Original subtitles

- I was 13 years old the day I escaped my father's cult,

a violent polygamist cult.

My hands are sweating now just talking about it.

Um, I'm shaking.

There was a little phone in the hallway.

And I quietly called my sister.

The last thing I heard her say was "start walking."

I walked out of the house with just the clothes on my back.

It was very frightening because I knew if somebody

saw me, that was the end.

I felt like I had one chance,

one chance to get out of there.

- I didn't see Anna for three years.

I was fully convinced that we were God's chosen people.

And even losing my sister could not shake my faith.

Our father, Ervil LeBaron, was the leader

of a fundamentalist Mormon religious cult.

It blows my mind.

I sit and think, this is impossible.

And yet it did happen.

If I hadn't lived through it,

I don't know if I could believe it.

Our family was killing people...

Because of our father.

- For many of you, Ervil LeBaron is probably an enigma.

Who is he, and why should we even care?

Ervil LeBaron, self-styled

prophet and patriarch.

Ervil LeBaron believed in the use of force

to govern members of his sect of polygamists.

- Our dad controlled everything.

The adults obeyed.

The children, of course, had to obey.

LeBaron and his polygamist fanatic cult

are suspects in a string of slayings.

Ervil came to be known as the Mormon Manson.

- Our father is responsible for the deaths of over 30 people.

The killings escalated

into a reign of terror.

He's claimed he has the right to kill

anyone he wishes upon orders from God.

- We were born good.

Goodness was in us.

And that had to be suppressed for a while.

When I think about my siblings,

um, everything they've had to overcome,

all the sons and daughters of Ervil LeBaron

that survived have had to pick up the pieces,

the shattered pieces of their life,

and put the pieces back together.

Hi!

Many of my siblings are afraid to tell their stories,

and I don't blame them.

We're afraid.

We're doing this afraid--

afraid of the judgment that we could get from the world

because of having been raised in those beliefs

and who our father was.

I'm so glad to see you.

- I am ready now to step forward and show

what it is like to be a LeBaron.

Okay.

Don't be looking at my cards, Faye.

I'm gonna beat you, don't worry.

- You win because you cheat. We already know this.

- I do--no, we-- no, I don't cheat.

- This is an established fact.

That is a lie. I do not cheat.

Celia and I were the most devout.

Well, you're still the most devout.

- I always wanted to do what was right, honey.

I never would do something that I knew was wrong.

Oh, I was a very devout true believer.

I thought with all my heart

that I was doing what was right.

And that I thought we were the only true church on the Earth.

Yes, I was totally devout.

I would never think of not following instructions.

You wanted to be good, but did you always believe

in the doctrine that was being taught

and that was the true church?

Oh, yeah. I totally believed it.

- And you always believed that too?

Yep.

- And in fact, I am more devout than you.

- You probably are.

- Because my very first actual romantic kiss

was with the man I married.

Celia takes the cake.

- On the other end of the spectrum...

Was me, who never believed.

I was born into a cult, and...

that's all I ever knew till--

till I was about 16.

I mean, we were trained to obey and demanded to obey.

And I got beaten a lot because I didn't.

- All my siblings were raised from birth with this very,

very closed-minded way of thinking.

We were indoctrinated from birth.

And it was absolute brainwashing.

Our father is God's mouthpiece here on Earth.

- My dad could convince people of just about anything.

And did.

- We were supposed to be special.

We were supposed to be the chosen ones.

If we were so chosen, why were we suffering so badly?

- Our dad had 13 wives and fathered--

- Supposedly. - Thirt--fourteen!

It's 14, we counted finally.

- I actually don't know how many

brothers and sisters I have,

and it depends on how you count.

- Um...

What was the question again?

- Oh, gosh.

- 51 children.

- 52 kids?

- I say 51.

- No. - Of our father.

- 55 total.

- It's impossible.

Somebody just needs to count,

and I've never taken the time to count.

- We just say over 50 children because

nobody really knows the exact number.

- People come up with different numbers

depending on different circumstances.

Polygamous math is hard.

All of Ervil's followers--

his children, his wives--

were just pawns.

He used them and groomed them to kill for him.

- He was a wanted man.

How many people in America can say

their house has been raided by the FBI multiple times?

- We're not proud of this fact, by the way, just to be clear.

- No, but it's-- it's part of our story.

It's part of the reason why we're sitting here.

Because this was our life. This was what we lived.

My only recollections of life as a child...

It was being on the run from the law.

Of course, I didn't know we were on the run from the law.

- My father, Ervil, led his children

down a very destructive path

that I don't think naturally

any one of us would have gone down.

Really good people were led to do terrible things.

Police are still looking for two women

who murdered a Utah polygamist leader.

It's a history of family violence,

vicious killing, murders in the name of God.

- In order to understand our family history,

you do have to go back to Mexico.

I was born in Colonia LeBarón, Chihuahua, Mexico.

My mother went into labor with me.

She called the midwife.

She took the mattress off of the floor

and put it on the kitchen table.

- Celia was born on the kitchen table.

In this house, there was no running water.

In order to get water,

we had to pump it out of a well.

- And we would have a big galvanized tub

that we would bathe in once a week.

She would start with the little kids

and go up and bathe us all in, I think, the same water.

It was very primitive.

We didn't have a lot.

We never wore shoes.

We didn't have electricity.

The closest town to the colony was, like, an hour away.

The colony was very isolated.

We didn't leave it hardly ever.

I don't ever remember thinking,

oh, I've got a horrible life or anything like that.

I just thought I was serving God.

My father, Ervil,

along with his brother, Uncle Joel,

they established the Church of the Firstborn

of the Fulness of Times.

They were establishing Zion,

a gathering place for people

who wanted to practice the law of plural marriage

because polygamy is illegal in America.

The original teachings of Joseph Smith,

there's the terrestrial-- - No.

- The telestial, terrestrial, and celestial.

- She never knew the religion.

- I knew enough. No, we, uh--

- Okay, we'll let her explain it

since she knows so much more. - Yes.

There's also three degrees of glory, which is telestial,

terrestrial, and celestial.

- And in order to attain the celestial level in heaven,

you had to live plural marriage.

If you were just a monogamous husband and wife,

you could not attain celestial glory in the afterlife.

So there was sort of

an excitement in their doctrine.

It wasn't just, live the tenets of Mormonism,

but follow Joel and Ervil,

and they're going to unite the entire house of God

because Jesus is coming soon.

Joel was what they call the One Mighty and Strong.

- In the Book of Mormon, they talk about

the One Mighty and Strong.

- The man who was going to save the world.

And Joel was given the mantle

from his father originally, and Ervil accepted him.

Joel is gonna be the head of the church.

Ervil is gonna be in the supporting role.

And together, they're gonna usher in

the second coming of Jesus.

- Uncle Joel and Ervil, they're very close in age,

and they loved each other.

- They had a tight brotherhood between them.

- I was born in Chihuahua, Mexico,

south of the El Paso border in the LeBaron colony.

I'm the daughter of Verlan LeBaron...

Brother of Joel and Ervil.

He was the baby of the family.

My father ended up fathering 58 children

with eight of his ten wives.

- Verlan was the third most powerful person in the church

behind Joel and Ervil.

He was there to support them

in building up the Kingdom of God.

- Uncle Joel, the prophet, was more revered than Jesus.

We all just adored him.

- Joel is sort of laid back.

He's quiet. He listens.

Ervil's the opposite of all of those things.

Ervil was the big talker.

He knew scripture inside and out.

He was highly intelligent, charismatic.

- Ervil is really handsome.

They call it Hollywood good looks.

And people that met him said he had a way about him,

this sort of confidence

and this swagger when he would talk.

Ervil was going out and preaching and teaching

and bringing people to the colony

so that they could settle this arid desert land.

Every time Ervil would convert somebody,

that's another person who can earn money

and pay their tithes.

- I was born and raised in Mormon fundamentalist cult.

My mother was Ervil and Joel LeBaron's sister.

My father was a mainstream Mormon,

and he was converted, moved to Colonia LeBarón.

His money, a lot of it was going to help support,

especially, Uncle Ervil's family,

and that's how faithful my father was.

My Uncle Ervil, I saw him convert people.

He knew how to read people's eyes.

And he studied till he saw that snap

that showed that they had been converted.

He was really busy at the time

building his brother Joel's church,

but little by little,

the more money that was brought in,

the more Uncle Ervil enjoyed his power.

He had this real nice gold car.

My mom and a bunch of people, they used to refer to it

as the Golden Calf.

I never saw him work a day in his life.

- A lot of people had a big problem with the fact

that Ervil wasn't working and lifting a finger

to support his always-growing family.

It was creating this very untenable situation.

- Uncle Ervil, he started having all kinds

of revelations and claims.

We had a prophet.

You would think the prophet should be the one

having the revelations, but Ervil's having

revelations for everybody--

who to marry,

predicting the end of the world,

all kinds of crazy stuff.

He started ranting hellfire damnation.

This was not what Joel was teaching.

Uncle Ervil was learning more and more

how to control his flock.

My mother, Anna Mae, was living

with her husband, Nephi.

And there was a preacher in town.

He came to the home.

And that first evening she heard him speak,

she was smitten by this tall, handsome,

highly intelligent man.

Anna Mae left Nephi without a word of warning.

This was the first time that Ervil

took another man's wife as his own,

but it was not the last.

- My mom had 12 children, 7 of them with Ervil.

- My mom married my stepdad Ervil when I was two years old

'cause Ervil had the power to separate people

if they weren't married to the right person.

So in order to make my dad happy,

'cause he was still in the church,

um, Ervil says, okay, I'll give you, uh, two other wives.

And I'll give them to you for wives

because I took your wife.

Everybody hated that Ervil wanted all the wives.

- Ervil has now stolen another man's wife.

And this really causes a sort of friction in the community.

- Joel always wanted to believe

that Ervil would get back in line.

It's the people that were following Joel

who wanted him to rein Ervil in.

And Ervil wouldn't be reined in.

So Joel, he tells his brother,

you're out of control.

You're excommunicated.

There's so much tension going on.

And this rift between Joel and Ervil

is getting so wide that finally, Joel,

he decides he's just gonna go elsewhere.

- Joel and his younger brother Verlan

continue to run the church

out of a town called Los Molinos in Mexico.

- We had then what was called the Joelites

and the Ervilites.

- My father, Ervil, starts his own church.

And he calls it the Church of the Lamb of God.

- Joel's church, the Church of the Firstborn,

had close to 1,000 followers.

And when Ervil is excommunicated,

he takes only about 125 followers.

- Ervil wanted all of Joel's followers

to bend the knee to him and give him their tithe money.

Ervil decides that Joel is then a false prophet

and that Ervil is actually the true Prophet of God on Earth.

And you can only have one true Prophet on the Earth.

We have a very, very serious problem.

There's an old Mormon doctrine

called Blood Atonement that the mainstream church

no longer adheres to.

Ervil loved this idea.

He was obsessed with it.

And he decided to incorporate it into his practices.

- He taught the law of Blood Atonement just as it was.

- Yes. - Hold on.

- Blood Atonement is the taking of someone's life

so that their blood can hit the ground

and cry to God for atonement.

Meaning they have to be killed.

Uncle Ervil started saying comments like, well,

some of your husbands, if they don't start getting behind me

and doing what they should and paying their tithing,

they are going to be pushing up carrots in the garden.

It set off, uh, an intuition in my mind

that pretty soon, Uncle Ervil was going to actually

start killing people.

He starts bringing in guns to the community.

They start practicing military drills.

He starts training children on how to shoot machine guns.

Ervil's building his own little militia.

And Dan Jordan is kind of his drill sergeant or his general.

And he's--he's creating this little shock troop

of--of soldiers to do his bidding for him.

Dan was part of Ervil's inner circle

from the very beginning.

He was, uh, very impatient, very brutal.

He was a taskmaster.

- In my opinion, Dan Jordan was a pretty

despicable human being.

He treated us horribly.

And he did things to me and my family

and my siblings that are unconscionable.

- Ervil would promise his daughters to different people

that he wanted to impress and to come into the fold.

And--and I think be loyal to him.

When I was 15, my mom came and told me

that Ervil had a revelation that I was

supposed to marry Dan Jordan.

And he was 42.

I was a virgin. I was very scared.

He already had wives,

but I knew I had to do it.

I had to marry him with one of my other stepsisters.

We were both being married the same night,

so I'm like, oh, maybe at least I don't have to spend

the first night with him.

Dan decided that he was going to flip a coin

to see who would spend the first night with him.

And in my heart, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I hope it's not me.

I hope it's not me.

Then, thank goodness, it landed on not mine.

But I ended up having four children with him.

I've had several polygamous relationships.

I still believe in the principle, let's say.

I think it's going to be lived in another time.

I think God is a polygamist.

From the time we were little kids,

we were told that Ervil was a prophet.

He would get revelations.

And we didn't question what Ervil said.

If he said it, we did it.

- They feel like they are fighting God's war.

He raised us to be like him.

He raised us all with a gun in our hands

from the time we were very young.

/do Ervil and Dan went off the deep end together.

They had already made some serious threats.

They were just feeding each other with all this hate.

One day, all of us Church of the Firstborners

of the Fulness of Times were gathered

at our weekly Sunday school...

When all of the sudden, in walks Dan Jordan.

And one of the adults whispered to the next,

he's got a gun on him.

- Joel and Verlan, his brothers,

were saying, Ervil, he talks big.

Um, his bark is bigger than his bite.

And his followers were growing more and more afraid,

saying it sounds like they might.

So Ervil tells his followers, listen,

they're not following me.

And if they're not following me, they're being wicked.

And what do we do to the wicked?

The scriptures say we kill them.

And that's what we're gonna do.

Joel LeBaron is in Ensenada, Mexico.

Joel is lured away by Dan Jordan

and another follower of Ervil to an abandoned shack.

And now the plan is working.

Joel is alone.

And he has no idea what's gonna happen next.

Dan and his henchman,

they took a chair leg and beat Joel senseless.

And then Dan puts a gun in his mouth

and pulled the trigger.

And this is the ultimate betrayal.

Joel has been assassinated by the people

he once trusted the most.

- We were just in shock and devastated.

This was our prophet, someone that we loved,

that we, uh, you know, revered.

From that moment on, it was like,

if he's capable of murdering his own brother,

he'll kill anyone and all of us.

- Ervil LeBaron lived in this house.

He was second in command of the Church of the Firstborn.

Now he's become its scourge.

Joel, who emerged as head

of their church, was murdered.

And Ervil became a fugitive,

charged with being behind the murder of Joel.

- And what started Ervil on the move from missionary

to accused murderer.

Ervil LeBaron and his brother Joel

split over their religious philosophy.

The church, a peace-loving offshoot

of Mormonism, was founded by Joel LeBaron.

A church that was based in Mexico

where there were no laws governing polygamy.

- Let me read from the official police report

about what happened.

Joel F. LeBaron was attacked in an empty home,

hit over the bridge of the nose with a chair leg,

and shot through the head on the ground

by Daniel B. Jordan.

Today, Joel is dead,

murdered at Ervil's command.

Cain versus Abel,

and now the LeBarons against one another.

- Here's what I'm curious about is,

did you know any of this was going on?

- No, I always felt very blessed 'cause I had no idea

any of it was going on.

- So you didn't know that people

were being blood atoned?

No, I had no idea people were being blood atoned.

- You were married to Dan, but you didn't know he had--

I didn't know-- he never talked to me

about murdering anybody.

I never knew any of this stuff was taking place.

I never dreamed that he would kill someone.

I did not even know he had anything to do with it.

- Faye--

I heard that it wasn't him.

- But I will say that the whole time our father

was carrying out blood atonements,

Dan was right there beside him. Oh, yeah.

- And knew about it and helped planned them.

- I'm sure he knew about them. He was his right hand man.

He would have had to know about it.

- He would have had to know everything.

I generally was a very obedient wife.

And Dan yelled and screamed at everybody

when they weren't doing what they were supposed to.

That's how cults work.

They work by fear and control.

And that's the way it was.

They controlled everything,

and we just went right along with it.

- Members of Joel's church had told the authorities

that it was Ervil behind the attacks.

- We heard that one of Joel's followers

saw Dan Jordan with Joel shortly before he was killed.

Baja Police start asking questions,

investigating, searching for Ervil.

This fear and this terror of this crazy Mormon prophet

is compounded by the fact that

they don't know where Ervil is.

They can't find him.

Meanwhile, Dan Jordan and the other assailant

are nowhere to be found.

- Ervil was sort of like Pablo Escobar.

I'm gonna move a lot and move to different places.

I'm not gonna let people know.

I'm just gonna show up and keep moving and moving and moving.

And I think that's one of the reasons he had

a couple places in Mexico and several places in, um,

uh, in the States that he could go to.

I believe Ervil was both paranoid and smart.

It's smart to keep moving around.

If they can't fix you, they can't find you.

- One of the houses we lived in had a little,

um, crawlspace door. - No, no, no.

That was the house we lived in for, like, a month.

- But we only lived there maybe a couple of weeks,

and then we got loaded up.

- And it was pitch black. It was middle of the night.

- Middle of the night, get in the car,

and then drive--

- 'Cause Ervil had a revelation!

Oh, my gosh.

- They were trying to take his children from him.

- Right. - Yeah, yeah.

Our father would get an inspiration or a revelation

and move people around like--

like chess pieces.

My mom would come and go a lot.

That was normal for us for people to leave

and be gone and then come back, and then they were here again.

We probably lived at 10 or 15 different houses

by the time I was ten years old.

- We lived in homes in California,

in Houston, in Mexico, Dallas...

- Denver. - In Oklahoma, in Denver.

- We never got to feel settled anywhere.

- You'd imagine if you're gonna move with your child,

you're gonna kind of talk to them in advance

and let them kind of prepare for it.

There was none of that in our-- growing up.

As children, we didn't understand what was going on.

We just knew we had to move all the time.

Now as adults, we look back on it,

and we understand it's because

we were on the run from the FBI.

We were awakened up

in the middle of the night one night,

told not to ask any questions.

It was all hush-hush, urgent tones, and scary.

We were just told...

"Quickly, put on your shoes.

Don't ask any questions."

We are told to gather your things.

And it was time to move again.

And you don't know exactly where or exactly why.

We walk outside.

And there's this truck.

And we're confused.

An older brother of ours was the one

who was in charge of getting all these kids

into the back of this truck.

And he's like, "Shut up and get in.

We're doing this for God's Kingdom."

You don't argue. You just do what you're told.

And then the door rumbled closed.

And we're left in pitch black.

We arrive in the morning.

We were in Denver.

We moved into a green house.

In total, there were 3 wives and 20 children

that lived in a 1,500 square foot home.

We couldn't have the landlords know.

- Or nosy neighbors...

Yeah. Reporting us.

We were in hiding.

We were not allowed to play outside.

We had to stay indoors.

Everything was secret.

- We were taught a distrust for police,

for FBI, for any kind of authority.

They were instruments of Satan.

If they were to ask us any questions,

we were literally trained to say, "I don't know."

What is your name?

"I don't know."

Are you hungry?

"I don't know."

Where did your dad go?

"I don't know."

- So we were taught to conceal

the polygamous lifestyle that we lived.

- So do you remember how many people we had living

in that house at the time? - A lot.

- So we had three wives,

and we had all of their children.

There were 20 children. Wow.

- And three women living in a 1,500 square foot house.

- I drove by that house.

I drove past it, and I was like, oh, wow.

That's the one that had the little dark room in the back

where they hid all the guns.

- Which dark room in the back with all the guns?

What? - Yeah, so they wouldn't want--

- He's the only one that remembers.

- What dark room with all the guns?

- What?

Just four months after the murder

of Joel LeBaron,

Ervil takes matters into his own hands.

With the confidence only

the One Mighty and Strong would have,

he walks into the police station in Ensenada,

and demands the charges against him be dropped.

- Ervil sat in jail for about a year awaiting trial.

- When Ervil was in jail for murdering

his brother Joel, my Uncle Joel,

my mother would take Ervil food.

There was a guard outside the door,

a bunk bed in his cell...

A blanket thrown over the top bunk

to shield the bottom bunk.

And I guess they got it on,

and I was conceived in an Ensenada jail.

Ervil is put on trial.

He's found guilty of being

the intellectual author of the murder.

He sentenced to 12 years in prison in Mexico.

And then the next day, he's released

by a higher court on a technicality--

a supposed technicality.

So he walks.

- Bribery was a big thing in Mexico.

That's--it was a way of life.

And Uncle Ervil played that well.

He had grown up knowing how to manipulate and bribe people.

It was very, very disheartening

that he had been released from jail.

It made his followers probably think, yeah, God's behind this.

- Certainly in Ervil's mind and probably in the minds

of his followers, the fact that he was able to beat this charge

and--and walk away, it was just further proof

that he was the One Mighty and Strong Prophet.

Because not many people can get away with murder.

Ervil is just getting warmed up.

He is developing more power, more money, more women,

more guns, more followers.

- So after Joel, our prophet was murdered,

my father, Verlan LeBaron, was left

as president of the church.

We lived in Los Molinos at the time.

- Verlan knew that taking Joel's place

would put him in a position of danger.

He knew that he was a threat to Ervil.

- He knows he's in the crosshairs

of Ervil and Ervil's gunmen.

Ervil's desperate-- desperate to kill Verlan.

My dad wasn't safe anymore.

None of us were safe.

We were sitting ducks if they wanted to come in

and murder us.

So it's a quiet night the day after Christmas.

Los Molinos seems quiet. The desert is quiet.

When it's interrupted by the shrieks

and terror of an explosion.

The tower is on fire. It bursts into flames.

All the people in town started running

to help put the fire out.

Once everyone gathered there, they opened fire.

And then they proceeded to go through town

shooting at every house they passed,

filling the homes with bullets,

and throwing Molotov cocktail bombs on top of the roofs.

Women and children,

mothers with their nursing babies

are running from burning buildings

and being picked off with guns.

People are screaming, running in terror.

They don't know where the violence is coming from.

They're firing on their family members, their relatives.

These are people they had known and loved

and gone to church with.

24 homes had been burned down.

The place had been firebombed.

People were injured by gunfire.

Two were dead.

This was just a bloody, terrible massacre.

- There was a big shootout down near Ensenada, Mexico.

There was a split-off polygamist group.

Every home in the village

was firebombed or simply burned.

Two men died.

19 other people were critically injured.

- The Los Molinos raid was just Ervil

getting back at-- at Joel's followers.

Verlan was supposed to be there, but he was not.

He kept moving around 'cause he knew

Ervil was trying to kill him.

- They caught everybody off guard.

I mean, they took it to the next level

of trying to burn us down and kill people.

- None of these murders happened

without Ervil's say-so.

But he always made sure to be physically

well away from them.

This is part of his brilliance...

As a criminal mastermind, really.

He had his followers, his young men and women,

carry out the attack.

And he was nowhere in the area.

We were living in Denver.

We had a revolving door of other sister wives,

older siblings tending us.

- Two people that we really loved were Rena and Ramona.

- Ramona was our oldest sister from our mother.

And she was like a second mama to me.

Ramona was married to Dan Jordan.

She married him when she was 17.

She had a little bit of a rebellious streak in her.

I remember a tomato plant that she grew,

and it actually was pot, so.

Rena Chynoweth was Ervil's youngest wife.

She was his 13th wife.

Rena was maybe 16.

She was still a teenager when she married Ervil.

- We had no way of knowing how much darkness

she had already endured by the time she was 16.

- Well, he'd been after me since I was about 12 years old.

Of course, they start early, pursuing the girls

at a very young age in polygamous societies.

He wasn't the only one, but he was very persistent.

I didn't want anything to do with him in that respect.

I--I felt respect for him as a leader and as a prophet,

but I didn't want anything to do with him.

I did not want to marry him.

When you're 12 years old, you're pretty impressionable,

especially when this big, tall, important man comes up

and says, you're supposed to be my wife,

and God has told me so.

And so for a year or so there, I--

I believed him.

And during that time, he sexually molested me.

Later on, I-- I rebelled against the idea

that I was going to marry this man.

And, uh--but by the time I was 16--this was--

the division of the church had already taken place.

Um, when I was 16, he forced me to marry him.

- Of course, that was a revelation from Ervil

that Rena had to marry him.

So conveniently, that's the revelation he got.

- The only way you can actually make sure

that these girls will be compliant to marry old men

is to get them before they're fully sexually mature,

and to get them before they actually

have a mind of their own.

- It was creepy old men... - It was.

- Marrying very young, underage girls for sex.

- Yeah.

Ramona was also coerced into marrying Dan Jordan.

- Ervil wasn't just grooming

Rena and Ramona to become wives.

He was grooming them to become killers for God.

In his campaign to try to kill his brother Verlan,

Ervil settled on this new idea.

Ervil announced that God had told him

there was another couple of people

that had to be eliminated.

And, uh, that's when I first heard the name Rulon Allred.

I had never heard of the man before.

Ervil explained that he was the leader

of a rival polygamist group,

that this man was leading his people astray,

and God wanted him out of the way.

- My father was perceived to be a prophet of God.

He felt that he was representing the Lord

to his family and to his followers.

He had 48 children with his 7 wives.

He was also a naturopathic physician.

- Even though polygamy was illegal in the United States

at that time, there were still fundamentalist prophets

who had large followings, like Rulon Allred,

who was running his church out of Salt Lake City.

Rulon Allred, even though he lived very modestly,

a lot of money was coming in to Allred's church.

And I think that-- that Ervil was--

cast a covetous eye to that money.

Cast a covetous eye to the size of, uh, Allred's flock.

- There was some jealousy there because my father was

a very respected, influential person

and had a huge following.

And Ervil wanted that devotion for himself.

- To Ervil's belief, he was the only prophet.

Anyone else who said they were was a false prophet.

Ervil's gonna take over the world.

Once Ervil decided he had to kill Rulon,

he called together his top lieutenants.

And they had a meeting where Ervil announced

he'd had a new divine revelation.

- He commanded people to be executed

and/or threatened to execute anyone

that didn't agree with him.

It got pretty scary.

According to Rena, Ervil makes two women,

his wife Rena Chynoweth

and his stepdaughter Ramona Marston,

go kill Rulon Allred.

- In our cult, you had to do what Ervil said

because if you didn't, it put a target on your back.

- You were in danger for your own life.