THE DETROIT TIMES

Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.

21 December 1922

(page 2)

18-YEAR-OLD WIFE SAYS RYERSON,

LOVE CULT HEAD, WAS BRUTAL.

BRIDE OF O.T.O. CHIEF

TELLS OF “HORRORS”

FORCED TO SLEEP UNDER PORCH.

Divorce Trial Will Reveal Mystic

O.T.O. Secrets She Promises.

MAZIE MITCHELL RYERSON

Mrs. Ryerson, for 29 days the girl bride of the leader of the O.T.O.

love cult, tells in the Detroit Times today more intimate details of the

“trial marriage” with Ryerson and the “horrors” from which she fled.

In the fourth article of her series written for THE TIMES, Mazie Mitchell, artist’s model and alleged trial marriage wife of Albert W. Ryerson, wealthy head of the mystic O.T.O. love cult, relates the cruel treatment Ryerson inflicted upon her immediately after their marriage. She tells of the strange life she led at his beautiful home on Riverside Drive and how she determined to go back to her posing.

By MAZIE MITCHELL

On the third evening after we were married I went through a time of torture. I can never forget that experience. Ryerson became angry with me over some trivial matter. I believe I was reading a letter from a girlfriend when he demanded that I drop the letter and talk to him.

Of course, without thinking of arousing his anger, I indignantly refused. Then he dragged me out of my chair and commenced to whip me. He beat me until I was black and blue and almost fainting. I screamed and screamed, but it made no difference. He seemed to take a fiendish delight in my screams. Finally, I broke away from him and ran from the house. I didn’t bother about where I was going. I ran under the porch, just like a cowering, whipped dog, and lay there shivering all night. I was sore and weak, every bone and muscle ached. Moreover, I was heart broken. To think that a husband of but three days could thus treat his bride. I was determined to run away, to go back to my artist friends and make my own living as a model again.

HAD NO FUNDS

I had no money, nothing but the clothes on my back.

I sobbed myself to sleep and there Ryerson found me in the morning. Of course he was a humble, repentant, loving husband. He begged me to forgive him, to overlook his passion. Promising never again to lay a violent hand on me, he vowed he would be good and kind and make me happy.

So, believing, again I stayed. For a day or so he was kind to me and tried to make amends for what he had done. But he didn’t seem to be able to control himself. The little trifles that married people often offend in and pass by with loving word or look for forgiveness, aroused every vile feeling in him. He would storm at me, rave and, then grab and beat me. Frequently he would abuse me for no reason whatever. Sometimes he would awake in the middle of the night and continue beating me because of some fancied slight. Once he whipped me so hard and long that I lost consciousness. The marks are yet on my body, big welts on my back and limbs.

MYSTERIOUS LIFE

Gradually, intimations of mysterious things began to come to me. At first I could not believe them possible. Then one night, Ryerson produced a big book of clippings and told me of the O.T.O. These clippings related about the discovery of the O.T.O. cult in this city last year, and the connecting Ryerson as the head of it. Most of the stories were false, he said, and he had been very much persecuted.

He related a great deal about the O.T.O., facts that I cannot repeat. Perhaps I shall relate some of them when my divorce case comes to trial. He never tried to make me a member of the [illegible], but I believe he certainly intended to. He found me too obstinate, too determined to resist [illegible].

He must have thought that by whipping and abusing me he could break my spirit and mould me to his will. But he couldn’t.

(TO BE CONTINUED)