In 1926 an American female evangelist went missing. For five weeks the country wondered if she was alive or dead. At least one of her followers committed suicide. Her personal driver died while trying to find McPherson’s body. A ransom note delivered to McPherson’s mother, Minnie Kennedy, demanded $50,000 for the safe return of her daughter and warned, “Mum’s the word—keep police away.” Her church followers were convinced that she had died but that God would deliver her back to them anyway. There were reports all over the country of people seeing her (some at the same time most to close together in time for her to travel the distance between).
Five weeks later, After a month of mourning and unending rumor, McPherson turned up in Agua Prieta, Sonora, a small Mexican town just south of Douglas, Arizona. She claimed to have walked across the “burning sands” of the desert to flee kidnappers and then collapsed.
Within two weeks, McPherson voluntarily appeared before a grand jury as newspapers continued to trumpet accusations of fraud, accompanied by witness “spottings” in Northern California. Gaining the most traction was a story that centered on the fact that Kenneth Ormiston, a married engineer at the Christian radio station KFSG (owned by McPherson’s church) disappeared just when McPherson did. The two worked together on McPherson’s regular broadcasts. Police were dispatched to a cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Ormiston had been seen with an unidentified woman during McPherson’s disappearance. (Ormiston admitted to having an adulterous affair at the time of McPherson’s disappearance, but denied that the stranger known as “Mrs. X” was her.) After dusting the cottage for fingerprints, however, police found none that matched the evangelist’s.
I could go on with the speculations of the time, the accusations; but, the simple truth in that case is, we still don't know the truth of what happened. The kidnapping remained unsolved, and the controversy over a possible hoax went unresolved. Critics and supporters alike thought McPherson should have insisted on a trial to clear her name; instead, she gave her account of the kidnapping in her 1927 book, In the Service of the King: The Story of My Life.
In my opinion a trial would have likewise been a waist of time, money and effort. I'm not sure what kind of trial they would have even had. She wouldn't have been able to prove she was kidnapped nor would the prosecution been able to prove she wasn't. In the end, no one is found "innocent" they are found not guilty. There is a lack of sufficiency in the evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Doubters of her innocence would have still doubted.
Then there is Mystery Writer Dame Agatha Christie and her 11 day, unexplained, disappearance in December of 1926. In her case it was the first time that airplanes were used to search for someone. No, explanation was ever given by her for what happened to her.
If this current case is ever resolved it will be nice, but don't expect it. Finding the truth sometimes is akin to holding fog in your hand, extremely hard to do.
