Report: LAPD covered up that Shelly Miscavige’s fingerprints didn’t match in 2013

[Shelly Miscavige in the 1990s, and her 2010 driver’s license photo]

Journalist Yashar Ali posted a bombshell investigation to his Substack last night. After six years of reporting, he found that when the LAPD met with Church of Scientology executive Shelly Miscavige in 2013 after Leah Remini had filed a missing person report, the fingerprints that were taken from Shelly didn’t conclusively match what was already on record — but rather than investigate further, the LAPD covered up the discrepancy for the church.

That summer we first broke the news on July 8, 2013 that Leah Remini had left Scientology, and then a month later in August, that she had filed a missing person report on her old friend Shelly Miscavige, wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, who had mysteriously vanished after being a very visible figure in the organization.

On August 8, 2013 the LAPD announced that Remini’s report about Shelly was “unfounded,” but we later spoke to LAPD Lt. Andre Dawson, who told us that two of his detectives had met with Shelly and that she declined the opportunity to make a public statement. When we asked Dawson if that meeting had taken place in the presence of other Church of Scientology officials, he said “that’s classified.”

Now, Yashar has learned that the meeting actually took place at a coffee shop in West Covina (outside of LAPD jurisdiction), and that Shelly was accompanied by Jeffrey Riffer, an attorney we have seen handle David Miscavige’s personal legal issues in the past. At the meeting, Yashar says, Shelly’s fingerprints were taken, but they didn’t match conclusively the set of prints that were already on file at the DMV.

Yashar also obtained a record of Shelly’s driver’s license renewal at a West Covina DMV office in 2010, including the photo of her you see above, the first photo of her since her appearance at a Madrid “Ideal Org” opening in 2004, and since her disappearance in the summer of 2005.

Also, security footage from the coffee shop that would have shown if the woman with Riffer actually was Shelly Miscavige was found to have been scrambled, Yashar says.

Yashar’s sources tell him that the LAPD violated numerous law enforcement standards during its investigation.

My sources, and a review of documents, told me that Shelly was not informed that she was the subject of a missing person’s report by the LAPD detectives and that Remini was the one who filed it. There is also no indication that they ascertained why she was missing or what led her to withdraw so severely from life and her friends.

Not presenting Shelly with this critical information goes against every standard practice of law enforcement when a missing adult is found, even if they claim they are voluntarily missing.

In 2016, Leah Remini pursued this kind of information when she filed requests with the LAPD for records of what had happened with her missing person report, but she was told she wasn’t going to get any records at all.

Now, Yashar Ali has done a remarkable job learning just what the LAPD did — and didn’t do.

His report also goes into detail about Shelly’s overall story and describes how Scientology has such a grip on the LAPD. It’s a remarkable indictment of a law enforcement agency that not only failed to ask Shelly Miscavige the most basic questions about her situation but also kept from Leah Remini any information at all about how her report had been handled.

Yashar also mentions that Shelly was assigned Scientology Sea Org women to “handle” her in her banishment, something that we had also learned from Ron Miscavige before he died: Antonella Tisi, who was Shelly’s auditor, and Anne Joasem (formerly Anne Rathbun), her “handler.” And Yashar adds another name: Elsie Benhraiem (formerly Tucker).

In August or September of 2005 (not 2006, as numerous sources have it), Shelly Miscavige was moved from Scientology’s secretive international management base (“Int” or “Gold” it’s called), up to an even more secretive and much smaller compound, the headquarters of the Church of Spiritual Technology in Twin Peaks, California, and not far from Crestline and Lake Arrowhead.

Based on multiple lines of evidence, and public records, we believe that Shelly has been kept at that compound ever since, being let out only occasionally since then for excursions to Crestline and other places. She was seen by former Scientology film director Mitch Brisker in Redlands around 2008, and a woman in Crestline may have seen Shelly in 2015 and 2016. There are no serious reports of Shelly being seen outside the compound since that time.

Scientology, when it is asked about Shelly, says that she’s on a special assignment and not missing, and they have cited church attorneys who say they have spoken to Shelly and that she’s fine. For that reason, we do believe that Shelly Miscavige is not only still at the CST headquarters compound, but that she’s alive. (Attorneys may help Scientology cover up her whereabouts, but they are less likely to cover up a death.)

Each Christmas, we review what we know about Shelly’s strange banishment to the CST compound, and what law enforcement hasn’t done about it. (Including a time when Shelly’s own extended family tried to do a welfare check on her in 2016 and were rebuffed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.)

Now, thanks to Yashar, we know even more about the lengths that law enforcement will go to protect David Miscavige and the Church of Scientology. Incredible.

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Chris Shelton is going Straight up and Vertical

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