Cult leadership tends to be a male-dominated field. But in the 1920s, one woman turned that expectation on its head… not that that’s necessarily a point of pride. May Otis Blackburn and, as history remembers them, the Blackburn Cult believed in a post-apocalyptic future ruled by 11 queens. And this cult, run by Blackburn and her failed starlet daughter, didn’t pull its punches. If the accounts are to be believed, they had all the classic cult hits. Sacrifice – check. Moonlit debauchery – check. Grand theft – check. Murder… yeah, these ladies knew how to get weird. How weird? Ghostwriting for angels weird. Sacrificing cars and trucks weird. Attempted resurrection of a 16-year-old “princess” weird. Do we even have to ask you to read on?
The Voice of a Phantom Dove
Even before she became the self-proclaimed High Priestess/Queen of her own cult, May Otis Blackburn heard voices. Perhaps these were no different than those attributed to imaginary friends by bored or lonely children. But over time, the voices began to accompany a spectral dove that followed Blackburn through her travels.
In 1897, she wed John Wieland, who would be the father of her child… and the source of a considerable amount of her pain. A gambler with a mean streak, Wieland descended into violence upon any suspicions that Blackburn had squirreled away funds from him. A year into their marriage, Blackburn became pregnant with her only daughter, Ruth. Wieland promptly abandoned her, only to be allegedly murdered shortly afterward amidst a mining dispute in California. Desperate to support her daughter and herself in a time that did little to help single mothers, Blackburn refined her feminine wiles. And developed a penchant for crime.
The Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven
Blackburn and her daughter arrived in Hollywood in 1918, a long string of conned men in their wake. As Ruth struggled to break through as an actress, often falling back on work as an exotic dancer, Blackburn escaped into a private world of religious zealotry. But fortunes seemed to change for mother and daughter when, one evening, they claimed a disembodied voice spoke to them in their Bunker Hill apartment, approximately where the Charles Schwab building looms over a freeway onramp today. You know, just in case you wanted to make any religious pilgrimages.
The voice catalyzed what would come to be regarded as the Blackburn Cult. But it was officially dubbed the much more grandiose Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven. Sometimes, this was shortened to the informal Great Eleven Club. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll continue referring to it as the Blackburn Cult. The official name derived from one of the core beliefs of Blackburn and her followers: that following the inevitable apocalypse described in the Book of Revelation, 11 queens would rule the remaining world from atop Olive Hill (where Barnsdall Park stands today). Blackburn referred to these queens as “the Great Eleven”. She also went by the title “the Heel of God” herself, on occasion. And the bank accounts of many would be crushed beneath her.
Hope in the City of Angels
Blackburn came to believe that the voice that she and Ruth heard that fateful night on Bunker Hill belonged to none other than the archangel Gabriel. Mother and daughter alleged that both Gabriel and his fellow archangel Michael appeared to them, proclaiming that Blackburn and Ruth were the “two witnesses” described in the Book of Revelation 11:3.
These angels had their own story to tell which they planned to dictate directly to the mother-daughter duo. And it had a heck of a twist ending. Upon publication, they promised that it would shatter the Seventh Seal described in Revelation, bringing about the apocalypse. Fittingly, the book was entitled The Seventh Trumpet of Gabriel, though it would eventually be re-titled The Great Sixth Seal.
But there was one important detail of the book that, at least on one occasion, drew particular interest from a man with deep pockets. Along with its details of divinity, the book promised to reveal an untold bounty of secret riches, including valuable mineral and oil deposits. Enter Clifford Dabney, the nephew of an oil magnate and, fortunately for Blackburn and Ruth, an all-around sucker.
Simi Valley Salvation
Ruth had proven particularly adept over the years at parting fools from their money, but it was her mother who held what Dabney truly wanted. With the promise of divine deposits of natural resources, he happily handed over around $50,000 in cash and assets to the Blackburn cult. In 2024, that would equate to just under a million dollars. But perhaps the most valuable gift Dabney donated to Blackburn and her flock was land to the tune of 164 acres in Simi Valley. Hearing the promise land calling, Blackburn picked up stakes and headed up to Ventura County.
By the time the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven had settled in Simi, Blackburn had secured a husband in Ward Sitton Blackburn, who she referred to as the “North Star of the World.” Couple goals? Under her guidance, the cult built their own cabins on the land that had formerly belonged to Dabney. She also compelled them to erect a temple on the grounds, punctuated by a regal throne reserved for the return of Jesus Christ. To make ends meet, most of the Blackburn cult got jobs at a local tomato-packing facility. Of course, they handed all of the checks directly to Blackburn and her daughter.
The Blackburn cult really seemed to up the ante with the relative freedom afforded by their Simi Valley land. It was common to cap a long day of tomato-packing with a sacrifice in the communal amphitheatre. Mules commonly went under the knife. But when none were available, the Blackburns would seek other animals. And, in a real bind, they’d accept the occasional automobile. With the formalities out of the way, they’d de-robe and dance nude beneath the lunar rays before calling it a night. But this garden-variety cult behavior was just the tip of the angel’s trumpet for May Otis Blackburn.
Death Comes to the Blackburn Cult
Unlike many of the Blackburn cult’s members, Frances Turner couldn’t get a job at the nearby tomato-packing facility. An undisclosed ailment had left her mute and paralyzed. But the angels reached out to Blackburn with a novel solution. The Blackburn cult loaded the immobilized Turner into a brick oven they had built themselves, then turned on the heat. Blackburn alleged that this unconventional treatment would free Turner from the paralysis that plagued her. In a way, she was right. When cult members went to remove the paralyzed woman from the oven two days later, she was, of course, dead.
It wasn’t the only time the Reaper would turn up to a Blackburn party. Ruth had also settled down with a husband, though he carried with him a temper all-too-familiar to Mama Blackburn. After an evening in which Samuel Rizzio lost himself in that famous temper, hitting his wife, the Blackburn cult convened for a ritual referred to as a “whirling dervish” ceremony. Rizzio never recovered from it, succumbing to symptoms that bore a remarkable similarity to poisoning. Disturbed by the unexplained death of his brother, Frank Rizzio was able to infiltrate the Blackburn cult as a driver. Though he claimed to find evidence of the cult’s murderous tendencies, it was never enough to pin his brother’s mysterious death on Blackburn and her maligned daughter.
Resurrecting the 16-Year-Old Princess of the Great Eleven
Arguably, the most notorious of the Blackburn cult’s brushes with death started on New Year’s Day in 1925. Willa Rhoads, the foster daughter of two loyal Blackburn cultists, was the future face of the Great Eleven. At just 16 years of age, she was already touted as a “princess” or “high priestess” of the group; a true believer who had already earned her place as one of the future queens of Olive Hill. But on that first day of 1925, diphtheria resulting from a nagging tooth infection took the teenager’s life.
Yet Blackburn saw Willa’s untimely death as the introduction to her greatest miracle. The Rhoads were devastated by the loss of their foster daughter until Blackburn promised them that Willa’s resurrection was inevitable. They just needed to preserve Willa’s body for 1,260 days while she and the angels finished their book.
At Blackburn’s urging, Willa’s corpse was transported to a bathtub brimming with ice, spices, and salt. When the family needed to transport Willa’s body that day, they simply propped her up in the back seat, hoping that passersby would just see a tired teenage girl. But with the visible hallmarks of death creeping in, further transport required the corpse to be wrapped in a blanket during transit.
The Suburban Sarcophagus
For 14 uncertain months, the Rhoadses kept Willa chilled, going through approximately 600 pounds of ice each week. But the Rhoadses didn’t have 1,260 days of faith left. It was melting away like the ice meant to preserve their daughter. They’d followed Blackburn’s bizarre suggestions, but couldn’t bear to be regularly confronted by the rotting shell of their child.
At the time of her passing, Willa had been doting on seven puppies. They were sacrificed to aid in the resurrection process, but Willa’s body continued wasting away. Disillusioned, the Rhoadses left the Blackburn cult for a home in Venice a little over a year after Willa’s death. They no longer believed she was coming back, but couldn’t quite extinguish their last embers of hope.
William Rhoads, Willa’s foster father, set to work crafting a specially designed cedar casket lined in copper. Next to the coffin, they included another coffin holding the bodies of Willa’s seven puppies. It was a desperate last attempt to honor the mysterious beings that would only speak with Blackburn and her daughter. Willa and her dogs were laid to rest in a fortified burial chamber, a suburban pharoah sarcophagus beneath the Rhoadses’ bedroom.
The Advance Runs Out
Perhaps Willa and her canine companions would still be sharing in a mummified slumber beneath the floor of a single-family home in Venice had Dabney not remembered his true god: The Almighty Dollar. While Blackburn had potentially aided in multiple murders by this point without so much as a fine, she inevitably crossed the line by committing the real cardinal sin in America: thou shalt not mess with a rich man’s money. In 1929, Dabney, accompanied by other members of the Blackburn cult, had grown weary of waiting for the publication of The Great Sixth Seal. Good thing they weren’t George R.R. Martin fans!
They made their ire official by levying theft and fraud charges against Blackburn in the amount of $200,000 (a little over $3.5 million today). The trial brought to light all manner of accusations against the Blackburns and even some hard evidence, including the mummified body of Willa Rhoads, who had then been preserved for nearly five years. But there wasn’t enough proof to connect Blackburn and her followers to any broken laws… with the exception of eight of 15 counts of grand theft. On March 14, 1930, Blackburn was sentenced to between one and 10 years at San Quentin penitentiary.
A True Miracle for May Otis Blackburn
But in 1931, the angels truly seemed to smile down upon May Otis Blackburn. Ruling that the bizarre accusations inundating Blackburn were unrelated to her trial while prejudicing the jury, the California Supreme Court tossed her conviction. She hadn’t served a single day for the crimes. The court also sided with Blackburn against Dabney and the revolting cultists, stating that they had been of sound mind when bequeathing their funds and gifts to her. Though Blackburn had avoided prison, her influence was waning as a result of the trial’s coverage.
A Whispered End to the Blackburn Cult
By comparison, the rest of Blackburn’s life was uneventful. In 1936, she published a book entitled The Origin of God. Fragments of the long-rumored The Great Sixth Seal were included, but it wasn’t the same. And the world didn’t end (although someone should probably check on that seventh seal… it’s been a few decades).
May Otis Blackburn died in Los Angeles on June 17, 1951, more or less comfortable in an apartment she shared with her daughter. Ruth followed her mother in 1978. The duo never relented on their beliefs. Rather, they continued publishing supporting material until their deaths to an ever-dwindling audience. In recent years, a fictionalized account of the Blackburn Cult was used as story inspiration for the first season of HBO’s neo noir drama Perry Mason. But the legacy of the Blackburn cult has largely been lost to history, no more audible than the whispers of angels.
