While he was on a trip outside California shortly before Masterson’s second trial, Mueller received a panicked phone call from his wife, said the two officials not authorized to speak publicly. She’d heard glass breaking and went downstairs to find a window had been damaged.

The incident led district attorney’s investigators to guard Mueller’s home overnight. Los Angeles police were also called to the scene, police records show.

“[Unknown] suspect used [unknown] tool to break window. [Suspect] did not make entry and fled,” read the LAPD report, which listed Mueller’s wife as the victim.

LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz, the department’s chief spokeswoman, said an investigation into the break-in remains ongoing.

Pouw said the church has never been contacted by Mueller or the district attorney’s office about the alleged harassment. She called the claims “outlandish” and “unbelievable on their face.”

The church has long held that the case against Masterson, a lifelong Scientologist, was tainted by religious bias — a claim Pouw again leveled.

“If Mueller said these things, then it is part of a campaign of blatant harassment against the Church,” she said. “The Church never engaged in the conduct he alleges.”

Mueller’s colleagues defended him.

“He has a reputation as being extremely careful, honest and straightforward,” said Deputy District Attorney Eric Siddall, former vice president of the union representing rank-and-file prosecutors.

Masterson starred as the bad boy Steven Hyde on “That ‘70s Show,” and in court his victims said they waited years to come forward because of his celebrity status — and because Scientology forbids a parishioner from reporting fellow members to law enforcement.

Although the church has long denied it had such a policy, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled otherwise after a 2021 preliminary hearing in the Masterson trial. Hearing witnesses also testified that church officials dismissively refer to secular police and courts as “wog-law,” a reference to a pejorative term for non-Scientologists. The organization has its own “International Justice Chief” to handle internal disputes, according to trial testimony and documents presented during the case.

The Church has denied allegations that it has a policy barring members from reporting one another to police.

After learning of Mueller’s speech and the lawsuit accusing the church of harassment from The Times, Claire Headley, a former Scientology executive who testified as an expert witness at Masterson’s trial and unsuccessfully sued the church in 2009, said the alleged incidents sounded similar to tactics allegedly used by the Office of Special Affairs.

Formerly known as the Guardian’s Office, the church wing “manages all legal and public affairs,” which can include campaigns to “destroy” and “silence” critics of the church, former members and journalists, Headley said in a recent declaration in a lawsuit filed by actress and ex-Scientologist Leah Remini.

In a court declaration in the Remini case, Headley also accused the church of using private investigators to harass her organization, the Aftermath Foundation, which offers support to those who have left Scientology.

In court filings in the same case, the church has dismissed Headley as one of Remini’s “partners in bigotry” and said she’s been removed from the church for too long to have any direct knowledge of its current operating procedures.

Mike Rinder, a member of the Aftermath Foundation’s board, once served as head of the Office of Special Affairs and described it as “Scientology’s CIA” in a recent declaration in Remini’s lawsuit.

Rinder, a former Scientology spokesperson, said the church’s tactics include hiring “private investigators to surveill and intimidate targets,” harassing “targets’ family, friends, and employers in order to intimidate them” and enlisting “homeless and mentally ill people to harass and intimidate targets,” according to the declaration.

Pouw dismissed Rinder as a bitter, excommunicated member of the church, describing him as an “inveterate liar.”

“He has made a career of attacking his former religion,” she said. “Rinder knows for a fact there is no way on God’s green earth the Church would ever harass, nor have we ever harassed, any law enforcement in any way, shape or form. The accusations are false, defamatory and outrageous.”

Rinder did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Scientology officials have similarly long denied the existence of “Fair Game,” a practice that Rinder and others allege is a no-holds-barred approach to quashing criticism.

“Any and all statements that the Church has a policy of ‘Fair Game’ are false; the implication that such a policy endorsed violating the law of the land is also false,” Lynn Farny, an ordained Scientology minister and corporate officer of the church, said in a recent court declaration from the Remini case.

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Allegations that Scientology was attempting to influence the Masterson case first spilled into court last May, when Mueller told the trial judge that the church had obtained “a very large quantity” of discovery materials. The files, according to a transcript of the hearing, included emails and text messages between investigators and Masterson’s accusers.

Mueller said in court that he learned the materials were in the church’s possession after an attorney for Scientology mistakenly attached them to an email to the district attorney’s office. The message was intended to be a complaint against Mueller and his co-counsel, but it also included a message to the LAPD chief written on church letterhead that included links to about “570 pages” of the “people’s discovery,” the prosecutor said in court.

Weeks earlier, Moore had met with the Scientology representatives in his office at LAPD headquarters.

According to the former chief, who retired at the end of February, the church had accused LAPD detectives and prosecutors on the Masterson case of misconduct. Moore said he agreed to hear them out.

The meeting last April was not listed on a copy of the chief’s official schedule obtained by The Times. Moore and an LAPD spokesperson said it was attended by Scientology’s “head of security” and Vicki Podberesky, the attorney who accidentally emailed the protected files to Mueller.

Podberesky did not respond to multiple requests for comment. She previously told The Times the documents were “legally and properly obtained.” Two other attorneys responsible for disclosing the files were sanctioned by Masterson’s trial judge.

The church and Moore have given contradictory accounts of the reason for the meeting.

According to Moore’s recollection, Podberesky and her group reminded the chief that the church was not part of the trial, but said they had come to share allegations that detectives and prosecutors on the case had “falsified witness testimony, overstated or coached witness testimony [and] withheld evidence.”

Podberesky also claimed to have “boxes and files and electronic documents that would demonstrate clearly such misconduct,” according to Moore.

Pouw, the church spokeswoman, insisted the meeting had nothing to do with the Masterson case.

“The Church requested to meet with Chief Moore to present complaints about bias and misconduct by LAPD officers with respect to the Church, including accepting and maintaining open investigations of blatantly false reports about the Church,” she said in a statement. “The LAPD accepted the complaints and opened an investigation for the reported misconduct, which includes the disposition of open cases as to the Church. It was explicitly stated that the meeting was not in connection with the Masterson trial, and the prosecutor was never discussed.”

In both a November 2023 interview with The Times and in response to questions about Pouw’s statement, Moore remained steadfast that the meeting was in relation to the Masterson trial. Through an LAPD spokeswoman, he reiterated that church officials brought “boxes of alleged evidence of misconduct by our detectives and the prosecution.”

The judge in the Masterson case, Charlaine Olmedo, ruled last year that the church’s complaints about Mueller and his co-counsel were “demonstrably false.”

Moore said the department conducted its own internal investigation, which was not completed at the time of his interview. He does not believe law enforcement committed any misconduct in the case.

Moore’s decision to take the meeting set off alarm bells, both within the LAPD and the district attorney’s office. Masterson had been the target of an LAPD investigation, and even if Moore took no action, there were concerns the meeting could create an appearance of impropriety.

One high-ranking LAPD official and two sources within the district attorney’s office said it was highly unorthodox for him to personally receive an internal affairs complaint.

“The timing seemed extremely inappropriate to me,” said the LAPD official, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution from the department. “In the middle of a trial, you’re going to take a meeting because they’re high up attorneys with the Church of Scientology?”

In court, Mueller said the church’s visit to LAPD headquarters impacted the case — noting that one of the lead detectives, Esther Myape, expressed reservations about testifying after news of the meeting surfaced. Olmedo described the timing of the church’s allegations against the detectives as “calculating,” noting the meeting with Moore took place days before Myape was scheduled to testify.

In his declaration in the civil lawsuit on behalf of Masterson’s victims, Leen also accused the church of “filing baseless accusations against the detectives and the prosecutors in the Masterson case” that were timed to “interfere with the retrial of Masterson.”

Attempts to contact Myape were unsuccessful. Det. Javier Vargas, the other lead investigator in the Masterson case, declined to be interviewed.

Moore said that several LAPD detectives on the Masterson case reported “some type of harassment,” which they attributed to “agents or individuals from the Church of Scientology.” An internal LAPD investigation, however, found no evidence of church involvement, Moore said.

Pouw said neither Moore nor any other LAPD official contacted the church about the supposed harassment. She denied any contention that the meeting with the chief was an attempt to intimidate the investigating officers, and suggested the detectives were attempting to deflect from their own alleged misdeeds.

Moore acknowledged frustration in the ranks about his meeting with Scientology officials, but maintained the situation warranted his involvement.

“The person who represents themselves as the counsel for that institution was making very aggressive and very serious charges of prosecutorial misconduct, as well as department misconduct. And I, out of the abundance of caution, wanted to ensure that they understood that we took that seriously,” Moore said.

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While Masterson’s second trial played out in front of the cameras last year, another criminal case involving the Church of Scientology wound through the legal system in the same downtown L.A. courthouse.

Armando Garcia, a 52-year-old convicted sex offender, was awaiting trial after he allegedly drove his car at a Scientology security guard outside the church’s West Coast headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in February 2022, according to a probation report. Garcia told The Times he was distributing leaflets claiming the church has connections to Satanism when he was confronted by the guard, who told him to leave.

According to a probation report, Garcia got into his car and drove in the guard’s direction, but did not actually strike him. Although the man was not harmed, Garcia still faced assault with a deadly weapon charges. His public defender, Adella Gorgen, said last April that a church attorney approached her with an offer to broker a deal, according to court records.

Kendrick Moxon, a lifelong Scientologist and prominent church attorney, wanted Garcia to say he “did what he did because he was ‘inflamed’ by documentaries and a potential reality TV show that is currently airing or has aired on Netflix,” according to a transcript of a preliminary hearing in the case.

The documentary Gorgen referenced was “Scientology and the Aftermath,” created by Remini, the actress and outspoken former church member. The former “King of Queens” star sued the organization last year, alleging that the church and its members have harassed and stalked her since she defected in 2013. Remini also regularly attended Masterson’s trial in support of the victims.

Under the proposed deal, if Garcia blamed his alleged actions on Remini, the Scientology attorney would ask prosecutors to reduce the charges to a misdemeanor or “even less,” according to the transcript. Gorgen did not respond to a request for comment.

Court transcripts show Garcia called the church an “abomination” — but he maintains Remini’s show had nothing to do with his actions. His public defender accused Moxon of trying to use the case to further the church’s battles with Remini, according to the court transcript.

“It’s clear that the Church of Scientology, for whom the security guard is employed, has an agenda that is bigger and absolutely unrelated to Mr. Garcia, and they are using Mr. Garcia, in this case, as a pawn in order to be able to get these documentaries off the air,” Gorgen said.

A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office confirmed that a Scientology attorney approached prosecutors and said the church would accept a lighter sentence against Garcia if he admitted “on the record the Leah Remini documentary influenced him to commit the offense.”

In a sworn declaration in Remini’s lawsuit, Moxon said Garcia’s initial attorney, public defender Justin Page, had told him Garcia’s actions toward the church were motivated by Remini.

In a statement to The Times, Page said the contents of Moxon’s declaration were “baseless.”

An attorney for Moxon denied all wrongdoing and said there was nothing improper about his client’s actions on behalf of the church. Moxon was acting as a victims’ rights attorney in the case and has “often appeared as counsel for victims in prosecutions arising out of crimes in which the Church and/or individual Scientologists were the victims,” his lawyer said.

A judge reduced the charge against Garcia to a misdemeanor after reviewing video of the incident. Garcia was sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to stay away from the church, the district attorney’s office said.

Remini said she wasn’t shocked to hear her name invoked at proceedings she had nothing to do with.

“They will stop at nothing to protect Scientology,” she said of the church.

Bixler, one of Masterson’s accusers who has filed a civil lawsuit, said that as with many others the church allegedly harassed, no resolution can undo the fear they instilled in her.

“I can count on two hands the amount of times I’ve left my home in the last few years,” she said in her victim impact statement at Masterson’s sentencing hearing last year. “This, and so much more, is the life sentence Mr. Masterson and Scientology have given me.”

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