“Hear the Hoax Woman tell the truth about the McPherson case," a barker touted before a booth on the Long Beach Pike, an amusement area with a circus atmosphere. This was a short time after District Attorney Keyes, on January 10, 1927, dismissed the case against Aimee Semple McPherson, mainly because, he complained, this hoax woman kept changing her testimony and contradicting previous confessions and charges. Keyes learned, to his chagrin, that the woman upon whom he depended most to obtain a conviction against the evangelist, was an incorrigible liar.
She may have just been a liar lusting for limelight, but the Temple came to believe Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff was a “plant,” a deliberate frame-up groomed from the beginning to discredit Mrs. McPherson.
Sister may or may not have been right in assuming that had she followed Captain Cline's urgings and hired attorney Paul Skenk, the grand jury investigation would not have turned out to be a witch-hunt against her. But there can be no doubt whatsoever that the conspiracy charges and preliminary hearing never would have proceeded had it not been for the shenanigans of Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff.
Mrs. Wiseman, as she introduced herself at first, arrived on the Temple scene like a promised deliverer. She marched into an office on July 31, 1926 just as Asa Keyes was making noises like dropping the investigation and discounting the Carmel testimony. The timing was significant if, indeed, the hoax woman was a plant engineered to continue the harassment of the evangelist. Lorraine told Blanche Rice, “I know who the woman at Carmel really was.” Astonished but elated, Mrs. Rice took the stranger immediately to Mrs. Kennedy. Stenographer Mae Waldron was present and took notes at this first interview, but Mrs. McPherson was not. Attorney Veitch came in and challenged, “Are you after money?" and Lorraine Wiseman denied it emphatically, volunteering to pay her own expenses in substantiating her story.
According to Mae Waldron’s notes, Mrs. Wiseman stated that Miss X was Belle Owens, the sender of the mysterious telegram mentioned above. But on her second visit, the woman claimed Miss X was her sister. This discrepancy alone should have been sufficient to alert the Temple leaders to the likelihood of fraud. Here is one of the few occasions where Mrs. Kennedy’s normal astuteness broke down. Probably the circumstance which overcame Mother's suspicions was the Wiseman woman’s earnest professions that she would see Asa Keyes, Judge Keetch, Mr. Benedict, and other principals in the case. She insisted Benedict would recognize her, although she was not herself “Miss X.” She stated that nobody at Carmel saw her sister, who was confined inside the cottage ill, but that she - Lorraine - was there caring for the convalescent and had been the person the witnesses noticed.
Lorraine Wiseman did in fact contact the people she professed she would. She came back to the Temple claiming that Benedict had really ‘recognized her, but that he was too great a gentleman to admit it. Benedict, of course, from the first knew the Wiseman woman was a phony.
Mrs. Wiseman made contacts with numerous friends of the evangelist and came often to the Parsonage to report on her progress in proving her claims. Because of the services every night at the Temple, interviews lingered late into the night, necessitating sometimes Mae Waldron, the ste-nographer, staying at the parsonage. On two evenings Mrs. McPherson yielded to Mrs. Wiseman's entreaties, based on fears the woman expressed for her safety (she claimed attempts were being made on her life because of her attempts to exonerate Sister), and invited her to spend the night at the parsonage. Mrs. McPherson gave up her own been to Lorraine, personally changed sheets and pitlow slips, then proceeded to sleep ina hamm i behind the kitchen.. ee
Meanwhile, the Wiseman woman managed to get her sister to appear before Judge Bardin in Salinas and swear affidavit that she, Vera Kimball, was the Carmel Miss X. Later in court this sister denied she had appeared, but the Judge and others swore she was the one.
From the first, Sister's attorneys believe Lorraine Wiseman was a fraud and advised against using her. Mother overruled them, and Sister concurred, because they felt that if her story was true it would blow the case against them to smithereens. “What a silly goose was,” Mrs. McPherson later wrote Judge Bardin, promising that from henceforth she would be a cooperative client and let the lawyers call the shots.
; Mrs. Wiseman suggested that Sister pose with her for pictures which would demonstrate a strong resemblance between them, thus making possible the Carmel witnesses’ mistaken identifications. Lorraine ‘studiously affected the evangelist's hair style, supplementing her own hair with switches.
Mrs. Kennedy, of course, sent Mrs. Wiseman to Judge Hardy, who also wanted to believe her testimony and thus did not press his personal suspicions to the limits, which wisdom would have dictated. The Temple paid Lorraine's expenses for several excursions, extracting receipts, of course, which later proved the money was no hush money.
The Wiseman woman did not impress the press. Even if she had been the genuine article the newspapers would likely have scouted her story, for the accusations against the evangelist made better and more saleable copy. But this party was decidedly vulnerable, as investigations uncovered.
Meanwhile, however, Lorraine strung a good line and stuck to her guns. She assured Sister, “| have come forward because |.must to clear your name. would be lost and go to hell if didn’t.”
But she did go to jail. f she had not insisted on badgering the newspapers she might have escaped arrest. Sister and Mother did their best to encourage Lorraine not to contact the press, but after she told her story, Mrs. Kennedy got on the telephone and pleaded with editors not to to publish the account, as employees of the papers conceded. The Los Angeles papers refused to bury the story. But the Times began an intensive investigation, and its staff dug up quite a bit of dirt about the lady, including the fact that Lorraine had passed bad checks. The Times got her arrested on fraudu-lent check charges at about midnight on September 10th.
Mrs. Wiseman dispatched a desperate plea to Angelus Temple to put up bail. “Nothing doing,” Mother and Sister refused. This refusal ought to carry some weight concerning the good faith of the Temple in dealing with Wiseman. Had there been any conspiracy or collusion, the bail would certainly have been produced post haste. Sister's attorneys turned over to Keyes the note demanding $3,000.
Wiseman couldn't get bail from Mrs. McPherson, but the Examiner posted the sizeable sum in return for a scoop on her alleged ‘‘confession” which charged that Mrs.
McPherson had coached her to impersonate her, and that the whole “Miss X” identification business was a Temple engineered conspiracy.
; Actually, the Examiner footed the bill to bring Mrs. Wiseman’s sister down from Oakland, and probably guaran-teed the expenses and fees for Attorney S.S. Hahn to represent the hoax woman as well. The sister arrived from Oakland late in the evening of September 12 and Lorraine arrived from jail at the Examiner offices at about 10:30 p.m. Just about every newspaperman on the Examiner staff was, on hand for the interview, she would later testify in court. A crowd of Times reporters was trying to crash the gate at the Examiner offices but they failed, much to the satisfaction of Mrs. Wiseman who could gloat over the discomfiture of the rival paper which had exposed her.
The terms under which S.S. Hahn undertook to represent Mrs. Wiseman, if she told the truth about the initial interview in court, which on the basis of her future retractions and revisions on other matters makes virtually every thing she said at any time suspect of prevarication, would have been unethical, to say the least. According to Lorraine, Hahn advised that he would not attempt her defense unless she told the truth, but then the attorney stipulated to her - or would “coached” be a better word? - what he thought the truth was. She quoted Hahn as telling her that she had been working for hypocrites, fakers, people who should be in the penitentiary. Hahn described the evangelist and her mother as “robbers, taking other people's money,” and continued, as Wiseman reported the conversation, that “unless did tell the truth that he would expose the most of it as he knew it.” Mrs. Wiseman responded to this ultimatum predictably. She said, “I told him rather than lose him would do it.”
Mrs. McPherson's attorneys, who had wanted nothing to do with Wiseman from the beginning, immediately set out assembling evidence to shoot down the hoax woman's charges. Really they did not need to work very hard, because
Lorraine changed her story almost every time she told it, in marked contrast to Sister’s unshakeable narration of her ordeal, which did not waver ever in a single detail.
While the Examiner was more or less stuck with Wiseman's story and committed at least for a while to accepting it as credible, other Los Angeles newspapers subjected the woman's past to careful scrutiny. It wasn't difficult for their reporters to dig up dirt. The press discovered that the woman's husband had divorced her for “ungovern-able lying.” Reporters confirmed a rumor that once, in order to obtain fifty dollars as alleged funeral expenses, Lorraine had advertised falsely in a newpaper that her only son had died. Records were produced proving that Lorraine had once been committed to a state insane asylum. And investigators uncovered a trail of bad checks she had passed in the San Francisco bay area. No prosecutions, however, had ensued because Mr. Sielaff had made them good.
Key Temple witnesses contradicting Lorraine's ‘“con-fession” were to be Mae Waldron, who kept stenographic records of the visits of the hoax woman to the parsonage, and Attorney Roland Rich Wooley. Mae could contradict - and document with notes her statements - numerous details of Lorraine's charges, thereby creating suspicion concerning the veracity of the hoax woman in other matters. The stenographer categorically denied that Mrs. Kennedy had edited materially statements dictated by Mrs. Wiseman, though Lorraine incessantly asked for suggestions. Mother's only advice pertained to grammar andin no way affected the sense of the statements.
Mae Waldron also could swear that Lorraine phoned the photographer who took the pictures of her and Sister together and gave him instructions about retouching them. Mrs. Wiseman ordered him to make the images “as nearly alike as possible.” Photographer Fisher could confirm that Mrs. Wiseman herself picked up the photos which she was using and which Sister never distributed.
Indeed, the evangelist and her mother, while hoping Wiseman was genuine, kept doing their best to keep her story secret while attempts to contirm or discredit it proceeded. When they could not dissuade Lorraine from releasing her first statement to the press, Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. McPherson spent practically the whole day trying to get the papers to withhold the story, according to Mae Waldron who heard the phone calls to the several newspaper offices. The Temple leaders, said the stenographer, were worried about publication before the details could be verified. Mrs. Reichart, a Temple worker, quoted a conversation she had with Mrs. McPherson in which the evangelist expressed her disturbed mind over Mrs. Wiseman and said she didn't need her testimony and would be better off without her. This was before the “confession,” of course.
The Temple's attorneys also obtained testimony from Notary Public F. M. Spinning, who sealed affidavits Mrs. Wiseman swore to, that in his presence Mrs. Kennedy told Lorraine decisively that she wanted her to make her own statement of her own free will, and that the Statement was not to be made at the Temple. Ralph Jordan of the Examiner also told them that he would testify that Mrs. Kennedy made efforts to have the Examiner withhold Wiseman’s first story.
Lorraine’s charges against Mrs. McPherson and Mrs. Kennedy furnished a catalyst which precipitated prosecution of the Temple leaders, Asa Keyes had conceded reluctantly since July 31st that the Carmel evidence Ryan had amassed would not be sufficient to convict the evangelist, and Benedict's disclaimer confirmed that conclusion. Ryan and Cline were now both out of the picture, except as potential witnesses. The buck stopped at the District Attorney's desk now, more than ever. But strong pressures intensified now that a witness was willing to swear that the Temple leaders suborned her perjury. Without Wiseman there could have been no prosecution. When her “confession” collapsed, Keyes’ statement in January conceded as much. But while he credited Lorraine's current testimony, the District Attorney had, or thought he had, evidence enough to get a conspiracy conviction. He filed a complaint against the alleged con-spirators, known and unknown, including Lorraine Wiseman-Sielaff who would turn state’s evidence. Because the grand jury was not in session he could not ask for an indictment. So the matter went instead to a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court. An inexperienced young judge would be called upon to decide whether the case against Mrs. McPherson and Mrs. Kennedy and others would go to jury trial in Superior Court. More experienced judges managed to avoid the assignment, which Judge Samuel R. Blake had to hear in Division #2 of Municipal Court.