Shawn Lonsdale: Suicide or Murder?

For several years, a man named Shawn Lonsdale has been filming Scientologists at Clearwater, Florida. The Mecca of Scientology, Clearwater has supplied Lonsdale with plenty of footage. For years, Lonsdale stood next to a sign bearing the words "Cult Watch" and providing insight to the affairs of the Church of Scientology. He has been harassed by Scientologists hoping to provoke him, the legal actions of the CoS, and even a Scientologist by the name of Michael Fitzgerald. Recently, Lonsdale was involved in the production of a BBC documentary entitled "Scientology and me" and was also working on a documentary of his own. All that ended, however on February 13, 2008, when Lonsdale was found dead in his home.

After a neighbor complained of a foul smell, police found Lonsdale's body as well as garden hose that had been stretched from the exhaust pipe of his car to a window of his home. The official cause of death, as defined by a coroner, has yet to be released and the police have labeled the death as suicide. Many members of Anonymous are not so convinced. I do not believe that Shawn Lonsdale committed suicide. I believe that he was murdered, my only question is in regards to whether this was a conspiracy or the actions of a single individual. In short, I side with logic.

As a critic of Scientology, Lonsdale often received threats and harassment as anyone watching "Cult Watch" may notice. Determined to stop Lonsdale, the cult sent a private investigator to dig up any crimes that he may have committed in the past. As it turned out, Shawn Lonsdale had been charged with two misdemeanor charges of "lewd and lascivious conduct." Lonsdale claimed that because he was low on money, he had worked on an adult chat room and had also arranged to meet men from the chat room in order to make more money. I will not say that what Lonsdale did was right, but there are many worse things that have been done (and by people in much less desperate situations) and many of these crimes can be laid at the feet of the Church of Scientology. The cult then reverted to its policy of "Fair Game" and used this information to incriminate Lonsdale in any way possible. The CoS tried to ban him from filming their activities and spread posters that sated that he was harrassing people and that he had been arrested for sex crimes with the intention of soiling his reputation. A member of the CoS also called his employer and told him about what Lonsdale had been doing and said that the "church" was afraid of him. The employer in question did, in fact, fire Lonsdale, but is also said to have told reporters that Lonsdale had been fired only because they needed to cut staff and that he had been a model employee.

As of yet, all I have managed to establish is the motive for a murder and by the end of this article, you still will not have been told of any evidence that is not completely circumstancial. However, the reason that I cannot bring any physical evidence to the table is not because there is none, but rather because the police have not released any. In the past, the CoS has had a habit of hiring off-duty policemen to "protect" its activities. Indeed, when protestors across the globe protested the CoS on February 10, the CoS repeated this habit in order to mae sure justice worked in their favor, should anything of legal interest occur at the Clearwater demonstration. There have been several other mysterious deaths in Clearwater in which the police failed to properly investigate the CoS, especially considering the fact that some of the most notable deaths have occurred in a Scientology-run hotel. For information on these unsolved cases, I recommend a YouTube search for "the un-funny truth about scientology" as well as a visit to the site known as whyaretheydead.net.

At this point, the reader is still left with nothing but a choice between the less shaky of two uncertain cases. Should you side with the writer who has no physical proof and never even saw the crime scene (and yes, because suicide is a crime, Lonsdale's home is still a crime scene no matter who happens to be right) or with the police who have already displayed a bias and are refusing to investigate an obvious possibiltiy? For that matter, why would Scientology take the criticism of a man who confessed to reporters that he did not have friends for years before deciding to silence him? If these people were really that serious, why would they wait until Lonsdale had aired his videos? Wouldn't it make more sense to kill him before he had an audience?

The answer to all this and more lies in the timing of Lonsdale's death. Because the report of the coroner who examined Lonsdale has yet to be released, I do not know the exact date of his death, but the very fact that his body was discovered three days after a worldwide protest against Scientology does a lot to complete an alternate explanation and to discredit the report that the police are spouting out. If there was ever a time that Lonsdale may have considered suicide, this was not it. He was garnering more online support than ever and the cult he had spent years confronting was under attack by the faceless armies of Anonymous. This was a time for him to celebrate, to boast of his victories like a viking raider, returning from far-away lands with a ship full of plunder.

The date also explains just why Scientology would strike now but not earlier. Quite simply, the CoS is desperate. They have seen what they are up against and they are afraid. Rather than being a deterrent, the attention that Lonsdale has earned may even have been the very reason he was targetted. It could very well be that this was intended to scare away the thousands who are now standing up to the CoS.

If this seems far-fetched, then consider the other possibility. The CoS claims that it renounced its "Fair Game" policy years ago, but if the leaders of Scientology really have denounced Fair Game, then the only logical course of action is to launch an investigation within its own ranks. If Scientology's leaders really don't approve of the murder of their critics, then why shouldn't they seek out answers to the unsolved muders to which their churcch is connected? If the current policy of the CoS is not to suppress any criticism of itself, then the only rational thing to do is to try to appease the public. As it is, the CoS is now standing firmly behind any possible murderers simply through their silence on the matter and their denial that Lonsdale's death is the responsibility of anyone other than himself.

Just as Lindon B. Johnson called for federal intervention during the Civil Rights Movement, so too must Bush call for a federal investigation into the crimes of the CoS, there is no alternative. If the death of Shawn Lonsdale does not recieve a proper investigation, then this may become the first of many casualties in Anonymous's war on Scientology.