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 Ammie” 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 attempting to cover up their crime, the conspirators were now subject to the punishment as if they had. 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 Hughes

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

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HAVING FAITH Chapter Three - Resurrection

I do not believe for one second Aimee Semple McPherson was kidnapped. But that leaves the question of what she was doing for the five weeks of her mysterious disappearance. It might help to remember  how Saint Thomas Aquinas defined a lie. He said it was any statement at variance with the mind -  meaning truth was anything you believed. This is a useful definition for every saint caught sinning.

“Oh, have you heard the story of Aimee McPherson?

Aimee McPherson, that wonderful person,
She weighed a hundred eighty and her hair was red
She preached a wicked sermon, or so the papers said.”
Ballad of Aimee

Aimee's story never wavered, once she walked out of the desert and into the village of Agua Pietra on Wednesday, 23 June, 1926. She always repeated it verbatim, refusing to allow questions to interrupt the flow of her story. “I sent my secretary to the hotel to phone the temple” she always began, adding she then went into the water for another swim. As she was rising out of the surf a couple named "Rosie" and "Steve" approached, saying they had a dying child in a car nearby, who needed Sister Aimee's ministrations. As any saint would, Aimee went with the pair willingly, and was guided to a parked car near the Ocean Park Bathhouse (above), where the minister was violently shoved inside and drugged. When she awoke from her drug comma several days later,  "Steve" told her, “You've taken enough of our girls from us, so turnabout is fair play.”

After several days of waiting for a response to their half million dollar ransom note, they took Aimee for an all day drive, ending in a little adobe desert shack, where they were joined by a large Mexican man named Felip (sic).

“Now, Aimee built herself a radio station

To broadcast her preaching to the nation.
She found a man named Armistead who knew enough
To run the radio while Aimee did her stuff.

After briefly releasing their frustrations by torturing their victim with a lit cigar butt, the men disappeared. Then Rosie - or so the story ran - left to buy cigarettes. Once alone, Aimee spotted an opened can of varnish in a corner of the shack. She “wormed” her way over (above) and “commenced the awkward endeavor of cutting the rope on the can's edge.” Aimee said she figured it was about 11:30 in the morning when she was finally free. Outside, she ran until she collapsed, rested and then ran again. She kept running until she reached Agua Prieta, over twelve hours - and twenty miles - from the shack.  Or so Aimee said.

“Now, they had a camp meeting out at Ocean Park

Preached from early morning 'til after dark.
Said the benediction, then folded up the tents,
And nobody knew where Aimee went.”

Later that morning a cab drove Sister Aimee the few hundred yards across the border to the Calumet Hospital (above) in Douglas, Arizona. The hospital was quickly surrounded by crowds of the faithful and the curious.

Meanwhile, the Agua Pietra Police Chief, Silverrio Villa (above), followed Aimee's trail four miles, where he found “a small shack...

"Tracks made by her shoes were found all around the adobe, but not beyond, though a search was made as far as Gallardo, nine miles away.” It was reported that doctors told the Arizona Daily Star there were burn marks on her fingers, binding marks on her wrists and ankles, and there were blisters on the bottoms of her feet..

“Now, Aimee McPherson got back from her journey,

She told her tale to the district attorney.
Said she'd been kidnapped on a lonely trail.
And in spite of all the questions, she stuck to her tale.”

Informed that her mother and daughter would be arriving by train in the morning, Aimee responded, “Won't it be grand when my mother gets here. I can hardly wait to see her.” Then she suddenly asked, “Do you think I will be welcomed back?” 

She need not have worried. There were thirty thousand cheering believers waiting for her arrival (above) at Los Angeles Union Station two days later. The L.A. Fire Department showed up in their dress uniforms, an airplane flew overhead and dropped rose petals. Hearst Gossip columnist Louella Parsons lead a large press contingent. Perhaps a hundred thousand of the devout lined Glendale Boulevard (renamed the “Avenue of Triumph”) to welcome Aimee back to her temple (below).

“Well, the Grand Jury started an investigation,

Uncovered a lot of spicy information.
Found out about a love nest down at Carmel-by-the-Sea,
Where the liquor was expensive and the loving was free.”

However, the cops were suspicious about Aimee's story, even before they heard it. When word of her suspected drowning broke, an off duty Culver City police officer reported he had seen Sister Aimee riding in the front passenger seat of a sedan, heading away from the beach, just half an hour after she supposedly drowned. His wife backed up his story. 

Acerbic L.A. historian Louis Adamic, who regularly called the evangelical preacher the “Queen Aimee of Moronia.” reacted to the tale of desert survival by writing, “Aimee was no more kidnapped than I am an incognito shah of Persia.”

“They found a little cottage with a breakfast nook,

A folding bed with a worn-out look.
The slats was busted and the springs was loose,
And the dents in the mattress fitted Aimee's caboose.”

The reporters noticed that the colors on Sister Aimee's dress (above), in the closet of her room in the Calumet Hospital, had not faded in the sun, despite her half day hike. The dresses' collar and cuffs were as pure and white as if they had just come from a laundry. Nor did her corset bear any sweat stains, nor the dress scars after stumbling for hours (half in the dark) through a desert populated with plants covered in hypodermic sharp needles and stiff oily razor sharp leaves.

She was not sunburned, her lips were not cracked, and the hospital was not treating her for dehydration. Reporters interviewing the miracle woman could see none of the alleged bruises on her wrists or ankles, although they were standing two feet from her bed. Neither could L.A. County District Attorney Asa Hays (above left), nor his first assistant D.A (above right).   

Her feet may have been covered with blisters, as she claimed, but none of the reporters thought to lift the sheets to look. Her shoes, when examined were not even scuffed. In fact, closer inspection revealed grass stains on the insteps. Residents confirmed there was no grass within a hundred fifty miles of Douglas, north or south of the border. 

 “Well they took poor Aimee and they threw her in jail.

Last I'd heard she was out on bail.
They'll send her up for a stretch, I guess,

She worked herself up into an awful mess”

When newsreels of Aimee's ressurection appeared in Los Angeles movie theaters, they were greeted with cat calls and loud booing. A beat up model T Ford was spotted around Los Angeles with a chalk message scrawled across the back  “I ain't Aimee, so I'm still missing.” Also missing was the gimpy legged married gentleman (below) who had been the chief engineer at Aimee's temple.

Now, Radio Ray is a going hound;
He's a-going yet and he ain't been found.
They got a description, but they got it too late.
'Cause since they got it, he's lost a lot of weight.

Kenneth G. Ormiston had been hired in February of 1924 to help Sister Aimee set up her new radio station, KFSG, (for 'Kall' Four Square Gospel), at the Temple on Glendale Boulevard. In addition to all the technical work required, Kenneth also spent hours in the isolated third floor radio room, coaching the 35 year old Aimee on transferring her impassioned theatrical performances into the confines of radio.

Amiee was often heard giggling to Ken's quick and irreverent wit during pauses in her broadcast sermons. Ormiston had been pushed out of his position by Aimee's mother in January of 1926, amid rumors of a romantic entanglement with "the world's most pulchritudinous evangelist".  After her alledged "drowning", and without a body, naturally the cops wanted to speak to the engineer.. But it was two weeks before he came in for an interview with the cops. Then he had immediately disappeared again. And the feeling among the cops and the press was there must be a connection between these two vanishing people.

Now I'll end my story in the usual way,

About a lady preacher's holiday.
If you don't get the moral then you're the gal for me
Cause there's still a lot of cottages down at Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Pete Seager “The Ballad of Aimee Mcphearson” 1926

                                                   - 30 - 

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 Ammie” 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 attempting to cover up their crime, the conspirators were now subject to the punishment as if they had. 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 Hughes

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

- 30 -