any number of pro survival futures is infinite!

Every thought of what I “should” do or be or think about myself or life of my dynamics has vanished. I’m just here in PT, thinking about what I want to create and really excited about it, as in “a kid on Christmas morning” excited.

Until very recently, I hadn’t really had genuine fun in a long time. Now I can’t stop smiling and laughing.

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