Mariette Lindstein,  A Biography

Here is the unvarnished truth about Mariette Lindstein from the people who know her best. These are the firsthand experiences of those who lived with and worked alongside her for nearly 25 years.

Lindstein writes sexually explicit gothic thrillers. To sell books, she makes the preposterous claim that her books were “inspired” by her former association with the Church of Scientology. In truth, her only reason for talking about a Church that she has not been part of since 2004 is obvious: She is doing it for publicity. Mariette Lindstein is a nobody, while Scientology is known worldwide, drawing interest from every part of the world.

So who is the real Mariette Lindstein? She was a volunteer staff member at the Church of Scientology. In January 2004, she was dismissed from her position for incompetence and immoral activities, but was graciously offered a second chance to remain with the Church if she reformed. She refused and was expelled.

Lindstein is a serial liar. From her earliest beginnings in the Church, she falsified and inflated her production records for practically every position she held. She continuously made up wild stories about her life, including one especially bald-faced lie involving a member of the Beatles.

Lindstein is an admitted kleptomaniac who quietly stole money from her coworkers’ purses over a period of years. She would repeatedly take small amounts to hide what she was doing. She also took personal belongings—shoes, clothes, jewelry, food, etc., and also “borrowed” money from other coworkers that she never repaid.

Lindstein also harbored hidden sexual obsessions. She cheated on each of her husbands, culminating in her final act in the Church in which she conspired with her secret lover, Dan Koon, to abandon their spouses and rendezvous outside of the Church.

Unable to make an honest living, she now peddles lies about the Church for money, exploiting her failed time in the Church in an effort to satisfy her insatiable desire for attention.

Losing Touch With Reality, Lying and Stealing As a Way of Life

Lying comes easily to Mariette Lindstein. She has compulsively lied about every aspect of her life.

Here are the provable lies she’s told about her personal life:

• That her mother was a professional photographer when in truth she was a housewife.
• That big band jazz groups jammed inside her home with her father when she was a child. None of it is true.
• That she was a Swedish clothes model for stores and catalogs between ages 14 and 16, when she was actually cleaning and babysitting.
• She made the absurd claim that she danced with Paul McCartney at a London nightclub. She was never at that disco and never danced with him, there or anywhere else. Total fiction.
• She lied about working as a music mixer for a famous Swedish band when she was 16. In truth, she never worked for the band. She apparently sat in front of a mixing board once, and didn’t know the first thing about the console.
• She faked being sick, even inventing fake injuries, to avoid working.
• Then there was the time she fabricated a story that she saved a friend from committing suicide. By Mariette’s account, the friend had slit her wrists. She claims she put towels on the friend’s wrists, got her to the hospital and saved her life. To say the story was embellished is an understatement. What really happened is the friend told Lindstein once that she was feeling down.

Stealing was also a way of life for Lindstein.

“I also constantly stole the property of others. I went into purses in bathrooms as well as stole money from the [location’s] canteen between
1984-1994.”—Mariette Lindstein

Mariette Lindstein would enter the canteen with $5. Magically, she would leave with $20. What was her secret? Theft.

She would also take coffee, cigarettes and snacks. In a two-year period, it was estimated she shoplifted $800 worth of items. In the laundry room, she stole panties from other women because no item was too small. She also helped herself to shampoo and milk from others or stole food from fellow staff members that was stored in refrigerators and cupboards.

Sometimes she would take 50 or more things in a single theft. There was ice cream, pens, razors, envelopes, chocolate bars, cups of noodles, hair conditioner, shoes, shirts, hairbrushes, drinks, makeup. She never wanted to honestly pay for anything.

When nobody was around she stole money out of others’ purses, so she could buy things like candy, a sweater, magazines, and books.

“I did these actions KNOWING they were suppressive. I knew they would harm,” she wrote when found out.

She also would steal from her former husband. As she put it, “I have constantly ripped off/cheated my husband concerning money.”

A former friend wrote:

Dear Mariette:

You and I worked together for some time and the thing I remember most about it is that during this time I began losing money from my purse and thought that I must have misplaced it, forgotten it or spent more than I believed that I in fact had. I did not place too much attention on these losses as the amounts were $5 to $10 at a time, but it was enough to cause me consternation as the incidents continued and it remained a mystery to me.

After you confessed I thought that you would pay me back or at least come and see me about it. Frankly if you had asked, I would probably have forgiven [you].

A Life of Sexual Obsession

Mariette Lindstein’s favorite pastime is sexually manipulating men. In fact, to her, it is like a sport.

Just as with her other derangements—violence and lying—Lindstein had an early start with perversions, writing S&M stories in her early teens, and indulging her fantasies.

While hitchhiking through Europe in her later teens, she set her sights on men driving expensive cars. Many fell for her ploy and took her to dinner, allured by her flirtation and the unspoken promise of sex. After ordering, and consuming, the most expensive dishes on the menu at fancy restaurants, Lindstein slipped out the backdoor, or window, on the pretext of using the ladies’ room. She repeated the scam dozens of times, fleecing men for hundreds of dollars’ worth of high-end gourmet meals.

She repeatedly made passes at men she fantasized about, preferring married men. She flirted with them, giving out her apartment address or hotel room number so they could join her after work—even leaving her door open. If her prey didn’t show up, Lindstein would act out her fantasies, exposing herself in bright light in the window of her apartment or on a rooftop. She once engaged in a sexual act with a complete stranger on a commercial airline flight.

She boasted of her attempts to seduce married men in her workplace while she was married herself. “I finally aimed for the [top executive] who was married and had several children. I also undermined his wife so that he would leave her and start a [relationship] with me.” Lindstein’s seduction resulted in the couple divorcing, shattering their family.

When Lindstein began her conquest of her current partner Dan Koon, it was far from the first time she wrecked a marriage. Calculatingly assessing Koon’s character, she was able to find his weaknesses and reel him in as she had done with so many other men. As Lindstein once put it, Koon was soon “like a fish flopping on a line.”

A Neglectful Mother

Mariette Lindstein neglected her son. As her former husband Billy Lindstein can attest, she only has her selfishness to blame for her failures as a mother.

Mariette alienated herself from her son and myself by repeatedly seeking liaisons with other men while legally married to me. These occurred in 1983, 1986, 1989, …1996 [and 2003]…

I was the one making sure he [our son] was cared for, brought up properly and educated. He was trained as a professional photographer and a highly specialized SFX technician. Using his education, he is now pursuing a successful and well-paid career… 

Violent and Unhinged

Lindstein’s bizarre behavior was not limited to sexual acts. She also was known for sudden violent outbursts aimed at family and friends. While today she describes herself as “an energetic little girl from a creative family,” her behavior at home was more like something out of The Shining.

In one incident, Lindstein chased her mother through the house wielding a belt and trying to hit her with it. Her mother locked herself in the bathroom. Overcome with rage, Lindstein repeatedly beat the door with the belt buckle, terrorizing her mother and cowing her into submission.

Lindstein’s bullying wrath included shouting at the top of her lungs, threatening people with violence and even resorting to it in some cases.

Lindstein admitted to several instances of physical abuse with one woman, “shaking her or pushing her against the wall. …I pushed her and she fell back into rose bushes and she got scared. ...I also turned [her] head violently and told her ‘stop looking at me’—‘stop looking at me’.”

With another woman, Lindstein half bragged, “I slapped her right in the face.”

About another incident she wrote: “I took [sic] my hands around her neck and pushed her into the wall physically.”

And with another she attacked, “It started with shaking her, then screaming about 1/2 inch close to her face…. Once I pushed her so that she fell over on the chair.”

In yet another psychotic episode, Lindstein was riding in the front seat of a car when she suddenly violently attacked the driver for getting stuck in traffic during rush hour. While the driver was trying to maneuver her way through a busy intersection, Lindstein started yelling at her, punching her with her phone.

In another incident Lindstein tried to induce sickness in a woman by serving her a cup of coffee spiked with detergent.

My violent encounter with Mariette

Dear Mariette:

I am the woman you punched while I was driving you in a car through a busy intersection in Hollywood. Do you remember?

It was at the Hollywood and Highland intersection, and you had a psychotic break and started screaming and yelling at me and then punched me with your telephone, all while I was driving. I was stunned.

The Great Escape

Lindstein’s biggest lie is her story about how she left the Church of Scientology. Far from being the great escape she claims in her media appearances, it is simply the story of two dishonest people—Dan Koon and Mariette Lindstein—leaving their spouses after carrying on an illicit affair. It’s a tale of sexual obsession that could have been pulled from the pages of Lindstein’s trashy novels.

The actual reason for Lindstein’s and Koon’s departure is that they were cheating on their spouses with each other for a year. At the time of their affair, Dan Koon was married to Sue, his wife of 26 years. Mariette Lindstein was married to her husband of 24 years, Billy (the father of her child). Both Koon and Lindstein were members of the Scientology religious order, which strictly prohibits extramarital affairs. Both knew they would be subjected to expulsion from the religion should their clandestine affair be discovered.

Knowing they faced expulsion from the Church if their affair was uncovered, they concocted a plan to keep their cheating a secret. They left Church staff separately so that their secret affair would not be obvious. Hoping to remain members of the religion as Scientology parishioners in good standing, they went to great lengths to lie and cover it up until they were ready to hatch their plan to leave their spouses.

On December 21, 2003, Dan Koon told his wife Sue he was going out to buy her Christmas gifts. It was a blatant lie. Koon instead walked out of their apartment, never telling his wife he was casting her aside for another woman. He was never to be seen again.

Mariette Lindstein’s secret plan to blow up her family was more elaborate. Some time after Koon’s departure, she requested a transfer to a different Church facility to participate in a program where she would purportedly try to rehabilitate herself for her ethical lapses. From that location, working with members of the religious order who did not know her or Koon, Lindstein bided her time until Dan Koon had all but been forgotten about. At that point, in April 2004, she left her family and Church without another word to her then husband. Lindstein immediately rendezvoused with Koon.

Fact-Checking Lindstein’s Delusions

To interest anyone in her cheap drivel, Lindstein has had to capitalize on the growing interest worldwide that people have in the Church of Scientology.

While her current partner Dan Koon bragged on Facebook following a Lindstein talk at a smalltown library that “the audience was fascinated...,” another individual posted the truth that “they’re more fascinated by Scientologists” than by Lindstein.

Nobody is interested in a 500-page tome that “says nothing really in particular,” let alone a mediocre author with nothing to say. So Lindstein tries to exploit the interest people do have in Scientology to book her talks and, in a bait-and-switch scam, peddles her bad fiction to an unsuspecting public.

To sell this fraud, she misrepresents the world of Scientology to fit her delusions. Here are just a few examples:

• One Danish reporter who interviewed Lindstein announced “She is writing thrillers about Scientology.” In contrast, the disclaimer in the Danish version of her novel reveals: “About the events and characters in this book—All people and events in this book are fictional.”
• Lindstein doubles down on her lies by making provably false claims about her former work location, Golden Era Productions (Gold). But, writing in 2002 about Golden Era Productions, the Church audiovisual and filmmaking studio, she gushed “This…has been my home since 1984, I love it, I love the people here and there is nowhere on earth I’d rather be.”

• The Golden Era Productions film studio Lindstein praised in 2002 is the audiovisual filmmaking facility of the Church of Scientology International. It is a massive 500-acre former resort that is breathtakingly beautiful. The facilities for staff are glorious and include a swimming pool, basketball courts, volleyball courts, running track and even a nine-hole golf course. The facility is open to and used by the local community for everything from bass fishing tournaments (on the lake located at the center of the property) to fundraisers for local charities and law enforcement (at the clubhouse and banquet hall). To prove the absurdity of Lindstein’s myths about Gold, all one needs to do is watch this video.

• Anyone who knows anything about film production is aware that every major film and TV studio in the world has tight security and fencing, including Universal Studios, Paramount Studios, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and Walt Disney. Like these other studios, Golden Era Productions has expensive, state-of-the-art equipment to protect. However:
• Unlike Lindstein’s claim (and unlike other major film studios), there are no armed guards at Golden Era, and no barbed wire or electrical fences—another fantasy by Lindstein.

• To further illustrate the extent of Lindstein’s dishonesty (“you are not allowed to get out”), neither Lindstein nor Koon lived on the property and, in fact, commuted daily from and to apartments in a nearby town. They got in and out every day. 

• Finally, if Lindstein and Koon were held “captive” as they claim, how would they have been able to freely go out and pull off their scheme to abandon their respective families? Koon lied by claiming he was going out Christmas shopping, while Lindstein lied about going to the hairdresser. That doesn’t sound like two people who are being held “captive.”
• Another provable Lindstein lie was her claim that she “juggled with budgets of millions and for example bought advertising at Super Bowl...” Yet Lindstein was expelled from the religion in 2004, nine years before the Church’s first Super Bowl ad appeared in 2013.

• Her final lie to Church colleagues, on April 4, 2004, was a line out of Dan Koon’s playbook. Lie about where you are going as a ruse for abandoning the family. Lindstein said she was going to get her hair done but never came back, abandoning her husband of 24 years and her son. She then hooked up with the married man she’d been cheating with, Dan Koon, who, three months earlier, had abandoned his wife of 26 years by lying that he was going out to buy Christmas presents for her. Instead, he took off and never returned.