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Freedom of Scientology Information?

By SM

I got interested in the alleged suicide by hanging of David Hans Schmidt, the Sultan of Sleaze, in October 2007. At that time he was under house arrest, awaiting sentencing for an extortion attempt on Tom Cruise, trying to sell him back several thousand photographs of his wedding (you know the story). The police went to look when his electronic tag had not moved for a while.

When I looked for more information about this case I found a cryptic entry for the gossip's gossip 'Jossip' dated Monday 16 October 2007, which said that Schmidt had 'closed the wedding deal' and that the wedding video was said to include something called the Donkey Punch'. It seemed to me that Jossip was a very unreliable source but I persevered. According to Wikipedia the donkey punch is a homosexual technique, to enhance pleasure, but the name and the technique may be spurious. I checked with a gay friend and he has never heard of it but admits to being out of date. However another Internet source confirmed that it involves punching the kidneys. The Jossip claim is attributed to 'R&M' but I haven't been able to identify them.

This was intriguing but I didn't give it much weight until I looked up the main Jossip page for 16 October 2007 and found that the same two-line text referring to Schmidt closing the wedding deal and claiming that the wedding video was said to include the Donkey Punch has been strategically hidden under an elongated version of the familiar (boring) blue CoS advert which cuts right across the text. Donkey has gone but Punch survives but if you are very quick you can see the whole text before the advert downloads.

The DHS story is the only one on the page that relates to SciFi. Are they now using their influence with Google to block information? Is this information very sensitive, as the overreaction to it suggests? Or is it a fiction? In that case they would surely have asked Jossip to withdraw the statement. The use or misuse of the advertisement only draws attention to what it tries to hide.

I have emailed Jossip to see if they know about this but have not yet had a reply.

The Defamer asked an interesting question (somewhere around 08/30/07): 'Something about Schmidt's threatening overtures towards Cruise's camp in June have [sic] left us extremely curious as to just what kind of sensitive material might have been contained in the purloined portraits.' Quite so. But stag nights are generally more raunchy than what follows. Schmidt is said to have told TC's representatives that 'It would not look good for anyone if the photographs became public'. Why not?

The co-conspirator and actual thief Mark Gittleman, who might have got five years, got off more or less scot-free by saying he was very very ashamed. David Hans Schmidt technically faced a lesser sentence as he was only the broker, not the thief. So why did he get so worried that he committed suicide? He seemed to enjoy his chosen way of life and, god knows, thanks to the ways of celebrities it has plenty of potential. But under house arrest he was a sitting duck. Maybe we should ask how he managed to hang himself in a shower cubicle so small that he was literally found on his knees.