Newspaper articles from the period reported strange rituals including the sacrifice of animals, sex scandals and attempts to resurrect a dead 16-year-old girl. Police found the corpse of young woman Willa Rhoads under the floor at the Rhoadses' residence, wrapped in spices and salt, and surrounded by the bodies of seven dead dogs. Mr. and Mrs. Rhoads later confessed to the police that they had placed their daughter in the tomb fourteen months earlier at the suggestion of May Otis Blackburn. The cult was also accused of killing a member in an oven, poisoning another during a "whirling dervish" ceremony, and making several other members disappear.