-- A telegram appealing for help was received by authorities from George E. Jeffrey of 585 Myrtle Street, Portland, Oregon, in finding his daughter Willa. Jeffrey claimed that his daughter had been taken into the cult by his divorced wife Martha, now known as Martha Rhoads.
--The possibility that a young girl whose body was preserved for four years in ice, salt water and spices may have been the victim of some strange ritual of the cult to which she belong occupied the attention of city and county authorities.
--Willa died on New Year's Eve, 1925, when she was 16 years old, at her old residence of 640 South Manhattan Place, Los Angeles. On the day she died, she was placed into a tub full of salt water, ice and various aromatic spices.
--The step-parents who adopted the girl in Portland, Oregon when she was two years old, said that the girl had died of an ulcerated tooth whose infection has spread to her throat, but admitted that no doctor had been called. Another newspaper article mentioned the mother claimed the girl had died from diphtheria.
--Willa's adoptive parents said that Mrs. May Otis Blackburn, one of the leaders of the cult and the "high priestess", had done all she could for the girl.
--Blackburn admitted to the police, however, that she knew the girl's body had been kept in a tub full of ice for 16 months and moved by the family during three changes of residence. On the actual day she died, in order to transport the corpse, the couple propped her sitting upright in the back of their car . “The remains were so well preserved that passers-by thought they saw a living girl.”
--The place she was moved to was 428 North Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. Later the Rhoads moved to 2327 Main Street, Ocean Park in Santa Monica and finally to Venice, where she was found by authorities.
-After keeping her daughter's body on ice for 14 months, Mrs. Rhoads finally accepted her daughter was not going to be resurrected, and the family decided to bury her in a makeshift crypt under their home. The burial reportedly took place at their home at 1904 Marco Place, Venice, California on Feb 10, 1929. Willa's wrapped body was placed on her back, knees drawn up to her chest and hands crossed inside a copper lined cedar coffin that her father, a carpenter had constructed, carefully soldering joints so tightly, it would essentially be airtight. Mrs. Rhoads claimed that she hoped that Willa would have been resurrected through the powers of the cult.
--In order to reach the coffins, a trap was lifted from the floor, and police officers dug into the ocean soaked ground, and finding the coffin about a half hour later. In order to remove the coffins, police chopped through a hardwood floor in the bedroom, then through a floor or rough planking, broke away at the cement slab and dug out the two coffins which were placed in a small, but elaborately reinforced burial chamber, a pit not more than four feet square and almost six feet deep, which took two days to create.
---In another casket were the bodies of seven puppies, in a fair state of preservation, which were once her pets, which, in the belief of the cult of which she was a priestess, represented the seven tones of Gabriel's trumpet and would proclaim the morn of her resurrection. Mrs. Rhoads claimed that one of the puppies died the same day her daughter did and that they were a symbol of the power of resurrection. The Rhoads killed the remaining pups and laid them out in a row in a casket similar to the one they buried Willa in. A necropsy of the puppies revealed they were poisoned to death.
--When the casket containing Willa was opened, they found her body wrapped, packed in salt and in a remarkable state of preservation. The salt water in the sandy soil of Venice seeped into the pit acted as a natural preservative. There was also evidence that large quantities of spices had been placed within the casket to keep the body in good condition and decomposition odors at bay. After a six hour autopsy, the autopsy surgeon was unable to determine the actual cause of death, but it appeared she died from natural death as no evidence of foul play was found. Her body was then turned over to county chemists for toxicology testing because the police suspected she may have been poisoned.
The Cult:
--Authorities feared that the girl may have been a sacrificial victim of a ritual to test the resurrection belief of the cult, "The Divine Order of the Royal Arm of the Great Eleven".
--The Blackburn Cult, officially the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven, or the Great Eleven Club, was a new religious movement started in 1922 by American woman Mrs. May Otis Blackburn. She started the group on Bunker Hill in Downtown Los Angeles, California, and later formed a retreat in the Southern California Simi Valley. Blackburn was said to have received revelations directly from angels, and, along with her daughter Ruth Wieland Rizzio, believed that she was charged by the archangel Gabriel to write books revealing the mysteries of Heaven and Earth, and life and death.
--The cult was composed of at least 300 "highly civilized residents of leading California cities". The only person of African descent involved i the cult was a 21 year old colored man named David Thompson. Thompson's role was that of a guard of the set of golden "Lord's Furniture" left to watch a desert retreat at the Santa Susanna "temple" headquarters. All others were, both men and women, were Caucasian. Each person connected to the mysterious cult had a name descriptive of their part in the cabalistic life of the colony. Thompson was known as "Ham", a character in the Bible. Willa was known as "The Tree of Life". May Otis Blackburn was referred to as the "Heel of God". Other cult members names were: "Dido", "Sunny Re", "Love Mi", "Ching Fai", "Peaceful Sol" and "Tootsie".
--All cult members were believed to have committed sacrificial murders. The cult was also accused of killing paralytic member Frances Turner in an oven the cult made after baking her alive for days in an attempt to cure her blood disorder, poisoning another during a "whirling dervish" ceremony, and making several other members disappear.
--Newspaper articles from the period reported strange rituals including the sacrifice of animals, sex scandals and attempts to resurrect a dead 16-year-old girl. Police found the corpse of young woman Willa Rhoads under the floor at the Rhoadses' residence, wrapped in spices, ice and salt, and surrounded by the bodies of seven dead dogs. Mr. and Mrs. Rhoads later confessed to the police that they had placed their daughter in the tomb fourteen months earlier at the suggestion of May Otis Blackburn.
--Mrs. Blackburn, who with her daughter, Mrs. Ruth Angelina Wieland Rizzio is held in the county jail in lieu of $10,000 bond as a result of financial charges brought by a male member of the organization, denied that she had promised resurrection. Blackburn embezzled about $50,000 from persons who had contributed to the cult. In 1929, group leaders were indicted in Los Angeles for grand theft and investigated in connection with the disappearances of several members. These indictments created a sensation after the background of the grand theft was revealed to the public. May Otis Blackburn was charged with twelve counts of grand theft, and articles at that time referred to her as a "cult leader". The cult collapsed after May Otis Blackburn was imprisoned for stealing $40,000 dollars from Clifford Dabney.
Willa's Final Resting Place:
Willa was born in 1909 and died in 1924 and was buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California. Her parents William and Martha both joined her 20 years later.
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