Activists honor Scientologist Lisa McPherson 30 years after her death

Colbi Edmonds, Tampa Bay Times on Dec 6, 2025

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TAMPA, Fla. — Thirty years ago, Lisa McPherson died after spending 17 days in the care of the Church of Scientology at its Fort Harrison Hotel in downtown Clearwater. Throughout the more than two-week period, caretakers logged McPherson’s behavior as she experienced a mental breakdown and became physically ill.

On Dec. 5, 1995, they took her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was 36.

McPherson’s death became international news — as did the church’s practices and stance on psychiatric care — and resulted in nine years of investigations and lawsuits.

Three decades later, people gathered around the world Friday to remember McPherson. But protesters and residents in Clearwater felt particularly close to her enduring story — gathering in the very downtown where she devoted her life to the church and ultimately lost it under its care.

“We remember her so that no one’s quiet cry for help ever goes unanswered again,” said Brooks Gibbs, who leads the local Save the Garden coalition working to keep a public street out of the church’s hands, to a group of around 30 people.

The then-St. Petersburg Times in 2009 published a three-part investigation into the church, speaking with high-level Scientology defectors to report an inside look at Scientology’s practices and McPherson’s case.

McPherson joined Scientology when she was 18. She moved to Clearwater from Dallas in 1994 with the company she worked for, AMC Publishing, which had ties to the church and wanted to relocate near its spiritual headquarters.

She spent years in Scientology counseling and, in a September 1995 church ceremony, was declared “clear” — a state of being that, in the church’s view, means shedding inhibitions caused by painful images in the subconscious.

Two months after that, McPherson was in a minor traffic accident. She took her clothes off and told a paramedic she needed help.

She was taken to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, but she signed out after church members came to the hospital and said they would take care of her.

The church is staunchly against psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.

Members of the church took McPherson to the Fort Harrison. A doctor who was unlicensed in the state supervised her care.

For 17 days, members of the church tried to “tried to calm, feed and medicate” her, the Times reported. The church kept logs of her behavior and care.

They gave her a mild sedative, and a staff dentist, who was also unlicensed in the state, combined orange juice, Benadryl and aspirin in a syringe and shot it down her throat.

She talked incoherently, hit her caretakers, destroyed the ceiling lamp and refused to eat, according to the logs. One caretaker wrote that McPherson had a fever and that it looked like her face had chicken pox and measles.

McPherson had lost around 12 pounds by the evening of Dec. 5, 1995, when her caretakers took her to see a Scientologist who worked in the emergency room at a hospital in New Port Richey.

Throughout the 45-minute drive, they passed four other hospitals. When they arrived, McPherson was not breathing, did not have a heartbeat and was bruised and gaunt.

She was pronounced dead.

McPherson’s death wasn’t leaked for another year. What followed was nine years of investigations and lawsuits — and a stain on the church’s reputation that lasts today.

“This is where a lot of stuff happened,” said Linda Seaquist, who came to Clearwater from California for the vigil. “They really don’t like the idea of Lisa McPherson because it was something for people to grab onto.”

McPherson’s relatives filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the church in 1997.

Bernie McCabe, the former Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney, in 1998 charged the church with practicing medicine without a license and abuse of a disabled adult.

The medical examiner on the case changed McPherson’s manner of death from “undetermined” to “accident” in 2000, and prosecutors dropped the felony charges. The church and estate of Lisa McPherson reached a confidential settlement in 2004.

In Clearwater Friday, it was an emotional evening near McPherson’s memorial brick downtown.

Ambient music played as people remembered McPherson’s life and urged one another to let her death not be in vain — whether that be advocating for people in situations like hers or joining community efforts to curb the church’s growing footprint downtown.

Attendees held candles and walked large scrolls with the names of people they said the church had in some way harmed to the front of its Flag Building.

Mark Bunker, a former Clearwater City Council member and staffer of the now-disbanded Lisa McPherson trust, gave a unofficial proclamation in her memory.

“Over the past three decades, Lisa’s story has inspired advocates, former members, journalists and ordinary citizens to stand against coercion, abuse and the silencing of voices,” he said. “This anniversary reminds us, not only (of) a life lost too soon, but of a shared moral duty to ensure that no one else suffers or dies in silence.”

(Information from Times archives was used in this report.)