On the night of February 24, 1951, Sara went to the movies and left her baby in the care of a young man named John Sanborne, who was studying at the foundation. Alexis had become a kind of celebrity, or at least a curiosity. Hubbard had been touting her as the world’s first “dianetic baby”—shielded since birth against any engram-forming disruptions or parental conflict. As a result, Hubbard boasted, Alexis talked at three months, crawled at four, and had no phobias. At about ten o’clock, eleven-month-old Alexis began crying in her crib, so Sanborne picked her up to comfort her. Suddenly, the infant said in a hoarse whisper, “Don’t sleep.” Sanborne was startled. He didn’t think a baby could talk like that. “It went through me in a funny way,” he later said. “The hair raising on the back of the neck type of feeling.”
At eleven p.m. there was a knock on the door. One of Hubbard’s aides appeared, wearing a topcoat, with his hand in his pocket. Sanborne believed he was carrying a gun. The man said that Hubbard was here to take his daughter. Hubbard himself then came through the door, also wearing a topcoat, with his hand in his right pocket. They took the child and disappeared.
Later that night Hubbard returned with two other men to abduct Sara. “We have Alexis and you’ll never see her alive unless you come with us,” Hubbard said. They tied her hands and dragged her out of bed into a waiting Lincoln. She says that Hubbard had her in a chokehold to keep her from screaming. Hubbard’s assistant, Richard de Mille (son of the famous movie director and producer Cecil B. DeMille), drove aimlessly, while Hubbard and Sara, who was wearing only a nightgown, sat in back. She warned him that kidnapping was a capital offense.
In San Bernardino, Hubbard ordered de Mille to stop at the county hospital so he could have Sara committed, but it was the middle of the night and no doctor would talk to him. Eventually, Hubbard and Sara negotiated a truce. Hubbard told her where Alexis was hidden—he had hired a nurse in West Los Angeles to watch her—and Sara signed a note saying that she had gone with Hubbard of her own free will. Hubbard and de Mille went to the Yuma, Arizona, airport and flew to Phoenix, while Sara drove the Lincoln back to Los Angeles in her nightgown to pick up Alexis. When she arrived at the nursing center, however, she was told that a young couple had just left with the baby.
Hubbard and de Mille flew on to Chicago, where Hubbard voluntarily presented himself for a psychological examination in order to counter the accusation that he was a paranoid schizophrenic. The psychologist administered some diagnostic tests, including Rorschach inkblots, and later provided a report that said that Hubbard was a creative individual who was upset by family problems and depressed about his work. Hubbard was extremely pleased; he would often mention that he had been given a clean bill of health by the psychological profession. Sara remembered that he then called her and told her that he had killed Alexis. “He said that he had cut her into little pieces and dropped the pieces in a river and that he had seen little arms and legs floating down the river and it was my fault, I’d done it because I’d left him,” Sara remembered.
Hubbard and de Mille then traveled to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where the Dianetics Foundation had its headquarters. Meantime, the young couple that Hubbard had hired to abduct Alexis from the nursing center drove the infant all the way across the country to deliver her to Hubbard. It was the middle of March and snowing in New Jersey, so Hubbard decided to move on to Florida, where he intended to write his next book. De Mille came along with the baby. After a few days in Tampa, Hubbard still felt edgy and announced that the three of them were flying to Cuba. “He believed that as long as he had the child he could control the situation,” de Mille told one of Hubbard’s biographers.
For six weeks, Sara had searched for Alexis in Southern California, enlisting local police, sheriffs, and the FBI, but the authorities regarded the abduction as a domestic dispute. Finally, she filed a writ of habeas corpus demanding Alexis’s return, setting off a press uproar. On April 23, 1951, Sara added to the sensation by finally filing for divorce in Los Angeles County, revealing that Hubbard was already married when they wed. She accused Hubbard of subjecting her to “systematic torture,” including sleep deprivation, beatings, strangulations, and “scientific torture experiments.” She said that she had consulted medical professionals, who concluded that Hubbard was “hopelessly insane, and crazy.”
Soon afterward, Sara received a surprising letter of support from Polly:
If I can help in any way, I’d like to—You must get Alexis in your custody—Ron is not normal. I had hoped that you could straighten him out. Your charges probably sound fantastic to the average person—but I’ve been through it—the beatings, threats on my life, all the sadistic traits you charge—twelve years of it.… Please do believe I do so want to help you get Alexis.
Meantime, in Havana, Hubbard hired a couple of women to take care of the baby. They kept her in a crib with wire over the top. To de Mille, it seemed that Alexis was being held like a monkey in a cage.