This week, a story we have been covering for a long time, the disappearance of Shelly Miscavige, suddenly became national news, thanks to a joke by comedian Jerrod Carmichael as he was hosting the Golden Globes Awards.
For years, we've been telling you what we've uncovered about Shelly, the wife of Scientology's ruthless leader, David Miscavige. Shelly used to help Dave run his empire, but in late August or early September 2005, she vanished from Scientology's secretive international management base near Hemet, California.
Two years later, in 2007, she was seen at the funeral of her father in the presence of a Scientology "handler." But since then, there's been no confirmed sighting of this person who used to be a very visible figure in the Hubbardite world.
You know, if you've been reading our reporting, that we believe David Miscavige had his wife banished to a small mountain compound near Lake Arrowhead, California that is operated by a Scientology subsidiary known as the Church of Spiritual Technology, or CST.
And yes, we hear from readers all the time that they have a hard time believing that Shelly is still alive, but we have reason to believe that she is still living at the CST base, which is often referred to as Twin Peaks, the name of a nearby hamlet. And yes, Shelly may be resigned to her fate.
A couple of years ago, we were interviewing various people who knew Shelly for an unnamed project that we couldn't publish anything from.
Until now.
On March 15, 2021, we knew that our friend Ron Miscavige, father to Scientology leader David Miscavige, had received a medical diagnosis that he had only weeks to live. We called him up in part to ask him about his memories of Shelly, and we spoke for about 40 minutes.
Ron died several weeks later, in June 2021.
He was a wonderful man, a great trumpet player, and we’re really glad that we got to know him.
Now, we are publishing material from the conversation we had that day in March 2021, with some explanations to help listeners follow what we're talking about. Also, we must apologize for the technical quality of the call. At the time we thought that we would have a chance to have a more formal recording session with Ron later, but that turned out not to be the case.
You’ll see that along the way we learned some very interesting new things about Shelly Miscavige as Ron described for us what he remembered about his daughter-in-law.
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
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PODCAST: Our never-heard 2021 interview with Ron Miscavige about daughter-in-law Shelly