Speaker 1: Ye novel. A listener note this episode contains violence, including
Speaker 1: sexual violence and references to child abuse. Previously on deliver
Speaker 1: Us from Hervil. Hervil thought that if he got rid
Speaker 1: of Joel, he could just move in and take leadership
Speaker 1: with Joel's people. Well, it didn't work, that's the problem.
Speaker 1: He told me about a group of Polygamus that were
Speaker 1: in town to kill someone. And then he told me
Speaker 1: about Ervil LeBaron, Glorious city police and I'd say they
Speaker 1: have no lead gept on who the two women were
Speaker 1: who headed the office of Polygamus, leader of ruling all
Speaker 1: of it yesterday and shot him dead. That anyone who
Speaker 1: opposed him deserved to die, including a daughter. And it
Speaker 1: was just a question how many people he could order
Speaker 1: be killed. There's really gonna be no stopping him. Salt,
Speaker 1: Like polygamous leader Robert Simon Kis who had been seen
Speaker 1: earlier with Pervil, LeBaron disappeared, leaving us home with one
Speaker 1: of LeBaron's followers. We are in a fight against evil.
Speaker 1: Add to that incident, a man named Dean Best was murdered.
Speaker 1: Best event a follower of Herbal LeBaron. In that case,
Speaker 1: like the Simon's disappearance remains unsolved, they said from the beginning.
Speaker 1: The only way you're going to get Herville is to
Speaker 1: break someone substantial in his group. It's October in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: the best time of the year, when the thick, muggy
Speaker 1: air of summer finally lifts. People go outside, sit on
Speaker 1: porches and stoops blues and barbecue in the air freedom.
Speaker 1: But not here in the confines of this airless room
Speaker 1: off the freeway, not far from the airport, where two
Speaker 1: people sit across from each other outside the bird's chirp
Speaker 1: every once in a while, the horn of a train
Speaker 1: and approaching siren. Inside the room, an interrogation is about
Speaker 1: to begin. A tape recorder clicks one. Okay, we're rolling
Speaker 1: against My name is I was born. I don't go
Speaker 1: through the crackle and warp of the tape. The voice
Speaker 1: of herbal LeBaron's thirteen and most infamous wife, Rina China Rena,
Speaker 1: who at the age of just nineteen killed Dr. Ruland
Speaker 1: Alread in a suburban Salt Lake office, and now, unknown
Speaker 1: to the interrogator sitting across from her, She's about to
Speaker 1: admit her role in that killing for the first time,
Speaker 1: but she'll confess to much more than that. Her confession
Speaker 1: will last days. As she talks and talks, the inner
Speaker 1: workings of hervil Abarren's church, cult, mafia, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, will emerge. A veil lifted, two killings
Speaker 1: carried out by the Lambs of God, Los Molinos, ruling Alread,
Speaker 1: and other disappearances so far unsolved in Mexico, California, and Utah.
Speaker 1: You've got the best information of anybody that's done anything
Speaker 1: or it's going to do anything on it since so
Speaker 1: as the tape recorder runs and runs, the cassettes will
Speaker 1: pile up. I've listened to all of what's left of them,
Speaker 1: and it's the only insider account of that era that survived.
Speaker 1: A story from inside Herbal Labarrens group, groomed since childhood
Speaker 1: for a role as both assassin and wife opposite Rena,
Speaker 1: her interrogator, unaware of just what his questioning would reveal.
Speaker 1: So I guess we would want to be as accurate
Speaker 1: as we can, as you know, even know it may
Speaker 1: be painfullets these are things that have got to be said.
Speaker 1: He was about to hear it all from the team's
Speaker 1: at novel and I heart radio. This is deliver us
Speaker 1: from Herbal I'm jesse High, chapter five, The Confession. When
Speaker 1: journalists del Van Adda and detective Dick Forbes teamed up
Speaker 1: together in May of nine seven, they started out thinking
Speaker 1: they were trying to solve the murder of polygamous leader
Speaker 1: Roulin Alread, but it didn't take long before their investigation
Speaker 1: revealed a string of other crimes. The massacre at Los
Speaker 1: Melinos in nineteventy four, the disappearance of arrival of Herville,
Speaker 1: a self proclaimed prophet Robert Simons in April of seventy five,
Speaker 1: and then the murder of cult members that giant of
Speaker 1: a man, Dean vest in June. Finally, there was the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Hervill's own daughter, Rebecca in April of seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Rena's interrogator would question her about all of this. Let's
Speaker 1: start with right on the Los Molinos on December nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, in the events that led up to that.
Speaker 1: But I don't remember. I have to think that Rena
Speaker 1: was just sixteen at the time of this assault on
Speaker 1: the Mexican town. She wasn't in on the cults planning
Speaker 1: for the ambush, although she does remember being around other
Speaker 1: cult members who were the sullivan who getting jumpy. You're nervous,
Speaker 1: you want to know what you know, what? What are
Speaker 1: we doing here? Here? No thing's happening, and had come
Speaker 1: up with sister. The Sullivan's she's referring to here are
Speaker 1: Lloyd and Don Sullivan, the River people from Indiana. Lloyd
Speaker 1: with his coke bottle glasses and his son Dawn, who
Speaker 1: followed him like a shadow. It turns out they were
Speaker 1: getting impatient with life in the cult. None of Herville's
Speaker 1: prophecies had been fulfilled. They wanted action. But Rena doesn't
Speaker 1: know why the group chose that town for the attack.
Speaker 1: The nation said the whole rate to make it. M
Speaker 1: Rena's interrogator turns to the events of the night of
Speaker 1: the attack. Why was she there? I don't know why
Speaker 1: I was there, accept the girl than know what else
Speaker 1: to do with you against I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out some land keeping the under he's controlling. What did
Speaker 1: she see happen? We do really ben't do anything. We
Speaker 1: surf there and we watched the fire from a vantage
Speaker 1: point at the edge of town. Rena watched the violence
Speaker 1: play out from that first fire, the attempt to draw
Speaker 1: out Evil's brother Verlin. I don't remember how long the
Speaker 1: fire burned, maybe fifteen twenty minutes, but at longer, but
Speaker 1: there was more than one fire. Wasn't to the ambush
Speaker 1: of the villagers who rushed to put out the fire
Speaker 1: as the massacre began, not until the shootings starting. And
Speaker 1: see that a shot of people that garted to put
Speaker 1: the tower fire. And then when they finished shooting there,
Speaker 1: then the truck they were darting and went through town
Speaker 1: just went down one streak through firelams of the houses
Speaker 1: along that stream, and they headed towards verds house. They
Speaker 1: meaning hope, what was Mark? Dwayne and Ed and Don?
Speaker 1: And we're in a stolen forward here Rena is talking
Speaker 1: about the shooters, which included her brothers Mark and Joyne.
Speaker 1: The group had guns and Molotov cocktails in the truck
Speaker 1: as they headed to Virdlin LeBaron's house. And then they
Speaker 1: drove through Pale and the others fired and through fireloms
Speaker 1: and in are you all? What was the shots and
Speaker 1: most people or something like that? Many of these details
Speaker 1: I've heard before from the victims families who were there
Speaker 1: that night. But what comes to light in Rena's version
Speaker 1: of events is that some of the cult members seemed
Speaker 1: to be enjoying themselves. Rena says her brothers Mark and Dwayne,
Speaker 1: who had just been living in the town before the
Speaker 1: attack act, were a little reluctant. They were the ones
Speaker 1: that were doing the shooting and the firebombing. No, h
Speaker 1: Dwayne was I guess they didn't shoot some but Dwayne
Speaker 1: was the driver and Mark they gave Mark. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of her shotgun that was didn't shoot, a shotgun that
Speaker 1: didn't shoot. It seems like Rena is suggesting her brothers
Speaker 1: weren't as involved as the others, like maybe she's trying
Speaker 1: to protect them. In fact, you can hear Rena trying
Speaker 1: to justify the actions of all of those taking part
Speaker 1: in the raid that night. They were simply carrying out
Speaker 1: orders from God. The Lord wants this done. Nan upstairs says,
Speaker 1: we just got to get rid of Berlin, and it's
Speaker 1: just ruin the people and leave them the strain, and
Speaker 1: it's just the most important thing. We illuminate his first
Speaker 1: and if he tried to stand up to her and sing,
Speaker 1: well that's stupid, then he getting at at you. Weren't
Speaker 1: all indignant how dare you questioned the lord, and so
Speaker 1: we just I don't know you did what he said?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, standing up and God, did you see it
Speaker 1: that way at the time, just saying how in retrospective
Speaker 1: at the time, I mean, did you have serious questions
Speaker 1: about doing it at the time? No, I guess I didn't. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess I was trying to do what I thought
Speaker 1: was try. I guess I thought that, well, the Lord
Speaker 1: wants it done, I guess I'd better do it. This
Speaker 1: was Herbal's go to justification. It all boils down to
Speaker 1: an elegantly simple but brutal theology. Do this because the
Speaker 1: Lord wants it done. And if the Lord wants it
Speaker 1: and you are the one in the way, well you
Speaker 1: know what that makes you, don't You a son of perdition?
Speaker 1: And you've seen what happens to them. M Long after
Speaker 1: the raid in Los Milinos, this mantra would continue and
Speaker 1: all kinds of terror would rain down. After establishing Rena
Speaker 1: wasn't a participant in the Los Milinos massacre, Rena's interrogator
Speaker 1: moves on to other violent crimes linked to the Colt.
Speaker 1: First up is the disappearance of that rival prophet to herbal,
Speaker 1: Robert or Bob Simons. Here's the cops talking about his
Speaker 1: disappearance in to journalist Lynn Packer on a local TV
Speaker 1: station cass L in Salt Lake City. Our information is
Speaker 1: that he was last seeing what the disciple of the
Speaker 1: Church of the Land him of God. Neither this disciple
Speaker 1: or Mr Simon's has been seen since, and we suspect
Speaker 1: that he is no longer living. Do you think they
Speaker 1: may have assassinated him? Oh, there is that possibility. Robert Simons,
Speaker 1: the guy who disappeared, was white, but believed he was
Speaker 1: a prophet to Native Americans, lived up in Grantsville, Utah,
Speaker 1: where the salt flats begin, which Simons have finishing. Started
Speaker 1: to him at that time that I don't ever remember
Speaker 1: him anything about him before Lloyd came in showing his wall.
Speaker 1: His disappearance happened in seventy five when Rena was living
Speaker 1: in the US with other cult members in such tight quarters,
Speaker 1: sometimes with three wives to a house. Rena heard things
Speaker 1: and saw things things she wasn't supposed to see. You
Speaker 1: were there and may save he did. Rena tells how
Speaker 1: it was Lloyd Sullivan, who had gone out for a
Speaker 1: game of pool with Robert Simons, but only one of
Speaker 1: them had come back, Lloyd with Bob's wallet. Did you
Speaker 1: know that that he had murded somebody? That's what you
Speaker 1: know that was, That's why he had the guy's wallet.
Speaker 1: I understood, Benna. Don't know who this guy was or
Speaker 1: why he had to be killed. Never heard of him before.
Speaker 1: Mike los Molino's Rena wasn't involved in committing a crime herself,
Speaker 1: but she's revealing here that the Coult definitely were involved.
Speaker 1: Rena's testimony puts the Robert Simon's murder at April of nineteen.
Speaker 1: That same year, there was another suspected killing by the
Speaker 1: Colt Dean vest shot to death in June in the
Speaker 1: house he shared with other cult members. There is no
Speaker 1: suggestion Rena was involved with Dean's murder, but her interrogator
Speaker 1: still wants to know what she knew about it. Dean
Speaker 1: was this big hug of a man, because he was
Speaker 1: soaked cool and everything he the out passed. It's one
Speaker 1: guy and he's like a big tenny there. According to Rena,
Speaker 1: Dean was falling in love with her and so let's stay.
Speaker 1: I felt simultant spirit. He's very touched. Dean stood at
Speaker 1: six ft eight two d and sixty pounds, and he
Speaker 1: actually wanted to appear even taller, so he put two
Speaker 1: inch soles in his shoes and added an elevated heel
Speaker 1: to a size sixteen cowboy boots. He joined Herbal's colt
Speaker 1: following a stint in prison, which followed a stint in
Speaker 1: the army where he had murdered his own sergeant. He
Speaker 1: picked the man up, held him up to a long
Speaker 1: I don't know what I can remember. How's bogus knit
Speaker 1: ike Bok's man literally killed him with his bare hands.
Speaker 1: His justification, according to Rena, was his sergeant refused in
Speaker 1: permission to attend his mother's funeral anyway. Rena tells how
Speaker 1: she got to know Dean in the early seventies as
Speaker 1: he was becoming some sort of military strategist for Herville
Speaker 1: and bodyguard. But by seventy Dean had moved to Southern
Speaker 1: California National City, just outside San Diego, and the rumor
Speaker 1: was he planned to defect. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: found out or how I came to know. I might
Speaker 1: have been there when Ville ordered it. I probably was.
Speaker 1: Herville had spoken to his followers, told them Dean knew
Speaker 1: too much. But I don't know if I if I
Speaker 1: protested or if I I don't think I did. I
Speaker 1: don't remember. He was turning, and he was a threat,
Speaker 1: and he could place everybody in places and if he
Speaker 1: and if he did that came to God couldn't go forward.
Speaker 1: Dean was in God's way, a son of perdition, and
Speaker 1: he had to go. This time, Herville dispatched a wife
Speaker 1: for the mission, Vonda White. She was living in National
Speaker 1: City in a house with other Lambs of God, including Dean,
Speaker 1: so she was selected to carry out the killing. I
Speaker 1: was probably there when it was reported to l that
Speaker 1: it was done or or whatever. I was probably, you know,
Speaker 1: right there, and your attitude was basically you know that
Speaker 1: it was just something that had to be done. It's done.
Speaker 1: Spike of feelings that you would have foreign greens, No,
Speaker 1: I remember now. I felt guilty because I felt like
Speaker 1: it was my fault that he was defecting, because I
Speaker 1: let him fall in love with me and messed up things.
Speaker 1: So you know, that was another thing to add to
Speaker 1: my this spare. But yet I don't know you you well,
Speaker 1: you have been close to Vanda. Apparently you know this
Speaker 1: didn't change any feelings towards her. She had done She
Speaker 1: did what she was ordered to do. She did what
Speaker 1: she was ordered to do. What I think. You can
Speaker 1: hear something pretty chilling in this part of the interrogation,
Speaker 1: as the birds chirp away freely outside the room. As
Speaker 1: you listen to her voice through the static, you can
Speaker 1: hear a sort of detachment as she tells the story
Speaker 1: of her sister wife killing the man she'd come to love,
Speaker 1: a man she'd let fall in love with her. It
Speaker 1: sounds like she's splitting off and disassociating, but as she
Speaker 1: felt bad now, worse was to come more after the break.
Speaker 1: There's this picture of Rena as a kid reporting this story.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it a lot. It's black and white.
Speaker 1: Back in East Layton, Utah, outside their three bedroom house
Speaker 1: in the shadow of the snowy Wassatch Mountains with her
Speaker 1: parents budd In, Thelma, and brothers Glenn, Vic, Dwayne, and Mark.
Speaker 1: Back when Mark dreamed of starting a band like the Monkeys,
Speaker 1: and the family took trips to Yellowstone, had the camper
Speaker 1: and the boat. Rena's about two in the picture, so
Speaker 1: it's nine. No Ley's on the trees yet, so I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it's early spring. And there's Glenn, who I talked
Speaker 1: to you back in episode three, now an old man
Speaker 1: but here in his twenties, shirt off, head down, working
Speaker 1: on a car. He's got that James Dean vibe. And
Speaker 1: then off to the side, standing on the lawn there's Thelma,
Speaker 1: Rena's mom. I swear she looks just like lucill Ball,
Speaker 1: hands clasped, pressed white blouse, khakis, her white tenny's tied neatly,
Speaker 1: a really big smile on her face. And this is
Speaker 1: what stops me. I look at that old photograph and
Speaker 1: what would unfold, and it's like one of those painful
Speaker 1: pictures from your own past where you wish, somehow, somehow
Speaker 1: you could rewind to that point and then write an
Speaker 1: entirely different script before you press play. Rena was a
Speaker 1: child who loved music, played the accordion, who wrote in
Speaker 1: her diary most days, who got a report card detailing
Speaker 1: her grades. I've got a daughter about that age, and
Speaker 1: I think about how much I want her to determine
Speaker 1: her own future, and how Rena should have had that too,
Speaker 1: but because of choice as others made, that would never
Speaker 1: be available to her. And now, all these years later,
Speaker 1: Rena sits here, trapped in this airless New Orleans interrogation room,
Speaker 1: about to be asked about her relationship with the man
Speaker 1: who ripped her family's life apart, the leader of the
Speaker 1: Church of the Lamb of God, hervil A Baron. Oh. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, have been after me for years to marry him,
Speaker 1: and I got some us can't saying well, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna marry me? Or don't you think it's about time?
Speaker 1: I think it's time now, or something like that. He
Speaker 1: always says stuffing like that, and I just get mad
Speaker 1: and off. That was our little routine through this, Reugie.
Speaker 1: You know, thretty more time here, more than this been
Speaker 1: going nonsince you were about twelve when you first leach
Speaker 1: do with it. Twelve years old, that's when Rville started
Speaker 1: grooming her, a man who was already married to her sister.
Speaker 1: Rena tells her interrogator how five years later, in February,
Speaker 1: she got word that Erville wanted to see her. He
Speaker 1: summoned her to where he was hiding out at that
Speaker 1: point in Yuma, Arizona, Rena arrived to find Herville in
Speaker 1: his hotel room with Dan Jordan's his right hand man.
Speaker 1: So he went through that number, turned at me and
Speaker 1: looked at me as he's old milk cow eyes and said,
Speaker 1: it's about when you got married. And I did my number,
Speaker 1: My did my performance. I got mad and stop talk.
Speaker 1: Dan and Herville went into a bedroom and talked in
Speaker 1: hushed tones. Dan came out and ordered Rena outside, and
Speaker 1: then Dan sat with Rena inside a station wagon and
Speaker 1: he just turned him and he said, did you marry
Speaker 1: Ervil day? Or this is your last chance? You were
Speaker 1: go to him and it was just like just like that,
Speaker 1: except he was looking right at me and his eyes
Speaker 1: didn't blink, and the chill up. And now, my fine,
Speaker 1: I know. I said in an earlier episode that Erville
Speaker 1: was old Hollywood handsome in his day, but by this
Speaker 1: time in Herville was fifty and he'd gone to seed
Speaker 1: with twelve wives already, his breath wreaked of onions and
Speaker 1: steale coffee. Nothing about him would be anything other than repulsive.
Speaker 1: Yet to Arena, he had always been presented as God's prophet,
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter if it made sense or if
Speaker 1: she was in love with him. Rena had always been
Speaker 1: raised to do God's will. And I tried to picture
Speaker 1: Arena at this moment in her life, sitting there wearing
Speaker 1: bell bottom blue jeans and a red, white and blue
Speaker 1: tshirt emblazoned with an American flag. She knew she had
Speaker 1: run out of time. She had to marry Herville or
Speaker 1: she would be killed. A lot of things went on
Speaker 1: went through my mind, like, you know, should I er, why,
Speaker 1: You're fine, I'll just leave? But then where would I go?
Speaker 1: And nowhere to go? Nowhere to run too? And I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's just going through all this despair. I
Speaker 1: wish and God would just strike me with lightning or something.
Speaker 1: This pressure might all sound remarkable, sick, twisted, and it is.
Speaker 1: It's all those things, except for women raised in Mormon
Speaker 1: fundamentalist communities. It's not that unusual. I've interviewed a lot
Speaker 1: of polygamus, many of whom were asked forced really to
Speaker 1: marry much older men. Men they didn't love, men that
Speaker 1: in some cases they loathed. And I got out in car,
Speaker 1: after crying quite a while, over to the pool and
Speaker 1: wash my arms off, watched my face flashed water on
Speaker 1: my face from the pool, it was cold, cried some more.
Speaker 1: I thought I'd stopped it, and then they started praying
Speaker 1: and say please or don't let this happen me. Um.
Speaker 1: Then I just I just decided that God must want
Speaker 1: me to marry him. So I'm went into the hotel
Speaker 1: room and they vested been. I guess they were talking
Speaker 1: strategy or I'm always him and I I walked up
Speaker 1: to Hertle when I said, you can marry you had
Speaker 1: to ask him, and his face kind of clumped. He
Speaker 1: hugged me and I cried, they're in this dingy motel room.
Speaker 1: In humor, Rina Channath and Irvill la Baron were married
Speaker 1: by Dan Jordan's. Her brother Mark stood as a witness.
Speaker 1: Then he went to Jack in the Box, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and I ordered an in rings. That's all. That's all
Speaker 1: and the reading and then Herville fell asleep back at
Speaker 1: the hotel. So much for a honeymoon, but Herville and
Speaker 1: Rena their lives were now linked more closely than ever.
Speaker 1: After marrying Herville, a new picture emerges. From Rina's answers
Speaker 1: to her interrogator's questions, The story becomes weirdly domestic. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty nice house. I think it was a
Speaker 1: three bedroom too car attached to DJE. We didn't have
Speaker 1: any furniture to speaking like some fucked up sitcom about
Speaker 1: the life of a death could. Then I discovered behind
Speaker 1: this store that there is a whole bunch of cheese
Speaker 1: and stuff in the dumpster had a little bit of
Speaker 1: mold on it, So we started going out back and
Speaker 1: getting stuff from the dumpster. These men and their multiple
Speaker 1: wives I'll share these mundane, unfurnished apartments going out to
Speaker 1: work in normal jobs were starting these doomed to fill
Speaker 1: get rich quick schemes. One time and everybody's supposed to
Speaker 1: move to babas and get into the mush walk business,
Speaker 1: except none of it is funny. Myself at that time
Speaker 1: emotionally flip flopping between trying to be why settle down
Speaker 1: and be where everybody expecting you to be, and fighting
Speaker 1: with the fact that I was trying to get along
Speaker 1: with a man I couldn't stand, and dealing with feelings
Speaker 1: of being trapped, and then feeling guilty because I felt
Speaker 1: that way, because I should be feeling happy and glad
Speaker 1: that I'm doing God's will. Hervil wanted Rena to get pregnant,
Speaker 1: and Rena was willing to submit to God's will like always,
Speaker 1: but sex with Herville was something to endure, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times I imagined I just had
Speaker 1: to pretend I wasn't there, or that, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to pretend it with somebody else, or hold my breath.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to smell his breath. Hervill would call
Speaker 1: his wives out by name when he wanted to have sex.
Speaker 1: We're having a meeting in the living of the house
Speaker 1: I was living right in the middle of Maybe he
Speaker 1: looks across at me. He gets up, walks over and
Speaker 1: takes my hat and says goodbye everybody. It starts leading
Speaker 1: me into the bedroom. And I was so embarrassed. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought, I mean, look, wait a minute, or we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a meeting here, you know, come,
Speaker 1: what do you think you're doing? And he was like
Speaker 1: he did it like he was He kind of pranced
Speaker 1: across the living room floor like this rooster. This was
Speaker 1: the grim reality of life and Hervill's promised kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: In the mid seventies, it was bleak. He would lock
Speaker 1: himself in the bedroom that he and I shared, and
Speaker 1: I would write and write and right, and you drink coffee,
Speaker 1: and drink coffee wouldn't be their shade because he was
Speaker 1: all writing, like twenty hours a day, and he smelled
Speaker 1: like coffee. I mean he's pores. He just he sweated
Speaker 1: coffee that he drank it really strong. Black and Herville
Speaker 1: of Colonial le Baron, the mad prophet king, the Ervil,
Speaker 1: who would write until he collapsed. Herval would write, um,
Speaker 1: we triple space, and he ryan the margins, just feel
Speaker 1: up the margins, and sometimes he has so much more
Speaker 1: than he had to add to this institu soon that
Speaker 1: he'd have to turn the page over. And then you
Speaker 1: have to follow all these arrows. He could aly direction
Speaker 1: where he'd add the stem. I closed my eyes and
Speaker 1: I can see it, Rena. They're flipping over pages, trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of Hervil's scribblings. In the margins. The
Speaker 1: arrow is pointing here and there, trying to decipher in
Speaker 1: the scriptures and the threats. But when it came to
Speaker 1: the intention of Herville's verbal orders, there was less ambigue.
Speaker 1: That's coming up after the break. By April of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, Evil's daughter, Rebecca LeBaron had married into the
Speaker 1: same family as her father. She was now the second
Speaker 1: wife of Rena's brother, Victor Moneyman shin Off. Rebecca or Becky,
Speaker 1: as the cold called her, shared her father's propensity for visions,
Speaker 1: but no one called Becky a prophet. I guess she
Speaker 1: was Schizzo. She'd stelights and she'd hear a voice of syd.
Speaker 1: In Rena's testimony, you hear how the group saw Becky's
Speaker 1: mental health issues as a direct threat to the colts.
Speaker 1: Really weird. She went out and got caught shop lifting
Speaker 1: and ran off the math to the police. Here we
Speaker 1: were trying to be incominito. It just felt that she
Speaker 1: was a threat. Especially threatened were cult members who felt
Speaker 1: like she knew things that could land them in prison
Speaker 1: for murder. But surely, as Herville's own daughter, she was
Speaker 1: safe from the colts. They kept harping, harping on Hervill
Speaker 1: about getting rid of Pick, and he didn't want to. Now,
Speaker 1: the way I remembered is that Don was the limit,
Speaker 1: kept pressuring and pushing to do something about her. Don
Speaker 1: and Lloyd, Lloyd Sullivan and his shadow son Dawn. Again.
Speaker 1: Lloyd is revealed in Rena's testimony to be the catalyst
Speaker 1: behind escalating violence. But now joined by others, ratcheting up
Speaker 1: the pressure for more violence from the colts. Herville was
Speaker 1: in the bedroom and Don and Adverse like danning at
Speaker 1: the living room door, and they were saying, we've got
Speaker 1: to do something about Becky. I mean, this is it's bad,
Speaker 1: really bad. And Lloyd was talking with them, and then
Speaker 1: he'd go in the room and he talked to woman.
Speaker 1: He'd come back out and it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was carrying messages back and forth. And for some
Speaker 1: reason I was there and maybe not meaning to stand
Speaker 1: there and listen, I became it was asking my opinion
Speaker 1: it wasn't a meeting. Well, I came out and nodded
Speaker 1: his head. The order had been given, according to Rena.
Speaker 1: The assignment this time, perhaps the most disturbing of them all,
Speaker 1: would go to Rena's brother Dwayne and his friend Eddie Marston.
Speaker 1: Both were veterans of the Los Molino's raid. I'm going
Speaker 1: to warn you here, as gnarly as this whole series
Speaker 1: has been, this next bit of tape is very graphic
Speaker 1: and disturbing. It was difficult for me to listen to
Speaker 1: still is. I guess you wouldn't know how they got
Speaker 1: back to get into the car in the first place
Speaker 1: with him. I told her they were taking her somewhere.
Speaker 1: I don't know from what I understand. Wayne was driving
Speaker 1: and it was in the back seat, and he, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this needs to be mentioned, but he said,
Speaker 1: when I can't do it, this is too hard. I
Speaker 1: guess she was really you know, she was fighting, and
Speaker 1: he was arm's for getting tired. He said, I can't
Speaker 1: do this, and Dwayne reached back and held one side
Speaker 1: of the rope. The two men strangled Rebecca LeBaron. Together.
Speaker 1: They took her into a forest of some kind and
Speaker 1: buried her in an unmarked grave. Was it the next
Speaker 1: day that she had heard that she had been taken
Speaker 1: care of her week later? I wouldn't ask. I don't
Speaker 1: remember asking. It wasn't you know, I'm not a kind
Speaker 1: of person that she was going to be done in eventually. Well,
Speaker 1: I figured when they left, when they got the okay them,
Speaker 1: they were gone for a few days. As hard as
Speaker 1: listening to Rena describe all this is, it's almost as
Speaker 1: hard to hear her rationalize the actions. They felt that
Speaker 1: they were putting somebody opping ma sory and it it
Speaker 1: was necessary for military security reason and it had to
Speaker 1: be done. It wasn't something they did out of hate,
Speaker 1: because they enjoyed killing. So I didn't say anything. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask questions. Rena didn't need to ask questions. The
Speaker 1: message was clear. If Herval's own daughter wasn't safe, no
Speaker 1: one was. It was later spring of and Rena tells
Speaker 1: her interrogator about this next stage of her life inside
Speaker 1: Hervil LeBaron's colt. She was invited to attend a meeting
Speaker 1: in Dallas. This was to be Irville's infamous military emergency
Speaker 1: meeting where he would announce the colts most ambitious attack.
Speaker 1: I guess that's when he had decided he had to
Speaker 1: hit Ruin already, it was time for Rena to step
Speaker 1: out from the background, to take center stage, from witness
Speaker 1: to participant. And it would be a way to get
Speaker 1: Vernon the other false profit too to his funeral. That
Speaker 1: was the main idea, But he Verrlin LeBaron the target
Speaker 1: they'd missed at Los Melinos. The ruling alread hit was
Speaker 1: going to be another attempt on his life. Listening to
Speaker 1: these tapes of Rena talk about her involvement in Rvil's colt,
Speaker 1: one thing that jumps out is how candid she is
Speaker 1: when it comes to the killing of Rulin alread and
Speaker 1: just been salutinely terrified. I was shaking, shaking really bad.
Speaker 1: Pu has things in the head of what us us
Speaker 1: to do that day. The next shocking bit of Rena's
Speaker 1: confession is how she was selected for the killing. He said, Uh,
Speaker 1: now I need nominations or two women, who do you
Speaker 1: think we should see in hervill selected Rena. I just
Speaker 1: remember being really surprised. And then I'm going on to say,
Speaker 1: what an honor was to be picked to undertake this
Speaker 1: great nostion. It'll assure your ticket into the celestial kingdom.
Speaker 1: The celestial kingdom, that's Mormons speak for the highest level
Speaker 1: of heaven. You'll be blessed beyond your wildest dreams. Rena
Speaker 1: tells her interrogator how on the morning of the killing,
Speaker 1: the reality of what she was about to do finally
Speaker 1: set in Um and Don came overnight and pretty long
Speaker 1: around me. Okay, it's gonna be all right, thanks, I'll
Speaker 1: go fine. God will be with you and you then
Speaker 1: will be okay. Don Sullivan, he was leading the hit
Speaker 1: on Verlin. The Lord was with them, he reminded Rena.
Speaker 1: We ended up behind the doctor's officer and the vehicles
Speaker 1: were waiting there. The guys handed us our guns and
Speaker 1: gave us encouraging words and send us all away. Rena
Speaker 1: disguised in a blue park and Wig entered the office
Speaker 1: of Dr. Alred locked in and it was the reception area,
Speaker 1: seats around on two walls along the way, and I
Speaker 1: just sat down and I'm gonna run. Peered into the
Speaker 1: glass cubic glory where the office was the reception area,
Speaker 1: and then the door was time standing that went back
Speaker 1: to the rooms. And yeah, as I looked through the door,
Speaker 1: the doctor was coming out of I want to get
Speaker 1: family rooms. And he was the way and described to
Speaker 1: me tall slender, m raight hair, nice nice command. And
Speaker 1: he came towards me and then turned to his right,
Speaker 1: which would have been left towards like a little laugh
Speaker 1: area or something. I heard it was a sinkers pumpy
Speaker 1: kind of behind the door where I was standing. I
Speaker 1: had it in the pocket of Parker. It was m Parker. Um,
Speaker 1: I think you just nodded at They were now just
Speaker 1: three ft away. Yeah, I dude, what I was supposed
Speaker 1: to do? And where did you show him? Chest. I
Speaker 1: guess all a little hard to hear here. The interrogator
Speaker 1: asked how many bullets she fired. I am, Rena says
Speaker 1: she emptied the gun and the doctor went down. He said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, and his nurse gratch being and I
Speaker 1: just kind of shook her off to head out the door,
Speaker 1: and then got outside, and I didn't know whether he
Speaker 1: was standing on And we walked around the side of
Speaker 1: the building to the back, got in the truck and
Speaker 1: drove it to where we were supposed to meet the guys,
Speaker 1: and gave them our wigs and the guns and jackets,
Speaker 1: and and we shit fine and stout in the car
Speaker 1: and the net. Hearing Rena confess to the killing of
Speaker 1: Rulin Alread, it's a difficult listen, like really difficult, hard
Speaker 1: to grasp. The details in this confession certainly all fit.
Speaker 1: They corroborate what Rulin's daughter, Dorothy Alread told me back
Speaker 1: in episode three. But what I mean by hard to
Speaker 1: grasp is how Rena, despite this full and frank confession,
Speaker 1: has never served a single day in prison for this crime.
Speaker 1: Because this tape and all these recordings you've heard in
Speaker 1: this episode weren't made for the purposes of a police interrogation.
Speaker 1: Her interrogator is a man named Dean Shapiro. He's a
Speaker 1: writer and he's sitting with Rena in New Orleans, many
Speaker 1: years after the Alread killing, collaborating with her on a book.
Speaker 1: They'll call that book, Blood Covenant, a memoir or kind
Speaker 1: of a tell all account of her life with hervill
Speaker 1: Le Baron. I had heard on the news that her
Speaker 1: plan was to release the book admitting that she killed
Speaker 1: my father. This is Dorothy Solomon Alread, doctor Rulin Alread's daughter.
Speaker 1: Years after her father's murder. She would hear about the
Speaker 1: details of Rena's book in television promos. Whoever the reporter
Speaker 1: was was asking her, well, how did you feel when
Speaker 1: you pulled the trigger? And she said glibly, if you
Speaker 1: want to know that, you'll have to read the book.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to believe it. It was set
Speaker 1: for release on the thirteenth anniversary of my father's death.
Speaker 1: Real bad timing, I think, really insensitive and I was
Speaker 1: just a knife in my gut. I just like, how
Speaker 1: do I live with this? Rena will go on to
Speaker 1: appear on TV chat shows across the country to promote
Speaker 1: the book. A movie will even be made based on it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it was like losing him all over again. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it was worse because she'd made a mockery of our
Speaker 1: systems of justice. She had made a mockery of my
Speaker 1: father's life. She had sent the message that the death
Speaker 1: of a polygamus was not really murder. We've reached out
Speaker 1: to Rena for comment on numerous occasions making this podcast,
Speaker 1: but she's yet to get back to us. Rena continues
Speaker 1: to live out her life in freedom. How was this possible,
Speaker 1: this escape from punishment from the law. Simple answer, It's
Speaker 1: called double jeopardy, the clause in the fifth Amendment of
Speaker 1: the U s Constitution that states no person shall be
Speaker 1: subject for the same offense to be twice put in
Speaker 1: jeopardy of life or limb. In other words, a person
Speaker 1: cannot be prosecuted twice for the same offense. Rena, a
Speaker 1: year after she had killed Roulin Alread in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: would be arrested along with other members of herbl's cult.
Speaker 1: She'd be put on trial. Rena wasn't the one snitching
Speaker 1: to the cops, but someone did. And the date is March.
Speaker 1: This is an interview. It's conducted in the County Attorney's
Speaker 1: office in Salt Lake City. I understand that care affiliated
Speaker 1: with the Church of the Lamb of God. That correct,
Speaker 1: I have been affiliated with what was called the Church
Speaker 1: of Land. That was Lloyd Sullivan, the man Rena named
Speaker 1: as the instigator of both the Los Milinos attack and
Speaker 1: the murder of Becky le Baron. But he wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one talking to the cops. From late n a
Speaker 1: number of cult members had decided to turn on Herville,
Speaker 1: the dominoes falling as the police desperately tried to bring
Speaker 1: down Herville's colt. That's coming up in the next episode
Speaker 1: of deliver Us from Rvill. Deliver Us from Herville is
Speaker 1: hosted by me jesse Hyde and written and reported by
Speaker 1: me Leona Hamid and David Waters. Production from Leona Hamid
Speaker 1: and David Waters. Sean Glenn and Max O'Brien are executive producers.
Speaker 1: Lena Chang and Megan Oyinka are researchers. Marianna Gongora is
Speaker 1: our field producer. Fact checking by Donya Suleman and Sona Avakian.
Speaker 1: Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf
Speaker 1: Austin Mitchell is our creative director of Production. Michae Lee
Speaker 1: Row is our managing editor. Gavin Haynes is our head
Speaker 1: of Development. Willard Foxton is our creative director of Development.
Speaker 1: Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson.
Speaker 1: Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music
Speaker 1: is composed by Julian Lynch. Special thanks to Scott Anderson,
Speaker 1: Scott Carrier, Del van Ada, Pippa smith sas Skip Edwards,
Speaker 1: Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle and Beth and Macheluso, or In Rosenbaum,
Speaker 1: Shelby Shankman and all the team at U t A.
Speaker 1: For more from novel, visit novel dot Audio