Heber Jentzsch is 88, but Scientology still makes this surprising claim about him

{Heber Jentzsch at Maiden Voyage in 2006]

Yesterday, Valerie Ross provided another of her fascinating glimpses into the life of a Scientologist, someone so dedicated to the cause that she had, at one time, infiltrated and spied on the FBI for Scientology’s espionage wing, the Guardian’s Office.

Before she joined the GO, however, she got to know one of Scientology’s more legendary couples, Celebrity Centre founder Yvonne Jentzsch and her husband, the charismatic Heber Jentzsch, a former actor who became a well-known spokesman for Scientology as well as president of the Church of Scientology International.

For some time Yvonne and Heber became Val’s friends and even stepped in to help her get through some difficulties.

Along with the story, we posted a photo of Heber that Val had taken at a 1977 protest of the FBI’s raid of Scientology that year.

The mention of Heber and the photo naturally led some readers to ask us about his current whereabouts.

And it turns out that Val has some surprising information about that as well.

Despite his grand title as president of CSI, Heber Jentzsch actually had little power and like everyone else served at the pleasure of the true, ruthless leader of the organization, David Miscavige, who rules the entire Scientology movement as the “captain” of the Sea Organization. (Nominally, Miscavige is “chairman” of one Scientology subsidiary, the Religious Technology Center, but court documents show that he actually maintains control of the entire movement as leader of the Sea Org, which has no legal status.)

By the mid 2000s, Heber was, like so many other top Scientology officers, forced to go through the humiliating experience of being imprisoned in “the Hole,” a degrading confinement that Miscavige created for his top aides at the secretive international management base east of Los Angeles known as “Int Base” or “Gold Base.” Mike Rinder reported seeing Heber in the Hole during his own stay there before his 2007 escape from Scientology.

Like Rinder, Heber was allowed out of the Hole when Miscavige needed him, and in 2006 Heber was let out of the prison long enough to make one final on-stage appearance at the “Maiden Voyage” event that summer (see image above).

After that, the last time we saw Heber outside of Int Base was his surprise appearance at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre for a funeral for his son Alexander. Yvonne had died of a brain tumor in 1978, and Heber later married Karen de la Carriere, and they were Alexander’s parents. Karen has described how Heber was forced to divorce her by the church, and later, when Alexander died in 2012 at 27, by then Karen had left Scientology, and the organization kept her from her son’s remains.

At the Village Voice, we wrote about Karen being kept from her son and unable to hold a proper burial for him. Perhaps as a result of that embarrassing news coverage, Scientology took the unusual step of holding a memorial service for Alexander at the Celebrity Centre, and Heber was pulled out of Int Base to attend it. (Karen wasn’t invited.) A photo of him there made its way to us. It was the last photo of him that we’ve seen.

The only later report we’ve had about Heber was from Valerie Haney, who escaped from Scientology in 2016, and who subsequently told Leah Remini about a disturbing thing she witnessed before her escape.

Valerie Haney was involved in video shoots, and so she noticed that Heber was filmed for a video, but he was so infirm that the camera crew had to set up a special rig to help him sit upright for it.

Infirm, elderly, and busted down to a nearly nonexistent state of being: It was hard to believe that Heber was still being kept at Scientology’s prison camp and away from his family.

And from time to time, we would get questions from readers who noticed that we continued to refer to Heber as the president of CSI. Did we really think that he still had that title after so many decades, and if he was so infirm he couldn’t sit up straight on his own?

Well, Val Ross has now provided some information which strengthens our reasons for referring to Heber that way.

And that’s a filing dated September 26, 2023 with the state of California which shows that Scientology, at least, still considers Heber Jentzsch, now aged 88, to be the “CEO” of the Church of Scientology International.

For our podcast, Karen de la Carriere told us last year that she’d heard her former husband was in such bad shape, Scientology had sent him away from Int Base to a nursing home somewhere. We were unable to confirm which facility that might be, however.

But despite Karen’s tip about the nursing home, and Val Haney’s sighting that Heber can’t even sit up straight, it’s really remarkable that Scientology continues to list him as the Church of Scientology’s CEO, a powerless position that exists only on paper and that is submitted to keep CSI’s paperwork current with the state.

Val Ross has been going through Scientology’s many other reports to the state, and found that it had let many of its corporations fall into suspension for a lack of reporting. But then, a few years ago, an attorney at the Law Offices of Kendrick Moxon named Jeanne Reynolds began bringing the church’s entities up to date and in compliance.

It was Reynolds who submitted the filing this past September identifying Heber Jentzsch as still the CEO of the Church of Scientology International.

“I think that Jeanne in Moxon’s office just renews the Statements of Information with the California Secretary of State without even checking to see if there is a warm body attached to the name. Jeanne is an active attorney with a valid California bar number. There are several other Scientology related organizations she does this for too,” Val says.

Is Heber the CEO of Scientology while he’s actually suffering at a nursing home somewhere? We’d like to know more about this man who was such an important figure in Scientology history. If you know something, please let us know.

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