FROM THE FILES OF THE FBI 300C

From the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of
Justice, Washington, D.C.  Please archive.  Previous files are archived at
http://www.xenu.net

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[continued from FBI FILE 300B]

The following article regarding two members of the Church of Scientology
appeared in the November 25, 1969 issue of the "Los Angeles Times':

Motive Sought in Slaying of Youth, Woman

Only Clue Discovered Was Common Membership of Pair in Scientology Sect

BY DIAL TORGERSON and JERRY COHEN
Times Staff Writers

Police investigating the weird slayings of a youth and young woman pursued
Monday what they termed the only common thread between the pair: their
membership in the Church of Scientology.

The Scientology organization--a mystical, quasi-scientific group--verified
that Doreen Gaul, 19, and James Sharp, 15, were members of the group.

"We are shocked and bereaved by this sudden and brutal crime," a
Scientology spokesman said.

The deaths brought to 13 the number of seemingly motiveless murders in Los
Angeles since the first of the year.  As in the Tate case and other
still-unsolved killings, the murders of Miss Gaul and Sharp were crimes of
shocking brutality.

Miss Gaul had been stripped except for a string of Indian beads.  Both had
been repeatedly stabbed and beaten about the face and head.  Their eyes
were slashed.

They had been murdered elsewhere and their bodies dumped in an alley a
half-mile from a hippie-like cult commune which Miss Gaul had left Friday
evening for a Scientology session with young Sharp.

Police were concentrating on two aspects of the mystery: where the couple
had gone Saturday night and where the crime occurred.

"It's difficult to see how a crime of this sort could be committed--one
which would involve this much blood and this much noise--without someone
noticing it," said Capt. Frank L. Brittell.

He said it could have been the work of a gang--because of the excessive
number of blows rained on the victims.  Police talked to scores of people
in the Alvarado-Westlake district where the victims lived.  Many were
fellow Scientologists.

"These two people could have both belonged to the Meat Cutters Union or
the church down the street, " said Brittell.  "But the only thing they
have in common in Scientology.  This is the only thread we have so far."

Scientology had its beginnings in the Dyanetics [sic] fad begun in 1950 by
science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who now runs what he calls a
worldwide church.

In Los Angeles, Scientology has four "church" and administrative buildings
and a number of communal living quarters in old Victorian mansions on side
streets in the neighborhoods near MacArthur Park.

"Auditors" who offer "parishioners" of Scientology a mystical version of
psychological therapy have been ordered by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration to stop using a crude form of lie detector called the
Scientology E-meter--a galvanome-

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ter with two tin cans attached.

It was learned that Miss Gaul had said that Sharp who came here from
Missouri last June, was going to "audit" her Friday night.  "Auditing" is
a term applied to the process of achieving a "clear" state of soul.

The victims lived about a block apart.  Sharp lived with an older
Scientology worker in an old but well-kept three-story apartment building
at 921 S. Bonnie Brae St.  Miss Gaul had lived four days at a 14-room
commune called Thetan Manor at 1032 S. Bonnie Brae.  (Operating Thetan, in
the language of Scientology, means reaching the advanced level of study in
the cult.)

Sharp was the son of a prosperous salesman living in the upper middle
class suburb of Crestwood, southwest of St. Louis.  He left high school in
June, with his father's permission, to study Scientology here.

"He was a very, very intelligent boy," the father told newsmen in St.
Louis.

Miss Gaul, the eldest of four children, was graduated in the spring of
1968 from a parochial high school in Albany, N.Y.  Friends said that until
she became devoted to Scientology after graduation, the attractive young
woman had been a devout Roman Catholic.

Her father told a newsman in Albany that she had apparently become
disenchanted with Scientology in recent weeks.

Garb Described

"She was a good kid, but an emotional kid," he said. "She was always
looking for green grass and rainbows."

Miss Gaul was wearing a skirt and blouse or sweater when she left Thetan
Manor to go to Sharp's house.  Mike Thompson, a resident at the commune,
remembered her looks: "She was outa sight," he said Monday.

Shortly before midnight, a man taking a short cut through an alley between
Arapahoe St. and Magnolia Ave., south of 11th St., found the bodies.  They
were so badly battered police at first believed them the victims of
shotgun blasts.

Preliminary reports indicated Miss Gaul had not been raped.

Police said Scientology officials cooperated with them in their
investigation.  The Rev. Natalie Fisher, who describes herself as resident
agent of Scientology's American St. Hill Organization at 2723 W. Temple
St., issued a statement saying in part:

"This organization has no facts or information regarding the circumstances
of the crime, but we are doing everything in our power to assist law
enforcement agencies to see that justice is done."

Police said there was no apparent connection between the latest deaths and
11 others, including the five Tate murders, which have remained unsolved
in Los Angeles County since January.

Other seemingly motiveless crimes included the deaths of a wealthy grocer
and his wife in the Los Feliz district and the slaying of four young women
in separate crimes.

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[continued in FBI FILE 300D]

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