Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Angeles airport, said he was leaving for Las Vegas in five minutes and hoped to be able to identify
John Doe. They agreed to meet at ten o'clock that night at the Medical Examiner Facility on Pinto
Lane. Weigand was a senior Guardian's Office agent. He arrived at Pinto Lane five minutes late
and explained that he had been contacted by a Kathy O'Gorman, who lived at the same address in
Clearwater as Quentin Hubbard. However, he said he had only seen Quentin a couple of times and
could not be sure of making a positive identification. Weigand viewed the body twice, stared into
Quentin's white face, with his unmistakable red hair and moustache, then shook his head andsaid
he was not sure. He could give no more help and he did not even know the telephone number of
Kathy O'Gorman in Clearwater. Weigand disappeared into the garish Las Vegas night and
immediately put a call through to the Guardian's Office to give them the bad news: it was Quentin,
all right.
Mary Sue screamed for ten minutes when she heard the news. 'It was horrendous,' said Kima
Douglas. 'It kept on going. I couldn't believe she could get that much air in her lungs. The only time I
had ever really seen her cry before was when Vixie, her Corgi, died and I had to give it mouth-tomouth
resuscitation to try and revive it. The old man didn't cry or get emotional. He was furious -
really angry that Quentin had done it.'
That same morning, a detective from Clearwater police department telephoned Las Vegas to say
that 210 South Fort Harrison Avenue was the address of the US headquarters of the Church of
Scientology, but that the church's public affairs officer, one Kathy O'Gorman, had refused to give him
any information about Quentin Hubbard. The detective said that the Clearwater police had had
'many problems' with the church; as far as he knew, the founder, L. Ron Hubbard, lived on a yacht
in the bay.
The Guardian's Office, meanwhile, had moved swiftly to 'handle' the situation. Its local
representative in Las Vegas was a pit boss at the Sands Hotel by the name of Ed Walters. 'I had
been working as a covert operator for about eight years,' he said. 'I had secretly tape-recorded a
psychiatrist and got him to talk about lobotomies to try and discredit him and I had bugged the
meetings of Clark County Mental Health Association, things like that. I worked on anything that org
conceived to be a threat to the Hubbards.
'When they found out Quentin was here, I was told to get hold of all his medical files. There was
apparently evidence that he had had a homosexual encounter shortly before he was found and they
didn't want anything like that to get out. There was a girl Scientologist working in the hospital in a
very secure position and she got all the reports on Quentin and gave them to me and I handed
them over to the Guardian's Office.'[10]
On the morning of Thursday, 18 November, Arthur Maren arrived at the coroner's office in Las
Vegas and introduced himself as director of public affairs for the Church of Scientology. He said he
would be able to make a positive identification of the body and at 11.25 he confirmed that John Doe
was, indeed, Geoffrey Quentin McCaully Hubbard, aged twenty-two. Maren said that Quentin's
parents were not in the United States, but were away on a trip round the world.
Maren went backwards and forwards to the coroner's office over the next few days providing
information designed to deter any further investigation into Quentin's death. He even persuaded the
coroner to describe the cause of death as 'undetermined' in a press release. Quentin was said to
have been on vacation and in Las Vegas to check out enrolment requirements for a flying school.
On Monday, 22 November, a young woman called Mary Rezzonico turned up with an authorization
signed by L. Ron Hubbard and Mary Sue Hubbard for the release of their son's remains and his