Scientology doesn't want The Lisa McPherson Trust in Clearwater. From the events of the past week, it is clear that they are desperate to keep us out of town. Some of the following information has already been reported, but I think it's important to provide a running record of what the Trust is going through in trying to get established in Clearwater.

The week before last I was in Clearwater to secure office space for the Trust. I couldn't find an office building that would lease to us. The office manager of the SunTrust building informed me that the owner had declined to lease to us. He never returned phone calls from me, Bob, Patricia Greenway or Ken Dandar, so we were left to form our own conclusions as to why. Then the realtor for the NationsBank building told me that he got an email from the owner of that building - right before he was supposed to meet me to negotiate a lease - saying that the owner had "decided to rethink how he wants to utilize the building." What? Half the building is empty! I told the realtor it was obvious Scientology had contacted him. He hemmed and hawed and said he'd have a final answer for me the next day.

Next I tried at the Clearwater Tower building. The way that realtor refused us was to tell me the owner had said they would have to get a release from all the other tenants in the building before they could lease to us. The owner of the AmSouth building at first told me there would be no problem leasing to us, but later changed his mind and refused. In conversation with the realtor for that building (the same person, by the way who represented the NationsBank building) I was able to discover that Scientology had sent him a large package of materials "documenting" the dangerous nature of each of the principals in the Lisa McPherson Trust. He refused to show me the package, but he did mention that the owner wouldn't want to lease to a "convicted felon." I told him he was being given false information by Scientology and told him the real story of the assault charge against Bob in Boston and how the charge had been thrown out by the judge. He was clearly surprised at this and asked for documentation, which Bob faxed to him that afternoon. But he still turned us down. I even tried a building a few blocks down Cleveland called the Clearwater Centre. The office manager was enthusiastic about leasing to us, but the owner said no way.

It was becoming clear that if we wanted to be in downtown Clearwater we were going to have to buy our own building. So Bob and I flew to Tampa last Sunday to find a building for the Lisa McPherson Trust.

Two Scientologists, both women, were there to greet Bob when he got off the shuttle in the Tampa airport. "Bob Minton!" one of the women shouted at him."What are you doing in our town?"

To which Bob replied, "Maybe this used to be your town, but we're taking it back."

"Bigot!" the woman spat at him.

"Scieno!" he replied.

This little interchange definitely set the tone for the entire week.

Scientology had been harassing Bob relentlessly during the preceding week. All 4,000 people in the town of Sandown, N.H., had received anonymous DA material on him in the mail "provided as a public service." Many of his friends in Boston had also received these materials, as had the principals of both of his daughters' schools. Just that morning, as he went out to his car to drive to the airport, Bob had found a Halloween flier which had been taped to his mailbox. It was a picture of Frankenstein with Bob's head superimposed over the body and a warning to the children of the neighborhood not to have anything to do with the person who lived at that house.

As a note, Bob discovered that one of the people who had received a flier in the mail was a woman whose daughter is a good friend of one of Bob's daughters. The flier was addressed to the woman's maiden name and sent to the summer home on Long Island where Bob's daughter has visited this family. The only way Scientology could possibly have gotten this address would be by following Bob's daughter to this house. The deed is in the maiden name of this woman, which explains why it was sent to her under that name. Bob was infuriated when he realized they have been following his daughter.

With all of the events of the past week, by the time Bob arrived in Tampa his adrenalin level was already high.

We drove directly to the Fort Harrison, where I got out and picketed with a sign that said "Lisa McPherson's blood on Scientology's hands" on one side and "Scientology: Spiritual Death" with photos of skulls on the other side. The plan was for me to walk back and forth past the Ft. Harrison two or three times while Bob drove around the block. I was glad it wasn't going to be a long picket because I was having to hold the sign up above my head with my hands, since we didn't have picket sticks, and my arms were getting tired.

These people soon surrounded me and Bob as we walked back and forth in front of the Fort Harrison. "Go home! Go home!" a couple of the people chanted monotonously. But another woman, who told me her name was Cheryl, concentrated on trying to miss my withholds about what I had been doing that afternoon. "Come on, Stacy," she kept saying with a smirk, "what have you really been doing today?" I felt like telling her I'd been having a lot more fun than she had, but I didn't bother. Mainly I was watching to make sure Bob was OK, since he was the one they were obviously concentrating on.

After about a half an hour we decided we'd had enough and went to our car. As we headed for the Belleview Biltmore we became aware that two cars were following us. Bob pulled over onto Alexander Road instead of turning into the hotel entrance. One of the cars parked in front of us, and the other one parked behind us. We got out and so did the people in the two cars. Richard Howd got out of the car in front of us, a Buick Century with Florida license DK612H, and immediately began videotaping Bob, again one to two inches from Bob's face. Cheryl got out of the car behind us, a dark gray Volvo 240GL, Florida license J48162. We asked them what they were doing following us but Richard just kept on videotaping, and Cheryl just repeated, "Why don't you just go home?"

We got back in our car and drove to the hotel, stopping at the guard booth to give the guard the license numbers and telling him not to let those two cars into the hotel, which the guard assured us he would not.

After a quiet dinner with Ken Dandar in the hotel dining room, Bob suggested we find Bennetta Slaughter's house on Kent Avenue in Largo in case she was having a Halloween party, similar to the party Lisa attended shortly before she was taken prisoner and allowed to die. We found the house - actually, it appeared to consist of several structures behind a concrete wall - but it was dark and there was a collection of Halloween party trash at the gate, so we assumed the party had been Saturday night. We did get out to picket briefly, but the only people who seemed to know we were there were the PI's following us. One white SUV drove through the gate and disappeared but otherwise it was quiet.

Just a personal comment here: I have been aware that there are public Scientologists making enormous amounts of money with Scientology employees such as Lisa was at AMC, but when I was in the Sea Org and in OSA I never actually saw the wealth of these people. Somehow, standing outside Bennetta Slaughter's huge compound that night on Kent Avenue, it really struck me how much people like Lisa McPherson are used by these ruthless Scientologists like Bennetta Slaughter, whose purpose truly is to "make money, make more money, and get other people to make money." I find it utterly horrifying that Bennetta Slaughter is now calling herself Lisa's "friend" after she was one of the principal players in driving Lisa into the psychotic episode which led to her gruesome death. I have experienced the kind of "product officering" Lisa was subjected to by Bennetta. It is cold-hearted, vicious and utterly without any concern for the well-being of those being "product officered." All that matters is that the statistics go up, that the quotas are met. Nothing else exists but the stats.

It was terribly chilling for me to stand outside the gates of a house owned by one of the people that I consider contributed to Lisa's death. Indeed, it affected both of us profoundly. By the time we walked back to our car we were shaken, and unprepared for the van that suddenly materialized out of the darkness at the end of the dead end street. The driver of the van raced toward us so recklessly that we thought he was going to slam into the front of our car. He came to a screaming stop just inches away from us. Bob jumped out of the car to confront him, but the driver quickly backed up and tore away before we could get a look at him. Clearly this was someone who had been waiting for us at Bennetta's. How did he know we were coming there?

As we drove back toward Ft. Harrison Blvd., Bob spotted the same van following us. He quickly turned up a side street and made a U-turn, but the driver of the van turned with us and nearly slammed into the side of our car. This was twice we had come within a hair's breadth of being hit by this van.

We had planned to go back to the hotel, but now Bob suggested that we go back to the Ft. Harrison for a fast picket just to let them know they hadn't frightened us away, as this was clearly what they were trying to do. We parked in the Presbyterian Church parking lot across the street and Bob took a picket sign and I took the video camera. It was my first time using the camera so he had to show me how to use it. Then we crossed the street and he began picketing while I kept the camera focused on him. Immediately Croc and several others surrounded Bob, including Richard Howd, the same man that had been videotaping Bob all day - the one at the first picket of the Ft. Harrison, who had also followed us to the gates of our hotel. As he had done earlier, he kept his video camera close to Bob's face the whole time, obviously trying to unnerve him.

Two women also showed up. One kept repeating, like a litany, "Go home, Bob, go home, Bob," over and over and over in a monotone voice. The other woman was Jessica Piccone Parselle Byrne. A little history: She was married to Enzo back at GO WW, then to Charles Parselle and just getting divorced from him when I knew her as a GO WW missionaire at GO US in 1978. Later she married Larry Byrne, who had been Mary Sue's Controller Assistant for Social Coordination until DM busted the GO in 1982. For a while, Larry and Jessica were at RealWorld, a software company staffed by ex-GO executives including Mike and Marty Carlson and Steve and Joanie Segal, among others. Then they were recruited to come into the Sea Org on direct orders of DM, Larry to be head of Central Marketing Unit and Jessica to be the headmistress of the children's ranch out at Happy Valley in Gilman Hot Springs. I remember seeing them in their brand new Sea Org uniforms in 1989 and thinking, "They've been treated like royalty during the recruitment process, but now that they're aboard the honeymoon is over. They won't last long with DM's ruthlessness." I knew neither of them would survive it for long.

Sure enough, next thing I knew they were public Scientologists again, now located in Clearwater and handling PR for the Purif. You may recall Jessica's and Larry's names being mentioned in an article by Tom Tobin in which he reported that a health food store in the Clearwater area was run by Scientologists who were prescribing the Purif for people who should have been seeing a medical doctor. It came out on the same day as Lucy Morgan's major piece on Scientology litigation.

In any case, here was my old friend Jessica, now a member of the official Psychological Terrorism Unit assigned to turn our peaceful picket into an opportunity to subject us to Black Dianetics techniques. I was disappointed to see her playing this role, because I knew that back when we were friends, she truly wanted to help people with Scientology. Now here she was, callously and deliberately setting out to interfere with our legal right to protest.

Jessica seemed to be assigned to me, while the other woman continued to intone, "Bob, go home, Bob, go home." Jessica's mantra was, "Stacy, is this your new boyfriend? Stacy, is this your new boyfriend? How can you associate yourself with someone like this? Stacy, is this your new boyfriend?" It was depressing to see a bright, idealistic person like Jessica reduced to this kind of behavior. Obviously she was under orders and felt she had no choice but to comply. I just responded to her by saying, "Jessica, you've been in the GO too long. Look at what you're doing." But of course she didn't stop.

All this time I was continuing to videotape because Richard Howd, the man with the video camera, was obviously intent upon creating an incident with Bob. It seemed to me that I was observing people carrying out the same orders as in the Boston incident with Frank Offman, in which it was abundantly clear to me from the videotape that Frank Offman and Kevin Hall came out that day with orders to set Bob up on assault charges (a number of people who have seen that tape, including Bob's attorney, have agreed with me on this). I was being careful to videotape the entire thing, and Bob was remaining extremely calm considering the circumstances, so I just wanted to make sure I had it all on videotape.

But as Bob turned the corner on Pierce, I was slowed down by the crowd of people surrounding him and wasn't able to video what happened for several seconds. This is the same thing that was done in Boston. In Boston, the point where Frank broke Bob's picket stick wasn't videotaped because his camera was knocked out of his hands. On this night in Clearwater, I missed the several seconds when Richard Howd struck Bob with his video camera and actually bent Bob's picket sign. (As I had done that afternoon, Bob was simply carrying a foam core board with no stick). By the time I caught up with them I saw the bent sign but there was no record of what had happened.

It was at that point, right after Howd assaulted him around the corner, that Bob said, "I've had it, I'm calling the police." He stepped into the street, heading toward the Presbyterian Church where the car was parked, and pulled out his cell phone to make a call to the police, but as he put the phone to his ear, Richard Howd stuck his video camera right into Bob's ear making it impossible for Bob to make the call. Bob turned around, holding the phone in one hand and his foam core picket sign in the other, and shouted, "Get away from me!" pushing the sign out in front of him.

I could literally see Richard Howd realizing his opportunity. He hesitated for a split second, then pushed his head into the edge of the picket sign moving at him so that it touched him. Then, screaming "I'm hurt! I'm hurt!" he dove onto the sidewalk, clutching his face and writhing on the ground. Within seconds he was surrounded by Scientologists. Almost instantly, it seemed to me, two ambulances and three police cars were there, and Bob and I were sitting on the steps of the Presbyterian Church watching this nightmare unfold. Bob looked at me in dismay and said, "Oh no, I can't believe this." We both knew what was going to happen.

Two Clearwater policemen walked across the street to where we were sitting. One of them said to me, "How can he be smart enough to make so much money and then be dumb enough to let these people bait him like this?" I said, "Officer, he wasn't baited, he was set up. Look at the video." The officers did watch my video, but because the picket sign touched Richard Howd, they said they had to arrest him. It wasn't going to be a felony charge, though, because they didn't see that Howd was actually hurt. It would only be a misdemeanor battery charge.

Bob was handcuffed as the Scientologists watched gleefully, and I followed the police car to the Pinellas County jail. By now it was about 1:00 in the morning. I wasn't allowed to go to the jail itself so I sat parked all alone in a deserted parking lot on the other side of the complex, waiting for the police officer to let me know it was OK for me to post bail. As I sat there I thought to myself that if Mark Bunker had been there to do the videotaping, I would have been free to run interference, and maybe if both of us had been there this wouldn't have happened. So I called Mark on the spot, told him what had happened, and asked him if he'd be willing to move to Clearwater. He said yes without skipping a beat, and that's how it came about that Xenu TV is relocating to Clearwater, Florida.

After about forty-five minutes the police officer came and told me I could go post bail. I had to park in another deserted parking lot and leave my purse and camera in the car, because I was only allowed to have my driver's license and the cash with me, and I had to walk down a long sidewalk enclosed in heavy fencing. It was the route people take who are visiting prisoners, and I guess the security has to be pretty high. I could feel the cumulative desperation of all the prisoners in that jail, and I was glad Bob wasn't going to have to stay there for long.

I gave the officer at the cashier's window the $250 cash for Bob's bail and then sat down with Ken Dandar, who had arrived a few minutes earlier, to wait for Bob to be released. He came out within twenty minutes. It was two a.m. by that time and we were exhausted. Ken drove us to the rental car and we drove back to the hotel. Bob felt terrible about getting arrested, he just kept saying over and over, "How could I be so stupid?" and I kept saying it was my fault for videotaping when I should have been running interference. We were both miserable about the whole thing.

The next morning Bob showed me the apology he later posted to a.r.s. It was a heartfelt apology, because he really did feel he had let everyone down by getting arrested. We both felt that it was not a promising way to launch the arrival to Clearwater of the Lisa McPherson Trust.

Little did we know that we would encounter nothing but good wishes during the next few days, with many people welcoming us and telling us how happy they are that we are coming to Clearwater. In fact, except for the Scientologists, we didn't encounter even one person who wasn't extremely happy to learn that we were coming to town. But we didn't know that early Monday morning. You've never seen two people hanging their heads like we were that morning.

But we had an appointment at eleven to look at a building at 33 N. Ft. Harrison, so we didn't have time to dwell on the events of the night before. We parked in the parking structure behind the building and saw Scientology bicycle guards at either end of the street, watching us and talking on their walkie-talkies, as we entered.

It was a two-story building, very nice, owned by a CPA. We introduced ourselves and told him right away about what had happened the night before, so that there would be no surprises for him. We told him we were being followed and explained why. He shrugged and said it was none of his business and began giving us a tour of the building.

Within five minutes seven Scientologists barged into the room he was showing us and began shouting at him, "This man is a criminal! He was arrested for assault and battery last night! He's violent! Don't do business with these people!" The CPA ordered them out of the building immediately, but they refused to go. "Don't do business with these people! Don't do business with these people!" they continued to shout, until finally the CPA managed to push them outside. We finished our tour and then sat down to talk to him in his conference room. Almost immediately his secretary called to say that his building was being picketed and that one of his clients had been photographed as they entered the offices. At this the CPA instructed his secretary to call the police.

During our brief meeting, he got three urgent messages to call Mary Story, the DSA Flag. "I've asked Mary twice to get Scientology to buy my building," he told us. "They weren't interested. Now that I'm talking to you, suddenly she's frantic to talk to me." He just shook his head in amazement.

He didn't return Mary's phone calls, and soon Pat Jones, who has apparently taken over from Brian Anderson as the DSA PR Flag, arrived with an entourage, demanding to see the owner of the building. He just closed the conference room door and tried to ignore all the frenzy, but soon his secretary announced that the police had arrived outside.

Our meeting effectively disrupted, the CPA went out to see for himself what was happening, while Bob and I remained in the conference room. Soon three police officers came in and one of them said, "Mr. Minton, I just wanted to shake your hand and welcome you to Clearwater." The other police officers also shook our hands and expressed how glad they were to have us in Clearwater. They all said they knew what had happened the night before, and asked us to let them know if there was anything they could do for us. It was extremely heartening and lifted our spirits considerably.

The police explained to the CPA that they could not forbid the Scientologists to picket as it was public property, and they couldn't keep them from taking photographs. But they said to call immediately if the Scientologists came into his building again because that was trespassing, and to keep them posted on any other incidents of harassment or intimidation. We concluded our meeting with the CPA and headed for our car.

As soon as we left the building we were surrounded by seven Scientologists, apparently public, at least two of whom had been part of the spontaneous grassroots counter-picket in front of the Ft. Harrison the afternoon before. However, Richard Howd was not part of the entourage. There were two people videotaping us, and it was obvious that they now had orders always to keep at least one video camera in Bob's face, because this one guy kept his camera so close to Bob that we could hardly get up the stairs to our car. I remarked on this to Bob, that they clearly were trying to provoke him by keeping the camera in his face. But by now Bob was very aware of this and didn't react at all to the provocation.

This gang of Scientologists surrounded us as we tried to get to our car and stood behind the car as we tried to back out. They followed us on foot as we drove to the ticket booth, and the woman in the ticket booth called the police to let them know that the Scientologists were harassing us in the parking structure. Finally we got out of the parking lot and immediately noticed that a beige van was following us. Bob pulled into a parking lot on Osceola and the van pulled in right behind us. So I got out and went around to the van to talk to the driver.

He was a man in his early thirties, with very short dark hair, well dressed. I said to him, "Scientology must be paying you an awful lot of money for you to be willing to harass U.S. citizens the way you're harassing us."

He replied, "10-4 on that! They're paying me big bucks to do this! But I'm not doing anything illegal." Then he gave me a big grin.

So I said, "Well, if we paid you more than they're paying you, would you be willing to stop harassing us?"

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, "That's an interesting thought. I'll have to check with my boss about that."

I said, "Well, how can I get in touch with you later on today to see what your boss thinks of my proposal?"

"Oh, don't worry," he said, "I'll be following you all day long. If I need to get in touch with you, I'll know where you are."

And indeed, he followed us all the way to Tampa, where we had a meeting about another property that afternoon. We were also followed when we returned to Clearwater later in the afternoon to meet with someone else about buying another property. The same band of Scientologists picketed outside the storefront (where A Place in Time used to be, next door to the cigar store on N. Ft. Harrison) as we discussed the building with the realtor. When he saw the Scientologists picketing outside, the man said to us, "You know, I've been in Clearwater for thirty years, long before these people ever came. It was a nice town before they got here."

"And it will be a nice town again," we said to him.

We stopped in to see the CPA again on our way back to the hotel. We parked in the same parking structure we had used that morning. When we came out it was raining. The same set of Scientologists materialized out of the bushes as we crossed the street and surrounded us as we tried to walk up the stairs to our car. There were two men with video cameras, three women with picket signs and two other women whose job seemed to be to chant, "Religious bigots go home, religious bigots go home." It was close to dusk and with these people all following us to our car it looked like a scene out of "Night of the Living Dead." It was really creepy, being in that shadowy parking lot with these people blocking our way to our car, and I was frightened about what they might do to us there in the dark, with no witnesses.

But as luck would have it, a policeman happened to be in the parking structure and witnessed all of this. He came running over to find out what was going on, and I told him that these were Scientologists who were blocking us from getting out of the parking lot and that I was frightened. He ordered them to let us get in our car and leave the parking lot and wait on the other side of the street because his sergeant was on his way. So we waited till the sergeant came.

He took a report from us about what had happened and gave us an incident number. He suggested that every time we were harassed or followed we should call the police and get an incident number, and we agreed that we would.

That night we had dinner with Patricia Greenway (TFCVP) and Peter Alexander at our hotel. Neither of us had slept more than a couple of hours the night before, and we hadn't eaten anything at all for the entire day. With all of the harassment that had happened all day long we were both pretty rattled. I don't do well with no sleep or food and I started crying at one point during dinner, from the stress of the harassment. A good dinner and a better night's sleep that night helped, however, and by Tuesday morning we were both feeling better.

Bob had to get back to New Hampshire, so after lunch with Ken Dandar I took him to the airport mid-afternoon. I spent that afternoon at Ken's office speaking by phone to the owners of several other buildings in downtown Clearwater and getting some business done, as we had agreed that until the Lisa McPherson Trust secures our own office space we will set up temporary quarters in Ken's office. I slept for twelve hours Tuesday night but still felt extremely drained, both physically and emotionally, when I woke up on Wednesday.

I didn't see anyone following me as I drove into Tampa for a meeting about another building early Wednesday morning. "Good," I thought, "maybe with Bob gone they'll leave me alone." It's difficult to describe what it's like to be followed everywhere I go. They had literally been stalking me for four days. It gave me a great feeling of relief when I thought they were leaving me alone. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

After my meeting in Tampa I had to go into Clearwater to set up a Post Office box for the Lisa McPherson Trust. I was in the Post Office for about forty-five minutes. When I came out I was surrounded on the steps of the Post Office by nine Scientologists - the ones that had stalked us all day the day before and two more - and this time they were actually threatening me. While two of them videotaped me, several others held up picket signs that said "Religious Bigot go home," and several of them shouted at me. One of them in particular shouted, "Go home or else, religious bigot!" Especially in the context of being surrounded and blocked from getting to my car, I felt very threatened by what was being shouted at me and by the intensity with which I was being stalked. They followed me to my car and surrounded my car, making it difficult for me to get to it. Finally I managed to get into my car and lock it. As I drove away I could hear them shouting after me.

I decided to go into Tampa and find Patricia and Peter at the Totally Fun Company. As I drove toward the Courtney Campbell Causeway I noticed the beige car that had been following Bob and me for the past several days. To make sure he was really following me I veered across three lanes of traffic and pulled into the Pier One Imports parking lot, then waited for several minutes and pulled back out into the traffic. Sure enough, there was the beige car waiting for me several driveways down on the other side of the street. As soon as I passed, he pulled out right behind me.

The beige car followed me all the way across the causeway to the Hyatt West Shore Hotel entrance. Then he turned into the hotel driveway and the beige van pulled out. The van followed me all the way to the parking lot of the Totally Fun Company but didn't follow me into the parking lot. I went in and Patricia's secretary told me they were at a restaurant across the parking lot called Hattrick's.

I walked across the parking lot and walked into Hattrick's, and as I walked in Patricia and Peter were both standing up. Patricia was pointing at a man who was ducking into the men's bathroom toward the back of the restaurant. Patricia called out to me, "He was watching for you! He was pacing back and forth looking out the window and talking on his walkie-talkie, and then I heard him say, 'Here she comes,' and I looked and saw you coming. Then I realized he's stalking you!"

I was taken aback by this and very happy to hear a Tampa police officer tell me so clearly that he was supportive of our efforts. I told him how much I appreciated his saying that and he said, "We'll do anything we can to help you. Anything." Then he asked me to tell him what had happened. I told him the whole story from the beginning to the end, not just the incident in the restaurant but everything that had been happening, that we were being stalked, that the Scientologists are always careful to walk a fine line of legality, so that the police could never protect us. I said that even though each individual incident might not be illegal, it seemed to me that if all the incidents were taken together it formed a pattern of illegal harassment and stalking that perhaps the police could do something about. He said he was sending several officers to talk to me and to wait there. Then we hung up.

Soon Patricia and Peter came staggering back into the restaurant, obviously out of breath. Patricia said she got several photographs of the man but that he had been holding his hands over his face so she couldn't get a clear shot. Peter said that they had been walking down the street after him, but the man began to run after Peter warned him that he had better have a private investigator's license because the Tampa police were on their way. Peter said that at that point, the man had taken off running down the street. Patricia was furious that the man had gotten away, but she said she got too short of breath and couldn't keep running after him, so she wasn't able to get his license plate.

She actually was able to get at least one good partial shot of his face, as it turned out. The photos Patricia was able to get are posted on Xenu TV if anyone hasn't already seen them.

Soon the Tampa police arrived and Patricia, Peter and I spent the rest of the afternoon with them. They were very concerned about my safety and extremely helpful in their instructions about what I could do to protect myself. They gave us copies of the relevant laws and suggested that we report every single incident of harassment. They spent over an hour with us.

That night Patricia, Peter and I met some people for dinner at the Key West Grill in Clearwater. As we pulled into the parking lot, Patricia spotted the beige car and a black car with it. I went into the restaurant to say hello to our friends, while Patricia and Peter followed the two cars that had followed us. Later Patricia told me that she managed to write down the license plate of the beige car, but when she held up her camera to get a photo, suddenly the black car fishtailed around so that his rear end was facing the rear end of the beige car, blocking the beige car's license plate. Then the beige car pulled out of the parking lot, with the black car backing up to keep the beige car's license plate covered up. It really sounded like something out of Keystone Cops.

"But I had already gotten the license plate number!" Patricia said triumphantly.

All of this information has been reported to the police and there are incident numbers for each and every incident. There are a few other things that happened during this trip to Clearwater, and some extremely interesting information that was discovered, but it's best that some things be kept confidential for the moment.

I was scheduled to leave early Thursday evening. I had a meeting Thursday Morning regarding a building, and I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with the police. Then I had lunch with Patricia and Peter at a nice restaurant in Tampa and was planning to spend the afternoon working on the report you are now reading.

But when we got back to the Totally Fun Company, I got a call from Bob. He had just had a call from Keith Henson. Keith said he had gotten a call from Jesse, and Jesse had said he was in Sacramento with no wallet and no identification, and his car had broken down, and could Keith please wire him $95 via Western Union?

Keith had called Bob immediately when he got this call and told Bob what had happened. Then when Jesse called back to Keith, Keith had told him he had called Bob. Keith said that Jesse had said to him, "Oh God, Keith, why did you have to tell Bob about this? I didn't want him to know."

Now Bob was calling me, terribly worried about what had happened to Jesse. We had both thought he was at home in Chicago. What in the world was he doing in Sacramento???

After I hung up the phone I started thinking, "Wait a minute. If Jesse was having trouble he'd call me or Bob. He wouldn't call Keith. He doesn't even know Keith's phone number."

So I called Dan Leipold and asked him when was the last time he had heard from Jesse, and Dan said he had just spoken to him a couple of hours before. Where was Jesse? I asked. Dan told me Jesse was in Chicago. What was going on, Dan asked me. So I told him what Keith had said, and Dan immediately said, "This is a scam. Somebody is pretending to be Jesse. It isn't Jesse, I assure you."

As soon as I hung up the phone with Dan, my phone rang again and it was Jesse, sounding just fine.

"Jesse!" I practically shouted at him, "Where are you?!"

He said, "Huh? What do you mean, where am I? I'm at home doing my laundry. Why are you asking?"

So I told him what had happened, and Jesse couldn't believe it. "I swear I'm in Chicago, Stacy! I'm not in Sacramento, I swear!"

I called Bob, and Bob called Keith, and Keith was going to try to get Western Union to catch the person who came to pick up the $95 in Jesse's name.

Bob and Jesse and I had a conference call and by the time that was over it was time for me to get to the airport to catch my plane home to Atlanta. I got home safely, and that is the end of this particular chapter of my story.

Now this is what I have to say about the events of this past week:

Clearly, Scientology is going to do everything they can to keep the Lisa McPherson Trust out of Clearwater. But we're moving to Clearwater, and we are going to shine the light of truth on Scientology. There are a lot of people who are very happy that we are coming to town. In Lisa's honor, we can't let the Scientologists frighten us away, and we won't. No matter how much harassment and intimidation they throw at us, we're moving into Clearwater.

What is probably happening is that DM has told Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder that if they allow Bob Minton and the Lisa McPherson Trust to get an office in downtown Clearwater, they will both be sent to the RPF. This was Bob's theory, and I think he's right considering the level of frantic, absolutely frenzied activity that was happening all week last week.

Here is a message for Marty and Mike: You will be welcome at the Lisa McPherson Trust if you want to leave Scientology but don't know where to go. We will help you. You don't have to go to the RPF. You don't have to submit to DM's abuse any longer. We will help you.

And to DM, this is what I have to say to you: The Scientologist who met Bob at the airport said to him, "What are you doing in our town?" Bob replied to the Scientologist, "Maybe this used to be your town, but we're taking it back."

DM, your reign of terror is over. But even after all you have done, you will also be welcome at the Lisa McPherson Trust if you decide you want to leave Scientology. We will help even you, DM.

Stacy Brooks