Mike Rinder, a former top Scientology spokesperson who later broke away and became one of the church’s most outspoken critics, died Jan. 5 in Pinellas County due to esophageal cancer. He was 69.
Rinder, who once worked closely with church leader David Miscavige, was a crucial source in the St. Petersburg Times’ 2009 multipart investigation into Scientology, The Truth Rundown. Later, he went on to win two Emmys for his work on the docuseries “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.”
Rinder was born in Australia and raised as a Scientologist. His parents learned about the church from a neighbor who had gone to a talk by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Rinder wrote that he started regularly attending a local Scientology center as a young child.
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Though Rinder earned a scholarship to attend the University of Adelaide, his parents instead pushed him to join the Sea Organization, an elite group that lived and traveled with Hubbard aboard his ship.
“Really, my life was preordained into Scientology,” he wrote in his 2022 book, “A Billion Years.”
While part of the church, Rinder married a fellow Sea Org member and had two children, though he recalled in his book that he had little time to see them. His focus was working his way up to the top ranks of Scientology. Leading the Office of Special Affairs, he became one of the group’s most prominent spokespeople.
He later would write about how the job required him to smear critics of the...
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