Defended Aimee Semple McPherson in ‘20s : Burbank’s Judge Hamner Is Dead at 96

Funeral services were held Saturday for former Burbank judge and civic leader Leonard W. Hamner, who was an attorney in one of the most notorious scandals of the 1920s, served in the New Deal of the 1930s and, as head of the local draft board in the 1940s, sent thousands of men to fight in World War II.

In the well-known scandal, Hamner defended evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson against the accusation that she faked a kidnaping to disguise a love affair.

He died Friday at the age of 96 in a convalescent home in Porterville, Calif.

He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, reported his son, John Hamner, a Lake Arrowhead real estate broker.

A lawyer in Kansas before coming to Los Angeles in 1919, Hamner became a deputy district attorney in the mid-1920s before setting up a private practice.

His best-known appearance as a lawyer was as a defense attorney for Mrs. McPherson, a white-robed revivalist in Los Angeles who was one of the colorful cast of characters that peopled newspaper headlines around the country during the Jazz Age.

In 1926 she disappeared while swimming at Ocean Park Beach in Santa Monica. It became the scene of nightly vigils by some of her thousands of devoted followers who prayed for her return.

She stumbled out of the desert near Douglas, Ariz., 36 days later, saying she had been kidnaped and taken to Mexico where she escaped.

Hamner was one of a team of about a half-dozen attorneys who defended her when she was brought before a grand jury, Hamner’s son said.

The grand jury investigated a possible charge of conspiracy to injure public morals and obstruct justice, based on accusations that she invented the kidnaping to cover up a rendezvous with a married man in a Carmel motel. She was not indicted.

Hamner became president of the Burbank Rotary Club, first president of the Burbank Coordinating Council of service clubs, a charter member of the San Fernando Valley and Burbank bar associations and a member of the first Burbank city personnel board, which established the Civil Service system for municipal employees.

During the Depression, he held positions in the National Recovery Administration and other agencies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

When World War II broke out, he became a member of the Civilian Defense Council, senior air raid warden for the Burbank area and a member of the ration board, which apportioned supplies to local businesses.

He was appointed to Draft Board 180, the third largest in the nation, in May, 1943, and was chairman for a year before resigning in 1946.

He said at the time that he was proud that of the 19,000 men in the board’s jurisdiction, 7,500 were drafted “and only four or five were prosecuted by the board for draft evasion--that gives Burbank an almost perfect record.�

He was appointed a justice of the peace for what was then called the Glendale-Burbank Township Court in 1949. In 1952 he was elected to one of the first two judgeships of the new Burbank Municipal Court, serving until 1961.

He is survived by his son, seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.