I first heard about Aimee Semple McPherson at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where I was earning a master’s degree in religious studies. McPherson, or “Sister Aimee” as she was sometimes known, was an early popularizer of Pentecostalism, a modern Christian movement that emphasizes a direct connection to the Holy Spirit. Just a few years after finishing my degree, on my way to work at the Los Angeles Times, I would drive by Angelus Temple, the giant white megachurch in Echo Park founded by McPherson in 1923. A female powerhouse in American religion who had been forgotten—that figures, I thought.
Then I read that McPherson had disappeared while swimming in the Pacific Ocean in May of 1926. She was taken for dead and mourned by the national media, only to miraculously walk out from the deserts of Mexico 36 days later, more than 600 miles from where she had gone missing. Unscathed, she told a bizarre story of being kidnapped. But soon, when no sign of the kidnappers materialized, law enforcement began to doubt her version of events. That year, the legal proceedings surrounding her alleged kidnapping became the most expensive in Los Angeles history—until the Manson murders, almost 50 years later.
