MCPHERSON CASE

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18897, 12 January 1927, Page 9

MCPHERSON CASE

CONSPIRACY CHARGE FAILS. (BT CAUL!!—PKESS ASSOCttTWIf-- COjnilOHT.) (AUSTRALIAN AND K.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

TrtSW YORK, January 10.

A message from LoS, Angoles states that charges of criminal conspiracy against Aimee McPherson,, hor mother, Mrs Kennedy, Kenneth Onniston, and others, arising out of the evangelist's disappearance, were dismissed by tho Superior Court to-day on the motion of Mr Asa Keyes, District Attorney, who stated: "The evidence laid before me tends to show that after Mrs McPherson had gone to Camel, and returned With the unreasonable story of kidnapping, she and others induced Mrs Wiseman Seilaff to produce false testimony or evidence in the nature of an alibi for the Carmel episode. The cftief evidence laid * before niG' was the testimony of Mrs SeilaiT. Without her testimony proof of the alleged conspiracy is now impossible Since the preliminary hearing Mrs Seilaif has changed her story almost daily, untl now it contains so many inconsistencies that she has become a Witness for whose truth, or credibility jio prosecutor could vouch," When the case opened some time ago, Mr Keyes outlined the charges, as wild ws:—" That Mrs McPherson V tale of kidnapping ftnd imprisonment was an absdlute fabrication; that to support this story she and hor mother wickedly conspired against the public morals; that she attempted to have '£ake« kidnappers arrested,; that she was in hiding with Ormieton at Cafmel, with the full knowledge end consent of her mother, and that she hired Mrs Lorraine Wise-, man Sielaff to produce the mysterious 'Miss X.'» Mrs MePherMtt'B attorney became derisive at the mention of this "X lady." "We must have bought these myeteriou« Mies <X'a' wholesale," he said, "because so far we have heard of seven of them. There have been two kidnappers and; five 'go-betweens' to add levity to the situation," he declared. [Mrs Aimee MePherson, a famous evangelist,, disappeared on May >lßth while surf-bathing at Santa, Monica Beach. Later she reached Douglas, Arizona, on the Mexican border, saying that she escaped from two men and two women who had kidnapped her frem the Ocean Park Beach. The kidnappers demanded £IOO,OOO ransom from her followers and religious adherents. From what she had overheard of the conversation of her captors, she understood they had planned to make away either with herself, her daughter. Roberta, or Miss Mary Pickford, the film actress.]