This is one of the least accurate articles
I’ve ever read about Edmund Creffield and the Holy Rollers. So why am I
including it in my list of articles? Because it was the prime source of
information in Wikipedia’ article on Creffield … until I edited the article.
BTW, I’m not knocking Wikipedia. I love it,
use it all the time and even donate a bit of money to it every now and then.
However, if you’re doing research for something serious (e.g., a term paper), I’d
advice using it only as a starting point.
Franz Edmund Creffield-"Joshua the Second"
By Lewis Thompson
, Startling Detective Magazine, March 1951, Vol. 42,
No. 244
Strange indeed was his hold over women, and
dire was the destruction and violence that followed in the wake of the prophet
In whatever low esteem the contemporaries of
Franz Edmund Creffield may have held him, none, certainly, would have charged
him with being dull. For around his person and personality there whirled in the
few significant years of his career, two homicides, a suicide, an earthquake
and an astonishing amount of sex promiscuity growing out of the most fantastic
religious cult this country has ever known.
To this catalogue of dubious fame may also be
added the observation that Creffield's accomplishments involved an unparalleled
degree of feminine gullibility and receptivity to the power of suggestion.
The story of Franz Creffield's formative
years would undoubtedly constitute a rich source for students of the more esoteric
aspects of psychopathology. Unfortunately, these details are not known, aside
from the facts that he was born in Germany, and that as a youth he came to this
country and settled on the West Coast. After the year 1903, however, when
Creffield was in his late 30s, data on him abounds, some of it, had it not been
solemnly sworn to, pressing the limits of credibility.
Early in that year, there appeared on the
streets of Corvallis, Ore., a lean, gaunt, bearded figure, who announced to the
few listeners he could muster that, through divine revelation, he had been
bidden to found the The Church, which was to be called the Church of the Bride
of Christ. Moreover, he declared, the Almighty had appointed him head of the
new cult, with the title of Joshua the Second.
But those among his hearers with longer
memories recalled that he had been in Corvallis before,
under the name of Franz Creffield, and on more worthy, but less dramatic
business. In the autumn of 1902, Creffield's voice had been heard on the town's
streets as part of a Salvation Army group, of which he was a minor figure.
The conclusion was inescapable that the new,
self-dubbed prophet had wearied of the sober, legitimate objectives of the
Salvation Army, and had decided to go into business for himself.
At first, Creffield was beset by doubts as to
the effectiveness of his approach, for his converts were painfully few, and
those from that mercurial fringe which continuously hops from one religious
persuasion to another.
But he must have had something –
perhaps it was the beard and the glowing eyes – to cause a slowly
increasing number of otherwise sensible folk to take him seriously. Before
spring was well under way, he was holding regular meetings at the homes of his
flock, and instructing them in his guaranteed method of attaining salvation.
For some, perhaps not inexplicable reason,
the women listened, and loved it, while their menfolk nodded solemnly, left
early, and decided that on future meeting nights, they'd rather bowl, smoke
cigars and drink beer with the boys.
That left Joshua alone, with several dozen
women, who really believed he was batting 1.000. For his part, Joshua noted
their devotion, and decided the time was ripe to deliver the real punch line of
his particular brand of faith. But, sensitive fellow that he was, he told the
ladies that one little detail would have to be changed – that henceforth
meetings would be held in the afternoon. Something about the
wrong vibrations of the night air.
A few noted that the new meeting time meant
necessarily that all the menfolk would be at work. When this was pointed out to
the leader, his eyes flashed scorn at the cynics, who were forthrightly
banished.
Now, behind curtained windows and locked
doors, Joshua really went to work on his flock. First, he solemnly exhorted the
eagerly listening matrons, wives, spinsters and maidens to abjure the pomp and
vanity of this wicked world and the evil of false pride.
This can best be described as the
softening-up process. For soon, at one climactic meeting, he stood erect, and,
particularizing on the theme of the wickedness of vanity, bellowed: "And
the most sinful vanity of all is the vanity of clothes, which are a curse! Away
with this curse! Destroy it, and be born anew! For I am your prophet, Joshua, the
Second, and I ordain it!"
With Joshua, it was no sooner said than done,
and even before he'd finished his pronouncement, he began to weave in and out
of the congregation wearing nothing more than a glint in his eye.
The ladies, it appeared, were really sent. Within
minutes, the floor was a writhing and rolling mass of nude and partially nude
bodies, all gripped in the hysteria of religious fervor, all shouting praise to
the Prophet, and gratitude for the sweet opportunity to be saved.
Such goings-on, of course, could not be kept
secret. For one thing, the zealots among the ladies became missionaries in
search of new material. Their friends, and their friends' friends, were invited
to come to the afternoon meetings and be redeemed. A few of the newcomers
stayed only long enough to sniff, outraged, and stalk out to mutter publicly
about the scandalous behavior of some of the town's most respected women.
Others of the proselytes, however – a
surprisingly large percentage – were converted. Indeed, the problem of
space began to be a critical one, for, as the numbers swelled, there was
scarcely room in an average sized parlor for each present to really roll her
sins away without getting a neighbor's elbow in the eye.
At just about this time, Joshua gave the
ladies another jolt. Having established the evilness of clothes and the
righteousness of nudity, the prophet now pronounced another revelation of
specific and very personal import to each of the faithful. From among their
number, he said, he had been directed to select the one who was to become the
Mother of a Second Christ.
If Joshua was not an honest man, he was
certainly a thorough one. Now, at the meetings, he retired to the seclusion of
another room with one or another of the candidates to test their suitability for
the dedicated role he had described.
Considerably later, after cold reason had
quenched the fires of their fanaticism, several of those involved testified
that Joshua invoked some peculiar practices in this process of selection,
including flagellation.
At the time, however, Joshua's performance of
this interesting phase of his cult only increased the numbers of his flock and
their adherence to him. As the summer of 1903 approached, it became apparent
that the Church of the Bride of Christ needed larger quarters.
Joshua, who was business manager as well as
Prophet of the organization, cast a speculative eye about for a suitable site,
and fastened on wooded Kiger Island, in the a Willamette River, on which Corvallis lay. The only difficulty was that, being short of cash, Joshua could get no established contractor to erect
the necessary buildings.
But this turned out to be a pushover for such
an imaginative leader as Joshua. He had another revelation, in which he
declared that the women of the flock were to construct, with their own hands,
and out of the trees God had provided on the island a huge meeting hall and
other smaller buildings which Joshua, from time to
time, might deem necessary.
The faithful heeded the call with a zestful
willingness, and soon the island was astir with chopping, dragging and
hammering by dozens of women, of all ages, and all eager to see that the
Prophet's revelation was fulfilled swiftly.
In a matter of days, the construction was
completed and the meetings of the flock resumed with all the old enthusiasm and
fervor. The Prophet and the ladies stripped and rolled, and when, at frequent
intervals, Joshua continued the quest for the Mother of a Second Christ, these
researches were conducted in the sequestered, vernal arbors in which the island
abounded.
Unfortunately, Joshua the Second, unlike his
Biblical namesake, could not command the hot, summer sun to stand still. In the
course of time, autumn came to the Kiger Island community, and the Prophet
noted that some of its members, to guard against the cold rains, were beginning
to regard sweaters and dresses with a certain amount of favor.
Joshua was a man to recognize a portent when
he saw one, and realized that to save his followers from the apostasy of
clothing, he'd have to find more adequate shelter. He looked about in
Corvallis, and through some minor, and still unexplained miracle, found a haven
in the home of O.P. Hunt, one of the town's most respected citizens.
Back trooped the faithful to Corvallis.
Daily, the Hunt house rang with the preachments of the Prophet, and the
antiphonal responses of his audience. By now, Hunt, himself, as well as his
wife, and daughter, Maude, was convinced that Joshua was pretty big stuff.
He hung up a sign over his door which read:
"Positively No Admittance Except on God's Business," and gave himself
over to other peculiar practices, which, although they undoubtedly sprang from
sincere conviction, did nothing to improve the assessed valuation of his
property. As the local newspaper of the town, which was now becoming alarmed,
reported it:
"Certain caprices of religious
fanaticism have been manifested at the house that are so unusual as to suggest
a condition bordering on insanity. Walks about the house have been torn away.
Much of the furniture has been reduced to ashes in a bonfire on the theory that
God wills it. Kitchen utensils have been beaten to pieces and buried, and it is
reported that house cats and dogs have been cremated."
Joshua, apparently was working on the theory
that if you keep shocking them, they'll keep coming
around. And, so far as his followers were concerned, this continued to be the
case as the year drew to a close.
But a number of those outside the select
circle, particularly the menfolk, were experiencing serious misgivings. Of
course, they told themselves, the wild stories about nudity could not possibly
be true, but still, this Prophet fellow would bear looking into.
This judicious attitude was given an abrupt
shock, with the dissemination, all over town, of a photograph on Kiger Island.
While it was a group picture, it was certainly an unposed one, snapped at the
height of the nude frenzy of a "meeting."
All hell broke loose.
Fifteen shocked and outraged husbands took
drastic measures, and half a dozen fathers sent their daughters to cool off in
corrective homes. Then, in conjunction with others of the town's males, they
dealt with source of what they considered all this deviltry.
On the evening of January 4, 1904, a
delegation firmly, and not at all politely, escorted the Prophet to the edge of
town, and there submitted him to certain ministrations. These took the form of
reducing him to what he himself had described as his favorite condition –
the nude – and then covering him, entirely, with a liberal coating of tar
and feathers. In this condition, they left him, with the strong advice that he
get out of Corvallis, and stay out.
But what the committee in charge failed to
realize was that when you start pushing around a prophet, you have to contend
with his followers, too. For the next day, it became known that Joshua was
resting comfortably in the Hunt home, two of whose residents, Mrs. Hunt and her
daughter, Maude, had searched for him the previous evening in the woods, found
him, and brought him back to the house, where they helped restore his
batterered person and outraged dignity.
Then, to compound this sensation and really
give the town something to talk about, before a week had passed, Joshua and
Maude Hunt were married.
Corvallis gulped, and then generously
swallowed the event, believing, no doubt, that under his new status, Joshua
would cease to be a menace to the modesty of the female population.
For weeks, this optimism seemed borne out.
Joshua and Maude appeared to be settling down in connubial regularity, and the
town breathed even easier when it heard that the Prophet, as he still called
himself, had gone to Portland for a visit.
What the town did not know was that, never
for a moment, had Maude's husband abandoned the conviction that he was duty
bound to continue the hunt for the Mother of a Second Christ.
They did not know he had gone to Portland
because of a hankering to test the fitness of a certain follower, whom he had
noticed, but hadn't gotten around to, on Kiger Island, and who, in the
meantime, had moved to Portland with her husband.
Corvallis, however, was not long to be kept
in the dark. In mid-May, word reached the town, and the horrified ears of Maude
Hunt Creffield and her father, that Joshua was wanted by the
police. The Portland husband, it appeared, had surprised his wife and
the Prophet and had sworn out a warrant for Joshua's arrest on a charge of
seduction.
O.P. Hunt, who long since had soured on his
son-in-law, gave concrete warrant of this feeling when he offered a reward of
$150 for Joshua's apprehension, and his outraged daughter promptly sued for,
and obtained a divorce.
The object of all this not-so-solicitous
attention, however, was remarkably skittish about showing himself in public.
The police looked, and public-spirited citizens looked, over a good section of
Oregon, but they couldn't turn up Joshua. It fell to a small boy, concerned with
the ancient and honorable pastime of fishing, to dig up a much larger worm than
he'd ever imagined.
The small boy was Roy, an adopted son of O.P.
Hunt, who, on a day in late August, 1904, while looking under the Hunt home for
a bait can, came upon bits of food and other evidence which suggested that the
place was inhabited by something human.
He called his father, who in turn called the
police. After a brisk ten minutes of poking and shouting, the officers flushed
from its hiding place an object which they recognized
as Joshua. But it took an uncommon amount of imagination to do so. The Prophet
was thin to the point of emaciation, stark naked, with the encrusted dirt of
months clinging to his hide.
Tearfully, the Hunt women,
mother and daughter, admitted the truth. Joshua, they said, had
beat his way from Portland to Corvallis, presented himself to them secretly,
and begged sanctuary.
The Prophet was unceremoniously hauled off to
Portland where Multnomah County authorities promptly brought him to trial on the
seduction charge. The prisoner admitted the specific act named in the
indictment, but pointed out that it could not be a crime, since he had acted
under divine direction. The all-male jury listened with skeptical ears, and
indicated decisive disagreement with this explanation by finding him guilty.
Joshua was sentenced to two years in state's prison.
God and parole boards sometimes move in
mysterious ways, for the latter body of the state of Oregon permitted Joshua
his freedom after serving only fifteen months of his sentence.
The released man immediately hied himself
south, to Los Angeles, presumably to brush up on the prophet business and
figure out his next operation. Before long, he had moved up to San Francisco,
and from there began to write letters.
One of these was to a Corvallis girl,
beautiful, blonde 17-year-old Esther Mitchell, who had been of the faithful in
the Prophet's Corvallis heyday. Joshua informed the otherwise intelligent and
appealing girl that the ultimate mantle had fallen on her. It had been revealed
to him, he said, that she was to be the Mother of a Second Christ. It was now
her solemn responsibility, he admonished, for her to await his instructions
regarding the time and place to fulfill her great destiny. Esther received the letter
and, in all sincerity and earnestness, believed it.
But the Prophet, it appeared,was hedging his bets, for at the same time he wrote to his
ex-wife, Maude, who was living with her brother, Frank Hunt, and his wife, in
Seattle, Wash. He reminded her that he was still God's appointed, a statement
he rightly guessed she had never quite disbelieved, and told her he was about
to resume his work. Would she not put away the evil thoughts concerning him she
had once entertained, and join him again as his wife in
the great undertakings which lay before him?
Maude was a pushover. She promptly replied
that of course she would remarry him and urged him to come to her at once.
Joshua reached Seattle in early March, 1906, married Maude, and then settled down to live with,
and off, Frank Hunt, his brother-in-law. The Prophet was never guilty of not
recognizing a good thing when it was right under his nose.
First, however, he had to bring Hunt and his
wife into his camp. By what exhortations he achieved this will never be known,
but accomplish it he did. Before long, the two were as ardent followers as he
had ever had, and when Joshua realized this, he moved in with his proposition.
The Church of the Bride of Christ, he told
them, needed a new Eden in which to take up the glorious work
which had been interrupted by the sinful men who had clapped him into
prison. And Joshua knew just the site - a lonely, isolated spot on the Oregon
coast, south of Waldport, where, in idyllic unity, the faithful could gather
and live in accordance with the True Word, as expounded and interpreted by the
only true Prophet.
There was only one minor detail, Joshua added
casually. He would need cash on the line with which to take title to the
property. However, he went on, this petty item need cause no great concern.
Now, if the Hunts would merely sell their house, and
turn the money over to him. ...
The Hunts didn't have a chance. Obediently,
they did as Joshua suggested, and, days later, the Waldport property was
bought. With so much accomplished, the Prophet had a couple of more convenient
revelations. He told Maude and the Hunts that they had been chosen to precede
him to the new Eden and ready it for the triumphant return of himself and the rest of the faithful. The latter group, he
explained, were to be alerted by him, through the mails.
Joshua got busy with his pen and ink, while
his relatives got busy with preparations for the journey. Finally, on the
morning of April 17, 1906, the Prophet stood on the platform of the Seattle
railway station, bidding goodbye to his relatives, who were taking a train to
Newport, Ore., from where they would ferry across Yaquina Bay to Waldport.
Joshua figured it was a good occasion for a
speech. "The hand of God is on the three of you!" he intoned.
"You have been chosen for a great mission! Those who come to be saved will
remember that you helped prepare a place for them, and your names will be
blessed!"
Here the Prophet paused, sucked in a mouthful
of air and then went on with his exhortation. "I have not told you
before," he declaimed, "but now you may know that the disbelievers
and the wicked are doomed! The evil will fall, and the scoffers be destroyed! I
tell you there is a curse on their cities! Corvallis is doomed! Portland is
doomed! Seattle is doomed! San Francisco is doomed!"
The departing trio nodded solemnly and swung
aboard the train. The next day, at Newport, any cynical doubts they might have
had that the Prophet had been talking through his hat, were dispelled when they
heard the news that was electrifying not only the West Coast, but the entire world. On the very morning after the
Prophet's dire forecast, San Francisco was being shattered by earthquakes and
gutted by fire!
When a self-styled prophet calls such a shot
as that, only the inevitable can happen. From Seattle, Joshua peppered the
female population of Corvallis with exhortations and commands. "Come to
Waldport at once," he commanded. "Corvallis will soon be
destroyed."
If some in the town were timid, their
reluctance vanished when the Hunts got word to Corvallis of the prediction
Joshua had made on the Seattle station platform, That did it. Girls and women poured out of the town literally in droves.
The two trains daily to Newport on the
Corvallis & Eastern Railroad were jammed with pilgrims headed for the
Heaven-on-earth the Prophet was providing. Women left their husbands, and
daughters their parents.
To Esther Mitchell, the fragile young blonde,
whom Joshua had informed from San Francisco of her chosen role as the Mother of
the Second Christ, the time of fulfillment was at
hand. She had never wavered in her firm faith in the prophet, and she needed no
dramatic, borne-out predictions to convince herself that his word was the word
of God. For her, it was enough that he had established the new Paradise and
summoned her. She was among the first to make the pilgrimage.
Throughout the month of April the trek
continued, and as it did so, the population of the Waldport colony swelled. On
reaching it, the faithful found that whatever living accommodations they were
to enjoy, they would have to build themselves.
Meanwhile, back in Corvallis, the male
population was progressively stunned, frantic and then furious. Wives,
daughters, sweethearts – many of them gone. After the first shock had
subsided, and the enormity of the situation realized, the boys who had been
left behind first regretted their temperate conduct on a previous occasion when
they had Joshua the Second in their too tender hands. Then and there, they
determined to correct this grievous error. Guns cocked, they went out to find
him.
It fell to Louis Hartley to get first crack
at the quarry, and, at the same time, provide unwitting cause for the errant
females to swoon more quickly at the sound of Joshua's voice, and more avidly
to do his bidding.
Armed with an excessive amount of righteous
indignation and a .32 revolver, plus cartridges, Hartley set out, not so much
in pursuit of the strayed lamb, but of the bearded wolf, whose hide he hoped to
puncture. The chase led him to Newport, and thence to the ferry slip, where, he
had been informed, Joshua was in the process of
shepherding a dozen of his followers to the new Canaan.
One thing wrong with Hartley was his timing.
He arrived, much out of breath, at the slip, just as the ferry was blowing its
customary three blasts to indicate that it was under way and about to enter the
navigable waters of Yaquina Bay.
Frustrated and cursing, at thus literally
missing the boat, Hartley drew out his .32, drew a bead on the figure of Joshua
leaning over the rail of the retreating vessel, and pulled the trigger.
All he got for his pains was a feeble click.
He tried again and again, but the gun failed to fire.
Aboard the ferry, Joshua, always the actor,
was quick to exploit the advantage of this unpredicted miracle. "How
ridiculous," he pointed out to his awe-struck coterie. "How
ridiculous of the man to try to kill me: I am Joshua the Second and therefore
indestructible."
The ladies listened and believed. When they
reached their destination and had an opportunity to relate to their sisters in
salvation the miraculous event, Joshua's stock, already well above par, soared
even higher.
It is possible that their opinion might have
changed, had they heard the diagnosis of the laconic gunsmith who subsequently
examined Hartley's revolver. "How did you think this would go off?"
the gunsmith asked. "It's a center-fire pistol and you were using rim-fire
cartridges."
Although this abortive effort discouraged the
enraged Corvallis male community, it did nothing to lessen their ardor for
their now most pressing objective in life. Joshua, they still figured, should
be rubbed out.
Therefore the Corvallis men trekked to
Waldport and to the very heart of Joshua's woodland retreat. Again, they were
notably unsuccessful. Joshua was an old hand at hiding out, and where the
legally constituted authorities of a large section of Oregon had been
unsuccessful, the motley Corvallis contingent could hardly expect greater
results. Joshua, for a while, went underground, and then overground.
His direction in this latter phase was toward
Seattle, and the Corvallis cavalcade got wind of his destination. A hurried
council-of-war resulted in the decision that it would be inexpedient for those
in the field to take up the chase for the fleeing fugitive. For the most
practical of reasons, having to do with rail connections, they decided to
telephone the alarm to Corvallis, where eager reserves waited poised for
action.
In this squad was George Mitchell, brother of
Esther, the designated Second Mother. The summons could not have reached a more
responsive ear. This was on the afternoon of May 6, 1906.
The next morning he was in Seattle and
managed to be hot on Joshua's trail before noon, even though the Prophet had
found it expedient to trim sharply his flowing beard. The scene of the resultant
dramatic incident was First Avenue, just off Cherry, in front of Quick's
drugstore.
At this point, Joshua and his wife, Maude,
both fully clothed, in deference to the local city ordinances, paused so that
she might test her estimate, at a cost of one cent, against a weighing machine.
As Maude stepped on the scale, George Mitchell, sure in the righteousness of
his cause, silently walked up behind Joshua, and fired a bullet into his head
back of the left ear. Apparently, it was a bad day for miracles, for Joshua
fell to the sidewalk, and along with his life gave up his claim to
indestructibility.
Maude, who might have laid claim to being one
of the most deluded women of her time, took her new widowhood with a high
degree of savior faire. "This man thinks he's killed my
husband," she announced to the gathering spectators and the police officer who laid a restraining arm on George Mitchell.
"But my husband is Joshua, the Prophet. In three days, he will rise
again."
Indelicately, Joshua made a liar out of
Maude. His body was turned over to the Bonney-Watson funeral establishment, who
planted him in Lakeview Cemetery, and at this writing – nearly a half
century later – he has not yet ascended from the narrow confines of his
piece of Seattle real estate.
In accordance with the statutes, but with
what must have been little personal appetite for their work, the authorities of
King County indicted Mitchell for murder, and in late June, brought him to
trial.
Seldom has a prisoner at the bar been more
admired by those who watched the proceedings against him. The men of Corvallis
supported him, in a body, with their persons and their purses.
It may be that the incidence of ulcers among
the assorted newspapermen who covered the trial took a drastic rise during the
proceedings. They were hunting sensationalism and they found it, but the
frustrating and ulcer-inducing feature of the situation was that a large part
of the testimony was so salacious as to be unprintable.
For the main body of the
evidence concerned the life and times of Franz Creffield, and how this bore on
George Mitchell's motivation. As witness after witness
trooped to the stand to tell what they knew of the magnitude and frequently
strange nature of Joshua's exploits, women in the courtroom blushed, lowered
their eyes, and covered their faces with their fans; male jaws dropped; and the
judge moved uneasily behind his bench.
Indeed, the only one in the courtroom who
appeared unmoved by it all was Esther Mitchell, the defendant's sister and
ardent believer in Joshua the Second, who sat throughout the entire trial as
though the matter was of no concern to her, and who refused to testify in her
brother's behalf.
From the very beginning, the verdict was
almost a foregone conclusion. The twelve good men and true surprised no one
when, at the end of the trial, on July 10, they
returned a verdict of not guilty.
The state withdrew its restraining hand on
George Mitchell and restored him to his admirers and well-wishers.
For two days, this circle toasted and banqueted its hero and then George
prepared to return to Corvallis, along with eighty of his fellow townsmen who
had attended the trial.
The group, which included Fred and Perry
Mitchell, George's brothers, reached the Seattle railroad station in time to
catch the 4:30 train. In the waiting room, on the fringe of the crowd, Fred and
Perry caught sight of Esther, and asked their sister if she, too, did not want
to congratulate George.
The pale, intense girl appeared to fall in
with the suggestion, approached George, and exchanged a few words with him.
Then the four Mitchells began to walk toward the station platform. George and
Perry were ahead, with Esther and Fred close behind. After they had traversed a
few feet of the waiting room, Esther suddenly produced a small, pearl-handled
revolver from under a coat she carried, thrust the barrel to within a few inches
of the left side of George's skull, and fired. George died instantly.
Arrested on the spot and taken to a police
station, Esther calmly justified the shooting to astonished police officials in
this wise: "Of course I killed George. He killed Joshua the Prophet,
didn't he? What else was there for us to do?" She went on to explain her
use of the plural pronoun. Days ago, she said, she and Maude Creffield,
Joshua's widow, had agreed that should George's trial result in an acquittal,
they would themselves mete out retribution for the slaying of their beloved
leader. Maude had bought the gun. Since Esther would have closer access to her
brother, she had been selected as the agent of vengeance.
Shaking their heads sadly and heartily sick
of the violence in Franz Creffield's wake, the Seattle authorities clapped
Maude and Esther in jail and obtained murder indictments against them. Maude
saved the county the expenses of a trial, for when a matron went to her cell
one morning, she found the prophet's widow stiff and cold – a suicide by
strychnine poisoning.
Esther, however, stood before the Bar of
Justice and, although she refused to so plead, was found not guilty of George's
murder "by reason of insanity." The court committed her to the
Washington State Asylum, where she spent the next three years.
At the end of that time, she was released as
having regained her sanity. For Esther, it was a small favor. A few weeks
later, she died in Waldport – within hailing distance of the ill-fated
New Paradise created by Joshua the Second.
Stewart Holbrook's Murder Without Tears, Part One
Stewart Holbrook's Murder Without Tears, Part Two
Stewart Holbrook's Murder Without Tears, Part Three
Stewart Holbrook's Murder Without Tears, Part Four
51Startling Detective Magazine, Nemesis of the Nudist High Priest
Newspaper Articles about Creffield & the Holy Rollers
1897-1903: B.C. (Before Creffield)
October to December 1903:Holy Rollers Burn Furniture & Pets
January to March, 1904: Holy Rollers Tarred and Feathered
April to June 1904: Holy Rollers are Committed to the Asylum
July 1904: Creffield is Found & Arrested
September 1904: Creffield's Trial
April 1906: Men are Gunning For Creffield
May 1906: Creffield is Murdered, Murderer is Considered a Hero
May 1906: Holy Rollers Found Starving Near Heceta Head
June 1906: George Mitchell's Trial Begins
July 1906: Hurt Testifies of Debauched Wife and Debased Sisters
July 1906: Esther Mitchell Kills Her Brother
August to October 1906: Seattle Prepares for another Big Trial
November 1906: Maud Hurt Creffield Commits Suicide
April 1909-August 1914: Esther Leaves the Asylum
1953 Stewart Holbrook's Murder Without Tears
1951Startling Detective Magazine, Nemesis of the Nudist High Priest
***
Chapters from
Holy Rollers: Murder & Madness in Oregon's Love Cult
Part 1: The Seduction
Chapter 1: Trust Me, Brothers And Sisters
(Life Before Creffield [B.C.])
Chapter 2: God, Save Us From Compromising Preachers
(Creffield's Preachings)
Chapter 3: The Flock
(Profiles of the Holy Rollers Were)
Chapter 4: The Holy Rollers
(Things Start to Get Wild on on Kiger Island)
Chapter 5: Housecleaning
(There's a Sacrificial Bonfire)
Chapter 6: Community Concerns
(Officers Visit)
Chapter 7: Esther, The Chosen One
(Creffield Plans to Marry 16-Year- Old)
Chapter 8: Tar and Feathers
(The Men of Corvallis Act)
Chapter 9: Sane People Don’t Go Bareheaded
(Holy Rollers are Committed to the Asylum)
Chapter 10: More Beast Than Man
( Creffield is Arrested)
Chapter 11: God Will Plead Creffield's Case
(Creffield in Court)
Chapter 12: Scandal
(Shocking Testimony at the Trial)
Chapter 13: Calm Before the Storm
(The Holy Rollers Resume their Lives)
Chapter 14: Giving Up The Ghost
(Men are Gunning for Creffield)
Part Two: The People V. Creffield
Chapter 16: The Widow Creffield
Chapter 19: An Inherited Streak of Insanity
Part Three: The Madness
Chapter 23: Seeking Reconciliation
Chapter 24: Another Holy Roller Page One Murder
Chapter 25: What Can Papa Do For You?
Chapter 26: Human Life is Too Cheap In This Community
Chapter 30: The Final Chapter
(What Happened to Everyone Afterwards)
The Epilogue
(Heaven's Gate)