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DOCUMENT TITLE: Three letters purportedly written by L. Ron Hubbard SUBJECT: Letters asserting that L. Ron Hubbard was alive and well, one each to two courts, one for the Rocky Mountain News PARTIES: Purportedly, L. Ron Hubbard; Sherman Lenske and Stephen Lenske, Hubbard attorneys who delivered the letters, both Special Directors of the corporation known as "Church of Spiritual Technology" (CST); Howard C. Doulder, U.S. Treasury Department document examiner; Richard L. Brunelle, forensic chemist with Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF); Meade Emory, former Treasury Department personnel as Assistant Commissioner of IRS, architect of the corporate restructuring and Hubbard probate papers BACKGROUND AND NOTES On 3 February 1983, L. Ron Hubbard purportedly wrote three hand-written letters using a ball-point pen ink cartridge that supposedly had been filled with timed ink "employed by U.S. government agencies" and "not available anywhere in the world." All three letters were delivered to their intended recipients through "Hubbard attorneys" Sherman and Stephen Lenske, both of whom were "Special Directors" of CST. The claims about the ink were made by Treasury Department forensic chemist Richard L. Brunelle of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), hired by Sherman and Stephen Lenske for the job. "Hubbard" also purportedly fingerprinted the letters, and it was another Treasury Department agent, document examiner Howard C. Doulder, who was brought in by the Lenskes to be in charge of that part of the job. Although Los Angeles Police Department personnel named Bowman and Kier are reported in various accounts to have been involved in the document "authentication," their role is believed to have been essentially rent-a-cop, hired to lend further confidence to the con, but with the two Treasury Department experts hovering over them. Analysts agree that the Lenskes' connection to the Treasury Department agents most likely came through former Assistant Commissioner of IRS Meade Emory, architect of the Hubbard probate documents and of the corporate restructuring of Scientology organizations. One problem with these three elaborately "authenticated" letters is that it is believed that nobody execpt the Lenskes and their hired "experts" ever saw the originals. There is later substantial evidence that Sherman Lenske's modus operandi for court evidence was to keep originals in his safe, and submit "certified copies," with attached affidavits from hired experts attesting to the "authenticity" of the originals. Although acceptable even to courts and judges, this also resulted in no one but Lenske and his hired experts ever getting to actually view the originals. And to this day no one else has seen the original documents. The three letters were released over a period of several weeks in February of 1983, which tended to obscure the fact that they had all been created on one day. The schedule of release was: 1. 10 February 1983, Friday First letter, delivered by the Lenskes to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge L. John Cole, presiding over the trial of Gerald Armstrong concerning 30,000 original documents and manuscripts belonging to Hubbard (later valued at $5 million) that Armstrong had stolen. 2. 14 February 1983, Monday Second letter, delivered by the Lenskes to Riverside County California Court Judge David J. Hennigan in the probate suit, claiming that Hubbard was dead or incompetent, that had been filed by Hubbard's son, Ronald DeWolf, a.k.a. L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., a.k.a. Nibs Hubbard. 3. 20 February 1983, Sunday Third letter publication date, Rocky Mountain News, along with a written question-and-qnswer "interview" with "Hubbard." There is no record of when the Rocky Mountain News--specifically reporter Sue Lindsay--received the package from the Lenskes. Many observers are inclined now to believe that the incredibly involved creation and production of these three letters was all part of an elaborate fraud perpetrated by IRS's Meade Emory, the Treasury Department personnel, and the Lenskes to cover up the fact that Hubbard was an unreported missing person--dead or incapcitated. There are many evidences of that throughout the documents and reports on this site, but credence has particularly been lent to that view concerning these letters by the admission of a writer named Robert Vaughn Young that he, not Hubbard wrote the Rocky Mountain News "interview" that accompanied the third letter. For more information, see our individual reports on letter one, letter two, and letter three. |
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