Original subtitles

[tense music]

♪♪ ♪♪

SCOTT: The Mexican authorities

conduct this raid to get Ervil.

They find Rena Chynoweth and, weirdly enough, Daniel Jordan.

They're arrested.

They have Rena Chynoweth in a prison cell.

And apparently, Rena is taunting them.

- By the time the Mexican authorities

realize their mistake,

they go back, and of course, Ervil's long gone.

It's just a stunning failure for law enforcement.

If you believe in the One Mighty and Strong idea,

well, Ervil seems to be the living embodiment of it.

LINDSAY: Ervil is a dangerous, unhinged prophet.

He's been connected to at least nine murders.

But Ervil wasn't gonna stop there.

He was capable of killing anyone.

- Ervil is as dangerous as any man alive

and won't stop until he wipes out all rival polygamists.

- Everyone's on edge

because Ervil is still out there.

[unsettling string music]

♪♪ ♪♪

- They caught Dan in that apartment

because Dan was pretending to be Ervil.

CELIA: Yes.

They thought he was Ervil. - I was there too.

ANNA: And I was there, and-- CELIA: Yes.

- So what do you remember about it?

- I remember sleeping, and somebody comes

and starts pounding on the door really hard.

And I woke up in the middle of the night

and walked over to the door and opened it.

And, uh, I remember them, like, hitting people.

[pensive music]

This is my first time I had been in a--in a house

when it was raided.

Gotta be about six years old.

And that memory of me opening that door...

♪♪ ♪♪

Just haunted me for just years and years.

In my child brain, I extrapolated

that I was responsible.

[tense music]

♪♪ ♪♪

This one's a tough one.

- Besides opening the door,

what do you remember about that?

- I remember they were pretty brutal.

The--I guess they were Federales.

- They were ransacking the house

and taking whatever they wanted of our belongings.

It was very frightening for a nine-year-old child--

and Hyrum is six---

to watch these events unfold right in front of our eyes.

Very violent things were happening around me.

They did whatever they wanted, and they knew they could.

After Rena and Dan are arrested, the Federales left.

The apartment was ransacked.

The next thing we know, Hyrum and I

are being whisked out the door

with another member of the cult.

♪♪ ♪♪

We had no idea where we were going.

We just drove for a long, long time.

We get to this little tiny apartment.

The door opens.

And it's Ramona.

And after so long of being

just mistreated the way we were

and finding her, and her embracing me,

she was such a safe haven.

We had no idea that Ramona was also wanted

for the murder of Rulon Allred, along with Rena.

- Allred, leader of a group of thousands of polygamists

in Utah and surrounding states,

was killed in a hail of gunfire.

REPORTER: Ramona Marston jumped bail and disappeared,

accused of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

- Ramona never talked about Rena or my father.

The last I heard about Rena

was when she had been arrested in the raid.

- The Feds want Rena Chynoweth

extradited to the United States immediately.

They wanna lock her up.

So the Mexican authorities take her straight to Laredo

to get her across the border.

♪♪ ♪♪

- They get Rena to the border.

And then just like you see in the movies...

The FBI agents are waiting for her there on the other side.

- The FBI today arrested a key suspect,

20-year-old Rena Chynoweth at the International Bridge

in Laredo, Texas.

Chynoweth is charged with first-degree murder

and conspiracy to murder in the Allred case.

Authorities have described the killing

as a religious assassination

ordered by the fanatic Ervil LeBaron,

the leader of a rival polygamist cult.

LINDSAY: More and more people are looking for Ervil.

They start putting up wanted posters.

He has to go further into hiding.

And he's running for his life.

[pensive music]

♪♪ ♪♪

- I did not realize that Rena was on trial

for the murder of Rulon Allred.

At the time, I lived with Mark and Lillian in Mexico.

Lillian was our older half-sister,

and Mark was Rena's brother.

Mark and Lillian were devoted

and very much in love with each other.

Their love story was a very sweet, tender one.

Mark was one of the very few men in our lives

who set a really good example of treating your wife

with respect and treating young teenage girls

not as potential wives, but as young girls

that needed to be brought up.

- Police suspect Mark Chynoweth

for being the triggerman for the cult.

Mark was involved in multiple murders

and the Los Molinos raid,

where Ervil's followers killed two people

and shot many others.

- This is nothing Mark would have ever done

if it would have been of his own free will.

It was purely brainwashing and indoctrination

and fear and the power that was held over him.

Mark and Lillian were true believers of Ervil LeBaron.

ANNA: Whatever our father asked,

Mark and Lillian obeyed.

They were there to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth.

CELIA: Shortly after the raid,

Mark and Lillian began packing up their things.

And we were going to move again.

[suspenseful music]

And Lillian seemed upset and distressed about having--

not knowing where she's going.

Eventually, we arrived to the U.S. border.

I didn't know what was going on with her,

but she was not happy with what was happening.

Mark got out of the car.

He told the Border Patrol who he was...

And that he was wanted for questioning

for the murder of Rulon Allred.

And so they took him into custody.

He's in handcuffs.

Before I could really even register what was happening...

Mark put on a bright smile

and was waving with the hands in handcuffs behind him

to make sure that we didn't get the impression

that anything bad was happening.

So I was very, very confused.

He was turning himself in

so that he could testify on Rena's behalf.

He was such a true, strong believer

that he was willing to turn himself in

because he knew God would prevail.

- Murder case investigators say

is the longest-running, most expensive in Utah history

began nearly two years ago with the shooting death

of polygamist leader Dr. Rulon Allred.

The investigation led to rival polygamist

cult leader Ervil LeBaron.

LeBaron is still a fugitive,

but some of his followers have been captured

and will stand trial.

REPORTER: Police believe on his orders,

Rena Chynoweth, his 20-year-old wife,

and Ramona Marston, his stepdaughter, killed Allred,

aided by Rena's brothers, Mark and Victor Chynoweth,

and Ramona's brother, Eddie Marston.

- After my father's murder and funeral,

we began hearing reports that some of Ervil's followers

had been arrested.

But I want them to get Ervil.

REPORTER: Just moments ago, a woman who's said to be

one of the 13 wives of Ervil LeBaron

was bound over for trial in the murder of Dr. Rulon Allred.

♪♪ ♪♪

ANNA: During the trial for Rulon Allred,

people feared Ervil, feared what he was capable of.

- Some of the police involved, some of the investigators,

prosecutors had received threats.

There was FBI coverage, security.

It was a very tense scene.

REPORTER: Assistant County Attorney David Yocom

says he doesn't rule out the possibility of violence.

- There will be, uh, guards on the door,

and, uh, the court has ordered that, uh,

there be close security in the trial.

The leader was still out there.

We feared that Ervil ordered them

to kill any number of our witnesses.

LINDSAY: Ervil's executions had been very bold,

and so it had everyone asking if he would be bold enough

to attack the courtroom.

Even though Ervil isn't on trial,

his presence is looming everywhere.

- During the trial, I was living with Ramona in Mexico.

Ramona never mentioned anything

about the trial that was happening.

- I was already back in the U.S.

It was always explained to me

that God would look out for them,

that they would surely be found innocent,

and that we could expect them to come home.

LINDSAY: Although four people were on trial,

everyone was focused on the triggerwoman, Rena.

The jury was made up of mostly women.

Rena's lawyers knew this.

Rena was a young, pregnant plural wife

victimized by this bad guy.

- Rena got on the stand and said she had never heard

of Dr. Allred before.

She didn't know anything about the murder until afterward.

- It was hard to figure out what role she had played in it.

- But I knew she was the cold-blooded killer.

Difficult to cross-examine someone like that.

You just want to tear into 'em and rip 'em apart.

But you can't. You can't do that.

- People in Ervil's group are paying attention

to how this is being reported on TV.

New threats start coming in.

DAVID: One juror had told the bailiff

that he was frightened.

He had thought people were following him,

which, to me, meant this juror

was being intimidated indirectly.

It's up to the jury in what they call a penalty phase

of the case to determine the penalty,

and there's only two choices.

One, death, which is a possibility,

as well as the other one, life imprisonment.

[tense music]

- The jury deliberates for only four hours.

They come out.

And before they read the verdict...

The judge tells the courtroom, "I will have no outbursts."

And they find Rena Chynoweth...

Not guilty.

♪♪ ♪♪

Rena, Mark Chynoweth, Victor Chynoweth,

and Eddie Marston were all acquitted.

- The jury couldn't convict Rena for several reasons.

First, no witnesses could positively ID her.

And second, Rena appeared to be a victim

under Ervil's control.

But there were other theories as well, like intimidation.

- How did they all get off?

I had no idea how that could have happened.

GARY: This cult was a big threat to a lot of people,

and it only takes one juror to acquit.

- I really don't remember Rulon Allred's trial.

But I remember when it was done,

they came back and said that Rena had been acquitted.

And that was, like, a huge relief.

We gave all the credit to God for that.

LINDSAY: The result of Rena's trial

isn't just the heartache of Rulon Allred's family

and their injustice. It has ripple effects.

Once Rena was acquitted, Ramona Marston

was never convicted for the crime.

And then there's Dan Jordan down in Mexico.

REPORTER: Jordan was held in jail in Ensenada, Mexico.

- I don't believe I'll have any statement

to make at this time.

I do thank you for coming.

Uh, thank you for your attention.

- Dan is let off as well.

INTERVIEWER: Mr. Jordan, are you surprised?

- I won't have any comments to make at this time.

Thank you very much.

LINDSAY: Another one of Ervil's followers

gets off the hook.

Justice is undone.

Ervil gets away with it again.

[apprehensive music]

- After Rena was acquitted in 1979,

we all returned to Colorado.

I was so happy to be reunited with Celia...

- Yeah! - My mom, my family, um.

But Dan Jordan also returned to Colorado at that time.

My father, Ervil, was, uh, hiding out in Mexico,

so Dan Jordan was the one who was in charge.

So we're working in the appliance store.

[tense music]

♪♪ ♪♪

And Dan comes in one day.

He has this big announcement.

Dan is like, "If you guys will work hard all summer long,

"at the end of the summer, each of you

will get $50 to buy new school clothes."

- There were times when, 20 children in a home,

they were given food money of $20 a week.

So $50 for us was a lot of money in our minds.

- I mean, it was astronomical.

And so guess what we did?

CELIA: We did. We worked so hard.

ANNA: We worked really hard.

All summer long.

Six days a week, 12 hour days.

And we're gonna get our $50.

The Saturday before school is supposed to start,

I'm like, uh, where is the $50?

Like, we're supposed to be able to, like, go shopping.

And then it's like, oh, no,

there's not enough money for that.

And that was that.

Inside, I'm going,

"Uh, no. Uh, I earned that money.

You said you would give it to me."

And then in walks Dan's daughters.

And they have on new clothes.

And I just could not believe my eyes...

that we were the ones who worked

our asses off all summer long.

This was the moment when there was a little bit

of a shift inside of me.

There was no amount of suppressing the emotion

and the... [groans] The anger.

And this began to fester inside,

and there was no making it go away.

[pensive music]

♪♪ ♪♪

SCOTT: Ervil's still on the 10 Most Wanted list.

They know he's probably spending most of his time

down in Mexico.

- Ervil was down in this small

little rural town called Atlixco, Mexico.

Law enforcement is hundreds of miles away.

But locals know he's there.

And so now this idea that this little cult

has moved to this remote village

starts to worry people.

And you have to remember that just a year before,

the Jonestown Massacre had happened.

900 people from the People's Temple,

this sort of religious group, commit mass suicide.

Mexican law enforcement start thinking,

"Is Ervil LeBaron's group gonna do the same thing?"

They don't want another Jonestown on their hands.

♪♪ ♪♪

So they decide to do something about it.

[suspenseful music]

♪♪ ♪♪

- Probably the Mexican authorities has just

reached a point where they were fed up with him.

He had--he'd probably made a lot of local enemies.

They raid where Ervil was living, beat him up.

♪♪ ♪♪

Supposedly, he had resisted arrest

when the Federales came in on him.

And they send Ervil across, dumped him across the border,

same bridge that Rena Chynoweth walked across at Laredo...

And handed him over to American authorities.

- Finally, after almost a decade

of murder, death, and terror,

Ervil LeBaron is arrested.

REPORTER: Ervil LeBaron, polygamist,

religious cult leader,

self-proclaimed prophet of God.

Finally, yesterday, he was arrested in Mexico City

and today walked across the International Bridge at Laredo

and turned over to American authorities.

He's claimed he has the right to kill anyone he wishes

upon orders from God.

He's expected to be returned to Utah

to stand trial for murder.

- American law enforcement people are waiting for him.

They wanna try to get Ervil to talk.

And Ervil being Ervil, says, "Yeah, I'll talk to you."

♪♪ ♪♪

And Ervil LeBaron talks for the next five hours.

Here's a guy who claims to be the prophet,

all need to bow down to him.

At one point, he claims he's the legitimate

president of the United States.

So in a lot of ways, it seems quite crazy.

And yet when the police start to push

towards the murder of Rulon Allred,

he's smart enough to know to not touch it.

Ervil will not say anything incriminating.

♪♪ ♪♪

FAYE: We were shocked when Ervil got arrested.

Because we--we were like, what happened?

Did--did God fall down on the job?

It's like we never thought things like that would happen

because we were so faithful.

- We were not told what was going on.

But sometimes we learn things through family prayers

and church prayers and stuff like that.

Sometimes in those prayers, you would--

there was a common theme of like, oh,

help Ervil to get out of jail soon, and...

So I was like, oh, I know he's in jail

because I heard it in the prayers,

we're asking for him to get out of jail.

ANNA: I remember seeing a picture of him

from his arrest in Ensenada, Mexico.

His arms are behind his back in handcuffs,

and he was being flown from one Mexican state to another.

It was the only picture I ever had of my father.

[suspenseful music]

- In 1980, the trial for Ervil LeBaron

begins in Salt Lake City.

Ervil ends up with a public defender.

♪♪ ♪♪

BRUCE: When I first realized

I was going to see Ervil LeBaron,

I was very, uh, uncertain about what he was like.

I remember someone saying he had these deep-set eyes

that looked evil.

I said, well, Evil Ervil, that fits.

Back in those days, we would meet person to person,

uh, just across the table, uh, no guards in there.

And when he came in, he had, uh, scriptures,

and he had an armful of notebooks and pencils.

And his hair was disheveled.

- Here you have Ervil LeBaron

being defended by a public defender.

He's still confident in the midst of all of this.

He really thought that he was the prophet of God

and that God would protect him.

- We knew going in that there was no indication

that Mr. LeBaron was actually present

at the death of Rulon Allred.

And so we sort of felt the state would have

a hard time convincing people that he put others up to it.

- This time around, I had the man

that everybody feared.

JERRY: I was at the trial.

And I remember Ervil picking up--me up

in the audience with his eyes.

- Oh. [chuckles]

- And we stared at each other for two minutes.

I just felt this kind of radiant--

GARY: Like a laser.

JERRY: Radiant, crazy hate in that stare.

BRUCE: They called him Mormon Manson

'cause Manson was commonly perceived, of course,

as a monster and a madman.

So we tried to present, this isn't such a person.

And we did that with just a very few witnesses.

We tried to humanize him as best we could

without him testifying in front of the jury.

DAVID: I called 40-something witnesses,

including one key witness,

and that was Isaac LeBaron.

- Isaac LeBaron, one of Ervil's children,

the prosecution's star witness

who had been in the planning sessions

for the Allred murder and had been raised in the cult.

He had come in to testify against his father.

But he was scared.

- What he was afraid of is the fact

that people that went against Ervil

would be considered traitors.

And the punishment for traitors was death.

- There are real courageous heroes,

like Isaac LeBaron,

who stood against his own father.

He spoke quietly and directly,

and he would sometimes look at his dad and then look down.

Even if you know your parent is evil, it's still your dad.

His own father had abused him mentally,

physically for years.

I can't even believe what Isaac had to go through

to be courageous and to speak the truth that day.

- Isaac's testimony was-- was important for the state,

and it was a surprise to Ervil that his son Isaac

would testify against him.

JERRY: This guy who killed my father

needed to be found guilty.

He should be held accountable, and he should be dealt with.

- When the jury came back in three hours...

I immediately felt, well,

this may be one of those good cases.

LINDSAY: After a decade of getting away with murder...

Ervil LeBaron is found guilty

of first-degree murder

and conspiracy to commit murder against Rulon Allred.

- Good. That's what should happen.

I felt relieved that Ervil had been found guilty

and would face those consequences.

How glad we all were that this chapter of our lives

could be partly closed.

- Ervil is sentenced to life in prison.

[soft hopeful music]

♪♪ ♪♪

- We were told he went to trial,

that everything would be fine because God would protect him.

And so when he was found guilty,

I thought it was just Satan basically trying us.

[tense music]

♪♪ ♪♪

LINDSAY: When Ervil is put behind bars,

there's a collective sigh of relief around the country.

Finally, they got this guy who has scared everyone

for almost a decade.

But people don't realize that putting

a man like this in prison doesn't stop his following.

When he's in prison,

his revelations take a new form.

They get darker and more extreme and more deadly.

BRUCE: Every time I saw him, almost,

he would want yellow pads and pencils constantly.

Just--just gross of pads and pencils.

And he would have four or five of them

completely full of writing.

And he would say, well, this is what

I've been working on since I saw you Tuesday.

The jailers would say, yeah, he'll stay up all night

and just be bent over his table writing.

The whole night, literally the whole night.

- He's still being visited by some of his wives,

some of his followers.

Kind of among his followers, most notably, uh,

Mark Chynoweth comes to see him often.

And Mark Chynoweth and the wives

are taking Ervil's writings,

kind of sneaking them out of prison.

- And when you read his writings,

you would understand that these are not the writings

of a man who is in his right mind.

♪♪ ♪♪

- We didn't know that our father was mentally ill

for all his whole life.

It wasn't until our father had been in prison

and we began to notice-- or the adults began to notice

that his revelations and his orders

were becoming more and more bizarre.

And more and more violent.

♪♪ ♪♪

- His writings, Ervil had ordered his followers

to come bust him out of maximum security prison

with guns a-blazing.

And all of the adults who knew about this

knew it was a suicide mission.

- It's almost like the--the kind of spell

has been broken for a lot of people in the cult.

Sanity starts to kind of seep in.

But what they didn't realize was,

some of his followers weren't pulling away from the cult.

- Our father's mental illness and all those--

all those revelations that he was writing

in his prison cell,

it fractured the whole organization,

which was already terrible and violent,

but it made it even more violent.

- He lost complete control. CELIA: Yeah, that makes sense.

- And then everyone else wouldn't come

and bust him out of prison.

That's what he had ordered them to do, and they wouldn't.

But the other difference, too, is that a lot of these adults

had also gone to trial and been in court

and gone to jail for stuff,

and some of them were acquitted, of course.

So I think that going to jail, having convictions,

and people experiencing the consequences

of what they were doing, like, was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

- That probably didn't hurt. - No. That did not.

- No? You don't think? ANNA: You don't think?

- Anna, it was the tone of the output.

It was the tone of his revelations.

It was the tone of his letters.

It was the tone of his demands that they knew

he was no longer in his right mind.

That's when Dan and everybody said,

ooh, we can't follow all of that.

- Dan, the reason he wouldn't follow Ervil

is 'cause he could tell by the letters

that he was writing and stuff, that he was crazy.

He had men--Mom--even Mom wouldn't follow him.

- But here's the thing, these revelations that

they're saying was crazy, when Ervil was having

those revelations before, they didn't seem crazy to Dan.

FAYE: Right.

ANNA: They were actually carrying them out.

- But that was a long time ago.

- I'm just trying to establish that--

CELIA: That they became very much more incoherent.

ANNA: I agree.

- Most of the adults

could sense the difference.

So they continued to follow it. - You are absolutely right.

You are right.

Dan Jordan and Mark Chynoweth refused

to carry out my father's orders.

Ervil called down vengeance from on high

on anyone who wouldn't obey his orders.

And that caused him to see them as the ones

that needed to be taken out, those ones that needed to be

blood atoned because they were not following his orders.

[unsettling music]

♪♪ ♪♪

ANNA: It was Sunday morning.

I had gotten ready for church.

I pick up the receiver, but before I can say hello...

I realize that my mom had already answered the phone.

And I hear Dan Jordan on the phone

giving my mom the news

that Ervil had been found dead...

In his prison cell.

I was shocked.

I couldn't believe it.

I could hear my mom could not believe

that Ervil LeBaron was dead.

She fully expected him to get out of prison,

not die in prison.

He was God's prophet.

God's prophet wasn't gonna die.

♪♪ ♪♪

CELIA: I just had memories of my dad when I was little

of us running to him when he came to visit,

jiggling us down his back like he's a big slide,

and when he used to have that warm,

comforting relationship with us.

And I just thought to myself, that will never happen again.

I think I always had that hope in my heart

that I would have a relationship with my father.

But looking back now, I realized I was more crying

for the father I never had.

REPORTER: This is the maximum security cell

Ervil LeBaron lived and died in.

There was no evidence of foul play or suicide.

Everything seemed to point to natural causes.

The daughter of the man he was convicted of killing

said his death alone in a jail cell

was a fitting end.

- As if the story doesn't have enough wild twists and turns,

how Ervil died is still a little disputed.

The official cause of death by the coroner is heart attack.

But there are some other things going around at the time.

BRUCE: My immediate reaction was,

there's foul play involved. Someone had this done.

I didn't know who. I didn't know why.

I didn't know how.

I have no evidence that that's true.

But he did not seem suicidal to me.

He was what, 56 or something? He wasn't very old.

That's unusual to have a heart attack at that age, I thought.

SCOTT: With Ervil's death in 1981,

Ervil has now passed from the scene.

But what they're kind of forgetting,

or maybe don't know, is that Ervil's writings,

which Ervil wrote in prison, that's out there.

- All these documents eventually did

make their way out of the prison,

and then they were compiled into a book

that is referred to as The Book of the New Covenant.

- A lot of insane-sounding rants, uh,

with a lot of violence included in them

and a lot of death threats.

LINDSAY: Before his death in prison,

Ervil wanted to get revenge against anyone

who had turned against him.

And so Ervil uses this to say,

"These people should be destroyed."

This list includes enemies of Ervil,

followers of Ervil, friends and family of Ervil.

And it becomes, essentially, a hit list for all his enemies.

- Over 50 people, Ervil had marked for death.

The open question was, was somebody gonna

take that list and start acting on it?

CELIA: The Book of the New Covenant

was something that was only embraced

and believed in by a handful of Ervil's followers.

There were a group of Ervil's teenage children

that had been born and raised to believe

he was a prophet, who remained loyal to him,

even while he was in prison.

ANNA: They were isolated, alone in Mexico,

and it got into their hands,

and they continued to follow it.

This group became known as the KOG, or the Kingdom of God.

HYRUM: They'd been taught horrible things,

abused and neglected and brainwashed

their entire lives from birth.

ANNA: They believed that what Ervil had written

was exactly what they needed to follow

in order to usher in the Kingdom of God here on Earth.

This was an incredibly fearful time.

CELIA: It became even more dangerous

to belong to our cult.

LINDSAY: These are teenagers with guns.

This list is a ticking time bomb,

ready to explode chaos and pain.

It's almost as if Ervil's voice

is coming from beyond the grave.

- It's not a matter of if the killings are gonna go on,

but just simply when.

♪♪ ♪♪

[unsettling string music]

♪♪ ♪♪