Karen#1
Well-known member
TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:
[Annie Tidman and Jim Logan]
This story was first published at The Village Voice on January 30, 2012. We consider it one of our most important stories ever about Scientology, and we decided to find room for it here at our Substack so it will have an ad-free archival home. — T.O.
Last June, a 55-year-old woman named Ann Tidman died in an apartment in Hollywood.
Her own sisters, who suspected that she was ill, did not learn about Tidman’s death until just a few weeks ago. They had tried to get information about her, but Tidman herself — and the church she belonged to — wanted as few people as possible to know about her fight with lung cancer.
And that’s why we’re only finding out now, months after her death, that Ann Tidman died on June 14 in apartment 336 at a complex owned by the Church of Scientology at 1830 N. Bronson Avenue, a block over from the famous Hollywood Celebrity Centre.
For those not in the church, or among its ex-members, Tidman’s name may mean little, and her death will probably not be noticed by the mainstream press. But to Scientologists, who tend to call her by another name — Annie Broeker — she was a powerful symbol for where their movement had been and where it was going.
On January 14, former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun announced on his blog that a record of Tidman’s death had been found online. Then, yesterday, he published her death certificate, along with an analysis of its details. Since his first announcement, we’ve been verifying information about her final years as well as interviewing people who knew her.
Janet Reitman, in her excellent history of the church, last year’s Inside Scientology, explained what made Tidman such an important figure in the history of the organization. After 1980, when Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, went into seclusion, it was Annie — then married to Pat Broeker — who cared for the aging writer:
READ MORE
tonyortega.substack.com
Excerpt:
[Annie Tidman and Jim Logan]
This story was first published at The Village Voice on January 30, 2012. We consider it one of our most important stories ever about Scientology, and we decided to find room for it here at our Substack so it will have an ad-free archival home. — T.O.
Last June, a 55-year-old woman named Ann Tidman died in an apartment in Hollywood.
Her own sisters, who suspected that she was ill, did not learn about Tidman’s death until just a few weeks ago. They had tried to get information about her, but Tidman herself — and the church she belonged to — wanted as few people as possible to know about her fight with lung cancer.
And that’s why we’re only finding out now, months after her death, that Ann Tidman died on June 14 in apartment 336 at a complex owned by the Church of Scientology at 1830 N. Bronson Avenue, a block over from the famous Hollywood Celebrity Centre.
For those not in the church, or among its ex-members, Tidman’s name may mean little, and her death will probably not be noticed by the mainstream press. But to Scientologists, who tend to call her by another name — Annie Broeker — she was a powerful symbol for where their movement had been and where it was going.
On January 14, former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun announced on his blog that a record of Tidman’s death had been found online. Then, yesterday, he published her death certificate, along with an analysis of its details. Since his first announcement, we’ve been verifying information about her final years as well as interviewing people who knew her.
Janet Reitman, in her excellent history of the church, last year’s Inside Scientology, explained what made Tidman such an important figure in the history of the organization. After 1980, when Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, went into seclusion, it was Annie — then married to Pat Broeker — who cared for the aging writer:
READ MORE
Why Annie Broeker, famous inside Scientology, had to die in secret
This story was first published at The Village Voice on January 30, 2012.
tonyortega.substack.com
