Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: What happened to vanished woman?

One of the biggest stories from last year started when South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford mysteriously disappeared. But in no time, the world found out that he had dropped out of sight so he could visit his mistress in Argentina.

Eighty-four years ago, the entire nation was captivated by the weird disappearance of another well-known person. But to this day, no one is really sure what happened when evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Aimee Semple McPherson was one of the best-known evangelists and media celebrities in the United States. She attracted crowds in the thousands who came to hear her sermons. Based in Los Angeles, she built the Angelus Temple, which in those days could seat 5,300. The massive church was filled to capacity three times a day, seven days a week. Semple's church eventually became its own denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. And McPherson was a pioneer in the use of radio broadcasts, which transmitted her message of hope and salvation to millions. The church even had its own radio station, KFSG.

On May 18, 1926, McPherson went with her secretary to Ocean Park Beach, near Venice Beach in California. Soon after arriving at the seaside resport, she was suddenly nowhere to be found. At first, her secretary and the authorities thought she had drowned in the ocean.

McPherson was scheduled to hold a service that day and her mother Minnie Kennedy preached the sermon instead. At the end of the sermon, Kennedy declared "Sister is with Jesus." This led shocked members of the church to believe that she was dead. Mourners crowded Venice Beach and the incident was covered extensively for days by William Randolph Hearst's paper The Los Angeles Examiner. Daily updates appeared in newspapers across the nation and followers of McPherson held day-and-night seaside vigils. One person even drowned while searching for her body in the ocean while a diver died from exposure, according to a Web site.

Even more odd, Kenneth G. Ormiston, the engineer for KFSG, had also dropped out of sight. Some suspected that McPherson, who was divorced, and Ormiston, who was married, had secretly run off together for a romantic getaway.

About a month after the disappearance, Kennedy received a ransom note that demanded $500,000. If the money was not paid, the kidnappers threatened to sell McPherson into white slavery. Kennedy later said she threw the letter away because she believed her daughter was dead.

But on June 23, 1926, McPherson surprised everyone when she stumbled out of the desert in a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Ariz. She claimed she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people, named Steve and Mexicali Rose. She also claimed to have escaped from her kidnappers and walked through the desert for about 13 hours to freedom.

The problem with her story was that her shoes had no trace of a 13-hour walk through the hot desert. Instead, they had grass stains. The shack she described was never found. In addition, McPherson was fully dressed when she emerged from the desert. When she vanished, she was wearing only a bathing suit.

On July 8, 1926, a grand jury convened to find out the truth about what had happened. Five witnesses claimed to have seen McPherson staying at a seaside cottage in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. during her "disappearance." The grand jury looked at documents from the cottages, which were said to be in her handwriting.

But McPherson stuck to her original story. She maintained that she was approached by a young couple at the beach who had asked her to come over and pray for their sick child. Instead, the kidnappers shoved her into a car and she was drugged with chloroform, according to McPherson's account.

During the inquiry, McPherson was asked about the extent of her relationship with Ormiston, who was now estranged from his wife. When she refused to give straight answers, the judge charged both McPherson and her mother with obstruction of justice. She then turned to her most powerful weapon, her radio station, to combat the negative publicity.

After a while, the furor died down. In January 1927, The Los Angeles Examiner reported that District Attorney Asa Keyes had dropped all charges against McPherson.

Some say McPherson dropped out of sight so she could have a romantic fling, like Sanford did. Others say she was kidnapped after all. Another rumor was that she had left the country so she could have an abortion or some kind of plastic surgery.

In 1944, Aimee Semple McPherson was found dead in her hotel room of an accidental overdose. Today, the church she founded claims to have more than eight million members around the world.