Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Sanborn wondered idly what was going on, but he went to bed soon afterwards. At one o'clock in
the morning he was woken by someone shaking him violently and he sat up with a start to find
Miles Hollister standing over his bed. If he had not been so sleepy, he would have laughed:
Hollister, too, was wearing a long topcoat and felt hat and also appeared to be carrying a gun.
'Where did Ron take Lexie?' he demanded. Sanborn rubbed his eyes and mumbled, 'Palm
Springs.' 'When did they leave?' Hollister asked. It seemed that Sanborn did nut respond quickly
enough, for Hollister shouted 'When did they leave?' Sanborn told him and he hurried out of the
room. A few minutes later, Sanborn heard Hollister revving his car outside.
Hollister headed out of town at high speed in the direction of Palm Springs, which was exactly what
Hubbard had intended him to do. By then, Alexis had been handed over to the twenty-four hour
Westwood Nurses Registry in Los Angeles. Hubbard, posing as a businessman by the name of
James Olsen, had asked the agency to arrange for his child, Anne-Marie, to be put in the care of a
competent nurse for about a month because his wife had suddenly been taken seriously ill and
business commitments required him to leave immediately for the East Coast. Melba McGonigel,
the owner of the agency, was deeply suspicious but agreed to take the baby after 'Mr Olsen' had
signed a 'To whom it may concern' statement releasing the agency of any responsibility.
Shortly after one o'clock on the morning of 25 February, a black Lincoln drew up outside the
Hubbards' apartment at 1251 Westmoreland Avenue in West Los Angeles. Richard de Mille was at
the wheel, Hubbard and Frank Dessler were in the back. Inside the house, Sara sat in her
nightgown by the telephone, weeping into a handkerchief as she waited for news of Alexis. She
jumped up in alarm when she heard a key scraping at the door, but her fear turned to anger when
her husband and Dessler appeared in the doorway. 'Where's Lexie?' she screamed. Neither man
said a word. They grabbed her by each arm, one of them clamped a hand over her mouth and they
bustled her out of the house, across the sidewalk and into the back of the car, which drove off at
speed.
Sara fought like a cat in the back of the car, screaming and shouting at Hubbard, who in turn was
shouting at her. At one point, when the car stopped at traffic lights, she tried to leap out and
thereafter Hubbard gripped her round the neck in a stranglehold while the argument continued.
'She was enraged at being hauled off and was fulminating insults in all directions,' said de Mille.
'She was very bitter about their marriage and his conduct and Ron was fulminating against Miles
Hollister and her conduct.'
At Los Angeles city limit, Dessler was dropped off and the Lincoln sped on towards San
Bernardino, where Ron hoped to get Sara medically examined and declared insane. 'She was
eager to get the same opinion about him,' de Mille declared, 'but Ron held all the cards at that
point.' There followed a ludicrous farce as they toured the dark streets of San Bernardino trying to
find a doctor while Sara alternately screamed at, and pleaded with, her husband to tell her where
he had taken Alexis. Eventually, Hubbard went into the county hospital while de Mille guarded Sara
in the car. He returned after some few minutes, apparently surprised and disgusted that there was
no doctor available in the early hours of the morning willing to declare his wife insane.
At dawn, the Lincoln could be seen trailing a cloud of dust as it headed east across the desert
towards the Arizona border; Hubbard had ordered de Mille to drive to the airport at Yuma. The angry
squabbling in the back of the car had not let up for a moment. Sara swore again and again that she
would have Ron arrested for kidnapping the moment she was free and he swore that if she did she
would never see Alexis again. The mutual threats and recriminations continued while Hubbard was
thinking hard how he could extricate himself from the situation.
Parked in the watery early morning sunshine in a quiet corner of Yuma airport, the warring couple at