On the day after Aimee Semple McPherson's reappearance monopolized newspaper front pages, friends of Santa Barbara astrologer J.H. Kennedy (no relation to Minnie) crowed that the local authority had called the turn in the McPherson case.
lt seems Kennedy had cast a horoscope for the evangelist on the morning of June 4th, twenty days earlier.On the basis of the horoscope the astrologer asserted, according to the Los Angeles Evening Express, ‘that the Los Angeles evangelist was not dead and that she was held a prisoner and would be returned to her home inside of three months.” The Associated Press dispatch quoted Kennedy as Stating that Sister was either “dazed or under the influence of dope,” and that she was a prisoner of someone who used dope or was connected with a dope ring. Kennedy added that when she returned “‘she will have some stories to tell of her experiences that will rival or surpass the wildest imaginative fiction.”
Did the "stars" make a lucky guess? At any rate, Sister came home three weeks — not three months — after the alleged “revelation.”
On Friday, June 18, someone mailed the “Avengers” ransom letter on a train between El Paso, Texas and Tucson, Arizona. The post office did faster deliveries in 1926 than it does now, for the missive was delivered at Angelus Temple the very next day. The inexpertly typewritten letter, addressed to Minnie Kennedy, struck Mother as a phony when she read it for the first time at the beginning of the following week — whether on Monday or Tuesday never was absolutely established. The volume of mail deluging Angelus Temple prevented speedy reading of all the letters.
Mrs. Kennedy glared at the length, two-paged message:
“Exactly one month has elapsed since ‘we grabbed Aimee McPherson and now is the time for action. We nearly bungled it once, but we've moved her to a safe place now and have doped out a plan of ransom payment that is absolutely safe to us. You won't be able to trap us if you act in bad faith. We doubt if you will attempt any funny business though when you are convinced this is no hoax or Sunday School picnic and that we really have your daughter. Do what you like with this letter (we realize you got to use it to raise the dough) but the next one must be kept absolutely to yourself and its instructions followed exactly or there will be grave consequences to your daughter.
“First, in order that you may know without doubt that Aimee is alive and in our hands, we are enclosing a lock of her hair. We tried to get answers to your silly questions but because she knows about the halt million ransom she won't answer them, Says she would rather die than cripple the church to such an extent. But before she knew what it was all about we tricked her into a couple fool answers something like, ‘A woven wire between two apple trees, and the hound was black and named Gyp.’ She shut up then realizing what we were after but if you insist a lighted cigar against a bare foot often gets results. Her middle right hand finger has a scar on it you ought to recogenize, suppose we chop it off and send it along to kill your doubts? We've got her alright and trust by now you'll believe it and know that we mean business. She has been taken good care of by a woman who has been with her constantly, an ex-nurse who knows her business. She is suffering with hysteria and the heat and is pretty weak but physically and mentally there's nothing wrong with her that won't mend soon once_ she’s home. But though we've treated her respectfully in fairness to her position and value to us, what the future holds for her is entirely up to you. Our alternative is to sell her to old Felipe of Mexico City. We are sick and tired of her infernal preaching, she spouts Scripture in answer to everything.
“We took her for two reasons—: First to wreck that damned Temple and second: to collect a tidy half million. We have held her for a month during which time her name and standing have been just about ruined. We had to fight hard to kill that ‘drowning’ idea of yours but a little palm-oit brought forth plenty reports of her being seen all over the place and the
They seem to have an axe to grind too and sure helped us grand. You've taken some of our girls, damn you, and given us many a jolt, but guess we are square now, eh?
“Now as to the ransom. We've been stumped for a method of collecting that would be safe, because you Spilled it to the police before. It's plain no ordinary methods will work with you so we've sure doped out a corker, and while it has taken time and delayed things a bit it is apple pie for us. You got a week to raise the money, and on June 25th you will get the final letter with the instructions how to proceed to get the money into our hands.
“It might interest you to know just what happened on the beach a month ago today. Well we had inside workers who kept us informed as to her whereabouts, and that day she went to the beach looked like our chance. We watched until she was alone, then a man and woman stepped up to her with a heart-breaking tale of a deathly sick baby in a car across the street, and that Mother Kennedy had sent them down to the beach to find Aimee and ask her to pray for the kid. She kicked and insisted on going to the hotel to dress first but the argument of a dying kid together with the use of a long coat the woman carried persuaded her to come as she was. When she got into the car to Pray for the imaginary kid a quick shove, a gag with Some dope on it and a couple of blankets thrown over her, and away we went. Simple, wasn't it?
“Now get busy. Have the $500,000 ready in big bills, watch for the final letter of instructions which will reach you next Friday. That letter you must keep absolutely confidential but you will alright when you read it. Follow the instructions exactly and on that same night you will have your Aimee back and we'll have the dough. If anything slips Felipe gets her.
The letter signed off, “Till Friday,” with the typewritten signature, “The Avengers.”
Mrs. Kennedy didn't put an ounce of faith in this strange document. It's text leaves no room for a vacillating verdict about Aimee Semple McPherson. You have to choose between believing her Story of the disappearance or disbelieving it entirely, for there is no middle ground. A question which forces attention thusis, can it be conceivable that someone who had been doing good on the scale which brought the evangelist worldwide acclaim would suddenly turn bad and deliberately lie to so massive an extent. Those who knew Mrs. McPherson well dismissed the latter alternative as unthinkable. Those who knew about her, but did not approve her ministry in many cases, believed her because they could not believe for a moment that if she had invented a tale it would sound so incredible as the story she told and stuck to without modification. She wasn’t stupid.
When Mrs. McPherson related the story of her ordeal she described the actual abduction along the lines already reported. As the car raced away from Ocean Park she drifted into unconsciousness. Hours later, she supposed, she awakened in a bed, sick at her stomach. She vomited. A woman held a basin and bent over her prone form. “Where am |?” she muttered. The surroundings seemed strange. Wallpaper covered the walls, so she knew she was not at home in her room. The foot of the bed was enameled. This was different too.
Her first impression was that she had been involved ina car accident. Perhaps she was confined to a hospital. She blinked her eyes and cried again, “Where am 1?” The woman hovering above did not answer. “What has happened? Where am |?” she repeated. Instead of responding, the woman hollered, “All right, Steve, come in.” Not only Steve but another man barged into the room. Now things began coming back to the evangelist's mind. She remembered the pair at the beach who'd implored prayers for a dying baby. She remembered the driver who sat at the wheel of the car. These must be the same people.
The driver remained in the background, but Steve came to the bedside. “What is going on?” Sister demanded. But her mind was still hazy and she couldn't understand exactly what Steve was saying. Eventually she understood him to be boasting that they had finally snatched her after planning the kidnapping for some time. “You are being held for ransom,” Steve blurted. “We are going to get that damned Temple.” Mrs. McPherson would later state, ‘I definitely remember that they used the expression ‘get.’”
She no longer was wearing the green swimsuit, but found herself clothed instead with a white cotton nightgown. She struggled to sit up in bed. “! must get back to the
Temple!” she whined. Certainly-this was a horrible joke.
The change in position intensified her nausea. Her head throbbed with pain. “| must get back to the Temple!”
Her captors cackied with laughter. Sister mentioned how worried Mother must be and exclaimed, “I cannot be spared from the Bible School. have examination papers out.”
Steve and Rose (the name the woman gave) and the other man simply sneered. Steve declared, “You will have to forget that. But if you are a good girl maybe you'll get to go home soon.”
When the trio withdrew, Mrs. McPherson staggered over to a window which was boarded up almost to the top. However, the wood offered a few cracks through which she hoped to project a cry for help. Her voice sounded weak when she attempted a yell — “almost as if it were mocking me.” But Steve heard the call from another room, rushed in, grabbed her shoulder and yanked her away from the window. He gave her a good shaking, shouted, “Stop that,” and threw her back on to the bed.
But when she was alone again she repeated the attempt. All three burst into the room this time, corralled her, and Steve Stuffed a gag into her mouth. A few minutes later they took it out, cautioning that a permanent gagging would follow one more outburst.
“Please send word to my family that am alive,” Sister pleaded. The abductors sneered, “You bet we will.”
Mrs. McPherson said she lost all track of time. Having no access to a Bible made each day seem longer. “It was the longest period in my lifetime that had no reading of the Word of God,” she complained. But she did attempt to convert the kidnappers. After her reappearance the District Attorney inquired about this and Sister answered, "I tried to convert them all.” When Asa Keyes asked, “Did you have any success,” she had to admit, “No, I’m afraid didn't.”
Steve seemed to spend a lot of time away from the captivity house. The other man whose name was never mentioned in her presence — and Rose were there almost constantly. Rose slept at the foot of the evangelist's bed on a cot.
After the reappearance, officers asked Mrs. McPherson to describe the appointments of the house. She located her bedin relation to the rest of the furnishings, an old-fashioned dresser and table. In one corner a curtain concealed clothes hung behind it. The ceiling looked plastered, Blue-striped paper with pink flowers climbing up covered the walls. She guessed that it was a two story house for she supposed at times she heard footsteps overhead. “I was never allowed in any other parts of the house than the room with my bed and the bathroom,” Mrs. McPherson said. A door from her room led to the small cubicle with a tub, wash basin, and toilet. Mrs. McPherson's testimony concerning that bathroom was misrepresented subsequently — translated to the crude shack from which she later escaped in the desert. Lately Thomas reproduced a hilariously bawdy poem which teased Deputy District Attorney Joe Ryan about this phantasy. The doggerel reports Mrs. McPherson answering Joe's question about the location of the shack:
“Then Aimee said, ‘Don't doubt me, Joe, That hut's somewhere in Mexico — An adobe hut with a wooden floor, And a flushing toilet, furthermore!” The rhyme continued:
“Joe scratched his head and kind of sighed, And then distrustingly replied (Quite sure that tale was bound to totter): ‘Where in the hell did they get the water?’
“But Aimee wasn't to be caught By Ryan’s sudden, wise onslaught; She shouted, with a burst of glee: ‘They got it from the Holy See!’” (p.106, “Vanishing Evangelist”)
The fact, of course, is that Mrs. McPherson never stated the shack in the Mexican desert from which she escaped —her final place of captivity — had an inside bathroom. The evangelist had grown up on a farm and knew all about rural Sanitation facilities. The bathroom was in the first house where she was held. Someone — accidentally or deliberately — promulgated the fiction that she said it was in the shack. A study of the transcript of the original statement the evangelist made to Cline and Ryan after her reappearance confirms that the bathroom was said to be in the house. But the misrepresentation persists even to present day rehashes of the incident.
At this first place of captivity Mrs. McPherson ate all her meals in her room. Rose usually brought canned foods, but sometimes she prepared boiled potatoes which the evangelist relished.
Mrs. McPherson recalled a certain day when Steve came back from one of his trips. He was in a foul mood. She heard him growling in the other room, “Don't they think we know a damned dick when we see one, even if he is beribboned?” At the time the evangelist had no idea what he could have meant. Not until after her return to the Temple did she learn details of the San Francisco police's follow up of the “Revengers’ ransom letter which her mother dismissed as a hoax. If Steve and Company actually scrawled the letter in question, he was not deceived by the ruse at the hotel, when two detectives wore Temple ribbon-badges and carried a bundle representing the ransom money.
Eventually her captors confided how much ransom they were demanding. The evangelist scoffed, “Why, our people cannot pay that. That's almost as much as our property is worth. Nobody on earth could raise that!”
“Oh, they can raise it all right," Steve announced confidently. “You've got that many people who would givea thousand dollars each to get you back.”
That statement doubtless was true. When the evangelist, however, insisted, “You'll never get it,” they contradicted decisively, “We will get it.”
Nevertheless, the trio betrayed considerable concern over the fact that Mrs. Kennedy could not be shaken from her conclusion that her daughter had drowned. They confided to Mrs. McPherson that they had people at the Temple pretending to be reporters and detectives — people who had insinuated themselves “on the very inside and knew everything that was going on.” Presumably these agents were trying to undermine the drowning conclusion. The evangelist never mentioned this circumstance to the public for many years, for fear people would suspect she was inventing a wild tale.
Though not noted for being particularly observant, Sister tried to make mental notes of details which might help the authorities apprehend the captors once she was released. She was able to give a quite comprehensive description of the two men and Rose to the authorities afterwards. And at times she attempted to elicit from Rose statements which might help an eventual investigation. But the evangelist usually dead-ended in a blind alley: “That's enough, Dearie,” Rose would declare. “We won't go into that, Dearie.” Rose did admit she had been a nurse, and she acted like one, but more like the kind who worked in psychopathic wards restraining the obstreperous or violent. Outside of occasional outbursts betraying frustration in attempts to collect ransom, Steve and his male colleague acted respectfully toward their captive. “There were no insults nor affronts,” she remembered. “Sometimes feel that those folks were almost kinder to me than some of the people had dealings with after made my escape and got away.”
Whether Steve and his crony were Wilson and Miller who contacted blind attorney McKinley in Long Beach on May 31, or whether Wilson and Miller were accomplices of the active kidnappers or “doing their thing” on their own, lying about having the evangelist in captivity, it is a fact, according to Mrs.
McPherson's story of the ordeal, that Rose commenced pumping her for information responsive to the questions Mrs. Kennedy tendered to McKinley and he claimed to have passed on to the pair who engaged him as a go-between with the Temple. Is there any way Steve and Rose could have obtained those questions except from contact with McKinley? Subsequently, Mrs. Kennedy Suggested that the questions got into the newspapers, which if they did would explain Rose's use of them apart from a connection with Miller and Wilson. The disappearance of the “Revengers” letter from the locked secret files of the Los Angeles police department tends credence to the possibility, at feast, that there could have been a leak through the police department. Cline was given by Long Beach detectives a copy of the questions, so the Los Angeles department had them.
Here is one of the several unsolved mysteries of the case, unless Miller and Wilson were Steve and his partner. And if they were, you have the problem of the discrepancy in the amount of money demanded. Steve told Mrs. McPherson they were asking one-half million dollars, the same amount specified in the “Revengers” letter of May 24 and the “Avengers” letter of June 18. But Wilson and Miller asked Mckinley to get them only $25,000, the amount of the reward offer then in force. People who denied Mrs. McPherson’s account and dismissed Wilson and Miller as elements of the alleged conspiracy have an even greater problem with this discrepancy, for if Sister and Mother and others were fabricating a plot, they certainly would have been consistent in the sum of money desiderated for the return of the evangelist.
A possibility of reconciliation of the discrepancy is the contingency that the kidnappers intended to collect the reward, then hold out for the larger ransom. Against this, however, it might be urged that Mrs. Kennedy, having once been burned to the tune of twenty-five grand, would never kick through another nickel, but rather thereafter stubbornly hold to the drowning theory against all odds. But, of course, Steve and Company would not have known that.
Rose put the questions to the evangelist in such a way that at first she didn’t realize she was being grilled. One day when Steve came home Rose commented, “It is certainly hot. A hammock would feel good today.” A moment later she inquired casually, “Do you like hammocks? Did you ever have one?”
Mrs. McPherson replied, “Yes, we had a wire hammock when was a little girl." Rose continued, “Was it on the piazza?” to which the evangelist responded that it was out under an apple tree. A further query elicited the reply that she had slept on it at times.
A bit later Rose asked, “Do you like dogs?” When Sister conceded she did, the nurse continued, “Did you ever have a dog?” The evangelist told her about Gyppy, thus answering her mother’s second question. But just at that moment Sister saw Steve standing in the doorway, sporting a pleased grin. His expression suddenly made Mrs. McPherson suspicious, and she countered, “Why are you asking me these questions?”
Rose tried to pass the matter off as of no consequence, but finally Steve spilled the beans about the interrogation. “If you'll just answer the rest of these questions your old lady will know you're alive and will come through with the money.” The captors then showed Sister part of a newspaper containing a dispatch reporting how Mrs. Kennedy had provided questions for McKinley. Mrs. McPherson's statement later did not divulge whether the paper printed the actual questions or not, nor was this question ever addressed to her by her interrogators, so far as have been able to ascertain.
“I won't answer any more questions,” Sister snapped with determination. “I'll not help them raise the money.”
“Oh, you won't, won't you?” Steve growled. “We'll see about that!” He grabbed her wrist and shoved his cigar down hard against her fingers. The marks of the burns were still visible during the grand jury Hearing in July, and Sister showed them in response to a question by one juror.
“Go ahead,” the evangelist challenged after Steve Stabbed the cigar. He hesitated, then stopped the rough stuff. He even acted a little ashamed.
In the days following, Sister thought she detected anxiety among her captors about how to collect and not get caught. Then Rose came and cut off a lock of her hair. A typewriter clattered in the other room. “It sounded to me that it was being operated by an amateur,” Sister recalled. Steve was still up tight about convincing Mother her daughter was alive. One day he discovered one of the evangelist’s fingers which had a permanent scar where it had been injured during childhood by a corn sickle. He told Rose, whom Mrs. McPherson wondered whether she was his wife, “If the hair won't convince her people, we can send that finger next.” Sister shuddered. She didn't know whether to take Steve seriously, but she feared he was capable of Carrying out the threat.
Then came the move to Mexico. Rose roused Sister from bed that night and ordered, “Get into your clothes.” For a moment the evangelist entertained hopes she was going home, but Rose soon undeceived her. “We're taking you fora short time somewhere where nobody can find you.”
Rose and the other man led her blindfolded to the car. Steve did not make the trip with them. Only three were in the car when, shortly after lurching into motion, Rose removed the blindfold. Rose ordered Sister to lie in the bottom of the car on the narrow mattress she had brought from her own cot. Hands and feet were tied, but somewhat loosely.
The journey tasted all night and until dark the next day. At one point Rose gagged her, but only briefly. They stopped in the desert a couple of times for comfort stops, but no landmarks appeared within vision.
At the eventual destination the blindfold went on again.
Here, after being led into a crude hut, Sister heard from Rose about a newspaper report that her mother had collapsed. The evangelist became “sick and hysterical and could not eat anything.”
Steve was either on hand upon arrival or came shortly afterwards. He unloaded from his auto some brown khaki soldier cots, a camp chair, and several utensils.
The shack had two rooms, and the men spent most of their time in the other or away from the cabin altogether. Rose told her, “Now, Dearie, if your mother behaves you will be out of here perhaps by Friday.”
But Tuesday proved better than Friday. The men had driven off in one car, and Rose announced she must go for supplies in the other. “I will be right back,” the nurse promised, “but! am going to have to tie you.” She insisted that Sister turn over, then bound her hands and feet with some kind of stitched strapping rather like bed ticking. Evidently the distance from civilization made it unnecessary for Rose to gag her.
Sister heard the auto roar away. Hope soared. For the first time in her captivity she was alone. “Praise the Lord!” she reacted. “Here is an opportunity to get away.” But could she get untied? And would she be able to walk if she could? She felt utterly weak. She resorted to prayer, meanwhile trying to wiggle out of her bonds. She soon realized that would be impossible. But across the room a five-gallon tin can similar to what was used for maple syrup spurred her hopes. The top had been cut off roughly. She resolved to try to get to the can and saw her straps on the sharp edge.
Somehow she managed to roll from the bed and across the floor to the can which stood against the wall. She leaned back and succeeded in cutting the bonds which held her wrists.
When she got back to civilization one of the first questions betraying skepticism concerning her story was the fact that her wrists did not appear to have been cut. Later in
Los Angeles, reporter Collins of the Hera/d newspaper told her, “Mrs, McPherson, don't believé your story, because no one could cut their hands loose in that way without cutting their wrists.” So Sister showed them. Representatives were invited one night to the parsonage. Mrs. Kennedy tied her daughter securely while she lay on a couch. A can rested at the other side of the room. Someone timed the demonstration. It took only thirty seconds for the evangelist to roll over to the can and saw her hands free. And again she did not cut her wrists — not at all! Three times thereafter she repeated the same demonstration, and never lacerated her wrists in the least, as many witnesses confirmed! So no one should doubt the evangelist’s story on the score that she didn't cut her wrists!
in the captivity shack she proceeded to loose her feet. She prayed for strength as she squeaked to her feet. It was hard to stand at first, but with each passing moment “strength began coming in a God-given flood,” she recalled.
For some reason, in her haste to escape before Rose could return, Sister gave no thought to the door which was closed. She climbed out an open window. A short drop landed her on the ground. She didn't stop to look at anything, simply Started out cross-country, anxious to put as much distance as possible between herself and the hut before her captor came back. Unfortunately, she did not give the exterior of the shack a single glimpse, so it would be difficult to identify it from the outside in the eventual search. It had been dark, and she was blindfolded, when a few days earlier she was dragged into the cabin.
Mrs. McPherson related graphic descriptions of her desert trek in the two books which discussed the kidnapping, “In the Service of the King” (Boni and Liveright, New York) and “The Story of My Life” (Word Books, Waco, Texas). Her dramatic prowess appears at its best in the chapter entitled “The Escape” in the former volume:
“Sand!
“Gray sand!
“A wilderness of sand!
“Lost in the desert — and night closing in!
““‘Helpl’
“‘H—E—L—P,'| cried as stumbled over the wasteland.
““H—E—L—P,’ came the mocking echo, growing softer and softer in the distance until it sobbed its way into the death-like stillness of the desert dusk.
“How small in the great infinitude, how utterly futile was my voice! The sound of it was as a drop of water absorbed by the great sponge of that endless expanse — swallowed up by the maws of space.
“A drooping, forlorn, Cogpn-clad figure, trudged falteringly into the swelling gloom. wavered, staggered, scarcely able to lift one foot after the other. The heavy shoes, far too large for me, chaffed burning blisters...” (p.t)).
Lately Thomas in “Storming Heaven” lists “In the Service of the King” as “ghost-written” (p.354), but Mae Waldron, then Mrs. McPherson's stenographer told me, “Why typed that book!" Mrs. McPherson wrote it, though she discussed its contents with others on the Temple staff.
Fortunately for Mrs, McPherson, the day of her desert wanderings was, though warm, the coolest day in some time, both before and after, in the area, as weather records confirmed. This was no blazing Sahara, even though the date was June 22 — a Tuesday.
Sister had no way of knowing exactly what time she escaped the hut or how long she trekked — or how far. Since she had no hat, she improvised a sunbonnet out of her dress which she gathered up around her head, affording protection from sunburn. She also protected her arms with the heavy, closely-woven fabric.
Some people perspire less than others, and Mrs.
McPherson claimed she was one of them. Weeks later some wiseacre quipped, “If Aimee had sweated more then, she would be sweating less now.” By that time skeptics were dismissing as impossible a desert jaunt such as she described without more noticeable effects on her person and clothing. But desert experts from the area would dramatically demonstrate in court that they had made comparable treks with equally minimal effects.
At times the evangelist wondered whether she was wandering around in circles. She felt thirsty, but did not seem to be suffering acutely. The area of her wanderings covered somewhat elevated region where the temperature was a few degrees cooler than on the flat desert. “Though had all the water wanted to drink th® morning at the shack,” she related, “Naturally became thirsty in the afternoon. wanted a drink, but can't say was dying for it.”
Because the sun was marching to her left, Mrs. McPherson figured she was travelling north. In the days to come trackers would find footprints they assumed were hers far out in the desert. From following them some estimated she had hiked twenty miles. The evangelist described the lay-of-the-land: “The terrain was not especially rugged or rocky. Certanly there were cactus and Catburs that would stick you, but these managed to avoid. The country was not one which would Cut up a person's shoes by any means. Deputy District Attorney Ryan himself said that he could walk two days on it without his commissary shoes being marked” (p.159, “The Story of My Life”). That is what Ryan said the first day he tackled that desert, when Mrs. McPherson crossed the border back into Mexico to help hunt for the shack. But when Ryan got back to Los Angeles he talked out of the other side of his mouth. Mrs. McPherson continued, did, occasionally, however, stumble on stones as journeyed.”
From time to time she had to lie down to regain strength before resuming the hike. When she would get up she thought her dress was filthy, but the sand was such that it brushed right off easily, not staining like soil or dirt.
From the position of the sun, Sister supposed it was about 3:30 p.m. when she caught a glimpse in the distance of an elevation which would be later identified to her as Niggerhead Mountain. She hoped to climb to the top and survey the surrounding countryside, but darkness fell before she reached the hill. She intoned a prayer for guidance and stumbled on. Before long, when she climbed a slight rise, lights glowed in the distance — what turned out to be the village of Agua Prieta, Mexico and the smelter fires of Douglas, Arizona. “Thank God!” she gasped.
In time her path led to a reasonably good road. Weariness seemed to dictate sleeping off to the side of the toad and plodding on to civilization after dawn. Of course, if a vehicle came along and she could hail it, so much the better,
She had hardly settled down to sleep, however, when a rustle in some bushes terrified her. She'd heard about desert creatures. Back on the road she found walking much easier than on the trackless desert.
Eventually she neared a small building on her left, a sentry hut which proved vacant. No one was there to respond to her cries, “Help! Is anybody here?” Later dogs barking in the distance drew her to a structure about three hundred feet to the right of the road. Fredrick Conrad Schansel responded to her shouts, but she shuddered when he advised the compound was a slaughterhouse and that he was the only one there, and that he had no telephone and no automobile, “Have you a horse?” Mrs. McPherson asked. Schansel said, “No.” “Will you go with me into the town?” she pleaded, but the custodian of the slaughterhouse declined. He seemed to want her to come in, but after eliciting directions to “the first house where there will be a lady,” she stumbled on, though she had to stop and rest several times. Eventually she reached Agua Prieta. Big dogs growling and little dogs yipping discouraged her from seeking help at the small houses she reached first. “Perhaps can find a policeman in town,” she hoped, so continued oh. But when she reached a somewhat larger dwelling with a hedge growing around it, she realized she'd passed the limits of endurance, She stumbled to the gate and called, “Won't you please help me?” A man's voice answered, “Who are you? What do you want?” “The police,” Sister gasped. "Have you a telephone?”
Ramon Gonzales answered, “No, but there is one across the street, one block.”
Mrs. McPherson had entered the gate and reached the steps to the porch. She retraced her route, hoping to getto the phone. “One block — just — one — more — block — now,” she muttered. But at the gate at the end of Gonzales’ walk she collapsed. Ramon and his wife rushed to the fallen woman. At first they believed she had died, for when they held lighted matches in her face, her eyes did not dilate.
For an hour, Sister was told later by the Gonzales’ she lay there unconscious. When the Mexican couple detected traces of life they covered her with blankets.
Mrs. McPherson's skeptics in the following weeks made much ado about the fact that she did not ask the Gonzales’ for water for an hour after she stumbled onto their property. But how could she ask for water when she was unconscious, as the Gonzales’ reported? If the reappearance had been a phony act, the evangelist would certainly have made water her first plea before feigning collapse, for she knew certainly that such a request would be expected in her circumstances. She had several weeks to fabricate a story, and if she had done so it would have been far more believable than the actual facts were.
But when Sister did come to, she begged, “Water! Water, please.” The Gonzales provided two glasses which she gulped down.
“But why didn't you ask for water at the slaughterhouse earlier?” skeptics would pillory in weeks to come. Sister replied, “For the same reasons did not stay there. In my upset frame of mind the man's appearance prompted me to get going quickly. He was too eager for me to come in.”
The evangelist remained in a daze as Mrs. Gonzales rubbed her hands. They asked, “Senorita, Senora, what is the matter?" It sounded so much better than Rose's gushy, “Dearie.”
Sister stammered the story of her abduction and escape to the Gonzales’ and other Mexicans whom they summoned. Someone rounded up an American taxi-driver, John Anderson, who had brought a fare over from Arizona. Liquor was legal in Mexico during Prohibition in the United States, and the taverns and roadhouses of Agua Prieta attracted many Americans. “I am Mrs. McPherson,” Sister told the cabbie. He didn't believe her fully, but nevertheless transported her across the border to the police headquarters in Douglas. An officer emerged and invited, “Get out of the car.” Mrs. McPherson, however, felt too exhausted to move. “Who are you?” the policeman inquired. “| am Mrs. McPherson,” she gasped. “| do not believe you,” he blurted. “Many people have claimed they were Aimee Semple McPherson, but they were not.”
“I don’t care whether you believe me or not, am Mrs. McPherson, and want to go home,” she stammered.
The evangelist's breath dispelled suspicions she was drunk, a likely assumption considering she just came trom Mexico where the taverns had closed only a short time earlier. “You are sick,” she heard a diagnosis. “You should go to the hospital. Or would you rather go to the hotel?” She preferred the hospital. But she had no money, not a single cent.
By this time, O.E. Patterson had arrived to replace George Cook at the police station. Patterson volunteered to take a chance that the woman was Sister and guarantee the bill. With Cook he arranged for admittance at the Calumet, Arizona hospital after the taxi brought her to the entrance.
People there scoffed at her claimed identity, but proceeded to clean her up. She described her face and shoes as “white with desert dust” and her hands as “covered with grime.” A nurse picked some cactus spines from her legs and rubbed some preparation on a toe where a blister had broken.
A parade of curious people came to the bedside. Virtually everyone reacted, “I don't believe it,” when she claimed her identity. But when Editor McCafferty of the Douglas Dispatch newspaper entered the room, the doubts were dispelled. He took one look at the woman whose revival he had covered in Denver and announced, “That's Mrs. McPherson.” She remembered him too. Douglas, Arizona would make headlines that June 23, 1926.