Southern Pacific's Golden State Limited steamed out of Douglas about 9:15 on Friday, June 25, hauling a special car which Sister and Mother expected was just for the family, but reporters and Cline and Ryan overran it. The newsmen continued demanding interviews. Mrs. McPherson pleaded to be permitted to rest, but in vain. Cline and Ryan questioned her, conferred with reporters who filled out telegraph blanks and wired dispatches from the train, then questioned her again.
‘The Los Angeles officers advised Mrs. McPherson that two Tucson men had tentatively identified her as a woman they saw on the street there just a few days previously. “Please be ready to meet the two men," they instructed her. When she objected that the train wouldn't reach Tucson until after midnight, they persisted in demanding she face the pair. If she didn't, they hinted, the reporters might conclude that she had something to hide.
Some distance out of Douglas the evangelist had her first opportunity to be alone with her mother. Mrs. Kennedy was grim. “My dear,” she confided,’ "| have been with the reporters, and they are not going to believe your story. You are in for trouble.”
The first “witness” who boarded the train at Tucson afforded no trouble. He took one look at the evangelist and announced, “I am mistaken. have never seen this lady before. am sorry to have disturbed you, madam.”
B. P. Greenwood, a Tucson building inspector, after flashing what the evangelist called was “a brief glance” at her, blurted, “Sure! have seen her before. She looks like the woman saw walking on the street.” He specified the date as four weeks earlier.
Reporters made a ‘mad dash to transmit the identi-fication over the telegraph wire. Greenwood insisted on the identification, stating that if the woman he saw was not Mrs. McPherson, it was her twin sister. He admitted the woman had a hat low over her face at the time. Cline and Ryan made no attempt to cross-examine Greenwood. it was up to Mrs. McPherson to question him.
Greenwood, however, was not subpoenaed to testify against Sister in the preliminary hearing, because by that time the theory of the prosecution was that the evangelist was at Carmel or elsewhere in northern California at the period the Tucson witness claimed he saw her.
: The surfacing of this first of many “identification witnesses” affords opportunity to point out that personal identification testimony, as Erle Stanley Gardner dramatized in the many Perry Mason cases, often betrays an inherent defect in the processes of human memory and in police procedure as well. The public entertains the fiction that eyewitness identifications represent the best form of testimony and evidence, while the facts blare that such evidence is really responsible for. more miscarriages of justice than any other kind. Some people have accurate memories for faces and some witnesses do not. And there’s no way to establish expertise in individual witnesses. And some people react to the pressures of cross-examination by intensifying their insistence on their stories. They become more opinionated than ever. Supposing themselves to be honest witnesses who will not allow themselves to be flimflammed by argumentative attorneys, they cement their testimony rigidly, reflecting more or less the attitude, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!”
The train resumed its route west from Tucson. Hours before the Express in Los Angeles had screeched in two-and-one-half inch high headlines: “M‘PHERSON DEATH THREAT: TRAIN HEAVILY GUARDED,” and a smaller caption announced, “S.P. PULLMAN POLICE PLACED ON TRAIN TO BRING PASTOR TO L.A.” The dispatch stated that the guards “all were armed to the teeth" (p. 1, June 25). They never needed to use their weapons. The attack on Mrs. McPherson was of a different nature than guns could defend.
The next morning, at every station where the train stopped, Captain Cline would knock at Sister's compartment and instruct her to come out and meet the multitudes who stood on the platforms. He asked her to introduce him to the crowds, and after she complied, he followed up, “Introduce Mr. Ryan.”
“Headline fever” infected the Los Angeles Express as it boasted in its editions that it had scooped other Southland newspapers by arranging a broadcast by Mrs. McPherson on radio station K.N.X. (she insisted that her K.F.S.G. share the coverage) from the train at Colton at 12:45 p.m. Saturday. Remote broadcasting was relatively rare in those early years of radio, so the Express felt it could justifiably be proud of its arrangements. The day before an airplane chartered by the Examiner covered the distance between Los Angeles and Douglas in two hours and forty minutes flying time. That morning paper boasted about “this remarkable speed” accomplished by pilot Major C.C. Moseley, vice-president of Western Air Express, “one of the most intrepid aviators in the country.” The dispatch continued, “Averaging well over 100 miles per hour, the plane made a:non-stop flight.” The trip back to Los Angeles took considerably longer, because “gasoline purchased in Douglas proved to be of an inferior grade and would not permit of the highest speed” (p. 3, June 25, 1926). We've come a long, long way in technology since 1926!
The railroad route into Los Angeles proved almost to be a parade for the evangelist, a triumphal entry into the city where for three-and-one-half years she had pastored Angelus Temple and preached almost daily over radio K.F.S.G.
Even at stations where the train did not stop, people crowded the platforms hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous passenger or demonstrate their support and admiration. “It was not only at the towns that the people were waiting,” the Examiner on Sunday would publish the dispatch by its correspondent on the train, “They came from the ranches along the line, from the little farms, from the packing plants, to gather in eager groups and wave their welcome.” According to the Examiner, by the time the train reached Colton every Los Angeles radio station, and not just K.N.X. and K.F.S.G., had horned in on the broadcast. Stations in outlying cities also carried Sister's words.
More than three thousand crowded the station at Colton. “Freight cars waiting on other tracks had their roofs lined with men who clambered up the iron ladders,’ the Examiner reported. "Hundreds of automobiles, parked along the side of the station, were covered with people clinging to their tops.”
As the train rattled to a stop, a messenger handed a telegram to the evangelist. The wire announced that a Douglas posse had located the captivity hut. “Oh, praise God,” Sister exclaimed. But further investigation proved it was the wrong shack.;
At Los Angeles’ S.P. Depot an estimated 50,000 welcomers cheered the evangelist in what was — and still may be — the greatest greeting ever accorded a celebrity coming to the city. Multitudes struggled to touch the evangelists hand. “God bless you,” she beamed. “Don't get killed just to see me. I'll always be at the Temple, you know,”
The Fire Department band was on hand (Sister was an Honorary Fire Chief) as well as the Angelus Temple Silver Band and choir. A flower-deck chair was provided, and when Sister sat down the chair was carried to her car. “Mrs McPherson was almost crushed in the rush of the throngs,” the Examiner story continued. “It was with great difficulty that the police and firemen kept her from being hurt.” Sister told her solicitous guards, “They wouldn’t hurt me. They wouldn't for the world; at least, not on purpose. How love them all.”
Sister could hardly wait to get into the main auditorium of Angelus Temple. “With brimming eyes made my way down to the altars and fell upon my knees behind the pulpit where a thousand times had stood and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ,” she described. Organist Ester Fricke's hands were caressing the console. The Record of the night before had anticipated this musical welcome on the instrument Sister said she loved most of all inanimate things by running a four column photo of Ester Fricke — who would continue as head organist at the Temple until seven months before Mrs. McPherson's death in September 1944. The selection which impressed Sister most on that occasion was “When peace like a river attendeth my way...it is well with my soul.” But the peace of that reunion with her flock soon was threatened by an unprecedented outburst of what the evangelist’s followers called persecution.