Where are David Miscavige and wife Michele 'Shelley' Diane? Mystery of 'missing' Scientology leader
CLEARWATER, FLORIDA: A desperate hunt is on for Scientology leader David Miscavige as lawyers are attempting to serve the controversial leader with a federal trafficking lawsuit.
The explosive lawsuit was filed in 2022 by three former church members, Gawain and Laura Baxter, and Valeska Paris, who alleged that they were forced into labor on Scientology boats as children after signing a billion-year contract in exchange for little or no money. Paris left the sect’s notorious military-style Sea Org in 2009 while Gawain and Laura left in 2012. The lawyers representing the trio claimed that the they tried to serve the 62-year-old leader 27 times in four months at Scientology properties in Clearwater, Florida, and California. Yet every time, guards outside the property refused to take the papers and claimed not to know where Miscavige lived or worked, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
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Reflecting on the reports, former top-ranking Scientologists said that Miscavige was deathly afraid of going to court and would do anything to evade the tenacious attorneys. Journalist Tony Ortega, who has written about Scientology since 1995, said that Miscavige may have “gone to ground” to avoid being served in numerous controversial legal cases, including the Danny Masterson rape mistrial. Ortega believed that the Scientology leader was not with his wife Michele "Shelly" Diane, who has not been seen since August 2007.
Miscavige, who took over the position after Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard’s death in 1986, was allegedly living in the gated Hacienda Gardens complex in Clearwater, which is owned by Scientology. Experts also claimed that Miscavige would end up like Hubbard, who died in a gated Northern California home after years of legal battles with the government. “Miscavige is a recluse now — the same way Hubbard was at the end,” Mike Rinder, former media spokesman for Scientology, told the New York Post.
“Hubbard abandoned his wife and never saw her again after 1982,” Rinder continued, adding, “Hubbard turned her into a pariah and Mary Sue was kept in a house where [Scientologists] reported on her every day to Miscavige.” Another former high-ranking Scientology executive noted that Miscavige was walking on the same route Hubbard did before his death. “Miscavige is completely echoing Hubbard,” said Karen de la Carriere, Scientology executive of 40 years who was trained by Hubbard. She added, “But unlike Hubbard, there is no successor lined up. Miscavige, in his lust for power, smashed to a pulp any possible rivals. So there is no one to lead if anything happens to him.”
She told the New York Post that Miscavige was his own enemy, adding that "he was so paranoid, he sees the FBI in his soup." "He expects a bullet in his chest by someone somewhere so he has an entourage like a third-world dictator. He doesn’t make a move without his security entourage. He has a very grandiose image of himself,” she said.
Speaking about Shelly, de La Carriere said she has been in the controversial organization since she was a child and may not want to escape the cult. “Shelly was on the Apollo with me when she was 11 or 12 years old [she’s now 62]. She studied with Hubbard,” de la Carriere said, adding, “She is like someone from the FLDS [a fundamentalist Mormon sect]. They want to be a sister's wife. They don’t know any better. They don’t think outside the box.”
Shelly was reported missing by former Scientologist Leah Remini in 2013, but just days after LAPD closed the case stating they had located her and she was not actually missing. The lawyers with the organization have time and again claimed that Shelly continued to be a dedicated Sea Org member and lives a private life. Geoffrey Levin, 77, a music composer who left Scientology in 2018 after enduring serious depression for three years, said that he heard from church members that Shelly was also going through the same kind of depression.