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| KFSG LA The Kidnapping
Pioneer L. A. Christian Station Stops Broadcasting After 79 Years
by Jim Hilliker
THE KIDNAPPING STORY HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
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Aimee Semple McPherson ca 1924
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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On
May 18, 1926, Aimee went for a swim at Ocean Park, between Santa Monica
and Venice, during a day of relaxing at the beach and writing some
sermons. Her secretary stayed behind on the sand, while Aimee was
swimming. She was not seen again all day. At first, it was feared
that McPherson had drowned in the surf, but a search for her body
turned up nothing. Her mother, son, daughter and Angelus Temple
workers were heartbroken, believing Aimee was dead. Then, on June
23rd, Aimee reappeared in Douglas, Arizona, across from the
Mexican border, with a story that she had been kidnapped from the beach
and held captive, but managed to escape. This good news came a
few days after her mother got a ransom note that said Aimee would be
sold into "White Slavery", if the $500,000 ransom wasn't paid.
The police and newspaper reporters however quickly noted that Aimee
didn't appear sunburn, if she had walked across the desert for many
miles to freedom, and her shoes, clothes and overall physical condition
looked too good to make her story believable. They also could find no
sign of a shack where McPherson claimed she had been held captive.
With
the earlier gossip about Kenneth Ormiston and Aimee having a secret
romance, there were newspaper and police reports that a woman who
looked like Aimee Semple McPherson had been seen with the former KFSG
engineer, spending time inside a cottage in Carmel, CA and other towns
up and down the coast during McPherson's disappearance. In the
1959 book by Lately Thomas "The Vanishing Evangelist", he wrote that
McPherson and Ormiston had been seen checking into the same hotels at
various times in California, prior to the alleged kidnapping.
Thomas also stated that a grocery receipt signed by McPherson was found
in the Carmel cottage where it appears Aimee had met Ormiston during
the time she was allegedly kidnapped. Several eyewitnesses testified
that they saw the two together during that time.
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Aimee Semple McPherson and Kenneth G. Ormiston
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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Suspicion
led to a Grand Jury investigation in L.A., with charges of perjury and
manufacturing evidence. The newspapers dug up witnesses and
handed them over to the district attorney. On August 3rd,
the Grand Jury reconvened to look at possible charges against Aimee,
her mother, Kenneth Ormiston and a woman named Lorraine Wiseman.
During
the several weeks of Grand Jury testimony, Aimee was tried in the press
each day. But she took her case to her followers at Angelus Temple and
to those listening to KFSG radio each night. She repeatedly told
the radio listeners about the kidnapping incident, often saying,
"That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." After each day's court
session, she also told the KFSG and Temple audience how ridiculous the
stories were that came from the witnesses dug up by the
prosecution. Aimee and Ormiston denied that they were together in
Carmel, while Aimee was missing. Ormiston testified he was with
another woman, not Mrs. McPherson. The newspapers ate it up and
Aimee was front-page news from Los Angeles to New York, in all 48
states. The complete transcript of the hearing covered more than
3,500 pages! Finally, on November 3, 1926, Judge Samuel R. Blake
bound over Aimee and her mother Minnie for trial on the charge of
"criminal conspiracy to commit acts injurious to public morals and to
prevent and obstruct justice," which threatened "the peace and dignity
of the People of the State of California." Aimee and her mother
faced three counts of conspiracy that could carry a prison term of up
to 42 years if convicted.
Suddenly,
after the months of investigation and the media circus during the court
hearings, the case was dropped before it even came to trial! One
of the witnesses changed her story again, saying that Aimee did not
hire her to perpetrate a hoax on the public. On January 10, 1927,
L.A. County District Attorney Asa Keys reluctantly asked the court to
drop the charges against Aimee and her mother. The case was formally
dismissed on July 8th of that year.
AFTERMATH
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KFSG Letterhead
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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With
the case closed, the controversy was not over. Many people at the
time believed Aimee's story and many others believed the story that she
was in hiding with a lover, whether or not it was Ormiston. Other
stories came out, saying she disappeared to have an abortion or was in
hiding to have plastic surgery. Another group of people thought
there was a conspiracy to discredit Aimee and that the newspapers were
a small part of a larger game to remove her from the pulpit of Angelus
Temple. A bit of thin evidence seems to point in that
direction. When men and women accepted Jesus Christ as their
savior at Angelus Temple, it was common for McPherson to reveal their
testimonies to the public. One of her favorite methods of doing
this was to broadcast the testimonies of new Christian converts over
her radio station, KFSG. During those first three years of KFSG
broadcasts, many people who were formerly on the lower rungs of
society, including drug dealers, gamblers, bootleggers, etc., testified
by radio over Aimee's station. Many of them would frequently
"name the names" of former associates. Some people have suggested
a plot conceived by "The Mob." Aimee's family always believed that "The
Mob" kidnapped her. To this day, what really happened to Sister
Aimee from May 18 to June 23 of 1926 remains a mystery and the truth
may never be known. (This chapter of her life was made into a
1976 TV movie, "The Disappearance of Aimee", starring Faye Dunaway as
Aimee Semple McPherson and Bette Davis as her domineering mother.
Also, in the 1960 Academy Award winning movie "Elmer Gantry" with Burt
Lancaster, Jean Simmons and Shirley Jones, taken from the Sinclair
Lewis novel, the character of evangelist Sharon Falconer was created by
Lewis, based on McPherson).
The
press later reported that Kenneth G. Ormiston acted like a gentleman
and never spoke of the alleged incident with Aimee Semple McPherson
ever again. He continued his work as the writer of radio columns
for newspapers and magazines. He also worked steadily as a chief
engineer/technician for several more Los Angeles radio stations,
including KEJK-Beverly Hills and KMTR-Hollywood in 1929, and later for
KNX-Hollywood, until his untimely death in January 1937, during
surgery. Ormiston had been in charge of the projects that boosted
KNX's power to 50,000 watts and got their first vertical antenna tower
erected in Sherman Oaks during the early 1930s.
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KFSG Towers 1920s
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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Aimee's
popularity had soared nationwide, despite the controversy. Word
had spread about her cheery, friendly style of preaching and the
excitement during her church services, which sometimes included faith
healings. The way she got the congregation at each service to
give money when the collection plate was passed around was also
famous. Frequently, she would say she didn't like the noise made
by the jingle of coins. To emphasize the point, she would tell
the people, "No coins please. Only folding money!" Or, if
Sister Aimee's mother needed a new coat, she'd make it known to those
in attendance by saying, "Mother needs a new coat! Who will help
donate money today, so that mother can have a new winter coat?"
Angelus
Temple was packed to capacity three times a day, every day, for several
years, causing traffic jams in the area. Her church in Echo Park
had become a "must see" for tourists visiting Los Angeles.
Picture postcards of Angelus Temple were printed up showing the KFSG
antenna atop the temple roof. Aimee entered floats in the
Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade two years in a row. On
January 1, 1925, "The Radio Float" depicting Angelus Temple and the
KFSG antenna towers, won first prize and the Grand Sweepstakes Trophy
in the parade. Her church continued to gain new members. As
an example of her popularity throughout the 1920s, on warm Sunday
mornings and many warm evenings, one could walk down a Los Angeles
residential street and never miss a word of Aimee's sermons on the
radio. That's because everyone had their windows open in those
pre-air conditioning days, and many who had radios were often tuned to
KFSG to listen to Aimee, in order to see what she would say next.
By the late 1920s, Aimee Semple McPherson was as famous as Babe Ruth
and Charles Lindbergh.
KFSG THRIVES DESPITE NEW CHALLENGES
During
1927, KFSG celebrated its 3rd anniversary and Angelus Temple
its 4th. It was the height of the Roaring '20s and
people close to Aimee Semple McPherson noticed she was changing and
they didn't like it. In one of the books on McPherson's life, it
says 1927 was the year Sister Aimee rejected social taboos preached
against by Bible-believing churches of that time. She bobbed her
hair and started drinking, dancing and wearing short skirts.
There were also photos of her that showed she had changed her hair
color from brunette to platinum blonde. The director of her choir
and band, Gladwyn Nichols, who also had acted as KFSG's radio announcer
up to this point, along with the entire 300-member choir, resigned from
Angelus Temple because of her lifestyle.
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KFSG QSL card ca 1940
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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But KFSG survived the changes and went on
as always, broadcasting various services and programs from Angelus
Temple. In 1928, the station's announcer was C.N. Tucker and the
Technician in charge (same as a chief engineer) was P.S. Lucas.
In 1929, KFSG listed Thomas Eade as the announcer heard on each
broadcast and M.E. Kennedy was now the station's
technician/engineer. He was listed as KFSG's chief engineer until
at least 1939. The KFSG station manager in 1928 and '29 was Roderick H.
Morrison.
Besides the changes in station personnel,
Sister Aimee had to deal with the changes the new Federal Radio
Commission made regarding KFSG's frequency assignment. KFSG had
been broadcasting on 1090 on the AM dial since April of 1925. In
February of 1928, the FRC forced KFSG into a time-share arrangement on
1190 kilocycles with station KEJK of Beverly Hills. This meant
KFSG could not go on the air whenever Aimee decided, although the
station did expand to a 7-day-a-week schedule. But sharing a
frequency with another station resulted in program schedule changes for
KFSG listeners. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, KFSG
went off the air by 7 p.m. and KEJK got the evening hours. KFSG
was able to broadcast services Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday nights,
even staying on the air past midnight Saturday. KFSG also had the
bulk of the morning and afternoon programs on 1190.
Then, on November 11, 1928, the FRC made
the first major national reallocation of the AM Broadcast Band,
assigning stations to operate on "clear, regional or local
channels." The FRC decided to move KFSG from 1190 to 1120
kilocycles, sharing time with KMIC-Inglewood. (That station
became KRKD in 1932; today's KXTA-1150. KFSG continued to share
time on 1120 and later 1150 until the ICFG purchased KRKD and merged
the two stations together in 1961.) The October 12, 1929 issue of
Radio Doings shows that under this share-time agreement, KFSG
had even fewer hours than before. It still had most of the hours
on 1120 on Sunday between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. Otherwise, KFSG was
heard during the nighttime hours only on Thursdays and Saturdays.
It was also evident that the founder and president of KFSG had cut back
on her involvement in KFSG broadcasts. Sister Aimee was still on
the air for all the Sunday services, but wasn't heard on the station as
much during the weekdays anymore, according to the radio program
schedules.
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Jim Hilliker
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Jim Hilliker is a radio historian and former broadcaster. He has
written a number of articles on the history of broadcasting in Los
Angeles. He currently lives in Monterey, California.
This article is © 2003 - Jim Hilliker
Interested in reading more about LA Radio personalities? Buy Don Barrett's Los Angeles Radio People available through The Emporium Radio Heritage Store © and support the Radio Heritage Foundation.
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 "Aimee Semple McPherson")
 "Aimee Semple McPherson and Kenneth G. Ormiston")
 "KFSG Letterhead")
 "KFSG Towers 1920s")
