Donny perceives it, Sporky believes it, and so much more...

YouTube video by Holy Rollers - Topic

Smite you and you and you Sources Holy Rollers Murder and Madness in Oregon's Love Cult by T. McCracken and Robert B. Blodgett ß Main Source Edmund Creffield and the Brides of Christ Church ## Baptized with Fire ## - come back to article 1900s ‘cult' brings God's messenger to Corvallis, along with preachings, lust and murder – Beaver's Digest ## OSU, Lane CC faculty pen book on turn-of-the-century cult | Newsroom | Oregon State University## History of The Salvation Army Reference Point: The Holy Rollers: Cults, Murder, and Insanity in the Frontier Pacific Northwest - BAR BULLETIN Steamboats and the West | Oklahoma Historical Society Holy Roller Family Trees ß Family Tree!

Five days following his May 2, 1906 arrival from Portland, Oregon, George Mitchell sighted his prey. The mill worker wasted minimal time fulfilling the object of his visit. Franz Edmund Creffield and his wife Maud were strolling leisurely down Seattle’s First Avenue that day completely unaware of Mitchell’s identity or lurking shadow. Mitchell posed leisurely in front of the Quick Drugstore at the intersection of Cherry and First Street. As the couple passed, he raised a 32-calibre revolver to the back of Creffield’s neck and fired a single shot. Creffield died instantly as did a religious movement that he had founded three years earlier in Corvallis, Oregon. He was previously a Salvation Army worker. After renaming himself Joshua, he founded his cult rejecting materialism, assuming that someone else provided him sustenance. The group began their services on Kilger Island (on the periphery of Corvallis), then and now rural farming grounds laden with water bodies and numerous trees to camouflage their activities from curious prying eyes. The majority of his twenty members were women who liberally incinerated their clothing, corsets and hats as sacramental rites. They wore wrappers that were long shapeless tunics. Locals labeled his adherents Holy Rollers due to their orgasmic rolling on the ground during religious services. The church’s adopted name was the Brides of Christ. Members lived communally, marriage was eschewed and Creffield indulged his sexual appetite on many of the members. The cult was tossed from their initial benefactor’s home when they ignited a bonfire of his family’s possessions in front of his house. Creffield became the lover of his benefactor’s wife and daughter. Alarmed male residents of Corvallis banded together on the evening of January 4, 1904 to tar and feather Creffield. The following morning, he revenged the act by marrying his former host’s daughter Maud. He prudently skipped town before a follow-up vigilante band could return that evening with a hanging rope. Creffield had temporarily evaded Corvallis, but remained in Oregon. A few months later an adultery criminal complaint was lodged against him in Portland stating that he had engaged in sexual relations with a married devotee as part of a purification ritual. The local press speculated that she was merely one of fifteen women that Creffield had seduced or violated. Some of these women were transferred to the Salem insane asylum and the younger ones to the Oregon Girls’ Aid Society. George Mitchell’s 15-year old sister Esther was one of these young women. Creffield went into hiding to avoid capture. Lacking financial resources, he opted to hide under the porch of his former benefactor. During that period, he became bearded, filthy, nearly starving and naked. He was slipped food and water clandestinely by some of his devotees including the wife and daughter of his former host. Discovered and then arrested, Creffield was convicted of adultery at his trial and sentenced to state prison for two years. While incarcerated for seventeen months, he decided to relocate to Waldport, Oregon and then Seattle. When George Mitchell learned of his whereabouts, he pursued by train. Following the murder, he surrendered to police without resistance. The cult’s former benefactor and primary victim provided him with top legal representation. He pled temporary insanity. The jury quickly exonerated Mitchell. His father, brothers and several male Corvallis residents celebrated his act of reclaiming the honor of his sister. The gesture however was unappreciated by the intended beneficiary and Creffield’s wife. Esther Mitchell met her brother at Seattle’s King Street station as the Mitchell family was preparing to board a return train to Portland. As an apparent act of forgiveness, she shook his hand in front of the assemblage. As he prepared to board the train, she raised a pistol hidden under a coat draped over her arm. She fired one shot in the exact same spot on his neck that had killed Creffield. The bullet severed an artery and he bled to death on the station platform. Esther Mitchell and Maud Creffield expressed no remorse at their trial. Creffield freely admitted that she had purchased the gun and ammunition following George Mitchell’s acquittal. Both women were declared delusional and dangerous. Maud Creffield was deported to the Oregon state insane asylum. She managed to have strychnine smuggled into the county jail cell during her appeal process and committed suicide. Esther Mitchell spent two years at the Western State Hospital in Steilacoom before being declared cured. In 1914 at the age of 26, she relocated to Waldport, Oregon. Externally happy, she ended her life as well with strychnine only three months into a recent marriage.