Karen#1
Well-known member
Lisa McPherson woke up the morning of November 16, 1995 looking like hell. She had hardly got any sleep overnight in her Orlando hotel room, which she was sharing with her friend and fellow AMC Publishing employee, Brenda Hubert.
Brenda was already very concerned about Lisa, someone she had known longer than just about anyone who wasn’t in Lisa’s family. They had met around 1982, when Lisa first got into Scientology in Dallas, and then they became close as they worked together at the Atlantic Financial Mortgage Corporation, a company owned by another couple of Scientologists, David and Bennetta Slaughter. In 1989, after Lisa had come back to Dallas after a short and unhappy stint in Scientology’s Sea Organization in Los Angeles, she moved in with Brenda, and then the two of them went to work for a man named Jeff Schaffner, who had come up with an idea for selling information to insurance brokers. That company eventually became AMC Publishing, and it moved to Florida at the end of 1993.
Lisa was AMC’s top salesperson, earning $136,000 in 1993, but by 1995, Lisa’s sales and income were sharply down, and she’d admitted to Brenda in June that she was having suicidal thoughts. Lisa took a leave of absence from her job to spend several weeks at Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel, and then had seemed to be back to something of her old self when she showed up at Brenda’s house for her husband’s birthday party in August.
But now, in November, Lisa was exhibiting strange behaviors and it had Brenda very concerned. The day before, on Wednesday, November 15, Brenda heard from Katie Chamberlain, Lisa’s ethics officer, who told her that Lisa was in the middle of a Scientology process that she was struggling with, and asked Brenda to “8-C” Lisa — to monitor her closely.
Lisa McPherson in Orlando: What her hotel roommate witnessed, and the Slaughter rule
Brenda was already very concerned about Lisa, someone she had known longer than just about anyone who wasn’t in Lisa’s family. They had met around 1982, when Lisa first got into Scientology in Dallas, and then they became close as they worked together at the Atlantic Financial Mortgage Corporation, a company owned by another couple of Scientologists, David and Bennetta Slaughter. In 1989, after Lisa had come back to Dallas after a short and unhappy stint in Scientology’s Sea Organization in Los Angeles, she moved in with Brenda, and then the two of them went to work for a man named Jeff Schaffner, who had come up with an idea for selling information to insurance brokers. That company eventually became AMC Publishing, and it moved to Florida at the end of 1993.
Lisa was AMC’s top salesperson, earning $136,000 in 1993, but by 1995, Lisa’s sales and income were sharply down, and she’d admitted to Brenda in June that she was having suicidal thoughts. Lisa took a leave of absence from her job to spend several weeks at Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel, and then had seemed to be back to something of her old self when she showed up at Brenda’s house for her husband’s birthday party in August.
But now, in November, Lisa was exhibiting strange behaviors and it had Brenda very concerned. The day before, on Wednesday, November 15, Brenda heard from Katie Chamberlain, Lisa’s ethics officer, who told her that Lisa was in the middle of a Scientology process that she was struggling with, and asked Brenda to “8-C” Lisa — to monitor her closely.
Lisa McPherson in Orlando: What her hotel roommate witnessed, and the Slaughter rule
