On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 12:56:23 +0200, mgormez@chello.nl wrote:

>Ken Urquhart in 2001, on 'A Piece of Blue Sky' by Jon Atack:
>
>
>18. p.207. Jon raises the matter of the death of Susan Meister, and
>strongly suggests that foul play caused it.

I didn't think so either, but with this information I am not so sure. Possibly a number of people could have been charged with murder.

>I never heard LRH mention foul
>play. By the time of this incident, we had GO people on the ship, and that
>office took charge of the investigation and handling of her terrible end.
>If they had proof of foul play it is conceivable that they would have
>withheld it - but not from MSH and I doubt extremely that she would have
>withheld it from LRH. It is possible that LRH would have withheld it from
>me.
>
>I was involved unknowingly in Susan Meister's situation. A week or so
>before her death, she had written to LRH asking his permission for her to
>leave the ship and return home. At that time, his policy on such was to
>refuse (it varied). I composed a reply to this effect and included it in
>his mail for signature. He signed it. He was considerably put out when I
>reminded him of this - he had signed the reply without reading it or its
>original request (and this was not unusual practice for him - I should
>have known better). From then on, I put a warning note on any similar
>reply composed for him to sign.

From the moment Susan's letter was received, everyone in the chain of command from LRH who set the policy down was involved in committing the crime of unlawful confinement. Now that's a crime that shades from a misdemeanor to an outright felony as in kidnapping. Would a court given the cited facts consider keeping Susan Meister on the ship constituted a felony? It's a good question to ask on misc.legal or misc.legal.moderated if someone would cross post.

The status of a person under unlawful confinement is similar in the eyes of the law to that of a kidnapped person. Any damage the person does to themselves while trying to escape becomes equivalent to that done by physical assault. I am not certain about people driven to suicide because they cannot escape, but there may be precedents calling it murder.

A bit of digging brought up the "felony murder rule." A death occurring during the commission of certain kinds of crimes constitutes murder and is applied to all participating in the felony. There are a lot of people serving life sentences because they were in a gang robbing someone who got killed, even accidentally, in the process.

>Further, on Susan Meister: Jon quotes some letters she wrote home in high
>enthusiasm about Scientology and what she took to be the mission of the
>Sea Org. He quotes them as examples of how gullible SO members were. We
>had a number of people on the ship who came without a great deal of
>education but with at least some experience of street drugs (I don't know
>if Susan had a drug history or not; she was certainly not well educated).
>Finding themselves on the ship, and sometimes with menial jobs and very
>unattractive berthing, some of them let their imaginations run wild, and
>their false enthusiasms flap. Many of them graduated through that phase to
>some maturity and, in some cases, great ability. I believe that Susan
>Meister was unable to face the growth that staying on the ship challenged
>her to encompass; I will always deeply regret that her cry came through
>me, and I chose to adhere to the current policy rather than to hear her,
>listen to her, and help her in compassion and good sense.

Scientology: No matter how bad you think it is, it is worse.

Keith Henson

>http://freezoneamerica.org/ivy/bluesky/part8.htm

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