Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

last agreed on a temporary truce. Hubbard promised to release Sara and tell her where Alexis was
if she signed a piece of paper saying that she had gone with him voluntarily. Sara tearfully signed
and Hubbard scribbled a note to Dessler: 'Feb. 25. To Frank - This will authorize Sara to take Alexis
to live with her when she has a house. L. Ron Hubbard.' He jotted down the name of the agency he
said was caring for Alexis - 'Baby Sitters Inc, Hollywood phone book' - and added, 'Give Sara the
baby's address now so Sara can see her.'
Hubbard and de Mille got out of the car and Sara, still in her nightgown, drove back to Los Angeles
clutching the piece of paper she believed would enable her to be re-united with her baby. But
Hubbard had no intention of permitting such a reunion. 'He believed that as long as he had the
child he could control the situation,' de Mille explained.
While Sara was on her way back to Los Angeles, Hubbard was standing in a telephone booth at
Yuma airport giving urgent instructions to Frank Dessler. He was to arrange for Alexis to be
collected from her nurse before Sara got there. No matter what it cost, he was then to hire a reliable
couple to drive the baby to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Hubbard would meet her.
It did not take long for Sara to discover that Ron had misled her but by the time she had persuaded
Dessler to reveal the baby's whereabouts it was too late. She arrived at the Westwood nursery just
two hours after Alexis had been taken away. Sara filed a kidnapping complaint with Los Angeles
police department, but Hubbard was lucky - the police dismissed the incident as a domestic
dispute which was nothing to do with them.
Hubbard did not go directly to Elizabeth because he wanted to block any further attempts Sara
might make to have him committed. Accompanied by the loyal de Mille, he caught a commuter
plane to Phoenix and from there they flew to Chicago, where Hubbard presented himself for
examination by a psychiatrist and a psychologist, both equally bemused.
'He wanted a testimonial from a professional who would say he was OK and that he was not a
paranoid schizophrene,' said de Mille. 'He and I went first to a psychiatrist who didn't like the smell
of it. He obviously thought he was being manipulated, so we just paid him $10 and left. Then we
went to a prominent diagnostic psychologist of that era who did some projective testing on
Hubbard and produced an upbeat, harmless report, saying that he was a creative individual upset
by family problems and dissension and it was depressing his work and so forth. It was very bland
but Hubbard was delighted with it. The main value of it to him was that it didn't say he was crazy, so
he could claim he had been given a clean bill of health by the psychiatric profession.'
Before leaving Chicago, Hubbard called at the offices of the FBI to alert them of his suspicions that
one of his employees was a Communist. The man's name, he was far from reluctant to reveal, was
Miles Hollister.[14] Hubbard and de Mille then flew to New York and caught a taxi to Elizabeth, where
the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation was still in operation, although besieged by creditors.
They checked into a hotel and waited for Alexis to arrive.
While they were there, a further complication entered Hubbard's already entangled private life: Polly
Hubbard filed suit in Port Orchard, Washington, for maintenance, alleging that her former husband
had 'promoted a cult called Dianetics', had authored a bestseller, owned valuable property and was
well able to afford payment of maintenance for his two children, Nibs, then sixteen, and Katie,
fifteen. Hubbard responded by claiming that his first wife was not a fit and proper person to have
control of the children because she 'drinks to excess and is a dipsomaniac'.
On 3 March 1951, Hubbard, in his role as patriotic citizen, wrote to the FBI in Washington to provide