Deirdre Saoirse Moen

November 5 (as in Guy Fawkes Day) is Bank Transfer Day, a movement to take funds out of banks that received bailouts and move it to either independent local banks or credit unions (I favor the latter as credit unions are non-profit organizations).

Sadly, though I’ve known about it for a week or two, I haven’t yet gotten my act together on this, so I’ll be taking care of the move over a couple of weeks.

Many credit unions now have big-bank features like online bill pay, etc.

This site will help you find a credit union.

One of the coolest features of credit unions? You can deposit and withdraw from CUs that aren’t yours if you get one that’s an affiliate with the CU Service Center Network. Many 7-Eleven stores and all Co-op network locations have free ATMs.

Many have one “loophole” way to join if you’re not otherwise eligible. For example, Stanford Federal Credit Union lets you join if you’re a member of Friends of the Palo Alto Library (membership costs $15), and (last I checked), they would open your account and add the membership at the same time. While I’ve kept up my membership in FPAL (it’s the next town over for me, after all), it’s not necessary to do so.

Hope this helps!

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

Executive summary: William Rex Fowler, a prominent Scientologist, shot and killed a former employee coming in for a severance check of < $10k. Fowler's business was desperate for cash after Fowler gave ~$175k to Scientology. After shooting Ciancio, Fowler then attempted suicide, but lived.

It's clear that Fowler was intending to attempt suicide given his preparations, but less clear to me that he intended to kill Ciancio from the outset. Ciancio was a father of four who had been married to his high school sweetheart for nearly half his life.

Story here. Short version: two days of hearings, on the third morning, defense rested without calling a single defense witness.

I already linked to day 1 of the trial previously, here's the link to day two.

Most interesting bit: they had Fowler's son testify about giving the gun to his father as a Christmas present. Fowler's son was a member of Scientology's religious order, the Sea Org at the time. It's not clear if he still is; his claimed address is in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is near Scientology's Trementina Base. (Even if you don't care about the trial, that link is interesting; you can see it from the air.)

ETA: Here's a short guide to a criminal case that'll say where the case is in progress. Because defense comes after prosecution for witnesses and evidence, that also means prosecution has rested. Since there were no witnesses, there was no defense evidence (because evidence is hearsay without witnesses), so there's no rebuttal, so I think we're up to jury instructions.

This is a sad tale about money, Scientology, and murder.

Scientology's quite expensive to get to the upper levels. On the "auditing" side of the bridge, some people report figures as low as $300,000 and others over $1,000,000 to get from the beginning through OT VII.

Of late, there's been even more money pressure to contribute to schemes L. Ron Hubbard (LRH) wouldn't have approved of, including building funds for "Ideal Orgs" (this kind of fundraising was expressly forbidden before LRH died by LRH's own policy) and the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), which seems to be a black hole into which Scn's contributions get sucked into. Kirstie Alley, for example, has donated at least 2.5 mil to IAS.

In the 1970s, Rex Fowler was a minister performing weddings within Scientology.

In 1989, Rex completed OT VII, which is the penultimate level available at the time; OT VIII was released in the late 80s, but requires going to the Freewinds, and it's expensive.

At some point, Rex started Fowler Software Design (FSD), which, at least in its later years, incorporated LRH's management technology, requiring him to be a WISE (Worldwide Institute of Scientology Enterprises) member. In general, this is a bad deal for such businesses, but that's a side issue.

Now, as you and I know, not all computer people are Scientologists, and so Fowler hired Tom Ciancio as COO. Some reports say he did a lot of the technical work. What is clear is that Ciancio was a part-owner of the company. Per a report (source):

The news reports say that Tom was a "partner". Everyone was a "partner" because their was a mandatory contribution to the company with each payday. When you left FSD, you were supposed to be "bought out"; however myself and each person I know that left FSD during my x years there never got a penny.

So, at the end of 2008, Fowler was encouraged to get back on OT VII.

Wait, you say, he completed it in 1989, he has to do it again?

Why yes, he does. One person I know of, Claire Woodruff, completed (new) OT VII twice and OT VIII three times. Normally, actions are completed once, but they were forced to re-do upper levels for specious reasons, largely because OT VII is such a great cash cow.

OT VII is a solo auditing action. Back when it first started, you paid for hours of case supervision in advance, and that was it. Then one had to go to Flag every six months, and that involved time and money away from home at hellacious hourly rates. More things kept being added to the point where, about ten years ago, a six-month check involved about 6 weeks. So, for a full quarter each year, you'd be gone from home, not making money, and spending about $20-50,000 per year.

It's gotten worse since then.

So when Rex's org's OT committee reported that he was "back on the level" in December, 2008, that meant a whole lotta money was going to go to Scientology for years to come. In fact, one report says between $150k and $250k and another says up to $200k "since 2008." (links later) The great suck of resources had begun.

Now, most Scientologist staff at FSD would not have said a peep about this, because if they did, they'd have to get an "ethics handling" about being "counter-intentioned" (I had a few of those myself, so I know whereof I speak, and things are worse now) and may actually be denied their own OT levels later on.

And then there was Ciancio, who wanted out, and probably wanted his share of the $ that had been sent to various Scn organizations.

So Ciancio agreed with Fowler over the amount of settlement, purportedly $9,900. Ciancio goes to FSD to pick up his check, and winds up dead with three shots to the head. This left Ciancio's wife a widow, and their four kids without a father.

Fowler then apparently attempted suicide, and failed in a particularly horrific way (source):

He has an entry wound (bullet hole) under the chin. The bullet travelled through his tongue, through the roof of his mouth, through the sinuses, through the frontal lobe and exited out the top of his head. His mouth is wired shut and he is heavily sedated.

This all happened at the end of last year. Today, more than three weeks later, Fowler was charged with murder one, which is covered in this article and this article.

Over $9,900? Wrong target much?

In a particularly interesting wrinkle to the case, OT VII materials are generally kept in a locked briefcase in a locked closet because OT VII people need to have several sessions a day. So the police find a note instructing them to give the briefcase to his wife, and the police still have it. Most everyone who's done OT VII believes it is his parishioner files -- which brings up an interesting question about solo auditing sessions: In regular auditing sessions, you're giving a confession to a minister, so they're generally not admissible, but in a solo session, you're telling yourself. Admissible? No? Could make for some interesting case law. My guess is that it'll be about as admissible as a journal and for largely the same reasons.

When Janet Fowler was interviewed by detectives, she told them she wanted the briefcase returned immediately.

"It is important to me and my church. It is religious material and I want it now," she said to investigators. "Even if you looked at it, and read it, you would not understand anything in it. Because it is way above a normal person and you would not know what it meant. I want it back right now."

You stay classy, Janet.

Edited to add: third story link, including more briefcase weirdness. Further interesting quote:

Employee Robert Read told police "Thomas Ciancio started to become very frustrated with Fowler, saying he was embezzling money and a crook."

A former employee Stephan Samuel said, "he and Ciancio were able to see several large withdraws (sp) by Fowler totaling in the area of 200,000.00 to 250,000.00 dollars."

Samuel says "Thomas Ciancio did not like William Fowler taking the company's money and causing a financial hardship on the company."

Employees say that money went to a church. read said he knew this information "because William Fowler had to apologize to everyone in writing for what he did."

Update: it seems most likely that Rex had decided to commit suicide and have Janet handle the briefcase (though I doubt he told her that), and Ciancio's agreed-upon payout may just have been wrapping things up beforehand. It does seem more likely that the whole note and briefcase thing was more likely about suicide than premeditated murder. It'll be interesting to follow the case and see what comes out.