This Huckster Preached Himself Into the Pokey

No other city, it seems, has given rise to such a spiritual smorgasbord of mystic, philosophical, occult, consciousness-raising, therapeutic and alternative creeds--and just plain money-grubbing--as 20th century Los Angeles.

For 100 years, the City of Angels has been a magnet for prophets promising to unlock the secrets of the metaphysical and downright odd, from eternal life to divine consciousness. From the Agabeg Occult Church, whose priestess had violet hair, to Arthur Bell’s Mankind United, which promised followers new homes with swimming pools, these movements found easy acceptance in a land populated by waves of newcomers eager to rid themselves of past ties and embrace a new California future.

But perhaps none was quite so entertaining and greedy as the self-proclaimed preacher Joe Jeffers, a huckster, jailbird and white supremacist who turned a 32-room Laurel Canyon mansion into his own Temple of Yahweh. During the 1930s and ‘40s, in their quest for enlightenment, hundreds of soul-searching Angelenos put their faith and their cash in Jeffers and, successively, each of his four youthful wives.

It was Hollywood--or at least Los Angeles--that catapulted the Bible Belt preacher to fame. It wasn’t his sin-smashing revivals, false predictions, anti-Semitic preaching or even his alleged sexual dalliances that brought his final fall from grace.

Ultimately, it was a lavish lifestyle--and fleecing his flock one time too many to support it.

Jeffers came to L.A. in the late 1930s, and he began his evangelistic ministry with revival meetings at the Embassy Auditorium downtown. Soon he opened his own church, the Kingdom Temple, at 8th and Flower streets. He claimed that he heard the voices of Noah and Jesus and that he wielded power over people’s fates.

Jeffers’ charisma, his compelling line and piercing eyes soon gathered a flock. He was part of what became known as the Christian Identity Movement, whose adherents believe that white people are the lost tribe of Israel and that Jews are half human and half satanic.

Jeffers first made headlines in the late 1930s, when he began mixing politics with religion. From the pulpit and by radio, he roared condemnations of Catholics and Jews--especially those in Hollywood--and threatened to expose the film industry for its wayward behavior. In the same era, Father Coughlin, the “radio priest,” was delivering his anti-Semitic broadcasts nationwide and, a few years later, anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith would try to get a permit to speak in the auditorium of a local high school.

All of that brought Jeffers new followers--and new attention from authorities, who in March 1939 arrested him and his second wife, Zella, on a morals charge in their Wilshire Boulevard high-rise.

The district attorney, Buron Fitts, said his office got wind of a rumor that the couple intended to burn down their church for the insurance money. On those grounds, the D.A. bugged their apartment and hired an undercover cop to pose as a screenwriter to approach them with the promise of putting Jeffers’ life story on the screen.

The ruse worked. On March 20, 1939, as the Jefferses threw a party for themselves and the undercover cop posing as a screenwriter, the undercover man shouted “Mahatma Gandhi!” as a signal for the police holed up next door to kick down the door and raid the party. An officer filmed the hectic scene, in which the Jefferses were clad only in their birthday suits. Whether the undercover cop was in the same state of undress, the D.A. didn’t say.

Headlines screamed of “orgies,” and for four sensation-packed weeks, more than 200 of what Jeffers said were 100,000 followers appeared outside the Hall of Justice singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” and waving small American flags. Inside, prosecutors accused the couple of performing what were delicately described as “exotic” and illegal sexual acts.

Prosecutors painted a grim portrait of the couple, giving lurid details of Zella allegedly indulging in sexual acts with another man while her husband was intimately engaged with three other women. The Jefferses bowed their heads and prayed.

Zella’s purported confession was read into the record: “I loved my husband and wanted to keep working with him to win him away from his peculiar ideas,” she stated. But on the witness stand, the hysterical Zella denied everything, including the confession. She and her husband drank “drugged” champagne only because they were “induced” to by the undercover cop who posed as their friend, she said. Ripping off the court microphone, she screamed: “Oh, it’s unfair! I’m not getting a fair trial!”

On the stand, Jeffers said he had been framed because of his preaching “against the Communist Jews who are trying to get a war with America.” Later, he accused studio chiefs Harry and Jack Warner of orchestrating it all; the executives denied it. (Two years later, the undercover cop sued Warner Bros. for the $50,000 he said he earned investigating the couple on behalf of the studio to prove Jeffers was a Nazi spy. He lost the case, but during the trial, the head of Warner Bros. security said he had rented the apartment next door to the Jefferses’ and bugged them.)

Outside Judge Charles Fricke’s courtroom, Jeffers’ followers quietly prayed, while scores of adherents and curiosity seekers crammed into the courtroom to view the prosecution’s X-rated film. Embarrassed jurors hung their heads, and some offended spectators walked out.

On the defensive, Jeffers’ attorney drew gasps when he presented a “threatening note” he said had been slipped under his office door, reading: “Your last warning. Jeffers must be convicted or you die.” In the end, the defense persuaded the jury that the Jefferses were framed, and they were acquitted.

One night in 1942, three years after his acquittal, Jeffers walked out on his flock, saying the evening’s $125 collection was too small. Guilt-ridden and afraid of losing him, the congregation collected an additional $500 in pledges that night. The following year, when Zella divorced Jeffers for being “under the delusion that he’s Jesus reincarnated,” his first wife, Jessie Mayfield Eubanks, sued him for back alimony and child support for his two children.

In 1944, Jeffers was arrested for stealing the car of one of his ex-wives. While serving 15 months of a four-year prison term, his third wife, Helene, stuck by him.

By 1946, Jeffers was a preacher on a mission again, out of prison and back in the limelight. Hoping to purify his sullied image, he began conducting “lengthy research on the name of the Creator,” and after “six weeks of fasting,” he said that “the name ‘Yahweh’” was revealed to him--even though it had existed in Judeo-Christian literature for millenniums.

Seeking the Garden of Eden, the couple found it in Laurel Canyon and called it the Kingdom of Yahweh. At Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Willow Glen Road, devotees held predawn prayer rituals on the grounds of a 1915 mansion, reputed to have been Harry Houdini’s home--though Houdini actually had lived across the street.

But Jeffers’ troubles were starting anew. His predictions caused an uproar in the press: that Los Angeles would be hit by a nuclear holocaust in 1949, and that England would sink into the ocean in 1952. His popularity among believers neither rose nor fell despite the inaccuracy of his predictions. But paradise was short-lived. Neighbors complained that the couple were disturbing the peace, which meant another trial; charges were reduced to a zoning offense. “Love offerings” began to slow down when more than a dozen disciples sued Jeffers for fraud and misrepresentation totaling more than $50,000. His parole was revoked in 1947, and he went back to prison.

When he got out a few years later, he resurfaced in Phoenix, claiming bankruptcy. When his third wife died in 1957, he married her 18-year-old secretary. Together, they set up a headquarters in Phoenix, where Jeffers again became a self-styled spiritual guide.

Less than a decade later, the law caught up with him for the last time. In 1966, a Phoenix jury convicted the 68-year-old Jeffers and his 27-year-old wife, Connie, of 13 counts of mail fraud for swindling followers out of $200,000 and gambling it away on dog and pony races. They were given probation and fined $13,000.

Then they fled for presumably greener pastures and the law never heard from them again.