MYSTERY CULT’S RITES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VIII, Issue 323, 23 January 1930, Page 2

MYSTERY CULT’S RITES.

BODY PRESERVED IN ICE. The weird rites of a colony of re- j ligious zealots is being investigated * by the Californian police, writes the New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. This action follows an amazing confession by Mrs W. P. Rhoades, high priestess of a mysterious cult, that for several years she kept the body of her 16-year-old daughter, packed in ice in the hope that she and other members of the order could bring her back to life. . Eventually the body was buried beneath the floor of Mrs Rhoades's cottage, where the police found it. It was in a duplex coffin, the other half of which contained the bodies of seven dogs. According to Mrs Rhoades, her A daughter died from natural causes, p but the police are investigating four other deaths of members of the colony, said to have occurred in mysterious circumstances. One of these, Frances Turner, was stated to have been placed in an oven in the cult's mountain colony as a cure for paralysis. Surrounded by hot bricks, she was left all night, and on the next morning appeared to be dead. When subsequently she disappeared the members were told that she had been healed and had walked away. The disappearance of Samuel Rizzio, another member, was explained by the statement that he had become a high priest invisible to the human eye. The police are making the investigation on the complaint of Mr Clifford Dabney, a wealthy man, who asserted that he paid £BOOO to defray the cost of writing a book, in which all the mysteries of life, death, heaven V and earth would be revealed, includ- ’ W ing the location of vast deposits of valuable minerals. There are 300 members of the colony which is incorporated as “ The Divine Order of the Royal Order of the Eleventh Branch of the Headstone of the Seventh Church of Josiah.”