When news of Edward McBride’s death was reported back in early September, I immediately became suspicious after reading that Scientology was involved.

Although initially fingers were being pointed at the army, I had a hunch there was more to this story than a simple case of bullying. The question mark over whether or not members of the Australian army had anything to do with the death of McBride was something I felt didn’t fit.

Instead I focused on what I believed to be the much more plausible link between Scientology and McBride, which ironically was briefly mentioned as a throwaway in the last paragraph of the news article I first read.

Initially I received a hostile reaction from family member Stephen McBride;

I’m disgusted at your website. There is a coroners inquiry to figure out if it is murder or suicide. I felt sick in the stomach when I read the title of this story.

You have already made up your mind that it is “suicide” – What my parents, remaining brother and myself have gone through is unimaginable, then we have a 2 bit, wanna be journalist like yourself that turns this whole situation into a sarcastic joke.


In hindsight this was completely understandable, I had nothing more to go on other then a gut feeling and circumstance that left me feeling like I wasn’t being told the entire story. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve clashed with family members over my opinions on current events (see Elijah Holcombe) and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

In the interests of debate I quite welcome discussion beyond what you might find in a standard news article. Although I might disagree with opinions and viewpoints raised I’ve always maintained that I’m happy to let people rebut what I’ve written.

Since writing my initial thoughts on the McBride case it seems a series of events have unfolded lending considerable weight to my original suspicions. At this point it’s clear the army has been ruled out as a cause for McBride’s suicide but there’s a still series of questions lingering over Scientology’s possible involvement.

Questions nobody seems comfortable publicly asking.

Mid last month a Coroner’s findings into the death of Mcbride were released to the general public. At 31 pages it’s quite a read and as such I’ve taken my time with it to fully digest the information it contains.

McBride had joined Scientology 18 months before his death and had ambitions to become an auditor.

Incase anyone’s wondering what a Scientology ‘auditor’ is, apparently it’s a bunch of people trained to listen to people, give them counselling and then manipulate them via mild hypnosis.


Whilst listening to people and offering counselling, Scientologist Auditors also record down extremely personal information in the form of documented hand written notes. In other words after successful auditing, the Church of Scientology is then in possession of a folder containing your deepest darkest secrets. To do with as they wish.

One of these folders existed for Edward McBride and the coroners report gives an insight into what information it possibly contained.

Just prior to joining the Army, Mr McBride commenced a relationship with Kate Divine.

Early on during their relationship Mr McBride confided to Ms Divine that he had previously had sex with a couple of males when he was younger. Mr McBride also confided to Ms Divine that he had seen a counsellor prior to joining the Army and that he had been depressed.

Mr McBride also indicated to Ms Divine that he did not feel comfortable being around other males; that he could not stand to be looked at and would often lock himself in his room and not talk to anyone.


McBride’s suicide occurred just 2 days after he had completed “a month of Scientology courses”.

Mr McBride was undertaking a significant course program which included components of auditing/counselling.


These courses cost McBride $25,000, $20,000 of which was on finance via a loan from ANZ bank.

Despite not being openly obvious, there were considerable issues in McBride’s earlier life that clearly hadn’t been completely resolved. You can bet these issues were covered extensively in McBride’s audit file.

Scientology’s view on homosexuality is quite clear;

In 1950 Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, introducing his “science of the mind,” Dianetics. He classified homosexuality as an illness or sexual perversion.


When questioned however McBride’s auditor, Lisa O’Kane insisted that she was only auditing “past positive experiences in Mr McBride’s life”. The coroner found this difficult to believe.

I have to say that I had significant difficulty in accepting all of the evidence of Ms O’Kane.

It had a very distinct flavour of being selective and avoidant about various issues and the examples she gave about possible areas of distress in a person’s life were indeed involved in areas of minor stress as distinct from more significant areas of distress.


He stops short of calling her a liar.

On the night of McBride’s death, police records showed that

only members of the Church of Scientology were in contact with him in the days leading up to his death.


Members of the church were still trying to contact McBride in the hours leading up to his death:

7/2/07 0728:22 – Edward McBride retrieves voicemails for 131 secs
7/2/07 0958:31 – Ms O’Kane sends two SMS (more likely one long text message) to Edward McBride
7/2/07 1429:39 – Ms O’Kane sends two SMS (more likely one long text message) to Edward McBride
7/2/07 1953:16 – Mr Cockerill contacts Edward McBride (and is diverted to voice mail) for 8 seconds
7/2/07 1953:54 – Mr Cockerill contacts Edward McBride (and is diverted to voice mail) for 3 seconds
7/2/07 1954:28 – Mr Cockerill contacts Edward McBride (and is diverted to voice mail) for 3 seconds
7/2/07 1955:00 – Mr Cockerill contacts Edward McBride (and is diverted to voice mail) for 56 seconds
7/2/07 2004:55 – Mr Cockerill contacts Edward McBride (and is diverted to voice mail) for 5 seconds


Daniel Cockerill is a member of the church who had been incontact with O’Kane. The nature of the voicemail messages left on McBride’s phone leading up to his death by members of the church were:

you are putting another person’s job at risk through your actions;
you should come in for an interview;
this is not good enough you need to call me you are going to get me into a lot of trouble. You need to come in now, we need to get this sorted out;
LRH would not approve;
it is not kosher of you to be out of contact with me. You really should come in for an audit;
you need to come in, we need to speak to you;
you need to talk to us, contact us urgently;
this behaviour is unacceptable, you have missed your interview;
we need to wrap things up; and
we are concerned that we haven’t heard from you.


Thus far we have an individual with a considerable financial obligation looming over his head, an uncomfortableness in regards to events in his past and the likely auditing of these issues in detail by an organisation who classify said events as an illness or sexual perversion. This organisation was frantically trying to contact McBride in the 24 hours leading up to his death.

So what exactly was in the audit file? Well, here’s the kicker and the defining moment I believe where co-incidence and speculation take a back seat to ‘something to hide’.

Shortly after McBride’s suicide, his audit file was shipped off to the US at the request of the Scientology Church HQ in the US.

Clearly relevant to the case, when asked to produce the audit file the church then hid behind “confessional privilege” and refused to present it.

In the lead up to McBride’s suicide it was also revealed that “over these dates Mr Cockerill, Ms Parker and Ms O’Kane were also communicating with each other and with the Church in Sydney.”

Did the church know what was about to go down? Their subsequent reaction in making the audit file disappear certainly seems timely and calculated.

The final bit of controversy surrounding McBride’s suicide is the question on whether or not he was alone at the time of his death.

Two local residents who lived opposite the substation, informed police on the evening that they saw two male persons inside the actual substation compound shortly after they heard the explosion that came from the substation area.


Of these two male persons the coroner noted:

The actions of one of them in holding his hands around his ears is indicative of someone who had experienced a large noise and was holding his head in pain. The other one was waving his arms around and one of them was walking backwards and forwards.

This is indicative of two persons who had found themselves in a stressful situation and were panicking.

It is probable that they then exited the compound after hearing the fire trucks arriving and knowing that they were in trouble.


I know I’d certainly be panicking if someone had just committed suicide because of my actions.

For me personally there’s just one too many co-incidences and suspect circumstances leading up the suicide of McBride to be simply written off. Further to that I have serious issues with a religious organisation, Scientology or otherwise, seemingly being able to quite casually disrupt the course of justice.

The Church of Scientology appears to have no inhibitions about releasing information from their audit files when it serves their own purpose. The following video is an example of how the church goes about using people’s personal information, quite ready to openly disclose such information if it works in their favour.

What you’re seeing is a snippet in which journalist John Sweeney is interviewing Scientology critic Shawn Lonsdale, the interview is abruptly interrupted by Tommy Davis, public spokesperson for the church.



Recently information was pulled from audit files to call into question the credibility of ex-members of the church. These ex-members had provided information to the media critical of the Scientology.

The church said the Times is relying on sources who, before they left Scientology, admitted in sworn declarations, affidavits and confessions that all responsibility was theirs and they held the church blameless.

For every person but one (Sinar Parman), Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis provided documents from church files, including confessions, ethics orders and Suppressive Person declarations.


These two examples again raise question on the reluctance of the church to provide McBride’s audit file to the Australian authorities. If the church is only willing to pull information from audit files when the information is of benefit, surely the opposite is then also true?

What is clear to me is that there had been a change. Something had happened to Mr McBride because in the next day/hours he would take his own life in quite a premeditated manner.


The above statement is from Brisbane Coroner John Lock himself and echoes my feelings on the case. That “something” I believe is clearly tied up to the audit notes taken on Edward McBride.

I imagine the audit file is now safely locked away in a property somewhere in the US, long buried and never to see the light of day again.


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