Scientology - A Question of Faith

Did A Mother's Faith Contribute To Her Murder?

(CBS) 
Still, Elli was desperate for a natural cure. She began feeding Jeremy more than a dozen vitamins and other supplements every day.

Asked whether she believes vitamins can treat or cure mental illness, Eastgate says, "You know, vitamins and minerals and so forth are one aspect of getting the body healthy, so that you're, you know, healthy body, healthy mind. But that's one option amongst many, many different things."

The vitamins did not improve Jeremy’s condition. In fact, their only noticeable effect was to make Jeremy suspicious of his mother.

“I didn't know like what were, what the vitamins were for,” Jeremy said in a recorded interview. Asked what concerns he had about the vitamins, he replied, "Well, concerns just that maybe she's trying to poison me or something.”

Life inside the Perkins home was growing tense. Jeremy was getting aggressive, and Elli was getting worried.

Elli explained the situation to a self-taught “natural healer” named Albert Brown. "She talked to me about two incidences that were physical. There was some pushing. There was some struggling," Brown says.

Brown is not a Scientologist or a doctor. But he says he has helped people overcome mental problems with regimens of meditation and one-on-one counseling.

Asked whether Elli ever told him not to give anti-psychotic drugs to Jeremy, Brown says "She did tell me that she was not intending to give him any drugs. And that she would like to explore anything that doesn't include that.”

In February 2003, Elli and Jeremy visited the country house where Brown did his counseling. Brown asked Jeremy an important question.

"I said, 'Do you think you have any problems?' And he was quiet. And then he looked me in the eye again and he said, 'Sometimes I think I'm Jesus Christ,'" Brown recalls of the exchange.

“Wasn't it your responsibility since you're not licensed to treat anyone, to say this is above my pay grade. You need to get him to a psychiatrist,” Van Sant asked Brown.

"If I really believed that, I would say that. But I have dealt with that exact situation. At that same level. And have done it very successfully,” he replied.

It was decided that Jeremy would come to stay at Brown’s house the following month. But just a few days before the move, Elli was troubled by Jeremy’s behavior. She called her son-in-law Jeff Carlson, now the executive director of the Buffalo Church of Scientology.

"His solution was for Elli to give Jeremy busy work to do, which could have been anything between yard work to house work," says Jeff's sister Gabrielle.

Gabrielle, and Jeff's deputy director Rich Dunning both found out about the conversation.

"The church’s solution was just to make him clean, get him tired, so he would go to sleep," Dunning says.