Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Chapter 20
Running Aground
'I don't think I will ever regret making my discoveries public. My sole purpose was to serve and give
man the knowledge I had . . . I've never looked to quarrel with anybody.' (First statement to the press
by L. Ron Hubbard for five years, read by Diana Hubbard at a reception in Quebec, to launch a new
edition of Dianetics, 28 April 1976.)
• • • • •
Frankie Freedman, a former pit boss in a Las Vegas casino and a Scientologist of ten years'
standing, knew the Sea Org was going ashore because he had been scouring South Carolina,
Georgia and Florida for a property with a security perimeter which could be used as a staging-post
until a permanent land base was established. His 'shore story' was that he was a representative of
a phoney corporation - Southern Land Sales and Development - which was looking to lease
properties for church-organized retreats. 'LRH knew that if we went into town and said we were
Scientologists,' said Freedman, 'we'd be out on our asses.'[1]
Early in August 1975, Freedman found a run-down motel, the Neptune, on the shore at Daytona
Beach in Florida. He contacted the owner, presented his Southern Land Development business
card, and offered to rent the entire motel for three months. They agreed on a figure of $50,000. Two
days later, Mark Schecter arrived with the money in a suitcase.
In his cabana at the Hilton in Curaçao, Hubbard summoned the faithful Dincalci, who was once
more restored to favour, and told him: 'We're going to leave the ship. Get some money, go to
Daytona Beach and find me a place close to the Neptune motel. They have those condomiums all
over the place - pick up one of them.' Dincalci remembered being rather touched by Hubbard's mispronunciation
of condominium which seemed to emphasize how long the Commodore had been
absent from his own country.[2]
On board the Apollo, it was by this time common knowledge that the Commodore was planning to
return to the United States. Sea Org officers were already making plans to get the crew ashore in
small groups through the international airports at Miami, Washington DC and New York so as not
to alert federal agencies to what was happening. Non US-citizens were provided with return tickets
and told to enter the United States as tourists. The ship was to be left at Freeport in the Bahamas
with a skeleton crew until she could be sold.
Hubbard, meanwhile, slipped out of Curaçao on a direct flight to Orlando, Florida, accompanied by
Mary Sue and Kima Douglas. They were driven to Daytona Beach, where Jim Dincalci had rented
adjoining suites in a modern seafront hotel a couple of hundred yards down the road from the
Neptune motel. Within a few days, the first Sea Org personnel began moving into the Neptune.
None if them was supposed to know the Commodore was living just down the road.
'We all used to pretend not to know where he was,' said David Mayo, 'although it was pretty obvious.
We could see his hotel from the balcony of the motel, but everyone was told to stay away, not even
go in there for a drink, because there were SPs [suppressive persons] there. Nobody believed that;
it was too outlandish. Then he used to visit us every day and he would arrive in a gold Cadillac
which we had seen leave the hotel a few minutes earlier. It would turn in the opposite direction, go