Heber Jentzsch, 89, Scientology's longtime 'president,' dies in nursing home
We heard last night from Karen de la Carriere that her former husband, Heber Jentzsch, the longtime nominal “president” of the Church of Scientology International, died at a nursing home that he had been moved to some years ago from Scientology’s international management base near Hemet, California.
[UPDATE: Although news of Heber's death reached us now, public records indicate that he died on October 25, 2025, and he was 89.]
Heber was a legendary figure in Scientology, one of its most recognizable executives and well-liked by both his fellow Scientologists as well as journalists he cultivated as the church’s spokesman in the 1980s and 1990s.
But his title as president didn’t mean very much as Scientology’s actual leader, David Miscavige, ran things as “chairman of the board” of the Religious Technology Center and captain of the Sea Organization after founder L. Ron Hubbard’s death in 1986.
Karen and others had told us that beginning in the early 2000s, Miscavige reduced Heber’s role and belittled him in front of other executives, and increasingly Heber became less and less visible at events.
And then he was among the top executives who found themselves prisoners in the “SP Hole,” which Miscavige created in early 2004 for the “SPs,” or “suppressive persons” that he suspected were among his formerly most trusted aids.
Mike Rinder was a prisoner of the Hole in 2006 and 2007, and he confirmed to us that Heber was one of the inmates in the ersatz jail, which existed in a former office on the grounds of the base, which is known as either Int Base or Gold Base.
The Hole’s existence was revealed by the Tampa Bay Times in 2009, by which time Heber and others had already spent five years in confinement. But after that exposure by the press, the original circumstances of the Hole were later abandoned. After Valerie Haney escaped from Int Base in 2016, she reported that the Hole still existed in another form, and that Heber was among its inmates. She said she witnessed Heber, then about 80 years old, being forced to make videos extolling Miscavige’s leadership, and that he had to be propped upright with a board to straighten his back during the filming.
Some time after that, Karen learned that Heber had been moved to a nearby nursing home.
Meanwhile, as recently as 2023 Scientology submitted official paperwork continuing to list Heber as the Church of Scientology International’s “CEO.”
The following is from a story we wrote about Heber for The Village Voice in 2012, when we heard from his older brother, David Jentzsch…
David Jentzsch, 80, tells me that the last time he spoke to his brother Heber, 76, was about three years ago. And at that time he urged his younger brother to break out of Scientology’s International Base near Hemet, California.
“He said, ‘I don’t think I can ever get out of here.’ But I told him, ‘You have to try.’ And the last thing he said to me was, ‘I’ll never get out of here alive’.”
Since then, David says, the workers at the base have refused to take his call.
“They won’t let me talk to him. Heber just lost his son, Alexander,” David explains. “I called and told them I’d like to talk to my brother about this. They told me, ‘You can’t come, we don’t want you here.’ I told them I’d come down there and they’d have to let me see him. But they said, ‘Heber is not going to be able to talk to you, so it’s best that you don’t come.”
David didn’t know that his brother had been let out of the base for a rare visit to Los Angeles and a hastily-arranged memorial for his son last week.
“I wish I’d known that, I would have been there to try to see him.”
Since 1982, Heber Jentzsch has been the president of the Church of Scientology International, but since 2004, he has rarely been seen in public or by his fellow Scientologists. By that time, he had fallen out of favor with Scientology’s ultimate leader, David Miscavige.
Heber grew up in Utah as the son of an excommunicated member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Carl Jentzsch, who was a polygamist. As a result of his father’s polygamy, Heber has 42 brothers and sisters.
The oldest among them is David Jentzsch, who today lives south of Salt Lake City.
David tells me that he never thought too highly about his younger brother’s involvement in Scientology. But it did give Heber notoriety and had him traveling around the world. Through the 1990s, Heber Jentzsch was the face of the church, often tangled with outside attorneys and reporters, and was even arrested in Spain in 1988 along with 69 other Scientologists for tax fraud and other charges, which were eventually dropped.
In 1984, Heber Jentzsch and Karen de la Carriere had their only child, Alexander. By 1989, however, de la Carriere claims that Miscavige ordered Heber to divorce her. And by 2004, Heber himself had fallen so far from favor that Miscavige ordered him to the new office-prison he was developing at the International Base east of Los Angeles, known as “The A to E Room” and then “The SP Hole” or just “The Hole.”
Mike Rinder, Scientology’s former top spokesman, says Heber was a prisoner in The Hole when he himself was incarcerated in the hellish office in 2006 and 2007. About 60 to 100 executives, men and women, were forced to live in the offices, day and night, and Miscavige had bars put on the windows and doors. The executives were only let out each morning to be marched across the highway to a building with showers, then they were marched back to the Hole to spend the day on mass confessions. Rinder told us about conditions in the Hole in video interviews we made when we visited him in March. Earlier this year, another former executive, Debbie Cook, testified in court about conditions in the Hole during her short stay there in 2007.
In 2010, when Jean Brousseau became one of the last workers to escape the Int Base, he says Heber Jentzsch was still a prisoner in The Hole.
On occasion, however, the church president — who has never lost his title — was allowed out to be paraded at an event. Tiziano Lugli, an Italian musician and former Scientologist, tells me he saw Jentzsch at the funeral for Isaac Hayes in August 2008. “Tom Cruise and David Miscavige were there too,” Lugli tells me.
We know that Heber was also allowed out for a few hours to see his son Alexander in 2010. That occurred because Alex’s mother, Karen de la Carriere, went public about Heber’s incarceration, writing about it at Marty Rathbun’s blog. That public criticism not only allowed Alexander to see his father briefly, but it also resulted in de la Carriere being excommunicated — “declared a suppressive person” in Scientology jargon.
Alexander gained his father for a few hours, and lost his mother for good. After Karen was excommunicated, Alexander was forced to “disconnect” from her. She never saw him again. On the morning of July 3, 2012, Alexander was found dead at the home of his in-laws in Sylmar, California, a part of Los Angeles. De la Carriere was kept in the dark about it for a couple of days, and then was prevented from seeing her son’s body before he was cremated — again, because she had dared to speak up about the treatment of her ex-husband, Heber, and had been kicked out of Scientology.
David Jentzsch remembers when his brother was still a big shot with Scientology, and tried to convince him that the base was really a thriving place.
“He did a lot with the IRS, telling them Scientology is a church. Which it really isn’t,” David says. “I went down there at one point. He showed me around. We had lunch at a nice table. The other people had to sit on the floor to eat in a gymnasium, but we had a waiter with a towel wrapped around his arm, and the table all set real nice, you know what I mean.”
At the end of the lunch, Heber asked his brother what he thought of the place.
“Heber, It’s straight from hell,” David remembers telling him.
“He was madder than hell at me.”
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I first met Heber in the fall of 1970. I was a public person online at the Denver Mission when he came around for a Sea Org recruitment tour. He wore buckskins head to toe, and carried a banjo and two guitars. He was a complete love bomb, really sweet and funny and truly entertaining. He recruited me and Molly Baxter that evening. Three days later, the three of us piled into my VW camper and drove to I think it was Santa Monica, where the Bolivar was docked. And then we were Sea Org members. End of.
2026 has been brutal so far.
Wish I had some good words to say about the departed, but I didn't know him well. I do know that if he was really the CEO of Scientology it would be very different. He was a fanatic for the cause, but not completely insane like Dave.
This is the real reason for the Hole. According to the faked-up corporate structure of Scientology that Dave made up for the IRS there were others that were supposed to be like a system of checks and balances.
Executive Director International. The Watchdog committee. Inspector Generals. All just dust in the wind before Dave.
Heber's position as President was intended from the beginning to be public relations fluff. Like the infamous Port Captain, a talking head to trot out before the press or dignitaries to take the heat while the real executives run the show from the shadows.
Heber always knew he was just a straw man intended to fool the rubes, but I think he accepted that. He liked the spotlight and the hopeless quest. To see him really in his element, look at the old videos of the Battle of Portland. Marching 'round the courthouse.
Just for the record, the showers they used in the Hole were in the Garage. I escaped just when the Hole was really getting started, but I did observe it. All that Tony has reported here is true.