Showing posts with label Clearwater Police. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clearwater Police. Show all posts
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Kyle Brennan Stories
Kyle Brennan 1986-2007
Clearwater,
August of 2006: Locked Out, Kyle Befriends a Trio of Unlikely Angels
When Kyle returned home to Charlottesville after his
tumultuous visit to Clearwater, Florida, in August of 2006 he related the
following: One evening in Clearwater, Kyle—who enjoyed a good cup of coffee—went
out to a Starbucks. This particular shop is just
down the block from the apartment Kyle’s father, Tom Brennan, had rented at 423
Cleveland Street.
Kyle
said that when he returned, the apartment building’s outer door was locked. He tried to call his father who was inside at
the time, but Brennan had turned off his cell phone. This meant, of course,
that Kyle was locked out for the night.
Heading back towards the coffee shop, Kyle was approached by a disheveled man begging for money. Kyle gave him five dollars, and the man asked: “Are you one of those f---ing Scientologists?” Taken aback for just a split second, Kyle replied, “If I was, I wouldn't have been able to give you that five."
Heading back towards the coffee shop, Kyle was approached by a disheveled man begging for money. Kyle gave him five dollars, and the man asked: “Are you one of those f---ing Scientologists?” Taken aback for just a split second, Kyle replied, “If I was, I wouldn't have been able to give you that five."
During the conversation that followed, Kyle discovered that
the man was a homeless veteran, and that he was living in a park not far from
Cleveland Street. Kyle had a soft spot in his heart for veterans. Military personnel, and law
enforcement officers, were Kyle’s heroes. Back home in Charlottesville, Kyle enjoyed
attending military events. He loved hanging out with veterans, and would often
draw them out so he could hear their stories.
Kyle and the old veteran, enjoying each other’s company, sat
up against the building, under a flickering light. Two Clearwater police
officers, spotting the unusual couple—an older man down on his luck, and a
well-dressed 20-year-old—stopped and asked Kyle if he was OK. When Kyle
told them about being locked out, the policemen tried to open the outer door. Finding it sealed tight, they told Kyle to stay
close by as they would check up on him throughout the night while they were on
duty. This promise they kept. The two officers—who Kyle later said were great
guys—actually spent their break time that night chatting with Kyle. The
homeless vet stayed out on the sidewalk with Kyle all night long. The two
passed the time talking war stories.
__________________________________________________________________
Clearwater, August of
2006: Kyle Under Pressure to Join Scientology
In
June of 2006 Kyle’s father, Tom Brennan, first learned that Kyle was seeing a
psychiatrist in Charlottesville. Brennan was very unhappy about it, but I didn’t
think much of it at the time as he was not directly involved in his son’s life.
Soon
after this Kyle and I started receiving letters—and anti-psychiatry hate literature—from the Church
of Scientology about the evils of psychiatry and psychotherapeutic drugs. I
found these annoying, but I didn’t think much
of it. At the time I regarded Scientology as a goofy, harmless organization.
In
July of 2006, Tom Brennan convinced Kyle that he should come and stay with him
in Florida at his apartment. He promised Kyle that he would take him to look at
the Florida State and the University of South Florida campuses.
Kyle
traveled to Florida the following month, arriving on August 15. Within three days he called me
complaining that his father had duped him. Brennan
at the time didn’t even have an apartment—he had lied to Kyle.
Instead,
Brennan was living in Tampa, in what Kyle called a “Scientology
flop-house.” Kyle said he felt uncomfortable being around Scientologists. They
have their own vocabulary, he told me, and they were pressuring him to
take a Scientology personality test—something he absolutely refused to
do.
Within
a few days of this conversation Brennan and Kyle moved from Tampa into an
apartment at 423 Cleveland Street in downtown Clearwater. This place is near the
old Fort Harrison Hotel, Scientology’s main headquarters. Things seemed to be
going a little better after their move from the flop-house.
Within
a week I received another distressing call from Kyle. I could hear a lot of
noise at the other end of the phone line, and I asked, "Kyle, are
you on campus?"
“Hell
no,” he responded, “I'm at a mall watching my father make an ass out of
himself. He's chasing people down trying to sell them L. Ron Hubbard books.” (A
third-rate science fiction writer, Hubbard founded Scientology in the 1950s.)
“Kyle,”
I said, “you’re kidding about this, right?"
“Heck
no, Mom,” came his answer. “ Please . . . tell me that I'm not sharing the
same DNA with this dude.”
Kyle
told me again that his father had duped him. Brennan, Kyle said, had no
intention of taking him to look at colleges. Furthermore, according to Kyle,
Brennan said that a college education was a waste of money, and that what he
needed to improve his life was to get involved with Scientology.
Kyle
wanted no part of Scientology. Despite this, however, Tom Brennan and his
Scientologist girlfriend, Wendy Jill Borden, had been placing a great deal
of pressure on Kyle to take a personality test.
(Borden was a staffer at the New York City Org—or Scientology “church”—in
Clearwater for training. Borden and Brennan were introduced by their
mutual friend Denise Miscavige Gentile, the twin sister of the organization’s
head. The two married soon after Kyle returned to Charlottesville in September.)
At
this point Kyle wanted to come home. He wanted to go back to school in
Charlottesville, at Piedmont Virginia Community College, but the fall semester
was already underway. He asked me if I would talk with his professors to
see if he could start the semester late, as he did not want
to waste any more time.
Kyle
called again the following day. He was upset. The previous evening, everybody
in the apartment—Kyle, Brennan, and Borden—had gotten into a huge argument. Kyle
said they were pushing him to pay for a personality test, and they wanted him
to take Scientology courses. They also told Kyle that his mother was “evil” for
allowing him to see a psychiatrist. Kyle told me that the argument had
been extremely heated. At one point, Kyle said, he told Brennan and his
girlfriend what he really thought of Scientology—he thought it was ludicrous—and
also how he felt about his father spending all of his money on it.
When
Kyle returned home he said that he had overheard Borden tell his father he
was now “an enemy of their church.”
Kyle
returned home without telling his father he was leaving—he took a cab to
the airport on September 7 and left without saying goodbye.
Kyle Brennan-April 2, 1986-February 16, 2007
In 2007 my forward-looking 20-year-old son, Kyle Brennan, died in Clearwater, Florida, under extremely suspicious circumstances while visiting his Scientologist father. (Clearwater, of course, is the site of Scientology’s headquarters.) We lost the subsequent wrongful-death lawsuit we filed against Kyle’s father, prominent Scientologists who were involved, and the Church of Scientology itself. Because of the legal expenses incurred, we’ve yet to purchase a proper headstone for our beloved son. Will you help us?
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The Clearwater Police; The Fox and the Henhouse
Detective Stephen Bohling; The Fox and the Henhouse-
In February 2007 my twenty-year-old son Kyle paid a visit to his Scientologist father, Tom Brennan, in Clearwater, Florida, the site of the Church of Scientology’s world headquarters. Kyle—who was not a Scientologist—was under the care of a psychiatrist who had prescribed for him Lexapro, an antidepressant.
One of the major tenets of Scientology is that psychiatry and psychiatric medications are evil: they’re forbidden. As a practicing Scientologist, Brennan could not have a relationship with Kyle if Kyle was violating that tenet. (In fact, according to Scientology, Kyle’s use of his prescribed medication made him an “SP”—a “Suppressive Person”—someone to be reviled and avoided.) So Brennan reported this state-of-affairs to his Scientology “auditor,” Denise Miscavige Gentile—twin sister of Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige—and to his other superiors in the Church. Even though Kyle was not a Scientologist, Brennan received written orders from the Church to remove his son from his apartment and “handle” the situation per Scientology policy.
Thirty-six hours later Kyle was dead.
(Perhaps the subject of a future blog posting, “handling”—as per Scientology—may involve a wide range of actions. It’s not necessarily as innocuous a procedure as it sounds.)
Detective Stephen Bohling of the Clearwater, Florida, Police Department was the lead investigator looking into Kyle’s extremely suspicious death. His investigation, however, was careless and sloppy, even perjurious. Many quandaries were left unanswered and several deponents who’d obviously contradicted themselves walked away without further questioning. Bohling’s official police report, as can be imagined, was riddled with half-truths and lies. Facts critical to the case were omitted.
Detective Bohling was deposed on July 12, 2010, by Attorney Lee Fugate (the attorney representing defendant’s Denise Miscavige Gentile and her husband Jerry Gentile). During the direct examination the Clearwater detective comes across as compassionate and caring—in fact overly-so, like someone over compensating to counteract his real personality.
During Fugate’s questioning, too, Bohling lied about the “thoroughness” of his investigation, making it appear that he’d examined the case from every angle, pursued all the possibilities. “Apparently . . . you acted immediately upon each of the suggestions that he [Kyle’s older brother Scott] made to you and followed up on those?” asked Fugate. “I believe that I did as I documented it,” answered Bohling. “I felt that I had an obligation to the family to follow up on any concerns that they had and I did just that.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The list of unanswered questions—and obvious contradictory statements made by the defendants—presented to Bohling by Kyle’s family in the vain hope of finding the truth, fills several pages.
Most disturbing, however, was how Bohling—under oath and in official documents—fabricated a false image of me, a grieving mother. He portrayed me as borderline hysterical, someone unable to accept the death of her child, someone making unrealistic demands and absurd accusations. “It was difficult at times to try and explain things to Victoria in a manner that she would understand. . . .” stated Bohling in his deposition. “At times I was accused of things that were just not true. You know, that I had connections to the Church of Scientology. I was being paid by the Church of Scientology.” More lies by Detective Bohling—I never accused him of being a Scientologist or of being paid by the Church.
Bohling referred to these fictitious accusations when, during his deposition, he described a September 7, 2007, meeting he had with Attorney Luke Lirot (the lawyer then-representing the estate of Kyle Brennan). “[C]omplaints are being made,” Bohling said he told Attorney Lirot, complaints that are “just clouding the investigation. We can’t have that.” (Here the detective overestimated his ability to recall important facts and dates. At the time of this Bohling-Lirot meeting, no complaints had been made regarding his faulty investigation.)
Bohling claimed, too, that he told Lirot he wanted “communication to go on with Victoria.” He also claimed he said: “I wanted her [Victoria Britton] to be aware of what was going on with her son’s case. . . .” Then why is it that this meeting was the only contact between Bohling and Attorney Lirot until Bohling closed the case in November of 2009, just two months shy of the Florida statute of limitations’ deadline? Was Detective Bohling really interested in keeping Kyle’s family informed? Was he actually interested in resolving those unanswered questions?
The answer to that question is found in a July 1, 2008, letter from Attorney Lirot to Detective Bohling, a letter written almost eleven months after the above-described open-lines-of communication meeting. “After being retained in June of 2007,” wrote Lirot, “I cannot be surprised that my client thinks that I am incapable of getting any final answers on the investigation involving the death of Kyle Brennan. I will not level any criticism at you or the CPD [the Clearwater Police Department], but where does this investigation stand?” Here Attorney Lirot’s dissatisfaction with Bohling lack of communication is clearly evident.
The result of Detective Bohling’s fraudulent behavior was a miscarriage of justice. Bohling’s police report is a collection of misrepresentations, half-truths, and outright lies. As soon as this public document became available, the Scientology lawyers—the attorneys representing Scientologists Tom Brennan, and Denise and Jerry Gentile, as well as the Church itself—tacked it onto their motion for summary judgment (their request that the judge rule in their favor and dismiss the case before it went to trial). Detective Bohling’s fabricated police report made sure that my point of view regarding this case—my list of unanswered questions and glaring contradictions—was never heard by a Florida jury.
Indeed, Kyle’s extremely suspicious death was never properly investigated in the first place.
Detective Stephen Bohling made sure of this by falsely claiming that he’d conducted a thorough investigation. According to Bohling and subsequently the Scientology lawyers, Kyle’s death was investigated by not one, but by three separate agencies. This misrepresentation appeared in court documents filed in the Federal Middle District Court of Florida, and in court documents submitted to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals located in Jacksonville, Florida. What were the three Florida agencies that supposedly left no stone unturned while investigating Kyle’s suspicious death?: Bohling’s Clearwater Police Department, the State Attorney’s Office, and the Florida branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI.
There is a kernel of truth at the core of this statement. I contacted the Florida State Attorney’s Office and the FBI regarding Detective Stephen Bohling’s unprofessional behavior and shoddy investigation. All of that correspondence I carefully saved and filed.
Here’s the pertinent question: Was Kyle’s case investigated by the FBI as claimed by Bohling and the defendants’ attorneys? No, it was not.
What about the investigation supposedly conducted by the State Attorney’s Office? Following the advice of then-Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum—he wrote saying that his office did not “have the legal authority to investigate the actions of law enforcement officers as they pursue their official duties”—I contacted the Sixth Judicial State Attorney’s Office. In January of 2008 that office assigned investigator Doug Barry, himself a former Clearwater Police Officer, to “look into the investigation conducted by the Clearwater Police Department.”
Detective Bohling stated in his deposition that “I opened up my books, everything to him. . . . [He] looked over everything that I had done to that date and eventually they came up with the same conclusion that I did. I know they also conferred with the Medical Examiner’s Office as “I had early on reviewed all their documents to make sure that everything had been done properly.”
What’s disturbing about Doug Barry’s investigative work—is the lack of it. Kyle’s case was less than a year old when Barry was assigned to look into it. And it would be wrong to conjecture exactly what information Detective Bohling provided when he “opened” his books. I, too, opened my books for Barry—I wrote to him about the numerous times Kyle’s father, Tom Brennan, had contradicted himself in statements made within days of Kyle’s death.
“The result of Barry’s “investigation” In a letter dated June 27, 2008, Barry stated that, in fact, he did not conduct an independent investigation—he merely “reviewed” Bohling’s incomplete report.
The fact is: If the State Attorney’s Office had conducted an actual investigation they would have discovered the case’s many glaring contradictions. (Instead, all of this work was left to me.)
One thing is certain: The State Attorney’s Office sending Doug Barry—a former Clearwater policeman—to look into the misconduct of a detective from his former workplace is a perfect example of that popular ancient proverb about the fox guarding the henhouse.
Anybody would have to conclude that in the State of Florida justice cannot be found when it involves the Church of Scientology.
Exchange between Attorney Lee Fugate and Detective Stephen Bohling
WTSP Report by Mike Deeson
Federal suit: Scientologists spent $30 million to cover up death of Lisa McPherson | wtsp.com http://on.wtsp.com/ZLu7rq via @WTSP10News
Affidavits of Victoria Britton
Excerpt from the Deposition of Detective Stephen Bohling
Excerpt from the Deposition of Victoria Britton
Excerpt from the deposition of Tom Brennan
Scientology SEC Check Order issued to Tom Brennan
In February 2007 my twenty-year-old son Kyle paid a visit to his Scientologist father, Tom Brennan, in Clearwater, Florida, the site of the Church of Scientology’s world headquarters. Kyle—who was not a Scientologist—was under the care of a psychiatrist who had prescribed for him Lexapro, an antidepressant.
One of the major tenets of Scientology is that psychiatry and psychiatric medications are evil: they’re forbidden. As a practicing Scientologist, Brennan could not have a relationship with Kyle if Kyle was violating that tenet. (In fact, according to Scientology, Kyle’s use of his prescribed medication made him an “SP”—a “Suppressive Person”—someone to be reviled and avoided.) So Brennan reported this state-of-affairs to his Scientology “auditor,” Denise Miscavige Gentile—twin sister of Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige—and to his other superiors in the Church. Even though Kyle was not a Scientologist, Brennan received written orders from the Church to remove his son from his apartment and “handle” the situation per Scientology policy.
Thirty-six hours later Kyle was dead.
(Perhaps the subject of a future blog posting, “handling”—as per Scientology—may involve a wide range of actions. It’s not necessarily as innocuous a procedure as it sounds.)
Detective Stephen Bohling of the Clearwater, Florida, Police Department was the lead investigator looking into Kyle’s extremely suspicious death. His investigation, however, was careless and sloppy, even perjurious. Many quandaries were left unanswered and several deponents who’d obviously contradicted themselves walked away without further questioning. Bohling’s official police report, as can be imagined, was riddled with half-truths and lies. Facts critical to the case were omitted.
Detective Bohling was deposed on July 12, 2010, by Attorney Lee Fugate (the attorney representing defendant’s Denise Miscavige Gentile and her husband Jerry Gentile). During the direct examination the Clearwater detective comes across as compassionate and caring—in fact overly-so, like someone over compensating to counteract his real personality.
During Fugate’s questioning, too, Bohling lied about the “thoroughness” of his investigation, making it appear that he’d examined the case from every angle, pursued all the possibilities. “Apparently . . . you acted immediately upon each of the suggestions that he [Kyle’s older brother Scott] made to you and followed up on those?” asked Fugate. “I believe that I did as I documented it,” answered Bohling. “I felt that I had an obligation to the family to follow up on any concerns that they had and I did just that.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The list of unanswered questions—and obvious contradictory statements made by the defendants—presented to Bohling by Kyle’s family in the vain hope of finding the truth, fills several pages.
Most disturbing, however, was how Bohling—under oath and in official documents—fabricated a false image of me, a grieving mother. He portrayed me as borderline hysterical, someone unable to accept the death of her child, someone making unrealistic demands and absurd accusations. “It was difficult at times to try and explain things to Victoria in a manner that she would understand. . . .” stated Bohling in his deposition. “At times I was accused of things that were just not true. You know, that I had connections to the Church of Scientology. I was being paid by the Church of Scientology.” More lies by Detective Bohling—I never accused him of being a Scientologist or of being paid by the Church.
Bohling referred to these fictitious accusations when, during his deposition, he described a September 7, 2007, meeting he had with Attorney Luke Lirot (the lawyer then-representing the estate of Kyle Brennan). “[C]omplaints are being made,” Bohling said he told Attorney Lirot, complaints that are “just clouding the investigation. We can’t have that.” (Here the detective overestimated his ability to recall important facts and dates. At the time of this Bohling-Lirot meeting, no complaints had been made regarding his faulty investigation.)
Bohling claimed, too, that he told Lirot he wanted “communication to go on with Victoria.” He also claimed he said: “I wanted her [Victoria Britton] to be aware of what was going on with her son’s case. . . .” Then why is it that this meeting was the only contact between Bohling and Attorney Lirot until Bohling closed the case in November of 2009, just two months shy of the Florida statute of limitations’ deadline? Was Detective Bohling really interested in keeping Kyle’s family informed? Was he actually interested in resolving those unanswered questions?
The answer to that question is found in a July 1, 2008, letter from Attorney Lirot to Detective Bohling, a letter written almost eleven months after the above-described open-lines-of communication meeting. “After being retained in June of 2007,” wrote Lirot, “I cannot be surprised that my client thinks that I am incapable of getting any final answers on the investigation involving the death of Kyle Brennan. I will not level any criticism at you or the CPD [the Clearwater Police Department], but where does this investigation stand?” Here Attorney Lirot’s dissatisfaction with Bohling lack of communication is clearly evident.
The result of Detective Bohling’s fraudulent behavior was a miscarriage of justice. Bohling’s police report is a collection of misrepresentations, half-truths, and outright lies. As soon as this public document became available, the Scientology lawyers—the attorneys representing Scientologists Tom Brennan, and Denise and Jerry Gentile, as well as the Church itself—tacked it onto their motion for summary judgment (their request that the judge rule in their favor and dismiss the case before it went to trial). Detective Bohling’s fabricated police report made sure that my point of view regarding this case—my list of unanswered questions and glaring contradictions—was never heard by a Florida jury.
Indeed, Kyle’s extremely suspicious death was never properly investigated in the first place.
Detective Stephen Bohling made sure of this by falsely claiming that he’d conducted a thorough investigation. According to Bohling and subsequently the Scientology lawyers, Kyle’s death was investigated by not one, but by three separate agencies. This misrepresentation appeared in court documents filed in the Federal Middle District Court of Florida, and in court documents submitted to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals located in Jacksonville, Florida. What were the three Florida agencies that supposedly left no stone unturned while investigating Kyle’s suspicious death?: Bohling’s Clearwater Police Department, the State Attorney’s Office, and the Florida branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI.
There is a kernel of truth at the core of this statement. I contacted the Florida State Attorney’s Office and the FBI regarding Detective Stephen Bohling’s unprofessional behavior and shoddy investigation. All of that correspondence I carefully saved and filed.
Here’s the pertinent question: Was Kyle’s case investigated by the FBI as claimed by Bohling and the defendants’ attorneys? No, it was not.
What about the investigation supposedly conducted by the State Attorney’s Office? Following the advice of then-Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum—he wrote saying that his office did not “have the legal authority to investigate the actions of law enforcement officers as they pursue their official duties”—I contacted the Sixth Judicial State Attorney’s Office. In January of 2008 that office assigned investigator Doug Barry, himself a former Clearwater Police Officer, to “look into the investigation conducted by the Clearwater Police Department.”
Detective Bohling stated in his deposition that “I opened up my books, everything to him. . . . [He] looked over everything that I had done to that date and eventually they came up with the same conclusion that I did. I know they also conferred with the Medical Examiner’s Office as “I had early on reviewed all their documents to make sure that everything had been done properly.”
What’s disturbing about Doug Barry’s investigative work—is the lack of it. Kyle’s case was less than a year old when Barry was assigned to look into it. And it would be wrong to conjecture exactly what information Detective Bohling provided when he “opened” his books. I, too, opened my books for Barry—I wrote to him about the numerous times Kyle’s father, Tom Brennan, had contradicted himself in statements made within days of Kyle’s death.
“The result of Barry’s “investigation” In a letter dated June 27, 2008, Barry stated that, in fact, he did not conduct an independent investigation—he merely “reviewed” Bohling’s incomplete report.
The fact is: If the State Attorney’s Office had conducted an actual investigation they would have discovered the case’s many glaring contradictions. (Instead, all of this work was left to me.)
One thing is certain: The State Attorney’s Office sending Doug Barry—a former Clearwater policeman—to look into the misconduct of a detective from his former workplace is a perfect example of that popular ancient proverb about the fox guarding the henhouse.
Anybody would have to conclude that in the State of Florida justice cannot be found when it involves the Church of Scientology.
Exchange between Attorney Lee Fugate and Detective Stephen Bohling
WTSP Report by Mike Deeson
Federal suit: Scientologists spent $30 million to cover up death of Lisa McPherson | wtsp.com http://on.wtsp.com/ZLu7rq via @WTSP10News
Affidavits of Victoria Britton
Excerpt from the Deposition of Detective Stephen Bohling
Excerpt from the Deposition of Victoria Britton
Excerpt from the deposition of Tom Brennan
Scientology SEC Check Order issued to Tom Brennan
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