About the time blind attorney Russell McKinley was getting back into the case, a mystery woman barged into the office of Monterey, California's police chief and volunteered to divulge how he could ascertain the whereabouts of Aimee Semple McPherson during the eleven days between May 19 and 29. Chief Gabrielson, rather incompetently some thought, agreed to her ultimatum that he not try to discover her identity. He easily could have elicited the information she was eager to communicate and then have proceeded to learn who she was. Perhaps he was overwhelmed with excitement over the possibility of prominence the revelation could mean for his career. At any rate, he listened to the tipster who suggested he buy a lout in Carmel a few drinks to loosen his tongue. Gabrielson proceeded to make the contact and was told that Mrs. McPherson had spent the time, posing as a Mrs. George Mclintire, in a cottage on Scenic Drive in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Gabrielson paid a visit to the address and found the owner, Mr. H.C. Benedict, living in the premises. But Benedict confided that he had moved out by May 18 in order to rent the cottage to the Mcintire couple who contracted for a three month stay. Mr. McIntire paid the first month's rent when he engaged the property on May 14 and tendered the last two months rent on the day he moved in. Benedict reported that the pair moved out suddenly on the 29th, advising him by letter that the illness of Mrs. Mcintire’s mother called them east. He produced several articles the couple had left in the cottage when they departed.
Gabrielson notified Los Angeles authorities and Joe Ryan entrained north to investigate. Whether it was sour grapes on Gabrielson’s part because he was shunted out of the limelight, or whether he sincerely objected to Ryan's pressure methods to force witnesses to identify Mrs. McPherson as the woman in the cottage, the fact remains that Gabrielson complained that “Mr. Ryan's conduct of this case was most unethical” (Los Angeles Times, July 31,1926, Part Il, p.1). Later, Cline came to Carmel to work with his son-in-law. And newspapermen swarmed to the Scenic Drive premises. Ryan put the reporters to work ransacking the grounds for evidence and tracking down potential witnesses. The press seemed willing to vilify the evangelist. She never felt the intentions were malicious, but rather economic. The scandal would sell papers. But her friends complained bitterly, especially when the press buried Captain Cline's drunk driving arrest on inside pages, devoting but a few lines to the accident. Why did newsmen help Mrs. McPherson's detractors against her while giving those same detractors protection in print they refused to the evangelist? Lately Thomas concedes that Herman Cline was “helped by a sympathetic press” (p. 196, op. cit.).
Ryan had no difficulty rounding up more than a dozen witnesses willing to swear that George Mclintire was in reality Kenneth G. Ormiston. Indeed, this identification apparently was never disputed by anyone and was later confirmed by Ormiston. But the witnesses were not so sure about the identity of the woman. Ryan got nowhere when he tackled Benedict and tried to secure a statement that Mr. Mclintire was really Mrs. McPherson. Benedict acknowledged meeting his tenants in the yard of his cottage on May 20. He had come over to plant some bulbs. Mr. McIntire saw him and brought his “wife” out and introduced her to the landlord. seems incredible to suppose that if Ormiston had been shacked up with a well-known celebrity he would have needlessly exposed her to Carmel citizens who might easily identify her from the pictures in the papers.
Ryan badgered Benedict for a half-hour, but the landlord refused to identify his tenant as Aimee Semple McPherson. The Deputy District Attorney flashed a sheaf of photographs of the evangelist, conveniently provided by a Los Angeles newspaper. One of the pictures was the pose Captain Herman Cline had requested he be included in by the car at Ocean Park when Sister accompanied him there to describe the snatch.
Ryan got nowhere with Benedict, but his methods produced better cooperation from several other Carmel residents. While there seem to be no stenographic records of interviews the Deputy District Attorney conducted with Benedict and other prospective identifiers, the investigative pattern so often has unfolded in the following manner that we can almost be sure Ryan proceeded something like this: “Mr. Benedict” or Mr. and Mrs. Parkes or Mr. Swanson, or Mr. Renkert, et a/ — “we have every reason to believe that these are pictures of the woman you saw at the cottage on Scenic Drive. Now don't make up your mind too quickly. Look these photos over. Study them very carefully. Take your time."
If the witnesses tended to nod a negative, the interrogater likely urged, “No, no, don’t shake your head. At least, not yet. Remember -that pictures often look a bit different from the actual appearance of an individual. Sometimes you have to look several times to be sure. So just take your time and keep on studying these pictures.”
More often than not a doubtful witness caves in under pressure of that kind and agrees to an identification. This has happened so very many times that the fact is a truism. But Benedict refused to be intimidated by Ryan. However, others marshalled less resistance. From photographs only half a dozen witnesses interviewed by Joe Ryan identified the evangelist as “Mrs. Mcintire.” Not one of these witnesses had ever seen Sister before, though most, if not all, admitted they had noticed photographs of her in the newspapers during the period of her disappearance and at that time made no connection in their minds with the Carmel cottage. Obviously, pictures alone were not enough to force identifications. What photos could not do by themselves, Ryan’s pressure tactics produced.
Having secured the “identifications,” Ryan reported ecstatically to Asa Keyes by telephone, “There is no doubt in my mind but that Mrs. McPherson and Ormiston were here from the morning of May 19 to the night of May 28.” The deputy cited, in addition to the identifications, “handwriting evidence" as proving the rendezvous beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The handwriting evidence was two grocery slips found out in the yard of the Carmel cottage by none other than Mrs. Ryan, who had made the trip with her husband. Even before handwriting experts examined the documents the authorities pontificated that they were in the evangelist's handwriting. One scrap of paper listed apples, rhubarb, prunes, rice, tapioca, and the other had butter, meat, bran, pears, strawberries, grapefruit, and lemons.
When Mrs. McPherson learned about the “discovery” of the grocery slips she dismissed it as a “plant.” Her mother and others confirmed that most of the items on the list were foods the evangelist never used. Except for apples and staples like butter and meat, the articles were foreign to the evanglist's diet. Furthermore, an astute observer would have smelled a rat at once in the listing of just plain “meat,” instead of the name of the cut or kind ordered. It must be remembered that these “grocery slips” were supposed to have been left at the back door for a delivery boy to pick up. Whoever heard of writing “meat” on such an order? The butcher wouldn't have the slightest idea what kind of meat to send. Sister claimed the slips were forgeries.
The circumstances of the discovery also tend to discredit the lists. The Benedicts had moved back into their cottage some weeks earlier. A landlord who would take pains to plant bulbs in the yard while tenants occupied the premises would likely remove litter from his yard. These grocery slips, however, were supposed to have survived two full months in that yard — and that in a coastal town where dews and fogs were frequent!
But were the slips in the evangelist's handwriting? The authorities produced handwriting expert Milton Carson who alleged they were. But Carlson had apparently erred on the “Dr. Merton” telegram. He identified the handwriting on the blank filed with the clerk as belonging to Kenneth G. Ormiston, but the clerk who took the telegram under circumstances so suspicious that he would remember the incident described the writer's appearance as such that he could not have been the radio man, Handwriting examination is not an exact science even yet, and it was far from such in 1926. Another handwriting expert, testifying at the preliminary hearing concerning these grocery slips, demonstrated that they had been doctored apparently even before Carlson saw them! Who doctored them? They remained in the possession of the Los Angeles authorities, so no one connected with the Temple could have tampered with them! They had to have been doctored either before their discovery in the back yard of the cottage or while in the possession of the police or District Attorney's office. Which time seems likeliest will leave for the reader to ponder.
Naturally, the press all over the country ate up the alleged scandal. Ryan and Cline crowed that the case was solved. Mrs. McPherson felt defenseless against the relentless assault. All she could do was issue denials which couldn't command the clout that the sensational charges exercised. She maintained her poise, but her attorney, Roland Wooley, exploded with indignation. The Los Angeles Times of July 27, 1926 quoted his statement on page 2 of part II:
“It is not remarkable that different people are reported to have come forward with further ‘identi-fications’ of Mrs. McPherson. It is significant that these so-calied identifications arrive at this late date and indicate that the possessors of this information evidently have waited to be prompted by self-styled investigators.
“If Kenneth G. Ormiston was at Carmel-by-the-Sea attended by a woman, there is absolutely no evidence to indicate Mrs. McPherson's presence there. He may have been there. it makes no differ-ence to us. know she was not there.
“All identifications so-called of Mrs. McPherson, however, are based on conjecture because she was not at Carmel-by-the-Sea at any time. Furthermore, there seems to be an increasing tendency for so-called identifications of Mrs. McPherson and others to spring up wherever these self-styled investigators center their activities. It is most surprising what some people will resort to for publicity.
“We cite the incident at Salinas. it has completely blown down before the blast of truth. The garage man to whom the so-called identification was credited has made a complete and unequivocal denial. The other identifications have been blasted likewise.”
The Salinas identification Wooley referred to involved Dennis Collins. Ryan had told the grand jury that Collins identified Mrs. McPherson as accompanying Ormiston to the garage. But the garageman told a different story. He was one of the witnesses Judge J.A. Bardin of Salinas interviewed when Wooley solicited his services. Bardin, by this time, retained the title of judge only by courtesy, having returned to private practice in Salinas in partnership with Russell Scott. Collins assured Bardin that he'd never made the identification Ryan reported. And on the back of both a front view and profile photo of Mrs. McPherson, the garageman wrote, “The photograph of this woman does not resemble the woman saw with Ormiston the latter part of May 1926 at the Highway Garage in Salinas, California.” Wooley sent the photos with disclaimer to District Attorney Keyes.
Attorney Wooley’s statement on July 26 concluded with the affirmation, ‘Mrs. McPherson's story stands as it will always — unshaken.””
Meanwhile, Cline and Ryan had a problem. None of their identification witnesses had ever seen Mrs. McPherson in person. Identifications of this kind, as Erle Stanley Gardner would reiterate later, constitute the “most dangerous evidence in the world,” indeed, “about the weakest evidence we have, especially when the party identifying and being identified are previously unknown to each.” Gardner put into the mouth of Perry Mason the statement, “You know and know that personal identification evidence is just about the worst, the most unreliable type of evidence we have, not when a person identifies someone he knows, but when he gets a glimpse of an individual and then later on makes an ‘identification’ either from a photograph or from personal contact” (p. 113, “The Case of the Beautiful Beggar,” Morrow, New York).
Even identifications of people you know, however, can prove errant. well recall an incident aboard the Queen Elizabeth in 1961. Across a public room spied a man I'd met several times, a physician from the Philippines who served as an after-dinner speaker at two functions I’d attended within the past year. was surprised to find him on the ship and delighted as well. barged up to him with my hand outstretched and exclaimed, “Dr. Quemada!” But it wasn’t Dr.
Quemada, or his twin brother, which he didn’t have, of course, though the resemblance was so striking the “identification” was understandable.
It isn't just a serious defect in police procedure which triggers mistaken identifications. The processes of the human memory prove fallible, sometimes on a large scale. Mrs. McPherson's personal scrapbook of press clippings contains an item from the front page of the Canon City, Colorado, Daily Record, dated October 2, 1926. The caption announces, “DESPITE FACT ALVORSON BODY WAS IDENTIFIED BY 200 PEOPLE TURNS OUT TO BE ANOTHER MAN.” The sub-headlines read, ‘Florence People Had Bought Flowers for Funeral; Alvorson's Wife and Children Believed Body That of Father at First; Insane Asylum Guard Identifies Man as Escaped Inmate." So eyewitnesses’ personal identifications are not necessarily infallible evidence.
Cline and Ryan realized that the longer the confrontation between their witnesses at Carmel and the evangelist they thought they saw there, was delayed, the more vulnerable the testimony would be to refutation. After all, it was two months since the fleeting glimpses had been caught. Cline got on the phone to the Temple and virtually demanded that Mrs. McPherson come at once to Carmel to face her accusers. He also wanted her to submit to fingerprinting in order to compare her prints with those on an allspice can left by the Mclintires in the cottage and the prints authorities hoped to get from books also left by the mystery woman.
Mrs. McPherson probably would have acquiesced to Cline’s demands, but her lawyers put their foot down. In no way would they permit their client to be harassed in this manner. Wooley knew police procedure. He could document countless cases where preliminary identifications from photos had been followed by identifications in person, prompted because of the resemblance of the person to photographs the witness had studied at great length. Wooley and Veitch both nixed the trip. Arthur Veitch, in refusing to permit his client to be fingerprinted, volunteered that the evangelist’s prints were available in many places: “| have no doubt that they could be picked up and photographed in 10,000 places if the officials care to do it.” Wooley added, “Not for one moment will we subject Mrs. McPherson to the indignity of having her handwriting and fingerprints taken just for the purposes of exposing another one of the wild and obviously concocted identifications.” (Los Angeles Times, p.2, part Il, July 28, 1926).
Yet the evangelist’s following of the legal advice has been used against her, with the rationalization, “If she wasn’t at Carmel, why wouldn't she go there and face the witnesses?” Sister gave a‘Biblical precedent for staying by her work at the Temple, paraphrasing Nehemiah 6:3 as the basis for a sermon, “I Am Doing a Great Work, So That Cannot Come Down to Carmel.” She would have lost at least two days of meetings had she complied with Cline’s call.
Ryan's investigations at Carmel resurrected rumors of an abortion. Someone in the town reportedly said that Mrs. Mclintire looked pregnant. The names of Carmel physicians R.A. Kocher and William Davidson were insinuated into the tumors. Reportedly they had been seen at the cottage under circumstances which aroused suspicions of an illegal operation. They denied the allegations vehemently. But the tumors persisted. A Los Angeles newspaper dared the evangelist to submit to a medical examination to settle the matter. She agreed, provided the paper pay the doctor and nurse who must come to the Temple after an evening service to perform the examination. Sister had called the newspaper's bluff. It called off the examination.
Meanwhile, Judge Bardin had exploded other rumors in the Carmel area alleging that Mrs. McIntire had undergone surgery in a sanitarium or hospital in. the area.
A fingerprint expert went to work on the allspice can the Mcintires had left behind when he quit the cottage. Police Sergeant Bartow reported on July 30 that the prints “were undoubtedly a woman's but were so indistinct that they could not be possibly used to make an identification” (Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1926, part Il, page 2). Barlow lied. Lately Thomas' assessment of the fabrication that the police “were not wholly candid” (p.177, op. cit.), represents a masterpiece of understatement. Barlow identified fingerprints all right, but they belonged to newspapermen who, as “The Vanishing Evangelist” puts it, “infested the Benedict grounds. This embarrassment was kept from the public.” Here is just another example of how circumstances favorable to the evangelist were muzzled by the press and police!
The Times had also reported on July 26 that fingerprints on the books at the Carmel cottage were to be checked page by page, but on August 2 the same Los Angeles newspaper reported that Sergeant Barlow failed to obtain any fingerprints from these abandoned books. Moreover, Mr. Benedict certified that the Biblical annotations and memoranda which the authorities confiscated from the cottage were in the handwriting of his wife, and that the Bible, concerning which much was made, for some time belonged to Mrs. Benedict. Attorney Wooley forwarded this information also to Asa Keyes. Not even “Mrs, McIntire" had any connection with these items which authorities had attempted to link with Mrs. McPherson.
Meanwhile, Attorney Wooley was issuing statements to the press wholesale. After a personal trip to Carmel he announced, “After two days of careful and impartial investigation...., it may be truthfully said that the mystery surrounding the identity of the couple (at Carmel) actually present is still unsolved." He scouted the professed “identification witness”:
“It is difficult for a fair and prudent mind to reconcile the widely varying descriptions of the woman...Note the following discrepancies: One person says, ‘The woman was 40 or more’; another is positive that she was ‘a girl of not over 25 years’; another states she had dark eyes, dark hair, and olive complexion, and still another emphatically states that a blond woman opened the door for him when he called at the house.
“It must be remembered that the so-called identity witnesses saw this woman two months before they were called upon to identify her by the ‘picture’ method; and that so far as can now be determined, under the most ordinary circumstances, when nothing of an unusual nature took place to arouse attention or to fix in the minds of the observers mental picture of the features of personality of the woman.”
Wooley remonstrated regarding the cultivation of abortion rumors:
“The foundation for the insinuations that a criminal operation was performed seems to rest solely upon the following facts fed by the very fertile imagi-nations of certain detectives at work — more with an eye to their own ambitions than to a correct solution of the so-called Carmel mystery. At the time the Los Angeles officials were present at Carmel, a visit was made to the Benedict home. The mere fact that no one was there offered but little obstacle to the ‘scientific’ detectives in the squad; a forcible entry was made; a medicine bottle was found; it bore the date of May 25, one of the very days of so much importance; it bore the name of a Carmel physician and also of a local druggist. Demand for the pre-scription file of the druggist was made in a matter not warranted. No officer of Monterey County was present. Upon their departure it was ascertained that the prescription referred to had been prescribed by Dr. Lowell for Mr. Benedict and contained some commonplace preparation. Mr. Benedict was not living at his bungalow on Scenic Drive on May 25, but shortly after that he returned to his own home, taking with him the simple medical compound prescribed for him by his family physician. Simple as these facts, nevertheless, upon them has been reared a malicious theory, which has now completely crumbled” (Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1926, part Il, pp. 1-2).
it any wonder that Monterey Police Chief Gabrielson complained that “Mr. Ryan’s conduct of this case was most unethical”?
Wooley denounced the “Carmel evidence” against Sister as “founded on thin air” and insisted, “the story of Mrs. McPherson’s abduction as told by her remains unshaken.” After returning to Los Angeles from the seaside resort town, he advised Asa Keyes by letter, ‘Whatever may be the view of your office, as to the truth of the accusation that Mrs. McPherson was at Carmel during a part of May of this year, a most casual canvass of the Carmel opinion on the subject will positively disclose that it is the belief of the citizens of Carmel that she was not there. It is the belief of the sober minded people of that community that a great injustice had been done Mrs. McPherson.”
As July drew to an end, Asa Keyes grew inclined to agree with Wooley. On the 31st he revoked the subpoenas of Carmel witnesses against the evangelist his office had issued commanding appearances before the Los Angeles grand jury. He conceded, "The evidence from Carmel is far from conclusive,” when reporters caught up with him the next day, that the testimony was “in no way as binding as had been indicated in unofficial reports.” He meant newspaper dispatches which unequivocally proclaimed the evangelist had been absolutedly identified as Mrs. Mclntire. Keyes countered that the evidence “failed to stand up under closer scrutiny,” and confided, “Our evidence from the north collapsed” (all quotes from Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1926, part |, page 1). The Times’ banner headlines screeched, “KEYES DROPS M'PHERSON QUIZ.”
A document which arrived on Monday, August 2, at Keyes’ office apparently helped confirm Keyes’ determination to drop the whole case. The mail service in 1926 apparently was faster than today’s, for an affidavit executed in Chicago on July 31 by Kenneth G. Ormiston, before attorney Edward H.S. Martin, reached the District Attorney on the 2nd, fulfilling a promise which arrived by telegraph at Keyes’ office on July 31. The day before that Mrs. McPherson had received a Western Union Telegram, filed at 9:55 a.m. Chicago time, with the following message: “SWORN STATEMENT TRUTH CONCERNING CARMEL INCIDENT CLEARING YOU ENROUTE. DEEPLY REGRET RYANS HORRIBLE ERROR.” The sender was K.G. Ormiston. That same Friday, Asa Keyes received a mysterious telegram “BELLE OWENS” who apparently never was traced, Her wire advised, “THE WOMAN WITH MCINTIRE AT CARMEL WAS NOT AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON BUT MY SISTER WHO IS HURRYING HOME FROM THE EAST TO EXPLAIN.”
Asa Keyes studied Ormiston’s affidavit carefully. He admitted he had occupied the Carmel cottage, but denied his companion was Mrs. McPherson. He called the woman “Miss X.” Not until January would the radio man offer aname for his paramour, “Elizabeth Tovey, a nurse from Seattle.” Ormiston outlined his movements during the Carmel cottage period and related the incident when Wallace Moore of the Santa Barbara Morning Press stopped him on May 29. Ormiston quoted what he claimed were the reporter's exact words, “| know Mrs. McPherson personally, having covered her meetings when in another paper, and can see that your companion is not she.”
Keyes evidently credited Ormiston’s affidavit and intended to quit the case. Ryan exploded indignantly anda rift developed between chief and deputy. Ryan just may himself have leaked rumors which circulated to the effect that high civic officials had pressured the District Attorney. It was a known fact that Mayor Cryer and President of the City Council Boyle Workman, as well as others in the city administration, were very friendly toward the evangelist. And on Sunday night, August 1, the wife of Superior Court Judge Carlos Hardy had announced from the Temple pulpit that her husband was devoting ail his energies when off the bench to vindicating Sister, a statement which the judge modified considerably when notified concerning it. However, at the time his wife spoke, he was absent from the Temple doing some work on the case!
Of course, there was no pressure from “upstairs,” as the subsequent resumption of the case proves. Mrs. McPherson's friends were so confident of her innocence that they felt she could only be vindicated the more if the investigation continued, which is in very fact what happened although the media misrepresented. and ignored that vindication, preferring to rehash the exploded innuendos.
Keyes and Ryan clashed over the disposition of the case. Then on Tuesday morning, August 3, the District Attorney conferred with Mrs. McPherson's attorneys and Judge Bardin from Salinas. Bardin challenged Keyes that he, Bardin, could overturn any alleged evidence against the evangelist which the investigators had brought from Carmel, and that he would do so if necessary in court. “The leading citizens of Carmel! take no stock in the story,” the former judge insisted. “Public sentiment there favors Mrs. McPherson decidedly.” Keyes already knew that.
Bardin laid massive evidence before the District Attorney supporting his exoneration of the evangelist, including an affidavit, whose text have been unable to locate, sworn by John E. Considine, a resident of Monterey, who testified that he had, while working on a nearby house in Carmel, seen the Mcintires seven or eight times and that Mrs. McIntire could not have been Mrs. McPherson. Considine described the woman as between 23 and 25 years of age, about 5 feet 7 inches tall (3% inches taller than Mrs. McPherson), weighing about 135 pounds (somewhat lighter than the evangelist at that time), and having long, medium blond hair. Mrs. McPherson's hair was auburn and not long.
Bardin also presented to Keyes an affidavit from the only witness in Carmel who had ever seen Mrs. McPherson before. Carpenter Fred Horton, another Monterey resident, swore that he conversed with Mrs. McIntire a bit before 8:00 a.m. on Monday, May 24th. Horton was seeking information about obtaining work on the adjoining property when he called at the Benedict cottage. He testified,
“A woman answered my call at the door, she looked to be not over 25 years of age; she had long hair, which was light blond; we talked for three or four minutes; she at the time was not wearing glasses, but a little fater noticed her in the yard as passed by and she was then wearing glasses which were dark in color; at the time of my call she was dressed in light-colored dress; she talked freely with me, and stated that she was a stranger there, and had nothing to do with the work going on next door.
“Previous to coming to California, resided in the State of Oklahoma; saw Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson in Oklahoma several times, and have heard her on one occasion conduct and talk at one of her meetings;! am absolutely positive that the woman saw and talked with at the Benedict cottage at the time when called there on May 24, 1926, was not Mrs. McPherson.”
Judge Bardin’s partner, Russell Scott, notarized the Horton affidavit. But the authorities never gave this testimony the weight deserved by the only witness testifying from Carmel who had ever seen the evangelist before July of 1926.
Judge Bardin also advised Asa Keyes in that August 3 meeting that already one of the Carmel witnesses was trying to shake down Sister, offering favorable testimony for a price! Shades of Agua Prieta's Presidente Boubion!
Later in the day, Asa Keyes had to appear with Ryan before the grand jury and outline the Carmel situation, The grand jury insisted the investigation continue. The Times reported that Keyes assumed a pessimistic attitude toward the Carmel “evidence” before that panel. Apparently there were discrepancies between the District Attorney's statements there and Joe Ryan's. Reporters waiting outside the chambers heard loud and heated exchanges but could not decipher the disagreements. The two prosecutors laid out all the physical evidence before the jurors. And would you believe it, the grocery slips disappeared? They vanished right from under the nose of the District Attorney! Ryan looked fora scapegoat, and when someone remembered that Mrs. E.A. Holmes had excused herself to go to the ladies rest room, shortly after she was seen studying the grocery slips which Ryan was passing around. The room was searched, but the missing evidence was not found. Ryan later suggested the slips had been flushed down the sewer. For a while a cloud hovered over Mrs. Holmes, but she steadfastly denied the shenanigan, and an investigation subsequently proved she had never had any connection with Angelus Temple. Mother Kennedy, who by this time was fed up with what she believed was Ryan’s and Cline's chicanery, lashed out with a suggestion that Ryan could have done away with the slips, an unlikely charge since photostats remained in the possession of the authorities. Meanwhile, Mrs. McPherson had letters from handwriting experts disputing that the slips had been written by her.
Judge Keetch, the’magistrate to whom the grand jury was responsible, had not attended the panel's sessions, but he flared with anger as reports of supposedly secret proceedings were leaked to the press. Keetch issued a sharp statement denouncing the violations, then continued to comment caustically on the investigations Ryan prosecuted
164 after the first grand jury hearing:
“A short time ago the grand jury was permitted to make a simple report that the evidence before it was insufficient on which to find an indictment. Almost immediately thereafter, the columns of the press were filled with the details of the activities of a deputy district attorney, who appeared to be acting in the role of investigator in another city. Apparently without waiting to communicate his findings, whatever they may have been, to his chief (Keyes), he is credited with having given the world the statement that ‘the mystery is solved,’ with.such details as constituted a bald and sordid accusation against a woman who has insisted that a crime has been committed against her.”
Two days after the August 3 grand jury session, Keyes fired Ryan from the case, demoting him to prosecuting minor thugs. Ryan's insubordination made the step necessary. Meanwhile, doggerel continued regaling Ryan from would-be poets. One of the “masterpieces” which were sent to Angelus Temple was entitled “Mystery Clues”:
“A woman's been seen with the ‘man in the moon,’ Never mind, we will fix her identity soon; Some say, this woman has lots of red hair, And they're sure for a time that she’s been living there.
“Hurry Ryan! Get into your big motor car, Rush up to the moon — it's not very far, But heavens! The moon has a veil o’er its face, And a pair of big goggles has dropped into space.
"Go get your subpoenas as fast as you dare, No doubt you'll find plenty of witnesses there; With field glass and telescope search like a man, Look for a bathing suit and a tin can.
“Do not be afraid, there’s no kidnappers there, Only a woman with lots of red hair; It’s dangerous to mix up with criminals — quite, But one woman alone can’t make much of a fight.
“On this clue will we work — it is not a bit funny, But in order to live we must earn our money. So we'll work and we'll put this thing over fine, With the help and endorsement of Father-in-law Cline.”
Throughout the long ordeal of charges and innuendos Mrs. McPherson remained charitable. Most of the diatribes Lately Thomas put into her mouth were distortions or exaggerations of statements by Sister. As she stated at the time, “When my friends urged me to fight back, recalled some very good advice a judge gave me after the bad publicity commenced. ‘It's very hard to outstink a skunk,’ he said, ‘so don't try.’”” Was that Judge Carlos Hardy?
The mystery of missing grocery slips continued to titillate the public, until on August 12 the grand jurors voted confidence in the accused Mrs. Holmes and recessed for two weeks. The expectation that Mrs. Holmes might resign following her vindication did not materialize. On September 2, Judge Keetch dismissed the grand jury.
Toward the end of August, however, help had arrived in Los Angeles for Mrs. McPherson in countering the Carmel charges. Landlord H.C. Benedict visited the evangelist at Angelus Temple. He and Sister and her counsel met for half-an-hour, during which conversation Benedict stated that the evangelist did not resemble the woman he met as Mrs. Mcintire. The tandlord declared that he was positive Sister was not Mrs. Mcintire. The next day Benedict told Asa Keyes the same thing. The stenographic report of that interview reads:
Question: "You have seen Mrs. McPherson, understand?" (by Keyes)
Answer: “Yes, sir, saw her yesterday. She showed me all around the plant (Angelus Temple), and explained what she was attempting to do, and walked around through the park with her, and then back.” (by Benedict).
Question: “Would you be able to say she was the woman that was there?” (at Carmel).
Answer: “| could not.”
Question “You could not?”
Answer: “No, sir, decidedly!”
Question: "And she does not impress you as being the woman?"
Answer: “No, sir.”
Question: “You never told Mr. Ryan at any time that you could positively identify her?” (Apparently Ryan had reported such an identification to Keyes, just as he'd lied about Collins at the Salinas garage).
Answer: “I certainly did not! Ryan tried his damndest to get me to say could identify her, and said could not.”
Question: “He showed you Mrs. McPherson’s pictures, or photographs?”
Answer: “Yes, sir. He had a squad of them up there, and none of them looked anything like her (Mrs. Mcintire), as remember. Let me tell you something more. They have been pulling these photographs and saying, ‘Do you recognize this?’ and another one, ‘Do you recognize this?’ "
Question: “Your best judgment is, from your recollection and memory, that Mrs. McPherson, the lady that you saw yesterday, is not the one, as far as you can tell, or do you want to say you don't know?”
Answer: “I have seen Mrs. McPherson, and there is nothing about her that leads me to believe that she is the woman that was there.”
Mr. Benedict had penned on the back of a profile of the evangelist, “There isn't a thing about this photo that suggests tome ‘Mrs. McIntire’ who occupied my cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea the latter part of May 1926.” And he wrote on the back of a front view of Sister, ‘This photo does not in any way suggest to me ‘Mrs. Mcintire’ who occupied my cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea in May 1926.” Both statements were dated August 17, 1926.
Benedict's testimony should have ended the matter, but it didn't. And while, during cross-examination in the preliminary hearing, the prosecution established that the pictures Benedict so marked were taken in Rochester, New York about five years earlier, the fact remained that the pictures Ryan flashed on Benedict were 1926 photos!
Objective reflection would seem almost to demolish entirely the likelihood that Aimee Semple McPherson would initiate an escapade of the nature alleged, staging a drowning stunt to cover a tryst three hundred miles up the California coast. So far as leaving “evidence” behind in the cottage, no one with a tenth of the evangelist's brains would be so simple as to abandon allegedly damning articles. The newspapers, during Sister's absence, were full of her pictures. Rumors located her in dozens of locales, but never once at Carmel. Mrs. McPherson scored in behalf of her own story when she challenged, “Why didn't they (the Carmel “witnesses”) come forward while was missing and claim the $25,000 reward that was offered for me?” That challenge is unanswerable.
Mrs. Kennedy, who emphasized over and over again, contrary to some more recent allegations, that nothing in the world could ever make her doubt her daughter's innocence of the Carmel charges, declared, “It has been demonstrated many times that Mrs. McPherson cannot be anywhere any length of time without being completely recognized. She is too well known — probably the best known woman in the world —to be anywhere or to make any attempt of that kind. For anyone to suggest that Mrs. McPherson could stroll up and down the lanes or streets of a little seaside resort in California and that for ten days she attended to ordinary household duties and business without being immediately recognized and her whereabouts reported, is absolutely ridiculous.” The effects of the bad publicity troubled Mrs. McPherson's children desperately. Daughter Roberta tried to withdraw into a shell. She didn’t want to go anywhere except to the Temple services where the congregation loved and trusted her mother. The girl cowered in the cellar whenever reporters and investigators descended on the parsonage. Roberta's younger brother grew most resentful of District Attorney Asa Keyes’ smears against his mother. One day Sister caught him wringing his hands and muttering, “| would like to go out and kill that man.” “You must not say that,” his horrified mother remonstrated. “You are a Christian.” Rolf rejoined, “I know shouldn't feel that way, but can’t help it.” Provocations like this prompted the evangelist to dictate an open letter to Asa Keyes which, according to the notation in pencil at the top, was never sent or released. Evidently Mrs. McPherson had second thoughts about expressing herself so forcibly against a public official whom she felt she had to honor because of his position, regardless of how despicable he might seem in the performance of his office. The tone of the letter sounds somewhat restrained in consequence of the severe provocation. But Sister suppressed it after dictating it. The evangelist advised the district attorney that reliable sources had quoted him as saying that he “did not believe a damned word” of her story about the kidnapping. She took the official to task for leaking unfavorable evidence against her to the press, while keeping concealed testimony he confronted which confirmed her story. As she put it, “When evidence began to come in in support of my story, all teaks stopped and no news got out and the policy of silence was rigidly adhered to for the first time. Wonderful what a firm hand you obtained all at once, after your powerless efforts before (to keep matters secret), wasn't it? Could it be that the leak was Mr. Ryan, and that he leaked just what he wanted to leak?” A paragraph later Mrs. McPherson reiterated, “The policy of silence seems to be maintained in ail things when am to the good in any way.”
The evangelist had Keyes dead to rights on this charge, for he managed to keep out of the press the statement of Mr. Benedict, the Carmel landlord, who insisted Mrs. McIntire was not Mrs. McPherson. Sister wrote, You have had in your possession for some time the uncontrovertable evidence that was not the woman at Carmel.” Not until the press got wind of this circumstance, which came as a complete surprise to the papers, did Keyes admit grudgingly that he had this statement. “Why did you not come out with headlines and try to clear my name?” Sister challenged. “Why did you not print Mr. Benedict's story in scare lines as you did the minute your deputized men who worked for you reported to you their ‘air tight case’?” The evangelist reminded Keyes, “When Mr. Benedict came and saw me he said, ‘That is not the woman saw at Carmel. could not be mistaken. Mrs. McPherson was never at our cottage’.” Sister expressed her belief that Benedict's disclaimer “was no surprise to you, Mr. Keyes. You know very well that have never been there” (at Carmel).
Mrs. McPherson concluded this letter, which was not used in the same vein:
“It is a strange thing, Mr. Keyes, that as long as things were against me the case was wide open and you had no power whatsoever over the leak in your office; but the moment evidence began to come in for me and the real truth came out, and Mr. Benedict, the owner of the cottage of Carmel said definitely that it was not who was in the cottage, you suddenly were able to keep one little word of the evidence you had from going out of your office and to the newspapers and to the world.”
The press gave token coverage to Benedict's dis-claimer, but nothing comparable to the space devoted to witnesses who “identified” the evangelist in Carmel. And so far as know, the write-ups of the case in the after years never mentioned Benedict's statement, with the sole exception of “The Vanishing Evangelist” which alludes to it briefly. If Benedict had lived, and if the case against Mrs. McPherson had gone to Superior Court trial, the Carmel cottage owner would have been one of the evangelist's main witnesses testifying that someone else was Mrs. George Mcintire. But the commotion attendant upon the case contributed to a heart condition which hospitalized Benedict in a sanitarium in Glendale and took his life later in Carmel on November 20, 1926. This was a severe loss to Mrs. McPherson and Mrs. Kennedy.
The Carmel charges echoed incessantly in the press through August and early September. Naturally some newsmen used them as a springboard for expanded exposes. The San Diego Herald published a scurrilous attack on Mrs. McPherson, which resulted in criminal prosecutions and convictions in California and Missouri, at least.
It strikes some as incredible, fifty years later, that any newspaper feature could be so objectionable that cities would suppress its circulation and prosecute distributors of the material in the criminal courts. Libel suits still occur, though rather rarely, but who has heard of a daily newspaper being banned by the police power of the city. Yet, that is what happened in Los Angeles in the summer of
The Los Angeles Times of August 25, 1926 headlined a dispatch, “NEWS VENDERS FOUND GUILTY.” The lead paragraph informed:
“Four Los Angeles news venders were found guilty last night on charges of selling obscene literature because of the sale of the San Diego Herald con-taining an article written about Aimee Semple McPherson. The verdict was returned in Municipal Judge Staftord’s court by a jury of six men and six women after two hours and thirty minutes’ deliberation.”
Deputy Prosecutor Reames took only fifteen minutes to put on his case against the four defendants, John C. Brooks, Manuel Goodman, Sam J. Steinberg, and Harry Smith. He castigated the newspaper they sold as “a vile, filthy, yellow sheet.” Reames only called two witnesses, officers who testified that they caught the venders selling the issue. At first the paper sold for 15¢ in Los Angeles, but the price shot up to 25¢ when it became harder to obtain.
Defense counsel Milton Golden had promised a “sen-sational defense.” When it came turn to put on his case, he called Aimee Semple McPherson to the witness stand. She entered the courtroom through a back door, accompanied by her attorney Roland Rich Wooley. The Court issued an ultimatum to Golden not to question her concerning the contents of the Herald article or about details of her disappearance, neither of which, he felt, were material to the issues at trial.
Sister appeared at ease and composed when she took the stand. Golden asked, ‘What is your business or occu-pation?” She replied, “Evangelist and minister of the gospel.” Golden queried, “Pastor of Angelus Temple?” She said, “Yes.” The defense attorney's next question inquired, “Do you know whether an article written in the San Diego Herald is obscene or indecent?" Prosecutor Reames objected here that such a question called for “expert” testimony and for a conclusion of the witness. Judge Stafford sustained the objection. Attorney Golden then dismissed Mrs. McPherson from the witness stand. A few minutes later she was overheard saying in the judge’s chambers, "My, that was short and sweet.”
In his closing argument to the jury, Prosecutor Reames bitterly denounced the defense for calling Mrs. McPherson as a witness “to parade her before the curious” and for
“making a sideshow” of the trial. Reames declaimed, “Mrs. McPherson has been persecuted as no man or woman ever has if her story is true. She is the victim of a vile, insidious thing like this paper.” Reames, according to the Times, “arraigned her doubters alike" (Part II, page 1).
The judge ordered the defendants to appear the next afternoon at 3 o'clock for sentencing.
Judge Stafford elected to fine the convicts rather than jail them, announcing that “the real guilty party has not yet been brought to trial,” an allusion to the author or publisher of the article, which the judge charged “presents an unjust and malicious charge against an unfortunate woman.” Stafford Claimed that Sister had been “recklessly slandered without the positive proof of any indiscretion.” He imposed fines of $100 each and gave a backhanded rebuke to defense counsel, “She was brought into court, the court believes, in view of the questions asked, of further publicizing her and the Contents of this article. A philosopher has said that’a lie given twenty-four hours start is immortal,’ and the court is inclined to think that nothing can ever rectify the wrong done in this matter. The court feels that it would be remiss in its duty if, by the judgment, it did not indicate that this paper which contained this obscene article should not be further circu-larized within the jurisdiction of this court.” (Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1926, part Il, page 1).
Evidently Mrs. McPherson never saw the Herald article. After the jury verdict she stated that she did not have “any idea what the article was about and for that reason, have no comment whatever to make” (Times, August 25, 1926, p. 1, part Il).
The lies Judge Stafford denounced, of course, had more than a 24 hour start. Other papers throughout the country reprinted the San Diego Herald article. An International News Service dispatch, datelined:- St. Louis on January 14, 1927, reported that editor Harry Turner, editor of the local maga-zine, “Much Ado," was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment by Federal Judge Davis for sending improper material through the mails - the Hera/d article he reprinted. The judge also fined the publisher of the magazine, Miss Alice Martin, 1,000.
What would have been the outcome of the preliminary hearing against the evangelist if either Judge Stafford or
Judge Davis had presided over it?