From the October 26, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“El Paso, Texas–Strapped to an operating table, James Clifford, 28-year-old self-styled scion of a wealthy Oakland, Cal., family, declared today he shot himself on order of a secret cult, whose heads gave him a pistol and demanded he commit suicide because he had fallen in love with the wife of another cult member. Police were forced to handcuff the injured man and he was strapped to the operating table while physicians worked, because of violent attempts to complete what he said was an attempt to kill himself. He was not wounded dangerously, one of two shots going wild and the other inflicting a surface abdominal wound.”