Top Aussie Scientologist is found dead after devoting her life to the mysterious religion – as details of her incredible link to its leader and her tragic cause of death are revealed
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An Australian woman who was run out of Melbourne as a child due to her family’s Scientology beliefs has died in Florida.
Marion Pouw, 72, died near the Scientology city of Clearwater where she spent much of her life dedicated to the controversial religion and its leader, David Miscavige.
Former friends – who say they were cut off from her after they left the church – revealed she had died from pancreatic cancer.
Pouw was said to be Miscavige’s right-hand woman, with some former Scientologists branding her his ‘henchman’, while another said she was one of his ‘closest lieutenants’.
A never-before-seen picture exclusively given to Daily Mail Australia reveals Pouw at her first wedding, with Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, one of her bridesmaids.
Ms Miscavige inexplicably vanished 18 years ago and has never been found.
A death notice listed by Tampa funeral home Brewer & Sons shared that Ms Pouw was born on February 7, 1953, and died on June 20, 2025.
The listing has since been mysteriously deleted, but still appears online in a Google search.
An obituary on US website Echovita revealed that Ms Pouw died in Clermont, Florida, just a stone’s throw from Scientology’s Clearwater headquarters.
The obituary farewelled her ‘Earthly form’.
Scientology’s core belief is that humans are immortal spiritual beings, called thetans, who are in a continual cycle of reincarnation on Earth and other planets.
Ms Pouw’s work for the church flew mostly under the radar, but she appeared in a Scientology video slamming David’s father, the late Ron Miscavige, for leaving the church and writing a memoir about it.
Ms Pouw said she had helped Ron at his lowest point when his brother Red died, and that they were close family friends for more than 40 years.
In his book Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me, Ron described Pouw as his son’s henchman, which infuriated her.
‘I find the fact that he references me as a ‘top henchman’ both offensive and insulting,’ she said in the video which was posted online and revealed a lingering trace of her Australian accent.
‘I mean we’re talking a 40 year relationship… a close family friend that’s gone out of her way for… and cared for him.
‘And to now depict that relationship in that manner – a friend doesn’t say that about a friend, ever. No matter the circumstances, you just don’t say that.
‘And I find it very insulting and such a gross misrepresentation of the relationship that… that I had with him.
‘He was a friend – he’s not a friend now – but he was a very close friend. I was family. And frankly, I was stunned.’
Ron Miscavige died in 2021, aged 85.
Content retrieved from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14946947/Austrslian-Scientologist-dead-David-Miscaviges-right-hand-woman-Marion-Pouw.html.
