User:SteamWiki/Reported kidnapping: LongVersion

On May 18, 1926, McPherson went with her secretary to Ocean Park Beach north of Venice Beach to swim. Soon after arriving, McPherson was nowhere to be found. It was thought she had drowned.

McPherson was scheduled to hold a service that day; her mother Minnie Kennedy preached the sermon instead, saying at the end, "Sister is with Jesus," sending parishioners into a tearful frenzy. Mourners crowded Venice Beach and the commotion sparked days-long media coverage fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner and a stirring poem by Upton Sinclair to commemorate the tragedy. Daily updates appeared in newspapers across the country and parishioners held day-and-night seaside vigils. One parishioner drowned while searching for the body, and a diver died of exposure.

Kenneth G. Ormiston, the engineer for KFSG, had taken other assignments around late December 1925 and left his job at the Temple.^[1] Newspapers later linked McPherson and Ormiston, the latter seen driving up the coast with an unidentified woman. Some believed McPherson and Ormiston, who was married, had become romantically involved and had run off together. Several ransom notes and other communications were sent to the Temple, some were relayed to the police, who thought they were hoaxes and others dismissed as fraudulent. McPherson "sightings" were abundant, as many as 16 in different cities and other locations on the same day. For a time, Mildred Kennedy, McPherson's mother, offered a $25,000^[2] reward for information leading to the return of her daughter.

The ransom demands sent included a note by the "Revengers" who wanted $500,000^[3] and another for $25,000^[2] conveyed by a lawyer who claimed contact with the kidnappers. The handwritten "Revengers" note later disappeared from the LA Police evidence locker and the lawyer was found dead in a possibly suspicious accident before his claim could be adequately investigated.^[4][5][6] A lengthy ransom letter from the "Avengers" arrived around June 19, 1926, also forwarded to the police, demanded $500,000^[3] or else kidnappers would sell McPherson into "white slavery." Relating their prisoner was a nuisance because she was incessantly preaching to them, the lengthy, two-page poorly typewritten letter also indicated the kidnappers worked hard to spread the word McPherson was held captive, and not drowned. Kennedy regarded the notes as hoaxes, believing her daughter dead.^[7]

Shortly thereafter, on June 23, McPherson stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona. The Mexican couple she approached there thought she had died when McPherson collapsed in front of them. An hour later she stirred and the couple covered her with blankets.^[8] In a hospital in Douglas Arizona, she convalesced and was later interrogated by Los Angeles officials including Prosecutor District Attorney Asa Keyes and Deputy District Attorney Joseph Ryan. Both men at the time seemed empathetic to her story. She said she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom in a shack by two men and a woman, "Steve," "Mexicali Rose," and another unnamed man.^[9][10][11] There were marks on her fingers that could have been caused by cigar burns as she described. McPherson also stated she had escaped from her captors and walked through the desert for about 13 hours to freedom. Ryan briefly searched the nearby desert for signs of tracks and kidnapper's shack and returned saying he could make the desert trip without scuffing or marking his commissary shoes.^[12][13]

Following her return from Douglas, Arizona, McPherson was greeted at the train station by 30,000–50,000 people, more than for almost any other personage.^[14] The parade back to the temple even elicited a greater turnout than President Woodrow Wilson's visit to Los Angeles in 1919, attesting to her popularity and the growing influence of mass media entertainment. Aircraft flew low overhead, dropping roses, which drifted around McPherson as she stood surrounded by white-robed flower girls from Angelus Temple^[15][16][17]

The fire department was out in their parade uniforms and high ranking Los Angeles officials formally greeted her return. Already incensed over McPherson's influential public stance on evolution and the Bible, most of the Chamber of Commerce and some other civic leaders, however, saw the event as gaudy display; nationally embarrassing to the city. Many Los Angeles area churches were also annoyed. The divorcee McPherson had settled in their town and many of their parishioners were now attending her church, with its elaborate sermons that, in their view, diminished the dignity of the Gospel. The Chamber of Commerce, together with Reverend Robert P. Shuler leading the Los Angeles Church Federation, and assisted by the press and others, became an informal alliance to determine if her disappearance was caused by other than a kidnapping.^[18][19]

In Los Angeles, ahead of any court date, McPherson noticed newspaper stories about her kidnapping becoming more and more sensationalized as the days passed. To maintain excited, continued public interest, she speculated, the newspapers let her original account give way to rain torrents of "new spice and thrill" stories about her being elsewhere "with that one or another one." It did not matter if the material was disproved or wildly contradictory. No correction or apology was given for the previous story as another, even more outrageous tale, took its place.^[20]

Her mother, Mildred Kennedy was very cynical of the increased newspaper scrutiny and McPherson's lawyer advised against pursuing the matter further. Since McPherson was the injured party and sole witness to the crime, if she chose not to press her complaint, the case would have to be closed, and the matter would eventually be forgotten by the media.However, their friend Judge Hardy, recommended official vindication through the courts and McPherson agreed with him.^[21][22] Therefore, she presented herself in court as a victim of a crime seeking redress.

Pressured by various influential Los Angeles business, media, political and religious interests ^[19] Prosecutor District Attorney Asa Keyes and Deputy District Attorney Joseph Ryan, in an turnabout from their previous meeting with McPherson in Douglas, Arizona; were openly hostile to the evangelist. Keyes stated to McPherson "don't you know it is practically an impossibility for anyone, particularly a woman to walk over the desert in Mexico in the broiling sun from noon until practically midnight without water?" McPherson seemed in unusually good health for her alleged ordeal; her clothing showing no signs of what some skeptics expected of a long walk through the desert. The grand jury inquiry continued with insinuating questions, implying McPherson and her mother were involved in a deception.^[23]

The prosecution contentions were countered by most Douglas, Arizona, residents, the town where McPherson was taken to convalesce, including expert tracker C.E. Cross, who testified that McPherson's physical condition, shoes, and clothing were all consistent with an ordeal such as she described.^[24][25][26] A grand jury convened on July 8, 1926, but adjourned 12 days later citing lack of evidence to proceed with any charges against either alleged kidnappers or perjury by McPherson. McPherson was told they would be open to receive any evidence submitted by her should she desire to further substantiate her kidnapping story.^{[27][28][29][30]}

The prosecution received new evidence from Carmel-by-the-Sea, a town 300 miles north of Los Angeles when five witnesses asserted they saw McPherson there. ^[31] seaside cottage there. It was discovered a local seaside cottage had been been rented by Kenneth Ormiston, her radio operator, under an assumed name. It was theorized McPherson left Venice Beach to be with Ormiston from May 19 to May 29 at the cottage, then left to stay somewhere else during the remaining three weeks of her disappearance. These discoveries dominated the inquiry and press speculations until McPherson's defense team could cross examine the witnesses.

The prosecution's Carmel witnesses were found to have only caught a fleeting glimpse of the woman they identified as McPherson; or she was otherwise obscured by far distance, hat, scarf or driving goggles. Most of them too, knew of the $25,000^[2] reward for McPherson's return, with her pictures prominently appearing in the newspapers. And none of the five, stepped forward at the time they allegedly saw McPherson to claim the reward.^[32][33] Moreover, two other witnesses the prosecution thought would testify for them, actually stated the woman was not McPherson. A stone mason who worked on the boundary fence who actually got a good long look at the woman in Ormiston's cottage yard , could not identify her as McPherson^[34] Ormiston admitted to having rented the cottage but claimed that the woman who had been there with him – known in the press as Mrs. X – was not McPherson but another woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.