“WILL DYNAMITE SEA FOR BODY OF MRS. M’PHERSON” blared two-inch high banner headlines on the front page of the Los Angeles Record newspaper on Wednesday, May 19, 1926.
The disappearance, presumably in the surf, of world famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson had developed too late the previous day to make the afternoon papers’ regular editions. The Times and Examiner on the morning after gave the event prime coverage, somewhat to the dismay of Cecil B. De Mille and other Hollywood celebrities because the disappearance of the evangelist crowded the Hollywood premier of De Mille’s extravaganza, “The Volga Boatman,” off the front pages.
But it was Los Angeles’ evening dailies which really made capital in publicizing the story and the subsequent search of the sea for a body which never turned up; that is until Mrs. McPherson stumbled into a Mexican village late at night on June 23 and told a tale of being kidnapped.
The reappearance came too late to make the morning papers, so the newspaper advantage was a stand-off. Two-and-one half inch high letters on the Evening Express screeched, “GRAPHIC KIDNAPPING STORY BY MRS. AIMEE M'PHERSON.” The Evening Herald in fractionally shorter but bolder type screamed, “MRS. M’PHERSON ALIVE. TELLS OF ABDUCTION.” The next morning's Daily News used three and one-eighth inch high headlines for the words “MAN HUNT"captioning a story of an initial posse seeking the kidnappers.
Press mortality has reduced the number of major daily newspapers in Los Angeles to the Times and Herald Examiner, while radio and television newscasts have relegated “Extras” which made quick profits for the press into journalistic dinosaurs. But in 1926 newspapers stood almost unchallenged as the main source of news, and competition raged among them for circulation, which determined advertising revenues. Los Angeles had among its major dailies the Times, Examiner, and Daily News in the morning, plus the Record, the Evening Express, and the Evening Herald in the afternoons. There may have been others. And they all made the most out of the McPherson case.
This was several years before Perry Mason was born from the womb of Erle Stanley Gardner's typewriter. In the Mason mysteries, the fictional attorney continuously complained about district attorneys trying cases in the newspapers. Perry Mason articulated legal principles, which if known by the public in 1926, there may have resulted a difference in the handling of the McPherson case received in the press then and subsequently.
Los Angeles’ District Attorney Asa Keyes certainly tried the McPherson case in the newspapers. If there was not conspiracy between his office and the press, there obviously was a collusion. Keyes admitted as much when, responding to public outcries about the cost to the county of prosecuting Mrs. McPherson, he announced that the newspapers had underwritten most of the expense of the investigation, which sent police and prosecutors scurrying all over the country seeking evidence against the evangelist and hunting a fugitive with whom they charged her with consorting.
The District Attorney could not prove Mrs. McPherson guilty at the time. Keyes indeed threw in the towel on January 10, 1927, complaining that his star witness against the evangelist had changed her story so often as to cease to be a credible witness. The District Attorney could not prove Mrs. McPherson guilty then and dismissed the case against her. But the press has been trying to prove her guilty ever since. Virtually every rehash of the kidnapping case proceeds on the premise that Mrs. McPherson was “guilty unless proven innocent.” Juries must acquit a defendant if reasonable doubt of guilt is established, but newsmen have no such restraints. Indeed, they have usually ignored completely, testimony favorable to Mrs. McPherson’s story, while blaring the unfavorable publicity. Sometimes they have distorted the former to make it appear to be the latter.
Here’s a case in point. Dial Torgeson wrote a resume of the case, entitled, “Aimee’s Disappearance Remains Mystery.” This appeared in the Los Angeles Times of May 18, 1969. The more than a page long rehash stated, among other things, “The owner of the Carmel cottage, who had been expected to be a witness against Mrs. McPherson, died, apparently of heart trouble brought on by the tens of thousands of sightseers trampling around his home” (section B, p.2). But H.C. Benedict did testify at the court hearing, which concluded weeks before his death on November 20, and his testimony helped Mrs. McPherson. For weeks Benedict had been denying vehemently that the woman who shacked up in his cottage with Kenneth Ormiston was Mrs. McPherson. Chapter twelve reproduces Benedict's sworn statement before District Attorney Keyes, charging that deputy prosecutor Ryan “tried his damndest" to get him to identify Mrs. McPherson. But Benedict insisted that there wasn't a thing about the photos Ryan flashed that connected Mrs. McPherson with his female tenant.
None of the stories which recreate the event have reported Benedict's disclaimer. But several suggest the landlord would have testified against Mrs. McPherson. How could he when he told around that he was positive the woman was not the evangelist and that he could not be more certain of that, indeed, could not be mistaken? But Dial Torgeson also wrote, “Desert trackers said she couldn't have crossed twenty tiles of desert unstained, unsunburned, only mildly thirsty.” Indeed, tracker Murchison scouted the possibility the evangelist could have trekked from her place of escape from captivity and arrived in Agua Prieta in the condition reported. But several other desert trackers filled pages of testimony at the preliminary hearing with their demonstrations that she could have made the jaunt as claimed. The press never rehashes their testimony, but this book will.
What kind of journalism is it which reports a person's account of an ordeal, then ballyhoos the evidence which seems to contradict that account, while ignoring any evidence which tends to corroborate the account? It can be shown that this is exactly the kind of treatment the McPherson case gets from the overwhelming number of resumes.
Even unbiased investigators, as Lately Thomas thought he was in writing the books, “The Vanishing Evangelist” (Viking, New York, 1959) and “Storming Heaven” (Morrow, New York, 1970), are at a severe disadvantage in that their sources, except for materials published by Mrs. McPherson and her friends, almost invariably reflect the ‘guilty until proven innocent" syndrome. “Lately Thomas,” by the way, is not the real name of this biographer. He is Robert V.P. Steele, who got interested, he told me in a telephone conversation, in “that Aimee story” in an effort to escape his displeasure with Los Angeles. “I hated L.A.,” he stated. So he buried himself in newspaper morgues investigating the clippings. When asked why he hated that city he replied, “Have you ever been there?" as if that were enough explanation. He was phoning from San Francisco. His chances of doing an objective biography using such sources were about comparable to those of an author researching Winston Churchill from Nazi or Fascist sources, or Billy Graham from the writings of John R. Rice or Bob Jones!
This book isn't objective or unbiased either. But it’s about time Mrs. McPherson's story and the facts that support it get general publication. Suppose we proceed from the presumption “innocent until proven guilty” instead of the opposite premise. Can the evidence admit of such interpretation?