How a recanted John Travolta gay sex allegation led to a bizarre Michael Jackson scoop - 2017-04-19

How a recanted John Travolta gay sex allegation led to a bizarre Michael Jackson scoop April 19, 2017, Tony Ortega, Underground Bunker

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Lately, your proprietor has been putting some of his older, non-Scientology stories on pages here at the website after readers expressed an interest in seeing them. And we were reminded of that project yesterday when a particular photo was posted in the comments section, making us think of our old acquaintance Paul Barresi.

There is a Scientology angle to our meeting with Barresi, and so we thought we'd tell that tale here on the regular blog, as well as bring back into print a piece we wrote with Barresi's help. We hope you find it entertaining.

So, it's the year 2002 and your proprietor is venturing into Tory Christman's Glendale backyard. The year before, we had told Tory's story for New Times Los Angeles, a feisty weekly paper where we'd been working since 1999. Two other writers at that paper were also contributing pieces about Scientology: Ron Russell, who did an amazing piece in 2001 about Raul Lopez, a brain-damaged young man who was being bled dry by the church (including with investments in ostrich eggs, of all things), and Mark Ebner, who in 1999 had written a brilliant examination of the life and death of Philip Gale, a young Scientologist who had jumped out of a building at MIT to his death on L. Ron Hubbard's birthday in 1998.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | author = Tony Ortega | title = How a recanted John Travolta gay sex allegation led to a bizarre Michael Jackson scoop | url = https://tonyortega.org/2017/04/19/how-a-recanted-john-travolta-gay-sex-allegation-led-to-a-bizarre-michael-jackson-scoop/ | work = Underground Bunker | date = April 19, 2017 | accessdate = August 21, 2017 }}