Mother Kennedy, Rolf and Roberta entered Mrs. McPherson's room in the Douglas hospital on Thursday morning. But they were not allowed a family reunion, for barging in at the same time came Herman Cline and Joe Ryan, who insisted upon an immediate interrogation.
Why had they come? To the evangelist and her mother they professed to be seeking clues in order to track down the kidnappers. But if the two women had seen the Los Angeles newspapers in the evening the family and Los Angeles officials entrained for Douglas, they might have entertained a more suspicious expectation. For the Herald article announcing the departure of the family added, “With the party were Captain of Detectives Herman Cline and Deputy District Attorney Joe Ryan who will investigate Mrs. McPherson's story for the purpose of determining whether she was actually kidnapped” (p. 12, June 23, 1926). This on the evening of the very day the evangelist reappeared! Had Cline and Ryan leaked to the press that soon their skepticism about Sister's story?
Sometime later a woman whosaid she lived next door to the Ryans, advised Mrs. Kennedy that on that same morning of June 23, Mrs. Ryan discussed the case with her and stated that her husband was going to Douglas with his father-in-law Cline and that they would break Mrs. McPherson's story.
But Cline and Ryan manifested no appearance of skepticism at the evangelist's bedside. Mrs. Kennedy did manage to get a few whispered words with her daughter before the grilling commenced. Authorities later questioned her, suggesting that her mother had coached her concerning her story. Not so, Sister insisted, “Mother simply asked me the question any mother would ask her daughter under the circumstances — if| was-alright. told her was” (p. 167, “The Story of My Life”). She complained, “The authorities never gave me a second alone with my family until they had extracted every bit of my story” (ibid.).
When Cline and Ryan commenced the questioning they professed — even protested — perfect faith in Mrs. McPherson's story. Mrs. Kennedy was most emphatic on this matter, and she was present throughout the interrogation. “Never once did they tell her that they doubted her story and that her story was going to be used against her.” Both the evangelist and her mother requested that the typewritten transcript of the interview, recorded stenographically, be brought back for her to read and O.K. before it was released. Cline and Ryan continued “all the time that we were in Douglas,” Mrs. Kennedy announced, claiming, “Captain Cline gave us to understand that he believed in us but that the newspaper men were stirring up trouble.”
The Los Angeles newspapers confirmed this profession — or was it pretense? The Express on June 25 captioned a Story, “CLINE CERTAIN OF AIMEE STORY,” and reported that the police captain told Associated Press reporters the night before that he was ‘firmly’ convinced” that Mrs. McPherson had been kidnapped. “There is absolutely nothing to make me disbelieve Mrs. McPherson's version of her abduction from that California beach,” he said after weighing reports of the desert search for tracks and shack and the transcript of the evangelist’s story. And the next day's Record headlined its account, “Cline Believes,” and pointed out, “Cline’s belief is contrariwise to that of the Arizona Sheriff who today told Aimee flatly he did not believe her story.”
Evidently Cline and Ryan, from the first, were talking out of both sides of their mouths. At the preliminary hearing Ryan would testify that he knew the evangelist was a “fake and a hypocrite” when he saw her the first time in the Douglas hospital!
At that initial interrogation, Lately Thomas reports — probably on the basis of some later statement by Cline or Ryan that ‘Cline endeavored to obtain an accurate description of her three captors, without marked success” (p. 78, “The Vanishing Evangelist”). The temptation is almost irresistible to reproduce the many columns of newspaper copy which profess to report verbatim the interview in question, because it would be difficult to locate in any literature, more detailed descriptions than the evangelist offered in response to scores of questions Cline and Ryan fired with machine-gun rapidity.
Sister described Steve as about forty years of age and about five feet ten inches tall, weighing aproximately two hundred pounds. He had a light complexion and brown eyes arched with rather heavy, but not bushy, eyebrows. His face showed no scars or peculiar marks, but there were pronounced lines. When he talked, he drew his brows together.
Steve’s dress generally was a brown suit, though once Sister saw him in gray. His hat was a soft fedora.
When the questioning switched to the other man, the evangelist guessed his age as between 35 and 40 and his height at six feet. ‘He had a flat chest. He was rather bony. It is hard to guess his weight — say about 160 pounds,” she recalled, adding that his complexion was dark and his beard quite noticeable even shortly after shaving. He had one upper gold tooth, quite near the front on the left side, and lines around a corner of his mouth. He usually wore black. She could not remember seeing him wearing a hat. His speech betrayed no noticeable accent.
“Now this woman called Rose,” the questioning continued, “do you think she was an American?” “I think so,” Sister said. She estimated Rose's height as “a little taller than myself." “How tall are you?” “Five feet five inches,” Sister replied. But a short time later she was measured at one and one-half inches shorter. Rose “had plump arms and was rather heavy set and full chested. Her hair was black; her eyes were dark brown; her face was rather olive but not dark.” Her hair style was a bushy bob. “It would come out forward on her cheeks and was alittle longer in the back.” She had rather full lips and “her nose as a little wide. She did not have long eyelashes, but there were no blemishes.”
Mrs. McPherson felt she gave as complete a description of the trio of the abductors as she could. “Certainly answered their every question,” and the transcript shows that she did, even though the published version had “some slight errors which twisted the meaning” a bit, according to the evangelist (op. cit. 170).
After the interrogation, Mrs. McPherson left the hospital and with her family checked into the Gadsden Hotel, from which quite early Friday morning she left to accompany authorities into the desert to search for the captivity shack. Already expert desert trackers had found her footprints at sundry spots along her route, where the nature of the ground would preserve the tracks. The evangelist agreed willingly to the expedition, although she warned, “I don’t even know which direction it (the hut) was. only know came in by the road by that big mountain.”:
Since already skeptics were scoffing that she could have made the long trek without water, Mrs. McPherson volunteered to go without water all that day in the search, even though it was warmer that Friday than on Tuesday by several degrees, as official records kept at Douglas’ Copper Queen smelter confirmed. The evangelist issued a challenge that, if her word was doubted, she would gladly walk the same distance without water and let the skeptics examine her condition, clothing, and shoes after the trek.
“No, Mrs. McPherson, don't be foolish,” a reporter riding inthe car objected. Is it possible the press did not want her to prove her stamina by such a demonstration? The reporter thrust a cup of water into her hand and encouraged her to drink it.
The evangelist would make to the grand jury in July the same offer, all to no avail. “I wondered why no one in authority seemed to want to let me walk into Agua Prieta again from the distant places where my footprints had been found,” she reflected (p. 170, op. cit.). Before she left the hotel in Douglas that morning, the officers had told her that trackers had already found her footprints about thirteen miles from Agua Prieta. Later discoveries would extend the distance to approximately twenty miles.
Probably the most ambitious tracker at the beginning of the investigation was C.E. Cross. He heard the story of Mrs. McPherson's reappearance at about 8 a.m. on Wednesday, May 23, at the Douglas police station. With others he headed for the desert and located footprints presumably made by Sister up to distances of nine miles from the slaughterhouse near Agua Prieta. But the searchers found no shack. Cross returned to Douglas to ask questions of Mrs. McPherson and saw her for the:irst time at about 1:00 p.m. The conversation lasted about thirty minutes. Also present were policeman Leslie Gatliff of Douglas, Mr. Folsom Moore, and Mr. George Spear. Cross inspected the hospital patient closely, observing that she seemed suffering from severe exhaustion. He noted the welts on her wrists. Later he inspected her clothing and shoes and identified the shoes with those which made the tracks he had trailed in Mexico. With reference to the shoes, Cross would testify in October at the preliminary hearing that they appeared to have been cleaned up, perhaps polished onthe soles, for when he first studied them they batrni greater signs of wear! Toss got his answers from Mrs. Wednesday, but did not venture back into i until the next morning. This trip with Folsom Moore and George Spear evidently eventuated in some sloppy reporting by the press. Cross was puzzled a few days later when he learned that newspapers were captioning accounts that he was doubtful of Mrs. McPherson's story with headlines like, Cross Puzzled” (e.g., Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1926). Twenty-three years later, Lately Thomas would resurrect the discredited attribution of skepticism without reporting that Cross decisively denied it under oath. Cross didn’t say he was misquoted. He insisted he had said nothing of the kind at all. Lately Thomas quoted Cross as saying, “I do not know of an adobe house such as the one described by Mrs McPherson within a hundred and fifty miles of Agua Prieta, and know every house in this vast area” (op. cit, p 84). When Deputy District Attorney Murray cross-examined the tracker, asking if he had said anything to that effect, Cross Snapped, “No.” He added a question or two later, “4 never made any such remark as that.” Cross also denied, under cross-examination, contemporary reports which ‘Lately Thomas did not mention, that he had said, “That woman is a damned good liar,” referring to Mrs. McPherson, He denied telling anybody he doubted the authenticity of the evangelist's Story. Cross thereby laid to rest rumors onl his attitude toward the evangelist’s account of Cross, by the Way, appeared at the prelimi i at Considerable personal sacrifice. He had rue All the trip to Los Angeles because it interfered with his campaign then in progress — indeed nearing its climax — for the office of Chochise County Sheriff. J.A. McDonald, the incumbent candidate, did not come to testify against Mrs. McPherson. Some Arizonians wondered whether Cross might have nosed out George R. Hinshaw, who won the race on the first Tuesday of November, if he had stayed home to electioneer in the closing month of the campaign. But he came to testify because Mrs. McPherson's attorneys felt they needed him. Sentiment in Douglas ran heavily in the evangelist’s favor throughout the long case. Interestingly enough, the prosecution would subpoena only one witness from Douglas, Murchison, against Sister, but the defense would call about ten.
C.E. Cross also set the record straight concerning the relationship of Mrs. McPherson's footprints and fresh auto tracks found on the Mexican road on Wednesday morning. Innuendoes spread to the effect that the physical evidence indicated that Mrs. McPherson's footprints here were made when this mystery car let her out at the spot before turning around to go back to Agua Prieta. Lately Thomas was very careful not to state that the tracks led to the car or from the car or that Sister was ever in that auto, but if he does not imply such to be the case some readers have nevertheless inferred it from his report. Cross absolutely denied any connection between the auto tracks and Mrs. McPherson's footprints nearby.
C.E. Cross wouldn't be the only Douglas personage to be misrepresented or misquoted as skeptical of Sister's story. The Douglas Dispatch, which was quite friendly to the evangelist, carried two statements in one issue which attracted forthright contradictions. One reported that Police Chief Bowden had let down in his efforts, intimating that he had no faith in Mrs. McPherson's account anymore. Bowden denied making the statement and told a local clergyman, “You tell Mrs. McPherson that we are continuing our efforts here without any let down in prosecution of search for the cabin.” A tracker named Hayhurst also was quoted as saying he did not expect to find the cabin. “I did not say that,”
Hayhurst contradicted hotly. “1 said that did not expect to find it on the west side of Niggerhead (mountain), but that did expect to find it on the east side of Niggerhead.”
A baseball player, named Hal Chase, got into the rumor factory too. Reports spread that Chase and others identified Mrs. McPherson as a woman upon whom a local doctor, named Weeks, performed an abortion. Both Chase and Weeks denied the allegations. The abortion fiction would Surface again at Carmel-by-the-Sea in August and command considerable notoriety. One Los Angeles newspaper planned io have a Physician examine the evangelist, but backed off when Rhode Island medical records were publicized proving that Mrs. McPherson had a hysterectomy more than a decade earlier.
The search party visited enough Mexican desert shacks in the area to give the lie to a statement Lately Thomas attributes to Police Officer Murchison that he knew of only three cabins in the whole area (cf. op. cit,p. 70). Mrs. McPherson seriously considered the likelihood that one had been the captivity hut until, according to the Los Angeles Times, authorities pointed out it had a concrete floor. The Times added, ‘The cabin she said she was in had adirt floor” (June 26, 1929, p. 2). The Times goofed there, for the evangelist had said it was a wooden floor. This detail would be the most vulnerable issue in her whole story, for no wooden floor shacks were located,
The question persists, “Could the evangelist’s story be true and yet she be mistaken on this particular detail of observation? How many stories could be substantiated if absolute infallibility of observation were demanded?” Pedro Demandivo, chief of the Mexican Border Patrol, may have just been being polite when he commented after failing to find the shack, “Probably her hysterical condition caused her to fail to note carefully the cabin,” but surely that probability is a Strong possibility. Is it conceivable that a Person exposed to such an ordeal as Sister described would become confused about details and directions? Has that happened to anybody 2 a Mrs. McPherson never changed her story that the shack had a wooden floor, but she did concede that she could have been mistaken after a subsequent expedition into the desert hunting for the hut. She gave her impression to the grand jury hearing that the place seemed more like a temporary camping outfit than a permanent building. She recalled being asked upon emerging from another shack on that occasion what kind of a floor it had. “Wooden,” she said, whereupon her escorts took her back inside and showed her she was wrong. The floor was ne ae sl Ba “smoothed and d with some preparation they have. ave nhe Friday samen turned up no hut, but the day didn't pass without excitement. Mrs. Kennedy complained that Cline and Ryan seemed more interested in chumming with reporters and posing for photographers than in seriously studying footprints or searching for shacks. At one point, Ryan spied a bull and left the car to chase it down and have his picture taken with it. The bull ran away. When C.E. Cross would mention the incident at the preliminary hearing, Prosecutor Murray virtually accused him of introducing the issue at the instruction of Sister's attorneys, an allegation he strenuously denied, claiming his recital was responsive tothe questionings. Sometime after this run in with the bull, an unsigned poem arrived at Angelus Temple, spoofing Ryan. The “bard” burlesqued:; “There’s-a wise old bull on the Mexican plain, But he left in a hurry and didn’t explain, For Deputy Ryan, pompous and grand, Tried to pose, alongside, on the desert sand;
“| imagine that bull, to himself, just said,;
‘Be seen beside him! Why I'd rather be dead! So he took to his heels and got him away,.
And that picture has not been made yet, today.
When the posse arrived back in Agua Prieta after the fruitless hunt for the hut, the Presidente (Mayor) of the town, Ernesto Boubion, insisted on a private interview with Mrs. McPherson. The only other person he would permit to be present was an American, William Appel, who would act as interpreter. The stories of Boubion and Sister concerning that interview disagree materially. Boubion claimed he told the evangelist that the investigations of Agua Prieta Police Chief Sylvano Villa and other Mexican authorities failed to substantiate her story. According to Boubion, the evangelist begged him not to make public those reports. However, Mrs. McPherson insisted the Presidente solicited a bribe. She gave his proposition in these words: “Mrs. McPherson, have been offered five thousand dollars by some people to give a written Statement that do not believe your story of kidnapping and desert experience to be true. Now need the money, but have no particular desire to hurt you. If you could see your way Clear to — oh, probably pay me as much as have been offered, am sure would find it convenient to give a statement just the opposite to what they want — that is, that oe story is true and that am convinced of it.” (op.cit. p.
Mrs. McPherson said she walked out of the cafe where the interview unfolded “hardly dignifying the swarthy plotter with an answer” (ibid.).
The interpreter William Appel backed up Mrs. McPherson's version, submitting an affidavit to that effect. However, because he was an ex-convict, authorities discounted his statement. Would they have credited it had it backed Boubion?
‘The search for the shack would go on indefinitely. Some of Sister's partisans suspected it had been dismantled and removed by the kidnappers once they returned to find their captive had escaped. From time to time headlines blared that the shack had been found, that the evangelist had identified photographs of it, and the like, but the reports proved unfounded. Letters arrived at Angetus Temple with drawings and descriptions purporting to represent the captivity hut, but they proved false leads. A. 8. Ball of Mesa, Arizona sent a communique which claimed the Associated Press had purchased photos of the actual shack for $2,000 from a free lance photographer, then suppressed them. Mr. Ball requested that his allegation be kept out of the newspapers.
When Mrs. McPherson got back into Douglas from the
Mexican desert, she chaffed at growing expressions of disbelief in her story. She peremptorily rejected an offer from Hollywood to appear in a movie about herself. She also rejected offers of vaudeville appearances. Just the making of such offers fanned the flames of suspicion that the evangelist had disappeared as a publicity stunt. In Los Angeles her good friends, Judge and Mrs. Carlos Hardy rallied to her defense even before the rumor mill exploded. The Hardys, according to the dispatch in the Express, were not and had never been Baptist church downtown while his wife was a Congregationalist. “Our acquaintance with Mrs. McPherson was accidental,” he said. “My wife and went to Angelus Temple just to see the beauties of the new building. There we were introduced to the evangelist, and we so deeply were impressed with her sincerity and her devotion and her solemn faith in her mission that we accorded her our unstinted admiration and support.”
Hardy declared forthrightly, “I do not believe that the kidnapping incident was a publicity measure. Mrs. McPherson needs no publicity,” an observation which the covérage of her disappearance in comparison with her reappearance would seem to have confirmed. For the headlines which reported the former were just as huge as those which reported the latter. “Mrs. McPherson needs no publicity,” Hardy asserted, “nor does she stand in need of anything which a less beloved and popular woman might have secured from a sensation.” Hardy reminded that she was perfectly free to marry whom she liked.
“Was she weary?” Hardy continued, answering, “Her congregaton would have gladly given her any leave which she might desire, and she could have gone where she wished. The mere suggestion that she might have voluntarily disappeared is, believe, unjust and cruel. If once the public lost faith in her it would, to my mind, be one of the greatest tragedies in American history.”
Judge Hardy's wife confirmed her husband's assessment and insisted, “Yes, Mrs. McPherson was kidnapped. believe it sincerely” (June 24, 1926, p.2).
In Douglas, prior to boarding the Friday night train for Los Angeles, the evangelist herself protested the accuracy of her account. She branded Sheriff McDonald's statement about her clothing as “untrue,” insisting that her clothing was soiled when she reached civilization (Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1926, p. 2). And she issued a statement which the Evening Express in Los Angeles printed beneath a four-column wide caption: “AIMEE SWEARS KIDNAP STORY TRUE.” The Associated Press dispatch commenced, “With a fervent prayer and in the name of her Creator, Aimee Semple McPherson this afternoon declared that “every word that have uttered about my kidnapping and escape is true. Before the God in whom have every faith and utter belief,” she swore her veracity. She continued, “If have been unable to answer any question propounded by a score of newspaper men, detectives, attorneys, friends — even my own mother —I have told them, “i do not know,” or “do not remember.” My Story is true. have permitted every reporter to ask any questions and where know the answer gave it!” (p. 1, June 25, 1926).