HAVING FAITH Chapter Ten BORN AGAIN

 

I was not surprised that just a month after the final break with her mother, in August of 1930, Aimee Semple McPherson suffered an almost complete physical and emotional collapse. She was diagnosed with Metabolic acidosis, when the kidneys are unable to remove carbon dioxide from the blood. The body tries to compensate by expelling more through the lungs, causing hypo-ventilation. The victim is left constantly exhausted. 

As a result Sister Aimee spent most of 1930 in a sick bed. The following year of 1931, Aimee returned to her demanding schedule. 

And then, in September, while heading to Portland, Oregon for a week long revival, she stopped off at San Quentin Penitentiary, to visit her old enemy, Asa Keyes.

A lot of people were suspicious of the way Keyes dropped the prosecution of Aimee. And even before he stepped down as District Attorney in 1928, a grand jury was looking into the matter. Although there were a lot of rumors about a payoff, there was not enough evidence to indict Keyes for that. However he was indicted and convicted of accepting a $140,000 bribe for undermining the prosecution of the Julian Petroleum scandal.

Asa Keyes (above, right) served 3 years, and upon his release friends in the movie business found him work in several courtroom dramas, punching up the scripts with legal jargon, occasionally working as an extra, always with his back to the camera, voicing objections. He died of a stroke in 1934.

Aimee's self appointed cross-town rival, the Reverend Robert Schuler (above), deplored the “loyalty of thousands to this leader in the face of her evident and positively proven guilt.” Typically for Shuler, it was an over statement, and a few weeks later an Aimee supporter punched “Fighting Bob” in the snoot. Fighting Bob did not fight back. Still the publicity was a victory for him. 

That Christmas he was presented with a $25,000 donation, specifically to build his own radio station, making him Aimee's equal -  at lest in wattage. The only difference was that Aimee's station belonged to the Angelus Temple, while Shuler put his station in his own name. However the new reach of his anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Aimee venom inspired the L.A. Times to note, “Unless you have been attacked by Rev. 'Bob' Shuler...you don't amount to much in Los Angeles.”

Bob's ministry profited in the coming decades, culminating in the 1980 dedication of the magnificent "Crystal Cathedral" (above), which housed over 2,000 of the faithful, and broadcast weekly to a world wide television congregation of 20 million.  Any way you measure things, Bob had beaten Sister Aimee. 

However, by 2010 Bob's church was forced into bankruptcy, and three years later attendance had fallen so far that the family and corporation was forced to sell their edifice to rivals Bob had once condemned, the Catholic Church.  In 2015, when 88 year old Reverend Shuler, died of esophageal cancer, his funeral was held in the church he built, by the permission of the Catholics. 

By 1932 Aimee (above right) felt the need to return to the revival trail, and started looking for help running the Angelus Temple while she preached - sort of a replacement for her mother, Mildred Kennedy . Aimee chose as her new co-minister a “blue-eyed (dirty) blond slip of a girl" named  Rheba Crawford Splival (above, left, looking up to Aimee). 

Rheba (above) was a Salvation Army convert known in New York as “The Angel of Broadway”. But her sudden rise allowed Rheba to dream of taking over Aimee's empire. 

However the Great Depression and the haphazard bookkeeping at the Temple drained even the flood of Sunday offerings. And in 1935 Aimee was forced to execute a coup, reducing Rheba's (above) power on the board and publicly blaming the angel of Broadway and her own daughter Roberta, for the mess. 

But Rheba was an experienced street fighter, and convinced Roberta McPherson to sue her mother for defamation. In a separate suit Rheba demanded $1 million for herself, claiming Aimee had called her a Judas. Mildred "Sister Minnie" Kennedy testified against  her daughter Aimee in both cases. A judge awarded  daughter Roberta $5,000, and Aimee settled out of court with Rheba for an undisclosed amount.

By 1940 the running of the Angelus Temple had been finally placed in the hands of professionals, with Aimee as the spiritual guide only.  It was the role she'd been born to. 

No longer speaking to either her daughter Roberta, or her mother "Sister Minnie",  Aimee had come to rely more and more on her son Rolf (above). And at ten in the morning of Tuesday, 26 September 1944,  it was Rolf who found his mother unconscious in her hotel bed.. There were rumors of course that the “Miracle Woman” had committed suicide. 

And the truth was that Aimee had taken sleeping pills the night before. 

But when they made her feel ill, Aimee had called two separate doctors seeking advice. The first was unavailable, and the second recommended she call a third.  She passed out before she could make the final call. Aimee Semple McPherson was declared dead at 11:15 in the morning of 26 September, 1944. Six thousand faithful attended her funeral in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Burbank, California, on a hill side overlooking the Burbank studio lot. 

At her death, Aimee's personal estate was valued at just $10,000. Daughter Roberta was bequeathed  $2,000. Her mother Mildred Kennedy got a mere $10, with the stipulation that if she contested the will, she was to received nothing at all. 

The remaining $8,000 went to Rolf, the only one who had remained loyal. He would lead the Angelus Temple for the next 44 years, the mother church to almost 9 million believers world wide.  The Temple's founder was not perfect, but the only people who expected her to be that, were the true believers.

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HAVING FAITH Chapter Eight RETREAT

 

I think most people in 1926 Los Angeles knew the District Attorney's case rested on Lorraine Weiseman-Sielaff  - the woman who was supposed to have saved Sister Aimee, but now threatened to destroy her.  But few knew how unstable the lady was. She was under the care of a psychiatrist, and had already spent time in a sanitarium. 

When no one came forward to bail her out of jail, and confronted with proof she'd been passing bad checks in L.A. during the last week of May, the very week her affidavit swore she'd been in Carmel-by-the-Sea, nursing the mysterious “Miss X”, companion to the limping bald playboy radio engineer Kenneth Ormiston,  Lorraine changed her story. Now she claimed to have been promised $5,000 for signing the false affidavit, and perhaps more for convincing her twin sister to claim being the mysterious “Miss X” .  This lady had more stories than Mother Goose.

But the prosecution had more than one unstable lady.  There was Walter Lambert, the owner of a shirt store on Hill Street in downtown L.A., across from the Hotel Clark, and the hotel's doorman Thomas Melville. 

Both men swore they saw Sister Aimee entering the 12 story hotel at about ten on the morning of 18, May -  the day of her drowning.  She only stayed 30 minutes. Kenneth Ormiston had been staying at the hotel since leaving his wife in January -  the same time he left the Angelus Temple. 

In an experiment, detectives left Venice Beach at about three in the afternoon (the time of Aimee's drowning) and drove the 300 miles north to the “love nest” cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea. They arrived at just about one-thirty the next morning, the same time Ormiston had admitted arriving there on 19 May, supposedly  in the company of the mysterious “Miss X” and her nurse.

There were half a dozen witnesses from Carmel who had seen and/or spoken with a woman they recognized as Aimee, or said “resembled” McPherson, and Kenneth Ormiston as well.  

There were  Dennis Collins and Louie Mandrillo, graveyard shift mechanics at a Salinas garage. They testified that the owner of a sporty little Studebaker sedan (above), left in their garage for a refuel and fluid check, had picked up his car at two on the morning of 29 May. The man signed the receipt as Kenneth Ormiston and he was accompanied by a woman wearing a heavy black veil on a very dark night.

And then there was the testimony of Bernice Morris, secretary to a lawyer named Russel McKinley, who worked for Sister Aimee. Bernice had no direct knowledge of any conspiracy, but she had come to suspect that the kidnapping story had actually been concocted to fool Aimee's mother. She believed this because, at one point in a conversation with the mother and daughter (above), at the Angeles Temple, Russel McKinley had suddenly reminded Aimee (left) that one of the kidnappers had rubbed her neck to relieve a headache.

Bernice said Aimee had looked startled, but had turned to her suspicious mother and said, “Why mother, I do remember that perfectly. I forgot to tell you that. You know I’m always having trouble with my neck.” 

Morris added she did not think Mrs. Kennedy (above) believed her daughter.  Only later did it occur to Bernice Morris that Russel McKinley was must have been blackmailing Sister Aimee, and just wanted to remind her that he could pull the rug out from under her at any moment. But if that had been the lawyer's intent, Aimee's secret was protected when, a few day's later Russel was killed in an automobile accident.  Still, Morris's testimony was damning.

But, to my mind, the case against Aimee McPherson rested on a single question D.A. Keyes had asked her back in August, in front of the grand jury.  He had admired her watch, and then pointed out, “I seem to have observed a photo of you wearing that wrist watch which was taken in Douglas, five weeks after you went bathing on the beach. You are sure you did not have it with you?” Aimee could only reply, “I guess the watch must have been brought to me in Douglas by my mother.” A few minutes later, the hearing was interrupted when Aimee fainted. But here, in open court, Keyes would not have a chance to ask that question again, because at least in this preliminary hearing, Aimee would never have to take the stand.

On the other hand there was Arthur Betts, a bell boy at the Hotel Clark who was supposed to identify Aimee as having entered Ormiston's room. On the witness stand he suffered a total memory loss. Two other prosecution witnesses suffered such a similar  memory failure under oath. And there was another problem, which the defense brought up in cross-examination with all the witnesses from Carmel. If they were so certain the woman in the “love nest” had been the famous evangelist, why had none of them claimed the rewards offered by newspapers for information on Aimee's whereabouts?

Then there was the lack of physical evidence. The Carmel “Love Nest” produced lots of fingerprints, but none belonging to Aimee Semple McPherson. And the grocery lists, recovered from the back yard, and identified as being written in Aimee's handwriting, had gone missing.  Photo-stats remained (above), but the defense never ceased in pointing out prosecution experts were now only working from copies. Besides, they had their own experts who insisted, it was not Sister Aimee's handwriting.

 

Aimee's kidnapping story was always a problem for Aimee's lawyers. Her escape from the kidnappers was just not believable. As D.A. Asa Keyes put it, “That was 20 miles in blistering, 120-degree sun…and yet she wasn’t blistered. Her clothes weren’t soiled. She wasn’t perspiring. Her heels weren’t broken. She didn’t ask for water. Taken to a hospital in Douglas, Arizona...she wasn’t dehydrated."

Author Louis Adamic argued in his monthly column (above), “The only way she can convince me that she made that... hike across the desert...is to do it all over again, and let me ride behind her in an automobile equipped...with a huge canteen of water; and if she asks me for a single drink or a lift, I’ll give it to her and then laugh right in her face. “

Still Aimee's version of events never varied by an inch or an instant, under oath or from the pulpit. When challenged Aimee (above) would always say with a beatific smile, “That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.” She repeated that line so often it was eventually used with great effect by vaudeville and movie star Mae West, whose entire career was a parody of "the world's most pulchritudinous evangelist", Sister Aimee McPherson.. 

On Wednesday, 3 November, Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Samuel Blake concluded the hearing by telling the small courtroom (above) he found ample evidence that Aimee Semple McPherson, her mother Mildred Kennedy, and Mrs. Lorraine Weiseman-Sielaff. were indeed involved in a “criminal conspiracy to commit acts injurious to public morals and to prevent and obstruct justice.” It was assumed Weisman-Sielaff would at some point plead guilty to a lesser crime, in exchange for her testimony against the other two . Aimee and Mildred were facing a possible 42 years in prison, each. In Spartenburg, South Carolina, humorist Will Rogers was traveling with Queen Marie, of Romania. Referring to the queen, Rogers wrote, “Bless her heart. America owes her a debt of gratitude for running...Aimee McPherson back among the want ads.”

And then, while the shock waves were still roiling back and forth across Los Angeles' culture, the unstable Lorraine Weisman-Sielaff (above) changed her story again.

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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 denounced Jews.  But his prime enemy was Sister Aimee, 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, following 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.

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