My Town Monday, Detroit

(Sorry about the size here. Unable to shrink it)

Detroit, 1929

One of Detroit’s strangest murders was that of Benjamino Evangelista, who came to the U.S. to improve his lot. As Benny Evangelist he made his way from Pennsylvania to Detroit, where he found God.

In 1906 he began experiencing religious visions and shared it in The Oldest History of the World Discovered by Occult Science. His intended four-volume work covered all of history through the resurrection of Jesus, including the birth of God himself. He never completed volumes 2-4, 1 ending well before the Flood.

As a psychic Benny received as much as $10 for private "readings," during which he called upon the powers heal various ills, either spiritual or physical, with which his "patients" were afflicted. He lived with his wife and four children on St. Aubin’s Avenue in Detroit.

Evangelist was murdered by decapitation on July 3, 1929, along with his wife and their children. The police initially jailed a friend of the family, who had suspicious weapons and newly washed shoes in his barn. Nothing of value was missing in the house.

In the basement, the police found eight or ten wax figures, each presumably representing one of the "celestial planets," suspended on the altar by wires from the ceiling. Among them was a huge eye, electrically lighted from the inside, which Evangelist referred to in his bible as "the sun."

The walls and ceiling of this "religious sanctum" were lined with light green cloth, which bulged out in places like the walls of a padded cell. In a window of the basement, which was on a line with and visible from St. Aubin avenue, a large card bore the words: "Great Celestial Planet Exhibition."

The murder was never solved.