Tom Brennan:Computer Incompetence or Incompetent Lying?

 

Computer Incompetence or Incompetent Lying?

The concept of Kyle “voluntarily” handing over his Lexapro—the psychiatrist-prescribed medication he was taking—appears nowhere in the early reports. (And we believe the early reports are the most truthful.) This was a story that was developed later by the Appellees in the wrongful-death lawsuit when it appeared helpful in their avoiding liability. Even then—when presumably they’d had plenty of time to think through the details—the stories told are implausible, full of obvious holes.

In Tom Brennan’s deposition, stated under oath 3 years after the fact, he explained that he took the Lexapro so he could research it. “So I took the bottle and I went down to the public library to find out what it was,” he stated. “I didn’t have a computer so I wanted to find out what it was.” Brennan didn’t have a computer, but his son Kyle did, right in the same apartment. Why didn’t he simply ask Kyle to look it up for him? Or, simpler still, why didn’t he look it up himself? The answer to that question shoots holes in the entire story: Tom Brennan couldn’t look it up because at the time he was completely computer illiterate.

In the Clearwater Police Report Jerry Gentile stated that Tom Brennan told him “I’m not computer literate.” Amazingly, Brennan concurred in his deposition—the very same deposition wherein he stated that he went down to the library to research Lexapro on the computer. When asked during this deposition if he turned Kyle’s laptop on, he stated, “You know, I tried to, but I couldn’t—at the time I was so computer illiterate, I couldn’t figure out how to get the damn thing on.” How could Brennan have researched Lexapro at the library if he was so computer ignorant? Obviously, he couldn’t—he made up the story to explain how Kyle’s medication ended up locked in the trunk of his vehicle.


Excerpt from the Clearwater Police Report:Detective Stephen Bohling



Clearwater Police Report:Denise Miscavige Gentile



CWPR:Gerald Gentile Interview



Excerpts from the deposition of Tom Brennan










Excerpt from an email written by Attorney Luke Lirot:Notes on my Meeting with Detective Bohling





Excerpts from the deposition of Dr. Stephen McNamara, M.D.-Kyle’s
physician



Attorney’s for the Church of Scientology-laying the ground-work to deceive
.


Kyle’s thoughts regarding his father’s involvement with Scientology-in three words.

 

 

Gerald & Denise Miscavige Gentile,"The Pajama Game"

 

Gerald Gentile, in an attempt to keep his wife away from the Brennan apartment—the crime scene—on the evening Kyle died, stated that his wife did not go near the apartment. Instead, said Gentile, she waited outside near their parked vehicle because she was in her pajamas.

This, of course, contradicts the early statements made to Detective Stephen Bohling by the Gentiles. In those interviews, according to this upstanding Scientology couple, Denise stayed home and only Gerald went to the Brennan apartment.

Gerald Gentile’s feeble attempt at helping his wife distance herself from the apartment backfired when Denise was deposed. In her deposition she stated under oath that she was walking in front of the Coachman Building,chain-smoking cigarettes while conversing with people.

The sight of middle-aged Denise Miscavige Gentile—the sister of Scientology leader David Miscavige—walking around in her pajamas on a cold damp night in downtown Clearwater would most certainly have been memorable.

Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t memorable enough for Clearwater Police Officer Jonathan Yuen, the first officer on the scene, a public servant who’s duty-bound to remember and record details. During his deposition, Yuen stated that a “couple” showed up at the Brennan apartment during his 10- to 20-minute investigation of Kyle’s death, but when pressed for details he was unable to recall any specifics.
      
Excerpt from the Clearwater Police Report: Denise Miscavige Gentile



CWPR: Gerald Gentile Interview



Excerpt from the CWPR



Excerpt from the deposition of Gerald Gentile







Excerpt from the depostion of Denise Miscavige Gentile









Excerpt from the Depostion of Detective Stephen Bohling



Officer Jonathan Yuen Deposition





Excerpt from the deposition of Gerald Gentile

 

"He who has the gold makes the rules"

Who Was Really in Charge of the Investigation? 

Within several months of his son’s death Tom Brennan hired attorney Paul Johnson from the law firm of Johnson, Pope, Ruppel & Burns, LLP. It’s fairly obvious, however, that it wasn’t Brennan who was paying for the legal representation. How so?

Tom Brennan, at the time of Kyle’s death, was employed by the mega-wealthy Church of Scientology. His title was “Director of Public Book Sales.” Brennan’s salary for this illustrious-sounding position ranged between twenty and thirty dollars per week. He supplemented these meager Scientology-slave wages by working at various menial jobs. Brennan hawked rugs alongside a Florida interstate highway, and he also worked as a handyman for Gerald and Denise Gentile. Under Denise’s direction, Brennan mowed the Gentile lawn, shopped for the family groceries, and made various repairs to one of the “news-worthy” Pinellas County rental properties owned by Gerald. (Why was this particular property “news-worthy”? According to a front-page piece published by the Tampa Bay Tribune, Denise Miscavige Gentile, in an act of charitable kindness, had been accepting from down-on-their-luck tenants marijuana cigarettes in lieu of rent.) http://fw.to/WB9jjIF

So, who had the upper hand in the police investigation? Was it Detective Stephen Bohling of the Clearwater Police Department or attorney Paul Johnson from the law firm of Johnson, Pope, Ruppel & Burns, LLP?

Perhaps surprisingly, Tom Brennan—Kyle’s father and the surviving person who knows best what happened on the night of February 16, 2007—was interviewed by the police three times . . . and yet none of the notes taken by the interviewing police officers survive, none!

Brennan was first interviewed by Clearwater Police Officer Jonathan Yuen on the night of the tragedy. Yuen later claimed that he destroyed his notes. The second interview—conducted by Detective Stephen Bohling—took place on March 6, 2007. He also said that he destroyed his notes.

Is this standard operating procedure for the Clearwater Police Department?! If it is, it’s certainly not supposed to be. Should a police officer who arrives first at a potential crime scene destroy his notes? Not according to the U.S. Department of Justice handbook entitled “Eyewitness Evidence” (available online at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/178240.pdf). On page 14 it states “that a preliminary investigating officer shall obtain and accurately document and preserve information from the witness(es). Preservation and documentation . . . are necessary for a thorough preliminary investigation.” Throughout the handbook, “documentation” of information obtained, and the “preservation” of that information is stressed.

What about the documentation of Brennan’s third police interview? According to Bohling, on November 8, 2007, he requested a third Brennan interview. When Bohling contacted attorney Paul Johnson to arrange a date and time, Johnson stated that he wanted to monitor the telephone conversation between Bohling and his client. This would require a three-way call, and this police interview—if conducted from the Communications Center at the Clearwater Police Department—would have automatically been recorded. However, Detective Stephen Bohling—who by 2007, had worked the bulk of his nineteen years as a police officer with the Clearwater Police—later testified that he couldn’t figure out how to utilize the police department’s three-way call system in order to record the interview.

Why didn’t he simply ask someone for help? Is Bohling so incompetent that 1) he couldn’t remember how to use equipment he’d used before, and 2) he didn’t comprehend that somebody at the police department must have known how to operate the three-way system, and 3) he was incapable of asking for help, or was there possibly a reason that the detective didn’t want the interview recorded in the first place?

According to Bohling’s police report, attorney Paul Johnson saved the day by offering to do the three-way interview using the system at his law firm. But Bohling—in perhaps a ham-handed attempt to manipulate the information—contradicted himself in his own report. On page 29, he stated that “Attorney Johnson advised [on November 8, 2007] that he did not wish to have the interview with Thomas Brennan recorded.” And, of course, the lawyer from the Scientology-funded firm of Johnson, Pope, Ruppel & Burns, LLP got his wish. The third and final interview with Brennan went unrecorded and all the notes taken by the detective were destroyed. Any reasonable person would have to wonder why.

All of this—the lies, the mishandling of information, the obstruction of justice—came at the expense of a twenty-year-old college student whose existence—to the powerful and corrupt powers-that-be in Clearwater, Florida—was absolutely meaningless.

Excerpts from the Deposition of Detective Stephen Bohling











Excerpts from the Clearwater Police Report





Excerpt from the Deposition of Officer Jonathan Yuen



No”Ticket to Ride”

Excerpt from the Deposition of Denise Miscavige Gentile



Clearwater Police Report:Gerald Gentile Interview



Who’s Footing the Bill? 
 


Excerpts from the Deposition of Thomas Brennan





For Detective Ray Emmons-A quote by essayist Samual Johnson: I do not care to speak ill of any man behind his back,but I believe the gentleman is a lawyer.

Uncovering the Lies:423 Cleveland Street, Apt.4

 

The Roommate Confusion


On page 19 of the Clearwater Police Report (the CWPR), compiled by Detective Stephen Bohling, there’s an interesting question posed by Kyle’s brother, Scott Brennan, a question that only those close to the early stages of the investigation would understand. On that page Bohling noted that Scott asked “If I [Bohling] have interviewed his father’s [Tom Brennan’s] new roommate, ‘Jerry.’”
My first conversation with the detective took place in April 2007 (about two months after Kyle’s death). That’s when I learned “Jerry’s” full name—“Gerald Gentile”—and the fact that he was not Brennan’s roommate. (It was not until August of that year, however, that I learned that Gerald Gentile is the brother-in-law of Scientology leader David Miscavige.)


Brennan’s roommate at the time of Kyle’s death was a Scientologist named Eddie Childers. In my first conversation with him, Detective Bohling told me that he was looking for Childers. He said that he wanted to ask him about the weapon in Brennan’s apartment. Bohling said he wanted to see if Childers recalled seeing it in the drawer where Brennan claimed he’d stored it. Unfortunately, this was the last time I heard the name “Eddie Childers”—there’s no mention in the CWPR that this interview was ever conducted.


Why, then, was Scott Brennan confused? Why did he think that “Jerry” was Brennan’s roommate? Because in the early stages of the investigation we were told by the detective that Gerald Gentile was in the apartment with Brennan before the police and the EMTs arrived. We believe that the earliest accounts of what happened that evening are the most accurate and truthful. Scott was confused, therefore—as was everyone in Kyle’s family—because we didn’t know who this “Jerry” was. And, more importantly, we didn’t understand what he was doing in the apartment with Tom Brennan before the police and the EMTs got there.


When I asked Detective Bohling what Gerald Gentile was doing in the apartment when my son lay dead on the floor he responded by saying “Scientologists have the right to call their _____ [inaudible] before calling for help.” What was the word I missed in Bohling’s comment? Was it “chaplain”? Was Bohling later told that he shouldn’t have used that word? Was he told that that word might implicate two powerful Scientologists? Any reasonable person would have every right to think so because during his deposition—when he was under oath—Detective Stephen Bohling changed his story. He lied about Gerald Gentile’s suspiciously early presence at the Brennan apartment.
_______________________________________

 Excerpt from the Clearwater Police Report




  
Excerpt from the deposition of Detective Stephen Bohling

Lies with ease





* The content of this information was discussed in April of 2007 with Father D. Langevin who was serving as a parochial vicar at St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish in Charlottesville, Virginia.The priest penitent privilege would not have been sought if Kyle’s case had gone to trial.

* This information was also sent to the FBI/Tampa Division in the Autumn of 2007.

When in Danger, Distance Yourself; The Gerald Gentile-Brennan Friendship

When in Danger, Distance Yourself; The Gentile-Brennan Friendship   

When questioned by Detective Stephen Bohling, Gerald Gentile repeatedly attempted to distance himself from Tom Brennan. Gentile referred to Brennan as an acquaintance, someone he only knew “through his wife.” Gentile also stated that Brennan had never called him, and that Brennan probably did not even know his phone number. Was he telling the truth?

Brennan, on the other hand, characterized his relationship with Gentile quite differently. On page 19 of the Clearwater Police Report, for example, Brennan referred to Gentile as a “close friend.” According to Brennan’s attorney, Paul Johnson, too, Brennan considered Gerald Gentile a friend and referred to him as such when speaking with Detective Bohling. Brennan also stated that—the night his only son, Kyle, died—he called Gentile after calling “Chaplain Denise” and that he asked Gentile to come to the apartment to give him support. This would have been an odd, and most likely an ungranted request if Gentile were a mere acquaintance. That these two were indeed friends—and that Brennan had Gentile’s phone number and had called him many times—is proven by a simple fact: During police questioning, Detective Bohling asked Brennan to “please call his friend Jerry and give him the message to contact him [Bohling] at the CWPD.” Bohling claimed that his calls to Gentile went unanswered, so from February 28, 2008, to April 1 of the same year, the detective repeatedly asked Brennan to contact Gentile on his behalf.

In the police interviews Gentile also attempted to distance himself from the bloody Brennan apartment, the crime scene. In the police report, on page 41, Gerald Gentile told Bohling that on the evening that Kyle died he returned home “Um, after 11 or 12.” These times, of course, don’t line up with statements that were given by his wife, Denise Miscavige Gentile, or by Tom Brennan. Why would Gentile offer up a different version of the events? To distance himself from Tom Brennan.

Detective Bohling never questioned these discrepancies.


CWPR:page 19



CWPR:page 38



CWPR:page 39



CWPR:page 54



Excerpt from the Deposition of Gerald Gentile

A Tangled Web (Part IV),More Computer Complications

 
Amazingly, Kyle Brennan’s computer was accessed within but a few hours of his death—in the early morning hours of Saturday, February 17, 2007. Who would do this? What was the purpose? Any reasonable person would refer to this fact—this act—as very suspicious. Even more suspiciously, Kyle’s PC was not removed from the crime scene by the police as evidence, but was taken instead to the home of Gerald and Denise Miscavige Gentile (two of the defendants in the wrongful-death lawsuit that ensued). And, of course—just like everything in this tangled story—there are multiple versions of how, and by whom, the computer was handed over to these powerful Scientologists.

Clearwater Police Detective Stephen Bohling, the lead investigator in the case, learned about Kyle’s computer being accessed soon after Kyle’s demise-three weeks after the tragedy—on March 6, 2007. Did he think that this acknowledged activity was in any way suspicious? Did Bohling rush to interview the Scientogist who had taken possession of what should have been in police custody all along?

Let’s look at what happened next:Over the course of the next 16 months, Kyle’s PC traveled a circuitous route. Tom Brennan got the computer back from the Gentiles and mailed it, along with several boxes of Kyle’s possessions, to Kyle’s family in Virginia in the final days of February 2007. Under the advisement of Attorney Luke Lirot, legal representative for the estate of Kyle Brennan, the computer was next shipped back to Florida, to the Clearwater Police Department.

It arrived on September 13 of that year. According to Detective Bohling it was delivered to the Tampa office of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) on the very same day. Sometime over the following 41 days, FDLE Special Agent Barbara Mendez alalyzed Kyle’s computer.

On October 24, 2007, at 14:30 hours, Detective Bohling took custody of Kyle’s computer from the FDLE Evidence Section.

On July 13, 2008—over eight months after taking possession of the computer, and almost one and half years after Kyle’s death—Detective Bohling conducted the first interview with Gerald Gentile. By this time the Scientologists have had ample opportunity to speak with—and strategize with—their Scientology-hired lawyers.

In the police interview Gentile stated that he didn’t really know Tom Brennan, Kyle’s father, all that well. Gentile described Tom Brennan as an acquaintance, someone who’d come over to his home once for Thanksgiving—to bake a pie—and once for Christmas. Gentile claimed he’d never really had a conversation with Tom Brennan. He said he knew Brennan through his wife, and that “[Brennan] works as a handyman for a couple of my rental properties that I own in Pinellas County.” Gentile further stated that he’d never heard of Kyle before his death—he said he didn’t even know Brennan had a son.

During the interview, too, Gentile told Bohling matter-of-factly that he had hard copies “of everything that was on [Kyle’s] computer,” everything including bank statements, photos, and personal notes. Why did Gentile have a folder containing personal and sensitive information belonging to a dead boy that he did not even know? Why had he saved—for a year and a half—print-outs from computer files belonging to the son of a mere acquaintance? What would compel him to save this information?

What follows next is very illuminating. Detective Bohling—instead of questioning Gentile about the oddity of having in his possession some of Kyle’s personal effects—asked Gentile politely if he would mind if he, Bohling, made copies. Bohling said he might need these copies later.

Who had the upper hand in this interview? Who was in control, the Scientologist in possession of personal items belonging to a dead boy he’d never met—the son of someone who was merely an acquaintance—or the groveling police detective who had to ask permission to make copies of files that should have been in his possession from the get go?
 
________________________________________________________________
Clearwater Police Report Narrative written by Detective Stephen Bohling.



Gerald Gentile’s July 2008, interview.



Lyle’s (?)





Gerald Gentile describes his relationship with Brennan.

Clearwater Police Report








Who’s in Charge?



Excerpt of of Gentile interview with Detective Bohling



Detective Bohling guiding Gerald Gentile-lining up the lies!