Reported kidnapping of Aimee Semple McPherson

On May 18, 1926, evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared from off Venice Beach, California after going for a swim. She reappeared in Mexico five weeks later, stating she had escaped from kidnappers holding her for ransom there. Her disappearance, reappearance and subsequent court inquiries regarding the allegation that the kidnapping story was a hoax carried out to conceal a tryst with a lover precipitated a media frenzy that changed the course of McPherson's career.

Disappearance off Venice Beach

On May 18, 1926, McPherson went with her secretary to Ocean Park Beach north of Venice Beach to swim. Soon after arriving, McPherson was nowhere to be found. It was thought she had drowned.

McPherson was scheduled to hold a service that day; her mother Minnie Kennedy preached the sermon instead, saying at the end, "Sister is with Jesus," sending parishioners into a tearful frenzy. Mourners crowded Venice Beach and the commotion sparked days-long media coverage fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner and a stirring poem by Upton Sinclair to commemorate the tragedy. Daily updates appeared in newspapers across the country and parishioners held day-and-night seaside vigils. One parishioner drowned while searching for the body, and a diver died of exposure.

Kenneth G. Ormiston, the engineer for KFSG, had taken other assignments around late December 1925 and left his job at the Temple.^[1] Newspapers later linked McPherson and Ormiston, the latter seen driving up the coast with an unidentified woman. Some believed McPherson and Ormiston, who was married, had become romantically involved and had run off together. Several ransom notes and other communications were sent to the Temple, some were relayed to the police, who thought they were hoaxes and others dismissed as fraudulent. McPherson "sightings" were abundant, as many as 16 in different cities and other locations on the same day. For a time, Mildred Kennedy, McPherson's mother, offered a $25,000^[2] reward for information leading to the return of her daughter.

The ransom demands sent included a note by the "Revengers" who wanted $500,000^[3] and another for $25,000^[2] conveyed by a lawyer who claimed contact with the kidnappers. The handwritten "Revengers" note later disappeared from the LA Police evidence locker and the lawyer was found dead in a possibly suspicious accident before his claim could be adequately investigated.^[4][5][6] A lengthy ransom letter from the "Avengers" arrived around June 19, 1926, also forwarded to the police, demanded $500,000^[3] or else kidnappers would sell McPherson into "white slavery." Relating their prisoner was a nuisance because she was incessantly preaching to them, the lengthy, two-page poorly typewritten letter also indicated the kidnappers worked hard to spread the word McPherson was held captive, and not drowned. Kennedy regarded the notes as hoaxes, believing her daughter dead.^[7]

After emerging from the Mexican desert, McPherson convalesces in a hospital with her family in Douglas, Arizona 1926. District Attorney Asa Keyes stands to the far left with Mildred Kennedy (mother) next to Roberta Star Semple, middle left (daughter). On the far right Deputy District Attorney Joseph Ryan is alongside her son, Rolf McPherson.

Reappearance in Mexico

Shortly thereafter, on June 23, McPherson stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona. The Mexican couple she approached there thought she had died when McPherson collapsed in front of them. An hour later she stirred and the couple covered her with blankets.^[8] She claimed she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom in a shack by two men and a woman, "Steve," "Rose," ^[9] and another unnamed man.^[10][11][12] She also claimed she had escaped from her captors and walked through the desert for about 13 hours to freedom.

Following her return from Douglas, Arizona, McPherson was greeted at the train station by 30,000–50,000 people, more than for almost any other personage.^[13] The parade back to the temple even elicited a greater turnout than President Woodrow Wilson's visit to Los Angeles in 1919, attesting to her popularity and the growing influence of mass media entertainment.^[14][15][16]

Already incensed over McPherson's influential public stance on evolution and the Bible, most of the Chamber of Commerce and some other civic leaders, however, saw the event as gaudy display; nationally embarrassing to the city. Many Los Angeles area churches were also annoyed. The divorcee McPherson had settled in their town and many of their parishioners were now attending her church, with its elaborate sermons that, in their view, diminished the dignity of the Gospel. The Chamber of Commerce, together with Reverend Robert P. Shuler leading the Los Angeles Church Federation, and assisted by the press and others, became an informal alliance to determine if her disappearance was caused by other than a kidnapping.^[17][18]

Between 30,000 and 50,000 people greeted McPherson at the train station following her return from Douglas, Arizona, the town she convalesced in after stating she escaped from kidnappers.

Some were skeptical of her story since McPherson seemed in unusually good health for her alleged ordeal; her clothing showing no signs of what they expected of a long walk through the desert. This was disputed by most Douglas, Arizona, residents, the town where McPherson was taken to convalesce, including expert tracker C.E. Cross, who testified that McPherson's physical condition, shoes, and clothing were all consistent with an ordeal such as she described.^[19][20][21]

Grand jury inquiries

When McPherson was interrogated in Douglas, Arizona by Prosecutor District Attorney Asa Keyes and Deputy District Attorney Joseph Ryan, both seemed empathetic to her story. Ryan said he could make the desert trip without scuffing or marking his commissary shoes.^[22][23] McPherson therefore presented herself in court as a victim of a crime seeking redress. Pressured by various influential Los Angeles business, media, political and religious interests ^[18] Keyes and Ryan instead opened the grand jury inquiry with insinuating questions, implying McPherson and her mother were involved in a deception.^[24]

In Los Angeles, ahead of any court date, McPherson noticed newspaper stories about her kidnapping becoming more and more sensationalized as the days passed. To maintain excited, continued public interest, she speculated, the newspapers let her original account give way to rain torrents of "new spice and thrill" stories about her being elsewhere "with that one or another one." It did not matter if the material was disproved or wildly contradictory. No correction or apology was given for the previous story as another, even more outrageous tale, took its place.^[25]

A grand jury convened on July 8, 1926, but adjourned 12 days later citing lack of evidence to proceed with any charges against either alleged kidnappers or perjury by McPherson. McPherson was told they would be open to receive any evidence submitted by her should she desire to further substantiate her kidnapping story.^{[26][27][28][29]}

The prosecution collected five witnesses who asserted to have seen McPherson at the Benedict^[30] seaside cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea, with the cottage being rented by Ormiston under an assumed name. It was pointed out that even though most of these witnesses knew of the $25,000^[2] reward for McPherson's return, with her pictures prominently appearing in the newspapers, none of the five stepped forward at the time they allegedly saw McPherson to claim it.^[31][32] Moreover, several other witnesses, including two the prosecution erroneously thought would testify for them, stated the woman was not McPherson.^[33] Ormiston admitted to having rented the cottage but claimed that the woman who had been there with him – known in the press as Mrs. X – was not McPherson but another woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

The grand jury reconvened on August 3 and took further testimony along with documents from hotels, all said by various newspapers to be in McPherson's handwriting. These, though, were later revealed to be those of Elizabeth Tovey, a woman traveling with Ormiston, whose handwriting did not at all resemble McPherson's.^[34] McPherson steadfastly stuck to her story, that she was approached by a young couple at the beach who had asked her to come over and pray for their sick child, and that she was then shoved into a car and drugged with chloroform.^[35]

The Carmel cottage was further checked for fingerprints, but none belonging to McPherson were recovered. Two grocery slips found in the yard of the cottage were studied by a police handwriting expert and determined to be McPherson's penmanship. While the original slips later mysteriously disappeared from the courtroom, photo-stat copies were available.^[36] The defense had a handwriting expert of their own who demonstrated the grocery slips were not McPherson's but doctored to look like hers. The slips' suspicious origin was also questioned. The original slips would have been in the yard for two months, surviving dew, fog, and lawn maintenance before their discovery.^[37]

California grand jury members are bound by law not to discuss the case to protect the integrity of the process in determining if there is sufficient cause for a formal juried trial. The Reverend Robert P. Shuler was told as much by a newspaper in response to an open demand he made for more disclosure in the ongoing inquiry.^[38] In the McPherson case, proceedings became quite public, as observed by journalist H. L. Mencken. A vocal critic of McPherson,^[39] Mencken wrote of her, "For years she toured the Bible Belt in a Ford, haranguing the morons nightly, under canvas. It was a depressing life, and its usufructs were scarcely more than three meals a day. The town [he refers to Los Angeles] has more morons in it than the whole State of Mississippi, and thousands of them had nothing to do save gape at the movie dignitaries and go to revivals" (from The American Mercury, 1930). Mencken had been sent to cover the trial and there was every expectation he would continue his searing critiques against the evangelist. Instead, he came away impressed with McPherson and disdainful of the unseemly nature of the prosecution.^[40]

The defense rested its case on October 28 and the judge, on November 3, decided enough evidence had been garnered against the evangelist and her mother for a jury trial case in Los Angeles, set for mid-January 1927. The charges were a criminal conspiracy to commit acts injurious to public morals, to prevent and obstruct justice, and to prevent the due administration of the laws, and of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to commit the crime of subordination of perjury. If convicted, the counts added up to maximum prison time of forty-two years.^[41][42][43]

Regardless of the court's decision, months of unfavorable press reports fixed in much of the public's mind a certainty of McPherson's wrongdoing. Many readers were unaware of prosecution evidence having become discredited because it was often placed in the back columns while some new accusation against McPherson held prominence on the headlines. In a letter he wrote to the Los Angeles Times a few months after the case was dropped, the Reverend Robert P. Shuler stated, "Perhaps the most serious thing about this whole situation is the seeming loyalty of thousands to this leader in the face of her evident and positively proven guilt."^[44]

Some supporters thought McPherson should have insisted on the jury trial and cleared her name. The grand jury inquiry concluded while enough evidence did not exist to try her, it did not indicate her story was true with its implication of kidnappers still at large.^[45] Therefore, anyone could still accuse her of a hoax without fear of slander charges and frequently did so. McPherson, though, was treated harshly in many previous sessions at court, being verbally pressured in every way possible to change her story or elicit some bit of incriminating information.^[46] Moreover, court costs to McPherson were estimated as high as US $100,000 dollars.^[47][48] A jury trial could take months. McPherson moved on to other projects. In 1927 she published a book about her version of the kidnapping: In the Service of the King: The Story of My Life.

Controversies with the inquiries

H.L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken determined the evangelist was being persecuted by two powerful groups. The "town clergy" which included Rev. Robert P. Shuler, disliked her, for among other things, poaching their "customers" and for the perceived sexual immorality associated with Pentecostalism. Her other category of enemies were "the Babbits", the power elite of California. McPherson's strong stand on bible fundamentalism was not popular with them, especially after taking a stand during the 1925 Scopes trial which gave "science a bloody nose." In addition McPherson was working to put a bible in every public school classroom and to forbid the teaching of evolution. The Argonaut, a San Francisco newspaper, warned these actions made her a threat to the entire state which could place "California on intellectual parity with Mississippi and Tennessee."Mencken later wrote: "The trial, indeed, was an orgy typical of the half-fabulous California courts. The very officers of justice denounced her riotously in the Hearst papers while it was in progress."^[39] To combat the bad newspaper publicity, McPherson spoke freely about the court inquiries on the air during her radio broadcasts.^[49]

Theories

Theories and innuendo were rampant: that she had run off with a lover, had gone off to have an abortion, was taking time to heal from plastic surgery, or had staged a publicity stunt. Two-inch headlines called her a tart, a conspirator, and a home-wrecker.^[50] McPherson's near death medical operation in 1914,^[51] which prevented her from having more children, was already part of the public record. When challenged about the abortion claim with a request to pay for the medical exam to prove it, the newspaper which printed the story backed down. Some prosecutor witnesses stated when they saw McPherson in Carmel, she had short hair, and furor ensued she was currently wearing fake hair swatches piled up to give the impression of longer tresses. McPherson, as requested by her lawyer, stood up, unpinned her hair, which fell abundantly around her shoulders, shocking the witnesses and others into embarrassed silence.^[50] She had once enjoyed only favorable press, nicknamed "miracle woman" ^[52] or "miracle worker" up until the time of the 1926 grand jury inquiry. Biographer Matthew Avery Sutton wrote McPherson learned that in a celebrity crazed-culture fueled by mass media, a leading lady could become a villainess in the blink of an eye.^[53]

Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff

The chief witness against McPherson was now Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff. She first stated she was in Carmel as a nurse for Ormiston's mistress; and because she somewhat physically resembled McPherson, it was her that people were misidentifying as the evangelist. Later, after the Angelus Temple refused to post her bail when she was arrested for passing a bad check, Wiseman-Sielaff said McPherson paid her to tell that story. Her testimony was fluidly inconsistent, and it changed significantly yet again in late December, 1926. Prosecutor Asa Keyes eventually concluded Wiseman-Sielaff's story was not true and a "grievous wrong had been done."

Moreover, on January 2, 1927, Kenneth Ormiston testified that Elizabeth Tovey, a nurse from Seattle, Washington, was his female companion and the woman who stayed with him at the seaside cottage on May 19–29 in Carmel-by-the Sea. Afterwards, Ormiston took her to a hotel where they quarreled and he left there. The hotel proprietor stated on the evening of May 29, that the woman who accompanied Ormiston registered as "Elizabeth Tovey," and was not the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.^[54][55] The Examiner newspaper reported that Los Angeles district attorney Asa Keyes had dropped all charges against McPherson and associated parties on January 10, 1927.^[56][57][58]

Aftermath

The 1926 grand jury case, the largest of its kind in California, had hundreds of reporters looking for discrediting evidence against McPherson. Almost $500,000^[59] was spent^[60] (most by newspapers assisting in the investigation), 3,600 pages of transcripts generated,^[61] and agencies, officials and others continued to investigate, even years later, but were unable to prove her kidnapping story false.^[62][63] In 1929, after a failed request by the state senate to reopen the older 1926 case,^[64] Journalist Morrow Mayo noted it was the last chance in California to "ruin that red-headed sorceress", and "she is free to serve the Lord until the Marines are called out." ^[65]

The tale was later satirized in a song performed by Pete Seeger called "The Ballad of Aimee McPherson," with lyrics claiming the kidnapping had been unlikely because a hotel love nest revealed "the dents in the mattress fitted Aimee's caboose."

The Court of Historical Review and Appeal in San Francisco, which holds no legal authority, is made up of members of the bench who examine and retry historical cases and controversies. In April 1990, a decision was handed down regarding the matter of McPherson's kidnapping story. George T. Choppelas, the then presiding judge of the San Francisco Municipal Court, ruling for the Court of Historical Review, found the issues involved both serious and fascinating. He concluded that "there was never any substantial evidence to show that her story was untrue. She may not have been a saint, but she certainly was no sinner, either."^[66]

References