The Strange Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson

• Author: Allen Pusey
• Pages: 72-72

The Strange Disappearance

of Aimee Semple McPherson

BY ALLEN PUSEY

72

Aimee Semple McPherson

was used to being noticed.

Between her faith-healing

tent revivals, her Sunshine

Hour radio broadcasts beamed from

Los Angeles and the pageantry of her

“illustrated sermons” at her Angelus

Temple, “Sister Aimee” was one of the

most recognizable women in America.

So when she vanished while swimming

off California’s Venice Beach on May

18, 1926, it was odd that no one no-

ticed where or how she disappeared.

Born in Canada as Aimee Elizabeth

Kennedy, McPherson was as enigmatic

as she was famous. Her Foursquare

Gospel was both mystical and practical.

She eschewed Old Testament damna-

tion in favor of healing in every sense.

Her followers believed the vibrations

of her voice could cure through hands

placed on their radio sets. Her charities

attended to the abandoned babies and

pregnant young women who showed

up on her doorstep. The Ku Klux Klan

donated to her ministry, only to be

scorned for its bigotry from her pulpit.

But at 35, she was a single mother,

already twice married; rst widowed

by Robert Semple, then divorced from

Harold McPherson. Her reluctant

beauty and condent charm generated

adoration and imitation—and gossip.

Her disappearance drew a massive

police search, widespread mourning

and 2-inch headlines. Grief, however,

was quickly overcome by suspicion and

hysteria: thousands of sightings, phony

kidnap demands and a belief among

the Southern California establishment

that the whole thing was a farce. Thus,

by the time the evangelist reappeared

36 days later in a tiny Mexican border

In Los Angeles County, District

Attorney Asa Keyes convened a grand

jury to investigate her disappearance,

proceedings that quickly turned on

McPherson and her mother/manager,

Minnie Kennedy. Both testied exten-

sively, and the grand jury refused to

bring charges against them. But when

defense witness Lorainne Wiseman

approached Keyes with a new, more

sordid story, the politically ambitious

Keyes brought charges. After her earlier

testimony, Wiseman had been arrested

on bad check charges. When the evan-

gelist refused her bail money, Wiseman

turned to Keyes, claiming McPherson

and her mother had hired her to testify

that her sister had been the woman seen

with Ormiston in Carmel.

At their six-week preliminary hear-

ing, throngs of reporters and spectators

elbowed each other for glimpses of

Sister Aimee, while in news-

papers and even in the

courtroom she faced

vulgar names and

accusations. On

Nov. 3, McPher-

son and her

mother were

bound for trial

for obstruction

of justice and

jeopardizing

public morals.

Though her

mother urged a

low prole, McPher-

son literally preached

her innocence—both from

the pulpit with costumed devils

named for prosecutors and politicians,

and in daily interviews with the press.

But by the end of the year, Wiseman

had withdrawn her claim, and on Jan.

10, 1927, all charges were dropped.

McPherson died at age 53 with her

disappearance never fully resolved; no

kidnappers were ever found, and no

part of her story was ever convincingly

refuted. Q

town across from Douglas, Arizona, the

hunt for her body had become a full-

scale criminal probe.

The story

A dazed but healthy McPherson

recounted being lured away from the

beach by a couple asking her to help

their sick baby. Once out of sight, she

was pushed into a car and chloro-

formed, only to awake inside a small

desert shack. She said the couple and

their driver held her prisoner for more

than a month before she managed

to cut through her bonds

and escape into the

desert, wandering

for 17 hours

before nding

the Mexican

couple who

took her in.

As her

improbable

story unfold-

ed, relief gave

way to tawdry

suspicion: a

publicity stunt, an

abortion, an affair.

Attention turned to

Kenneth Ormiston, a

married audio engineer who’d

developed the evangelist’s radio station.

Earlier that year, Ormiston had left

both the church and his wife. McPher-

son’s disappearance fueled gossip about

their easygoing friendship; her reap-

pearance propelled throngs of reporters

to a small cottage in Carmel, Califor-

nia, where witnesses claimed they had

spotted the couple during the time

McPherson described being in Mexico.

Aimee

Semple

McPherson

Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images

ABA JOURNAL | APRIL–MAY 2021

72

MAY 18, 1926

Precedents

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