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THE DETROIT TIMES Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. 28 December 1922 (pages 1 & 3)
RYERSON OF O.T.O. TELLS STORY.
ANSWERS 29-DAY BRIDE.
“I Fell for Her and Am Paying the Price,” He Says.
BY ALBERT W. RYERSON The Good Book says that love suffers long and is patient.
The chivalry born of a lineage of nearly 300 years of culture and gentle folks in this country proscribes any item of cheapness or meanness on my part.
The dignity of silence seeming the right thing to maintain, under a most vicious and false attack by one whom I have honored with the title wife and agreed to keep her skeleton in the closet, yet it does seem that I owe something to society and something to the good of the girl herself, in not permitting her to further conduct he career of vice and destruction, without a warning to the community as to the true character of this little vixen whom it has been said is a dangerous woman to be at large in the community.
Quiet, refined and demure, sweet, charming and young, yet experienced in wickedness as I found out later, like a woman of 40; also imbued with a viciousness that was as dangerous as a volcano and as heartless and cruel as a tigress. An habitué of evil companions in her true life, yet as it suited her purpose, dressing and posing as a virtuous religious little unsophisticated girl to enlist the sympathies of people who would not stand for her if they knew her in her true life calling herself 18, yet acknowledging herself in various documents as 21 or older.
AM PAYING PRICE
I fell for her and am paying the price.
When I tell my story I will let the public be my judge. I shall tell how she boasts of being a professional vamp: one who can bring any man to her feet. How she proposes to be a “Sappho.” How she has vamped as she says as her latest victim a young newspaper reporter whom she claims to have entwined around her fingers so as to get her publicity of the “Fatty Arbuckle” type to enable her to gratify her ambitions to get into the movies. How a certain reporter on the Free Press, as well as my wife, was completely in their toils.
I was also informed by one Mr. Castle, a fancy dancer, who claimed to have resided in India, how these fellows operated and that the reporter was merely one of their unsuspecting tools. I shall tell how I was horrified to hear Mazie say that her gang was going to get Judge———, for sentencing a girl for eight years. How this same man was arrested in Pittsburgh in a hotel where they were living as man and wife; for jumping a board bill and robbing a cash box.
How she became defiant and bold because they claim that they have the newspapers and the police on their side. How she would sing hymns before going out for evening, place a Bible in my hand telling me to be good and inform me that she was going to the theater with a girl friend and how in the middle of the night I would be called up and informed that she was in some resort.
BEGGED FOR SECRECY
How I begged of Mazie to allow this divorce to go through sane and suppressed. How she had refused because she wanted the publicity. How they finally did agree and proposed that after she got the publicity she would withdraw the suit if I would later give her a quiet divorce.
How she pretended in her press story that she did not want alimony, yet in her suit claims it and listing my properties. How the gang had seized upon the O.T.O. notoriety to use it for their evil and blackmailing schemes, yet while pretending to know all about it and attributing vulgar things to it, in fact actually knowing nothing of it. How they prevailed upon her to charge me with coaching her to drink and smoke when as all my friends know I never smoked in all my life until the last three months and then only a cigarette or so at Mazie’s request, neither have I been drunk in my life, yet Mazie was a past master at it before I knew her.
CONCERNING O.T.O.
Concerning the O.T.O. it can so far as I am concerned be dismissed briefly. A few years ago seven prominent men met in a prominent attorney’s office in Detroit to be introduced to one Aleister Crowley with a view of forming a chapter in Detroit to organize a tentative lodge by acclamation without Initiation or ritual, pending the arrival and approval of the rituals and Crowley received those present into membership without any particular ceremony.
I was one of those present at this meeting. A day or so later four of the men met with Crowley at the D. A. C. and organized a supreme grand council. I was not invited nor present, neither was Dr. ———, but both Dr. ——— and myself resented the slight at not being invited, and while I was silent and provoked, Dr. ——— was outspoken in his displeasure and called Crowley down and they became enemies from that moment. The understanding was that both of the meetings aforesaid mentioned were merely tentative pending the arrival and examination of the rituals which were to be sent to the prominent attorney for revision and approval, which if approved, some action would be put forth in initiations. Mr. ——— went to Salt Lake City to confer with a member there and when he returned, the rituals had arrived under seal for his eyes only. He examined them and finally returned them, and advised dropping the matter which was done then and there and the O.T.O. was from that moment on, a dead and forgotten issue in Detroit. In the book stores difficulty, some old correspondence was discovered and because a certain book called the Equinox had been purchased, although merely as a merchandising proposition, (and, by the way, this book was not purchased by the writer, but by the president of the company, and the contract and details arranged for by the prominent attorney) aforesaid mentioned.
DENIES LOVE CULT
The newspapers of Detroit tried to make out that a love cult existed. The O.T.O. was not a love cult, nor did ever any exist in Detroit of which I was a member. I was not a part of the official organization nor never was invited, neither was I its head.
A certain prominent attorney being elected its head at the D. A. C. meeting. When trouble came and unsavory notoriety I was made the “goat” for the bunch, although entirely innocent, and I have in my silence practically laid down my life for my friends “who have not shown any disposition” to help me in this awful trouble, allowing me to stand the brunt of it all alone when they know I am entirely innocent of any complicity in the matter.
My home has been completely ransacked at various intervals, my papers and books seized, my servants bribed, my library robbed and I have been persecuted beyond endurance by people seeking evidence concerning the O.T.O. which has been in error dubbed a love cult and which never had any active existence in Detroit.
The national notoriety had attracted much attention to me and only too late I found myself in the toils of a gang of blackmailers who were feeding the newspapers with lies concerning this mythical organization in order to extort money from me.
When it was not forthcoming they resorted to revenge and persecution beyond endurance breaking my home and nearly destroying my business. I shall tell how on one night when Mazie thought I was asleep she slipped down stairs in her nightgown and sat upon the edge of a chauffeur’s bed. I followed quietly and heard her say that Daddy would raise “hell” if he saw me here. He replied he’d better not, because you know me, “see this big knife,” he said “I can throw that 30 feet and land it in a man’s heart. I could strangle the old man,” he said, “with a cord so cleverly that no one would know how he died, then we could throw him into the river and pretend that he had been drowned, then we could motor to Montreal, ship the car and go to India together.” Mazie, because of a slight noise, became frightened and went into another room, and in a short time he followed her into the same room.
(To Be Continued Tomorrow) |