HAVING FAITH Chapter Six TESTING

 

I can say with certainty that when Sister Aimee's romantic radio partner Kenneth Ormiston, first talked to the cops in early June of 1926, he denied having "run off" with Sister Aimee. Oh, he admitted sharing various hotel rooms with a woman during a drive up the California coast,  But, he said, chivalry prevented him from identifying her by name. The press wasted little time tagging the mystery woman with the sobriquet of “Miss X”, which inspired a whit to say, “What made the McPherson case so interesting was its “X” appeal”.

Listen, Christ,

You did alright in your day, I reckon-
But that day’s gone now.

As the newspapers recounted the salacious details uncovered in Carmel, Aimee's Antics became the grist for vaudeville comedians across the nation. A “swell” would sidle up to a chorus girl and say, “ “I'm a radio man. Are you Aimee-able?”. Aimee's sermons at her Four Square Gospel tabernacle in Echo Park, were said to have “sects appeal”. The general populace was even getting into the spirit of the thing. One morning the empty “love nest” Carmel cottage had a sign planted in the front lawn, that read, “Aimee Slept Here.” It had not been up long before it was modified to read, “Aimee Slipped Here.”

They ghosted you up a swell story, too,

Called it Bible-
But it’s dead now,
The popes and the preachers’ve
Made too much money from it.

About the only person not laughing, was Sister Aimee's mother, Mildred “Sister Minnie” Kennedy (above, left). From the beginning of their ministry, this Salvation Army warrior had scheduled her daughter's revivals from the back seat of their 1912 Packard “Gospel Car”. And during the six years of hand to mouth existence Sister Minnie had handled what little money there was. And now, just when it looked as if “she was finally standing on solid financial ground, a tide of bad press was threatening to wash it all away. That is why I think it was Mildred who asked the criminal lawyer Roland R. Wooley to plug the hole in her dike.

“They’ve sold you to too many

Kings, generals, robbers, and killers-
Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,
Even to Rockefeller’s Church,
Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
You ain’t no good no more.”

Ideally, Wooly would have merely gotten a sworn deposition from Kenneth Ormiston (above) to answer more questions, but after his statement in early June the radio engineer had disappeared again, and the police, the District Attorney's office, not even the mob of newspaper reporters swarming over the case, could find him. So Wooley invented the witness he needed, by reaching out to an old college classmate from Salt Lake City, Mrs. Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff.

“They’ve pawned you

Till you’ve done wore out.

Goodbye,
Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,
Beat it on away from here now.”

Lorraine had fallen on hard times, and had even spent a few weeks in a sanitarium. At a meeting on 15 August, at the law offices of a friend in Salinas, and for the promise of $5,000 in cash, Lorraine agreed to say she had been the private nurse to “Miss X”, Ormiston's shy companion. Lorraine was even willing to hint that “Miss X” might have been her own twin sister, who was willing to play along for her own payoff. The ruse would be helped because, the twins  (below) resembled Aimee Semple McPherson. And that was the way, her story was presented in late August to the headline hungry newspapers, who gobbled it up.

“Make way for a new guy with no religion at all-

A real guy named
Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME-
I said, ME!

Go ahead on now,
You’re getting in the way of things, Lord.”

It might have worked, except that a few days later, Lorraine (above) was arrested in Los Angeles for bouncing checks. And when payments from Sister Minnie Kennedy dried up after just a couple of $50 "donations", and "Sister Annie” refused to pay Lorraine's $1,500 bail on her bad check charge, the seamstress called the District Attorney. And on 13 September, she reversed her story. Worse, by confessing her play acting, Lorraine now provided the one thing the District Attorney's office had been unable to find before: intent

“And please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go,

And Saint Pope Pius,
And Saint Aimee McPherson,
And big black Saint Becton
Of the Consecrated Dime.”

District Attorney Asa Keyes now indicted for conspiracy Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff , her twin sister, Sister Aimee, her mother Mildred Kennedy, and Kenneth Ormiston. Also indicted were the two unknown kidnappers, identified as “Richard Roe and Sarah Moe” - just in case there had actually been a staged kidnapping. The criminal code provided the same punishment as, “provided for the punishment of the commission of the said felony or act.” In other words, by successfully covering up their crime, the conspirators were now subject to the punishment they had avoided. Said one magazine, “Like the melodramas of old, or the slam - bang movie serials of today, the McPherson case, puzzling an avid public' month after month, burst into new and startling climaxes whenever there seemed a possibility of the story fizzling out.” .

“And step on the gas, Christ!

Move!

Don’t be so slow about movin?
The world is mine from now on-
And nobody’s gonna sell ME
To a king, or a general,
Or a millionaire.”

Langston Huges

Published in “Negro Worker” (Nov.-Dec. 1932)

- 30 -

HAVING FAITH Chapter Five IMAGE

 

I believe the outcome was preordained, in a secular sense. Conventional wisdom said that Asa "Ace" Keyes had all the power. He was the District Attorney.  He could play the legal system like a musician.  And he was willing to do whatever the law allowed to convict. But the truth was the uneducated Sister Aimee Semple McPherson held the real winning hand, if she played her cards right.

The reality was that Aimee was willing to do what ever was required to defend her favorite child, her church. And she greatest advantage was that she had the disadvantage of being a woman. It was the professional cynic from Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, who most succinctly described her ultimate weapon, when he surprised his readers by writing in her defense, "What she is charged with, in essence, is perjury...uttered in defense of her honor."  And in 1926, that was not only a justification for perjury, it was a requirement.

“Before the God in Whom I have every faith and utter belief in, every word I have uttered about my kidnapping is true.”

Aimee Semple McPherson 1926

It was a former USC classmate who offered the kindest description of the 28th District Attorney of Los Angeles. In his daily column "The Lancer" Harry Carr observed that during a 20 year career in the department "Ace" Keyes (above) proved to be "a careful slow minded trial lawyer". He was also honest and fair. Two years earlier, in late 1924, Aimee had even praised from her pulpit.

And oil magnate Courtney Chauncey "C.C." Julian (above) called Keyes the "squarest District Attorney’ that ever held that office”.  But as soon as he was elected Keyes replaced most of his staff, while cutting the length of the average felony trial from 120 days to just 51. But by the end of his only term, the corrupt dealers in city of Angles had found Keyes' weak spot and cracked him wide open..

"What brought about District Attorney Keyes’s change of belief? Did the overlords of the underworld who are fighting me, and who are heavily interested in Los Angeles, have anything to do with it?”

Aimee Semple McPherson September 1926

The roaring twenties, described by Franklin Roosevelt as "a decade of debauchery and of group selfishness", found the weak points in a lot of people, especially in Los Angeles. Just as the post war population boom produced a rush to subdivide the Los Angeles basin for new homes, as much as 10 billion barrels of oil was discovered under that very same land. One oil man observed, "They ruined a perfectly good oil field by building a city on top of it.” Brand new houses were bought and leveled to erect drilling derricks, as the locals went "stark, staring, oil mad." Some, like Edward Doheny, hit a gusher and got stinking oil rich. But the high fever of greed made it easy for the confidence men like C.C. Julian and Sheridan C. Lewis to fleece the vast majority.

“You may call it a ‘Fight the Devil Fund’ if you wish, because that’s what it will be used for....I am here to say that when I am proved innocent he will certainly have to go.”

Aimee Semple McPherson September 1926

At the top of The Julian Petroleum Company pyramid was a "Bankers Pool" of wealthy "preferred stock" holders, millionaires like movie mogul C.B. Demille, mine owners and recently wealthy oil men like Edward Doheny, and businessmen like Harry M. Haldeman, grandfather to Watergate conspirator H.R. Halderman. For a $1 million investment, they each made as much as 19% annual return by selling 4 million watered down general shares to 43,000 dreamers. 

After taking over "Julian Pete" in 1924, by 1927, Sheridan Lewis (above) had printed up and sold general shares equal to 3,614% of the company's worth. Lewis secretly unloaded his own shares, but retrained control and his generous salary by simply not telling anyone he no longer held the stock. He even used his now non-existent worthless stock as collateral to borrow millions from the biggest banks in Los Angeles, avoiding any questions by agreeing to interest rates so high they were illegal.

“Everybody knows that Asa has his hands pretty tight around my throat just now and wants to squeeze a little tighter every day until he chokes the life out of me.”

Aimee Semple McPherson 1926

Eventually it began to be whispered that there was far more "Julian Pete "stock on the market than was supposed to exists. In response to these rumors, Lewis (above) publicly formed a new "Millionaires' Pool" supposedly to save the company. In fact it merely extended the scam until the total fraud reached $150 million ($2 billion today). As Lewis reassured one nervous member of his "Bankers' Pool", "You have made more money out of this Julian play than any other living man." And they thought they had. Until it turned out they were in reality, not only flat broke but deeply in debt. 

“The vile insinuations which fell from the lips of Mr. Keyes during his examination today could not, in my opinion, exist in the mind of any pure man! He has subjected me today to the most exquisite cruelty and suffering that the human mind can conjure up.”

Aimee Semple McPherson 1926

Into this den of thieves stepped the "careful slow minded" and honest Asa Keyes. Tempted by the enormous bribes offered for seemingly minor compromises, District Attorney Keyes began drinking and gambling, which is another way of saying he went into debt.  Debt made him plastic. And by 1926 those in the know, knew the District Attorney was for sale, the price depending more on "Ace's" losses at the gaming tables than on the moral compromise he was being asked to make.

“Mr. Keyes means to do a-plenty to me right away! He has already blasted my name with trumpets, with trumpets!,  across the world—settling it for everybody—if his word is the Gospel—that I am the worst ever.”

Aimee Semple McPherson 1926

In mid-September, Asa Keyes announced his indictment of Aimee, her mother, Kenneth Ormiston and two others. At the press conference Keyes assured the reporters, “Mrs. McPherson is not and never has been a victim of persecution in so far as the law-enforcement agencies of this city are concerned...This office has its duty to perform and must do it regardless of who is hurt. I am sorry for Mrs. McPherson, but that cannot influence my sworn duty.” After her arraignment on the charges, Aimee's mother, Mildred Kennedy, told the courthouse reporters, “Jesus distinctly taught that His church should have persecution. As far as we know we are the only church in the world today to have this honor.” And in her next Sunday sermon broadcast, Aimee added, “ The sole purpose of this dastardly attack was to persecute me and besmirch my character, and possibly to destroy this temple. To my mind this is itself evidence of a hidden motive.”

“Asa Keyes—if you are listening in, you are a dirty, lecherous libertine! I urge every single taxpayer listening to my voice to contact your office and demand immediately an accounting of the money—thousands upon thousands of dollars—that you have been squandering—you and your wife and your assistants and their wives—on trips to vacation resorts in Carmel, Douglas, Arizona, and Mexico for what we are supposed to believe are investigations into my integrity.”

Aimee Semple McPherson 1926

Just as the charges were being filed against Aimee, Reuban F. McClellan, Chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, swore under oath that Keyes had misused county funds in his investigation of Aimee.   McClellan, a retired mining engineer, was running for Governor, and he was depending on Aimee's Four Square congregation to support him. But by mid-October the court proceedings were over and although they produced a few headlines, the charges were proven to be empty. And then McClellan lost in the Republican primary, finishing him as a political force. But it was clear that Aimee was now using every weapon she could lay her hands on, and in a far more sophisticated way than ever before.

"Whether you like it or not, you're an actress."

Charlie Chapman speaking to Aimee Semple McPherson

- 30 -

HAVING FAITH Chapter Four INTENT

 

I believe Aimee Semple McPherson's kidnapping would have remained a footnote in L.A. history, but for the burning envy of one man - the Reverend Robert Pierce “Fighting Bob” Shuler. After six years of tireless effort, the fire and brimstone preacher's Trinity Methodist church, at 1201 Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles,  had a congregation of 6,000. But that was barely a whisper  beside Aimee's 100,000 followers, nationwide.

In sermon after sermon., Shuler (above, left) denounced Aimee's vulgar Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues and faith healing, and her habit of regularly inviting other women preachers, black ministers, and even Catholics priests to share her pulpit. The Tennessee born Shuler supported the Klu Klux Klan and other racist hate groups. From his pulpit he denounced Jews.  But the prime enemy, for Shuler, was Sister Aimee. She was a divorced woman and thus the epitome of the "liberalism, pacifism, humanism, Unitarianism, universalism, and all the other little foxes that are destroying the vineyard that was planted by the Methodist fathers."

I suspect the real core of Shuler's anger was his envy of Aimee's 500 watt radio station, KFSG - "K"all Four Square Gospel. To him, the power it gave her voice was an outrage, especially since he had no similar outlet. The instant word of Aimee's drowning broke, Bob was convinced it was a hoax designed to make her even more famous.

Bob began publicly demanding Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes investigate Sister Aimee  for fraud. And when Shuler convinced the Chamber of Commerce and 8 other churches to add their voices to his. D.A. Asa Keyes, being an elected official, responded immediately.

The very train that carried Aimee's mother, Mrs. Mildred “Minnie” Kennedy, Aimee's daughter and son to Douglas, Arizona, also brought D.A. Keyes and his chief Assistant D.A. Joseph Ryan. The two investigators posed as bookends to the family reunion (above), Keyes to the left and Ryan to the right of Aimee's hospital bed. And Keyes noted that on Aimee's left wrist was the watch she said had left in the hotel in Venice Beach. Still, the prosecutors gave the evangelist a sympathetic hearing. But  instead of returning with Sister Aimee to Los Angeles, D.A. Ryan immediately took a train for Northern California, thanks to a tip from a Santa Barbara millionaire.

The wealthy retired engineer John Hersey (below)  was vacationing in the village of Camel-by-the-Sea, at the southern end of the Monterrey peninsula, about sixty miles south of San Francisco. On the afternoon of Wednesday, 26 May, Hersey was driving eastbound when at San Antonio Street, a block before the beach, he had to slow to allow two pedestrians to cross the intersection in front of him.

He was so stunned he had to pull to the curb. The woman, he was certain, was Sister Aimee, who had been reported drown the week before, 300 miles to the south. Hersey (above) recognized her because he had attended a service at the Angelus temple the year before. However Hersey kept his observation to himself, until a month later when Aimee McPherson walked into Agua Prieta, claiming she had spent five weeks held there by kidnappers. Then, spurred on by Fighting Bob Shuler's well publicized doubts, Hersey called the District Attorney's office in Los Angeles.

With his father-in law, Detective Captain Herman Cline,  (above) D.A. Joseph Ryan first went to the location of Hersey's alleged sighting, the corner of Ocean Avenue and San Antonio street. They discovered that most of the houses in the area were small cottages offered for short term rentals. So they made a tour of the rental management companies, showing at each a photograph of Sister Aimee's most likely companion, ex-KFSG radio engineer Kenneth Ormiston.  At Carmel Reality Company, they hit pay dirt.

The office manager, Mrs. Daisy Bostick, said she knew the man in the photo as Mr George McIntyre, who had come into her office on Friday, 14 May, (four days before Aimee's "drowning") looking for a three month rental of a quiet romantic cottage (above) where his wife could recover from surgery. The cottage he picked was facing the white sand beach across Scenic Drive, just two blocks south of Ocean Avenue. And he paid the $450 rental fee on the spot, and in cash. And then, without explanation, the couple left after just a ten day stay, on 29 May, 1926

The woman living next door to the cottage rented by the “McIntyres' was Mrs Jeannette Parker. She could not swear the couple were Sister Aimee and Ormiston, but she did say photos of Sister Aimee and and her engineer resembled the very affectionate occupants, and that the affectionate male “limped”, as Omstead did. The owner of the cottage, retired insurance adjuster Henry Benedict, dropped by to make certain his guests were comfortable. He spoke briefly to "Mrs. McIntyre", who was hidden under a large hat, while "Mr. McIntyre" did not seem friendly. However Benedict did remember a woman's green bathing suit hanging on the wash line stretched across the back yard. The local grocer, Ralph Swanson, never even saw the couple, but filled their phone orders, which his delivery boys then left on the back steps. The investigators found two of the grocery lists in the back yard (below), where they had survived almost two months of dew and sun. D.A. Ryan took those away as evidence.

But evidence of what? Fighting Bob Schuler might be certain a crime had been committed. Skeptical historian Louis Adamic seemed to agree. Shortly after Aimee's rebirth he had written, “According to the Angelus Temple statistics, Aimee’s business has been better since her “escape from the kidnapers” Previously she used to convert about fifty or sixty people a night; now her average is well past one hundred. Previously she used to baptize...twenty or thirty people each Thursday; last Thursday she immersed one hundred and thirty-six.” And most conversions and baptism were accompanied by a donation.

Aimee had always been good at raising money for her temple. She would often tell the congregation that she was suffering with a headache and the jingle of coins in the collection plate would cause her pain. “No coins, please”, she would implore her flock. “Only quiet money.” Or she might give the faithful a specific goal, telling them, for instance, “Mother needs a new coat. Who will donate money today, so that mother can have a new winter coat?.” Since 18 May, there had been tens of thousands of dollars donated to the temple to pay for the “search for Aimee”, and tens of thousands more dollars, donated in memory of the presumed drown evangelist. It seemed to many an obvious fraud.

But the issue facing Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes was much simpler; intent. Had Sister Aimee (above, center) conspired with her mother, Mildred Kennedy (above right), to fake the kidnapping, intending to defraud the faithful, to receive donations under false circumstances? Or did Mildred really believe Aimee had been kidnapped? Had Aimee suffered a nervous breakdown under the pressure of so many lost souls depending on her for salvation? Or, perhaps, she had just fallen in love with Ormiston, and had played no part in the temple's fund raising. Without proof of intent to defraud, there was no crime.

In early August of 1926, and without warning, D.A. Keyes (above) sent a telegram to Assistant District Attorney Ryan, who was still gathering evidence in Carmel-by-the-Sea, instructing him to close the investigation and come home. The Los Angeles Grand Jury, which had already begun to hear evidence in the case, was closed down as well. Joseph Ryan might be morally outraged over how much money poured into Aimee's temple, but moral outrage is not a violation of the criminal codes. In the United States the government is secular, and a crime against God is not a crime that can be tried in a human court. There was no proof of intent. And even if Aimee had intended to commit a crime, as Fighting Bob Shuler believed, without proof, it looked as if she was going to get away with it.

And then Mrs Mildred Kennedy (above, right), Aimee's mother, came to Bob Shuler's rescue.

-30 -