Actress Leah Remini left Scientology this month and we worried she’d be “disconnected” from her family– banned from seeing them again. But her sister Nicole tells Tony Ortega they’ve all left– Remini’s husband, mother and sisters. All gone. You can read the whole story at www.tonyortega.org. If the mother has left that’s of real significance. Vicki Marshall had gone to the top of the  Scientology hierarchy.

The highlights of this interview are rather amazing: Leah actually threatened to call the police about David Miscavige’s long-missing wife, Shelley. She also said that if Tom Cruise tried to take Suri away from Katie Holmes, all hell would break loose.

Nicole tells Ortega that around 2004-2005, Tom Cruise emerged as a defacto leader of the group. She once encountered him working out in the main room of the Celebrity Centre as if he owned the place. “I went into Celebrity Centre one time and Tom Cruise was doing jumping jacks and stretching, right where everyone was walking. Like he owned the place. Hello, there are other people here,” she told Ortega.

After the Cruise-Holmes wedding, Remini was sent to Florida for a type of punishment and debriefing. She was also charged $300,000 by Scientology for new classes. The interview with Nicole is simply startling because here it all is, all laid out. If anyone had any questions about what’s going in this cult– and it’s clearly a cult– now you can read about it in the simplest terms.

Nicole tells Ortega that her sister will weather the storm. “Leah is a righter of wrongs. These things are not right. If things were going the way they should be going, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And that’s all her motivation was, to get things right.”

I always love families that pull together in times of trouble. While country superstar Randy Travis fights for his life in Texas, his brother is keeping a nice vigil. Yesterday he and his wife were arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina. They’ve been running a meth lab out of their home. David Traywick and his wife Jessica, are now in jail under a $500,000 bond. Another woman, I guess their assistant, named Christina Stegall,  is also under arrest under $250,000 bond. They are all accused of trafficking and conspiracy to traffic in methamphetamine.  Traywick has separate charges pending from a meth arrest in September 2012. I guess the Traywicks will not be visiting Randy in the hospital any time soon.

Lots of stories today in the New York papers about Bruce Wasserstein, the billionaire financier and publisher of New York magazine. He died suddenly in 2009 at age 61 after being hospitalized for heart arrhythmia. Wasserstein had three children from his second marriage. Then he had two more kids from his third marriage.

It turns out he had an illegitimate child from another relationship they, after his marriage ended in 2008. Then he married another woman, Angela Chao, in 2009 right before he died. The funny thing is, I saw him on a date with Chao in 2006, at least, while he was still married to wife number 3 and before he fathered that other child with Erin McCarthy.

How do I know? On November 23, 2006, after the whole Michael Jackson trial was over and things calmed down, one of the principals came to New York and we had dinner at Peter Luger’s restaurant in Brooklyn. We each brought a friend. While I was waiting for our table to be set, I ran into Wasserstein at the bar.He was waiting for his table with Chao. They were obviously a couple. The problem was, he wasn’t divorced or separated. We acknowledged each other in Peter Luger with mutual nods, and he and Chao went upstairs to dinner.

Strangely, I ran into them again a week later. It was a dark blustery day. They were walking arm in arm, wind howling against their backs, on University Place. I saw them, they didn’t see me. I remember thinking, oh, that’s still going on? I did speak with a member of Wasserstein’s family to see if a change had occurred in his marriage. I was going to write about. But the relative expressed surprise and I let it go.

Now, McCarthy is trying to get use of Wasserstein’s mansion in the Hamptons for her child. That kid, by the way, is getting $75 million from Wasserstein’s estate.

No wonder he had heart trouble. Oy vey!