Chapter 1: What happened when Sister Aimee returned after six weeks?
In 1926, Sister Amy came back from the dead. At least, that's what it felt like to the members of the Four Square Church. They thought she drowned in the Pacific Ocean six weeks ago. There'd been an exhaustive search, even a memorial service. But here Amy was, stepping off the train from Arizona. A jubilant throng of over 30,000 people greeted her in downtown LA.
Firefighters hoisted her onto a chair and carried her through the crowd, while adoring citizens showered her with roses. The parade in her honor wound through the city. Over 100,000 people joined, including mounted officers, firefighters, and thousands of church members, sporting the same white dress and blue cape Amy wore when she preached.
When the parade reached Amy's temple, she found 5,000 people waiting on the street. She shouted joyously that she loved them and praised the Lord. Then she proceeded inside, where nearly 6,000 more faithful awaited her first sermon back. In it, she detailed how she'd been kidnapped, but by the grace of God, escaped. Some people called it a miracle.
But others called it a publicity stunt, and still more, a cover story for a woman who could no longer practice what she preached. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts or check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod.
This episode contains discussions of kidnapping, drowning, and abortion. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us. There's one part of this story everyone can agree on. Amy Simple McPherson was a prime target for kidnapping. She was rich, famous, and most importantly, people deeply cared about her.
In 1921, five years before her kidnapping, Amy officially founded the Foursquare Church. In her sermons, Amy shared her unique take on the Bible, which she called the Foursquare Gospel. The basic concept was that Jesus has four sides, the baptizer, the healer, the savior, and the future king. It was an offshoot of Pentecostalism, promoting baptism and healing through faith in Jesus Christ.
Focused on this vision, Amy sermonized. She healed, she spoke in tongues, and she taught thousands of yearning believers to do the same. Think of her as the Billy Graham or Joel Osteen of the 1920s. Amy literally opened the first megachurch in America, and it's still operating. As of 2025, the Foursquare Church boasts over 8 million members worldwide.
When Amy's megachurch was built in 1923, locals nicknamed it the Million Dollar Temple due to its construction cost, a value closer to 19 million today. Formally, it's named the Angelus Temple, If you've been to LA, it's the giant, curved church building overlooking Echo Park Lake. The church seats roughly 5,000 people inside big stained glass windows and a 125-foot dome.
Chairs face a proscenium stage where Sister Amy would preach so-called visual sermons that were half evangelizing, half theater. She'd have sets built, use actors, design costumes, lights, and music, and retell Bible stories. complete with live camels. But the spectacle didn't stop there. Sister Amy also facilitated faith healings.
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Chapter 2: How did Sister Aimee Semple McPherson become a target for kidnapping?
Amy would be left alone, though still tied up. The moment Rose left, Amy's eyes searched the cabin. On the far side of the room, she spotted an empty five-gallon tin can with a jagged edge. Amy rolled across the floor to the can. She wriggled her wrists against the rim, rocking back and forth. The fabric slowly tore and slipped off her wrists.
Hands free, Amy praised God as she untied her ankles. Unsteadily, she rose to her feet and climbed out the room's window. Freedom. Except Amy had no idea where she was or how long it would be before her captors returned. Putting her trust in God, she poured all her strength into her limbs and ran for her life across the desert. dodging the cacti and dry brush.
She stumbled 20 miles without scraping her legs or shoes. She wrapped her dress around her head and arms like a shawl, shielding herself from the sun to avoid burns. Darkness fell and still Amy ran. At last, she saw a glow on the horizon, a town running on pure faith. She staggered up to the nearest house, yelling for help. A couple opened the door, gave her water, and called the police.
Amy was saved. She learned it was June 23rd, 1926. She was in Mexico, in a small town called Agua Prieta, about 650 miles southeast of LA. The police took Amy to a hospital in Arizona, where she reunited with her mother and her two teenage children before her triumphant return to LA.
When she recounted her ordeal to assembled churchgoers, she asked them to raise their hands if they believed her story. Nearly every hand in the room shot up. Historian Matt Sutton notes that the crowd had plenty of reason to believe it. At the time, the FBI had been investigating kidnapping rings in Southern California.
including one case where a wealthy victim from LA was brought down to Mexico. But while her followers believed her, the newspapers were selling a different story. It was all a hoax, a massive cover-up for what Amy was really doing.
From the moment Amy Semple McPherson disappeared, questions flew.
Did she really drown? Where was her body? Why was her church fundraising at a time like this? Rumors crisscrossed Los Angeles, splattering the pages of newspapers, particularly the Los Angeles Examiner. They published reports saying Amy was everywhere from Arizona to Argentina, and that she was making secret phone calls to her 13-year-old son.
People suspected she'd hit her head and had amnesia, or she was secretly getting plastic surgery or having an abortion. Maybe she'd been kidnapped by a rival pastor. One man even suggested she'd been eaten by a sea monster. And believe it or not, the articles kept the papers selling. And though some rumors were provably untrue, for example, the abortion theory, Amy couldn't have been pregnant.
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Chapter 3: What led to Aimee's disappearance at Venice Beach?
On September 12th, she retracted the story about her twin sister being Kenneth's lover. She told reporters that Amy and Minnie had bribed her to lie to the press. This meant Amy could have been the woman seen with Kenneth Ormiston in Carmel by the Sea after all.
Lorraine was brought in to testify, swearing she'd been bribed until her lawyer and Amy's lawyer got into a fist fight, as if this could be more of a circus. Okay, up to now, the rumors about Amy had been little more than reputation-damaging gossip. She continued her ministry, including radio shows where she presented her version of each day's proceedings.
But with Lorraine's confession, it looked like Amy and Minnie were criminals. On Thursday, September 16th, 1926, District Attorney Kyes issued warrants for Amy's and Minnie's arrest, charging them with perjury and corruption of public morals. It seemed like Sister Amy was going to jail. But allegedly, she'd yet to play her ace. According to another conspiracy theory, Amy turned to blackmail.
Fall 1926 was the worst it had ever looked for Sister Amy.
During a grand jury trial to investigate her alleged kidnapping, she and her mother were charged with multiple crimes, all allegedly to cover up that the kidnapping was a hoax. And if you thought the evidence couldn't get more embarrassing, it did. When Amy's alleged lover, Kenneth Ormiston, went on the run, he left behind a trunk of women's clothing, all in Amy's size.
The DA's office confiscated it. They planned to go through the trunk in front of the grand jury. They'd get a good view of the contents, including the trunk's owner's love letters, and their lingerie. Yeah, they'd literally reached the point of going through her underwear, or her alleged underwear. But in the DA's defense, the case wasn't settled.
The grand jury was still out, and some of Amy's diehard followers still believed her. They sent death threats to the police captain and ADA, and two people who publicly accused Amy of lying suffered gunshot wounds from anonymous shooters. Then, after all this, Kenneth Ormiston finally showed his face in LA. He testified that he had stayed in the cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea, but not with Amy.
He was cheating on his wife with a different woman, a nurse from Seattle that no one ever found, and it was her underwear in the confiscated trunk. So finally, Amy had some backup for her story, and then she got some even more serious backup. According to historian Matt Sutton, one of Amy's supporters rose well above the rest, Ralph Jordan.
Based on old letters Sutton found in FBI files, Jordan brought Amy news of another conspiracy theory, one they could use for blackmail. You see, Ralph Jordan was a reporter from The Examiner, one of the very papers that had been, in Amy's eyes, defaming her. But Jordan had either decided Amy was telling the truth or had his eye on a job with a four-squared church.
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Chapter 4: How did Aimee describe her kidnapping experience?
For more information on Sister Amy, Amongst the many sources we used, we found the book Amy Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America by Matthew Avery Sutton and contemporary reporting by the New York Times extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story and the official story isn't always the truth.
This episode was written by Megan Dane and Maggie Admeyer, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video edited, and sound designed by Alex Button.
I'm your host, Carter Roy.