The Street Seen: Willa Rhoads Haunts Main St
2327 Main Street @ Hollister Ave
Nearly 100 years ago, in 1925, in a house on Main St at Hollister, the body of a dead 16-year-old cult priestess is preserved in an ice bath awaiting her resurrection.
In Los Angeles, on New Year’s Day 1925, 16-year-old Willa Rhoads dies as a result of a tooth infection. Willa and her adoptive parents (William Rhoads & Martha Rhoads) are members of The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven cult.1 May Otis Blackburn, founder and self-appointed Queen and High Priestess, assures the grieving parents that the girl can be resurrected to life after 1,260 days.2 All they have to do is preserve her body for the event.
Willa’s body is placed in a bathtub filled with ice, salt, and spices. Several months later the body is transferred from Los Angeles to an ice bath at the cult headquarters at 2327 Main St (North East Corner Hollister).3
Months later, the Rhoads move to 1094 Marco Place, Venice. Willa’s preserved body is placed in a coffin beneath the floor of their house.4 Next to her is another coffin containing the bodies of seven sacrificed puppies - said to represent the seven tones of the angel Gabriel’s trumpet.
In August 1929, former cult member5 Clifford R. Dabney (1891 - 1977), nephew of a prominent oilman, Joseph Dabney (1858 - 1932), files a criminal complaint that he gave May Blackburn $40,000 to finish writing her books (revealing sources of untold wealth in oil and mineral deposits), but the books never materialized. The Dabney complaint causes the police to investigate the cult in the death of Willa Rhoads,6 and in the disappearance of some cult members.7
In 1930, Ruth and May are charged with grand theft. The charges against Ruth are dropped, but May is sentenced to a minimum of eight years. She appeals on the grounds that stories of cult activities have been improperly admitted, creating prejudice in the minds of the jury, and have nothing to do with whether she has committed theft. In 1931, the Appellate Court overturns her conviction.
The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven is founded in Los Angeles in the 1920s by May Otis Blackburn (1881 - 1951) and her daughter Ruth Wieland Rizzio (1898 - 1978). The two women claim they are high priestesses charged by the angel Gabriel to write two books that would "reveal all the mysteries of life and death and heaven and earth."
Book of Revelation 11:3 “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.”
Thales Davis Stewart (1859 – 1926) operates Hollister Furniture at 2331 Main St. In 1925 Stewart is living with his daughters of a previous marriage at 2321 Main St. Cult members, his wife Mary T. Stewart (1878 - 1962) and their daughter Bessie Stewart (1907 - 1985) live at 2327 Main St.
Raymond Viginalli, employee of the Imperial Ice Co on Main St, informs the police that in 1925/1926, he delivered 600 lbs of ice per week to 2327 Main St but has never been allowed inside. Between 1926 and 1929, May Otis Blackburn (1881 - 1951) is living up the street at 219 Hollister.
Willa’s body is preserved in ice for 14 months before it is interred beneath the floor at the Venice cottage. Only once is Willa’s body transported “upright” in a car – the day she died. With every other move, she is in her coffin. The press makes up a story about her frozen body being moved around propped upright in a car – it sells papers.
Clifford Dabney joins the cult in 1924.
An autopsy reveals that Willa Rhoads died of natural causes and no action is taken.
In 1924, Samuel Rizzio (1903 - ) disappears after an altercation with his wife, Ruth. There is circumstantial evidence (Ruth Rizzio purchases poison around the time Rizzio goes missing) that he is poisoned during a subsequent cult ceremony, but a body is never found, and no charges are ever pressed.
