When Leah Remini, star of “King of Queens,” and former member of Scientology, filed a missing persons report on Scientology leader David Miscavige’s wife, Michelle ‘Shelly’ Miscavige, the action was not only personal, but also political. The report, by the way, has been filed before, as the wife of David Miscavige, himself a high-profile public figure, has not been seen in years. She was in fact a friend of Leah Remini, who first started falling out of the church when she asked at Tom Cruise and Kate Holmes’s wedding why Shelly wasn’t there, only to receive backlash from the church.
“Mrs. Miscavige is not missing. Investigators have made some type of contact with her,” said LAPD sources on News Thursday. “The investigation is completed and classified as unfounded.”
That at least seems a well-stated, simple explanation by the police that explains she was missing. The government agent is able to be concise and straight forward. Now what did the Church of Scientology have to say in regard to it? Surely something magnanimous and careful and austere, considering that they are after all a Church?
“This ill-advised, ludicrous self-promotion and the media inquiries it generated caused an inexcusable distraction for the LAPD,” the church said in a statement. “The entire episode was nothing more than a publicity stunt for Ms. Remini.”
Of course, it is not for the church to say what the LAPD finds excusable or inexcusable. Nor, really, are they in a position to psychologize or attribute motives to Ms. Remini’s purpose in wondering where her friend disappeared to. They have reverted to their incendiary and emotionally charged language that has so characterized the church throughout the years, in which enemies are “fair game” and can be lambasted or publicly excoriated as they see fit. But this is the first time they have approached Remini in such terms.
Remini, meanwhile, who left the church, is writing a memoir, an expose-all book about her experience with the Church of Scientology.