User:SteamWiki/Reported kidnapping: Short Version2

Reported kidnapping

Main article: Reported kidnapping of Aimee Semple McPherson

Minnie Kennedy doing radio interview with deep-sea diver R.C. Crawford during search for McPherson's body in Santa Monica, Calif., 1926

The reported kidnapping of Aimee Semple McPherson caused a frenzy in national media and changed her life and the course of her career. After disappearing in May, 1926, she reappeared in Mexico five weeks later, stating she had been held for ransom in a desert shack there. The subsequent grand-jury inquiries over her reported kidnapping and escape precipitated continued public interest in her future misfortunes.

Disappearance and return

On May 18, 1926, McPherson disappeared from Ocean Park Beach, in Santa Monica, CA, Presuming she had drowned, Searchers combed the beach and nearby area, but could not locate her body. Immediately, McPherson sightings occurred around the county often in widely divergent locations many miles apart on the same day. The Angelus Temple received calls and letters claiming knowledge of McPherson, including demands for ransom. After several weeks of unpromising leads, Mildred Kennedy, regarded the messages as hoaxes, believing her daughter dead.

Just as the Angeles Temple was preparing for a service commemorating McPherson's death, Kennedy received a phone call from Douglas, Arizona. Her distraught daughter was alive resting in a Douglas hospital, and related her story to officials.

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.

McPherson stated she had been approached by a couple who wanted her to pray over their sick child. Peering into their car backseat to better see the child, she was suddenly shoved inside. A cloth laced with some type of drug, was held against her face, causing her to pass out. Eventually, the revivalist was moved to a small shack far in the desert. When her captors were away on errands, McPherson escaped out a window.

She then traveled through the desert for around 11–13 hours across an estimated distance of 20 miles (32 km); and reached Agua Prieta, Sonora, a Mexican border town at around 1:00 am. Collapsing exhausted near a house, the evangelist was finally taken by locals to adjacent Douglas.

The turnout at her return to Los Angeles was greeted by 30,000–50,000 people, more than for almost any other personage. 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. Already incensed over McPherson's influential public stance on evolution and the Bible, most of the Chamber of Commerce and some other civic leaders, together with many Los Angeles area churches; saw the event as a gaudy display. To head off developing rumors her disappearance was not the result of a kidnapping, McPherson, against the advice of her mother, who thought the press would continue to unfavorably exploit the story; presented her complaint in court.

Grand jury inquiries

While various speculations were proffered as to the reason for McPherson's disappearance, the Los Angeles prosecution settled on the contention McPherson ran off with ex-employee, Ormiston. She was accused of staying with him in a California seaside cottage he rented in a resort town prior to her May 18 disappearance. After leaving the cottage at the end of May; for the next three weeks, the pair traveled elsewhere and remained hidden. Then, around June 22, Ormiston drove McPherson to Mexico, and dropped her off 3 miles outside of nearby Agua Prieta where she walked the remaining distance then then presented herself to a resident there.

McPherson maintained all along, without changing anything in her story, that she was taken, held captive by the kidnappers, and escaped as she originally described. Defense witnesses corroborated her assertions or McPherson herself demonstrated how the disputed parts were plausible

Issues of trial by media and court of public opinion were apparent, as much of the proclaimed evidence against McPherson came from reporters who passed it on to the police. Evidence and testimonies were hotly debated by an evenly divided public. Secrecy of the California grand jury proceedings were ignored by both sides as the Los Angeles prosecution freely passed on any new developments to the press, while the evangelist used her radio station to broadcast her side of the story.

Case dismissal and aftermath

On November 3, the case was to be moved to jury trial set for mid-January, 1927. If convicted, the counts added up to a maximum prison time of 42 years. However, the prosecution's case developed serious credibility issues. Witnesses changed their testimonies and evidence often had suspicious origins or was mishandled and lost while in custody Finally, on January 2, 1927, Ormiston identified another woman as his female companion who stayed with him at the resort town seaside cottage. All charges against McPherson and associated parties were dropped by the court for the lack of evidence on January 10, 1927.

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. The bulk of the investigation against McPherson was funded by Los Angeles-area newspapers at an estimated amount of $500,000.

Various influential individuals offered their opinions on the inquiry. 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."

H.L. Mencken, noted journalist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar and an ideological opponent of McPherson, opposite each other in the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" trial, unexpectedly came to McPherson's defense. He wrote that since many of that town's residents acquired their ideas "of the true, the good and the beautiful" from the movies and newspapers, "Los Angeles will remember the testimony against her long after it forgets the testimony that cleared her."