High-ranking Florida Scientologist burned herself alive then shot herself dead: report

On Wednesday, Tony Ortega, a journalist covering happenings within the Church of Scientology, reported that a high-ranking member in Clearwater, Florida brutally took her own life.

"We began looking into this matter, making some calls, and learned that the Clearwater Police Department had investigated this woman’s death. Yesterday, the department sent us its report of that investigation," reported Ortega. "Whitney Mills was 40 when she shot herself on May 12 and then died days later at Morton Plant hospital. We want to warn you that the details are very disturbing, and they do bring up questions about her involvement in Scientology."

Mills was what Scientologists refer to as an "Operating Thetan Level Eight" or OT 8, which she was certified on the Scientology cruise ship, the Freewinds, in 2019. "As we discussed after Kirstie Alley’s death, when Scientologists achieve OT 8, they believe they will be granted 'cause over matter, energy, space, and time.' In other words, the gamut of superhuman abilities that they have been pursuing for years and after parting with large amounts of money. Finally, they will have raised IQ, total recall, perfect eyesight, the ability to leave their bodies and travel as incorporeal spirits called 'thetans' with full perception. And, of course, they believe they will be impervious to disease."

As Ortega noted, cancer is supposed to be defeated at just OT 5, which may be part of why Kirstie Alley did not seek medical help early on for the symptoms of colon cancer.

"In 2022, Whitney Mills was facing some serious health issues of her own, according to the people who knew her and were interviewed by the Clearwater Police Department. One woman who had recently gotten to know Whitney told police that she had been diagnosed with Lyme disease as well as a mass on one of her ovaries, which 'she was refusing to remove,' the friend said," Ortega reported. On May 12, her friends requested a welfare check after she stopped answering her phone. When his brother forced his way into her apartment, he found her incapacitated from a gunshot wound, with a burning hair smell in the apartment indicating she had set herself on fire first. She died in the hospital a day and a half later.

"The mother said she had looked through the phone, and 'Whitney advised she was going to ask the ‘D of P’ for an assist reference suicide,' the detective wrote in her report," said the report. "Det. Hyppolite then contacted the Church of Scientology (she didn’t indicate which facility), which explained that 'D of P' referred to 'Director of Processing,' that an 'assist' was a Scientology method of healing that was 'not physical,' and when the detective asked if Scientology would assist with a suicide, was told 'absolutely not.'"

According to one expert on Scientology, a Director of Processing would have advised Whitney to overcome her depression with a "locational" — walking around and pointing to various objects in order to distract herself — or a "PAB 6", which would involve "getting proper food and sleep, daily walks, listing out all of your incomplete situations and then methodically completing them." "As an OT 8 Scientologist, the last thing Whitney could do was to turn to actual mental health professionals for help: Scientology demonizes the mental health field, and considers psychiatry to be the most evil force in the universe," noted Ortega.

Editor's Note: Tony Ortega is a former executive editor at Raw Story.