Speaker 1: Yeah novel. A listener note. This episode contains violence and
Speaker 1: content that some listeners might find distressing, including references to
Speaker 1: child abuse. Previously on deliver Us from Herbal. I think
Speaker 1: by the time hervill had died, I knew it really
Speaker 1: wasn't over, because with such an unstable group founded on
Speaker 1: such erroneous principles, you never really know what to expect.
Speaker 1: I'm Gabrielle Little Baron, and my father is irvil LeBaron.
Speaker 1: This is the book of the New Covenant. It's a
Speaker 1: manifesto of irvill Le Baron. Coult wasn't even a word
Speaker 1: reknew of. And we call ourselves the mafia. Right, So
Speaker 1: the mafia breaks apart. One team goes against the other team.
Speaker 1: Heber felt he had screwed up so bad. He gave
Speaker 1: the authority to next brother in line, Aaron. This is
Speaker 1: God's law, we have to do it. There were some
Speaker 1: threats made against Dan Jordan's What of our lifelong dreams
Speaker 1: was to get our siblings who were under Dan's spell
Speaker 1: an Dan goes off to do his business, drops his drawers,
Speaker 1: and two people walk up and shoe in their head
Speaker 1: in the chest of the nine millimeter weapon. No one
Speaker 1: seemed phase that a murder had occard. And my afterthought
Speaker 1: on that is, I mean, murder was sort of a
Speaker 1: of a natural thing with these folks, and different people
Speaker 1: would pray. We had this thing we called a solemn
Speaker 1: assembly where each person in that circle would say their prayer.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to imagine what would the prayers be like.
Speaker 1: They would be specifically about the killings. Yes, and they
Speaker 1: were trying to decide location and when where. I just
Speaker 1: know the feeling of the meeting. It was all like,
Speaker 1: of course, very ominous. It was June when Lucy finally
Speaker 1: convinced her dad to let her join him in the
Speaker 1: United States. I'm originally from Venezuela. I'm a six daughter
Speaker 1: of a family of nine. Like so many migrants who
Speaker 1: uproot their lives to cross borders, Lucy's dad's journey to
Speaker 1: America wasn't just some grand adventure. My father was struggling
Speaker 1: economically back in nineteen eighty seven, so he came and
Speaker 1: left mom and all of us in Venezuela. Ever since
Speaker 1: he arrived in Houston, Lucy had wanted to join him.
Speaker 1: He seemed to have made quick work of securing his
Speaker 1: steady income, who were so excited when he found a
Speaker 1: job and he told us that his boss kids and
Speaker 1: it was a very good man. Lucy was nineteen, and
Speaker 1: since her dad had settled in America so quickly, she
Speaker 1: thought why not her too? The time was right for
Speaker 1: her to make the trip. I remember asking him all
Speaker 1: the time, Oh, I want to go send for me,
Speaker 1: and he was like, no, because she's going to school
Speaker 1: and and I was like, yeah, but I want to
Speaker 1: learn English, and so he said, okay, Well, let me
Speaker 1: think about it. And she didn't have to wait long
Speaker 1: because her dad's boss had another job, opening a nanny
Speaker 1: for his four girls. He lost his babysitter and he
Speaker 1: needed to find a sater to watch them. When he
Speaker 1: was at work at the appliance business, he ran, I said,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. I'll do it as send for me.
Speaker 1: And he told me, okay, we'll get your visa ready.
Speaker 1: So I did. Lucy arrived in the US. It was
Speaker 1: to be the start of a whirlwind romance. Lucy's boss
Speaker 1: was a man named Dwayne, recently divorced his wife out
Speaker 1: of the picture. He ran his business fixing up and
Speaker 1: selling appliances in Houston with help from his mother and
Speaker 1: a couple of employees, including Lucy's dad. He'd set it
Speaker 1: up when he moved to the Houston area in and
Speaker 1: by this point in business was booming. That's why he
Speaker 1: needed and could afford help with his children. But those
Speaker 1: kids with a busy single dad, they needed more than
Speaker 1: a babysitter. I just became any medium mom to four
Speaker 1: of his gets four girls. The more time Lucy spent
Speaker 1: with Dwayne, the more she found things about him that
Speaker 1: she liked. He was introvert, but once you get to
Speaker 1: know him, he had such a assist a humor, and
Speaker 1: he was awesome. Dad loved loved his girls so much,
Speaker 1: and he was just amazing, really handsome, So it was
Speaker 1: not hard for me to fall for somebody like back.
Speaker 1: He was like my friends. Shortly after Lucy turned twenty,
Speaker 1: she was out with Duyne on a job to pick
Speaker 1: up a washing machine. We're driving and he said, would
Speaker 1: you marry me? And I was like yes. Given the
Speaker 1: speed of their romance, Lucy hadn't had time to learn
Speaker 1: much about Joanne's background, but she was already so close
Speaker 1: to his kids, and she met his mom, Tholma, who
Speaker 1: helped out sometimes running the family business. Once they were married,
Speaker 1: Dwayne began opening up more about his life, his past,
Speaker 1: introducing lou See two more of his family members and
Speaker 1: some of his friends. On our honeymoon, we did take
Speaker 1: a little few days off and on a honeymoon and
Speaker 1: we went to the Hill Country. We met his sister
Speaker 1: and her family, Ria Rina China, Joyne's sister. She was
Speaker 1: super nice, super sweet to me, and we immediately just
Speaker 1: you know, had a connection and we were a sweet
Speaker 1: And then months later I met Mark marchin Off, Joyne's brother,
Speaker 1: and then I met ed one day in Dallas. This
Speaker 1: was Joyne's best friend, Eddie Marston, met him and his
Speaker 1: girlfriend and even went to a Dallas Cowboy game. His
Speaker 1: son an awesome person, Thelma, Eddie Marston, Mark and Riena
Speaker 1: chanof the significan people in Joyne's life. But when it
Speaker 1: came to actual details about his past, remember him showing
Speaker 1: me a book of Moment and telling me a little
Speaker 1: bit about, you know, the story behind the Book of Moment.
Speaker 1: But he really wouldn't want any religion in his life.
Speaker 1: I didn't know why he said to me that, you know,
Speaker 1: past his past, he really wanted to put that past behind.
Speaker 1: So it was something He really didn't even want to
Speaker 1: bring up remember or anything like that. He just he
Speaker 1: was done with that. You know, I don't blame him
Speaker 1: because he drew it as a dark part of his life,
Speaker 1: So I don't blame him. I just feel like I
Speaker 1: didn't want that to be if something that got in
Speaker 1: between us little He knew what was going to happen,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to start a new life and you know, forget.
Speaker 1: And I don't blame Jayne either, at least when it
Speaker 1: comes to wanting to forget his past. He was just
Speaker 1: nine years old when his family converted into Evil's Church.
Speaker 1: Just like his sister Rena and his brother Mark, he
Speaker 1: had little choice about entering into it. His parents, Thelma
Speaker 1: and Bud, made that decision for their kids. Joyne was
Speaker 1: seventeen years old when he and his brother Mark and
Speaker 1: his best friend Eddie attacked Los Molino's indiscriminately shooting residents
Speaker 1: as they ran from their burning homes and terror. I
Speaker 1: can imagine they'd want to forget that night. Or when
Speaker 1: Dwayne was just eighteen and he strangled to death the
Speaker 1: pregnant Becky LeBaron holding the ligature together with nineteen year
Speaker 1: old Eddie and leaving Becky LeBaron's body in an unmarked
Speaker 1: grave in the forest. I'd want to forget all that.
Speaker 1: I often wish I'd never learned about it. But when
Speaker 1: I try to picture Eddie Marston, March Sanath, and Duyne Shana,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Did they actually believe they could simply
Speaker 1: move on, that their cult life was now behind them
Speaker 1: when they abandoned Hervill's church as he sat in a
Speaker 1: prison cell in and they walked toward new lives in Texas,
Speaker 1: Or did they really, in their heart of hearts no,
Speaker 1: that this wasn't over, that it would all come tearing
Speaker 1: back into their lives eventually. Because if they did, if
Speaker 1: they had even the smallest inkling that any of the
Speaker 1: things they did in the name of Hervil le Baron
Speaker 1: might come back to haunt them, then surely they would
Speaker 1: have thought about the people who might get caught up
Speaker 1: in their past, those who surrounded them in their new lives,
Speaker 1: the people they loved, like Lucy or Joyne's kids, who
Speaker 1: all had absolutely no idea about the lives they lived out.
Speaker 1: Just a decade before, Eddie Marston and Mark and Dwayne
Speaker 1: Shannath had belonged to a cult that would never let
Speaker 1: them go. Their names were written in the Book of
Speaker 1: the New Covenant, and one day their past would eventually
Speaker 1: track them down. From the teams at Novel and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, this is deliver Us from Herville, episode eleven
Speaker 1: at four o'clock. If there was one thing that brought
Speaker 1: Dwayne and Lucy together so quickly, it was the kids.
Speaker 1: The children were the reason they met, of course, but
Speaker 1: it was more than that. He was a very family
Speaker 1: oriented person and so was I. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of like a bond we had. The kids were a
Speaker 1: shared priority, and they both adored them. Really awesome, awesome kids.
Speaker 1: They had door their dad, and you know, they spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time with him. Lucy came to love
Speaker 1: all the kids. They were just good and sweet and
Speaker 1: full of energy, and it was just so nice and
Speaker 1: loving and it was a very positive experience. But some
Speaker 1: needed her attention more than others, as actially little Jenny, Jenny,
Speaker 1: she was just she got teased a lot from her
Speaker 1: brother's you know, typical siblings, but she she was just
Speaker 1: so loving and even though they got into little fight
Speaker 1: and arguments, she always just loved them let them back
Speaker 1: no matter what. She was sweet, adorable girl. Um, she's just,
Speaker 1: you know, a typical eight year old, curious and excited
Speaker 1: about life. June was a nice summer day in Houston,
Speaker 1: not too hot. That morning, the phone rang at Dwayne
Speaker 1: China's appliance repair shop. Joyne was out on a delivery,
Speaker 1: so his mother, Thelma picked up. The caller identified himself
Speaker 1: as Terry Phillips. He was moving from Houston and had
Speaker 1: a used washer he wanted to sell. Thelma wrote down
Speaker 1: the name and address. Did it seem strange to Thelma
Speaker 1: that the address was on Rena Street, the same name
Speaker 1: as her daughter? Maybe? Maybe not? Either way, she told
Speaker 1: Mr Phillips her son Dwayne would come and pick the
Speaker 1: washer up later that afternoon. Would he need help with
Speaker 1: the machine? No, it was fine, He'd handle it alone.
Speaker 1: The price offered for the machine was just seventy It
Speaker 1: was low, suspiciously low in retrospect. Had Thelma called back
Speaker 1: to check if that price was actually right, the number
Speaker 1: would have rung and rung. The call had come from
Speaker 1: a pay phone at a gas station. There was no
Speaker 1: Terry Phillips. At some point after hanging up, who ever
Speaker 1: had made the call had glued the phone's receiver to
Speaker 1: the cradle so no one could pick it up, just
Speaker 1: in case someone did call back to talk to Mr
Speaker 1: Terry Phillips. At around the same time, five miles north,
Speaker 1: the phone rang at Ed's Appliances and Irving, a suburb
Speaker 1: just west of Dallas. A guy on the line named
Speaker 1: Perry Wilson said he wanted to sell a used washer.
Speaker 1: Eddie Marston agreed on a price and wrote down the
Speaker 1: name and number and time to pick it up. If
Speaker 1: he would have called back, the phone would have rang
Speaker 1: and rang, because again there was no Perry Wilson. The
Speaker 1: call had been made from a pay phone at a
Speaker 1: convenience store, and now it's receiver was also super glued
Speaker 1: to the cradle. That afternoon, back in Houston, Mark China
Speaker 1: was kicking back in an office chair at the business
Speaker 1: he ran Reliance Appliances. You guessed it washers and dryers,
Speaker 1: the family trade. I picture him with his feet up
Speaker 1: on the desk because he waited for customers or for
Speaker 1: the phone to ring. And I wonder did he hear
Speaker 1: the tires on the asphalt outside or the car pulling
Speaker 1: up to the storefront. Did he glimpse the outlines, the
Speaker 1: figures outside the shop window the profiles of three of
Speaker 1: hervill La Baron's children, as they sat inside the approaching
Speaker 1: car in their disguises. Meanwhile, a fifteen minute drive across town,
Speaker 1: Dwayne Shannath was about to get in his truck to
Speaker 1: collect the cheap washer and dryer. He was supposed to
Speaker 1: go alone, but there was a last minute change of plans.
Speaker 1: Jenny was struggling with her reading. The teacher said that
Speaker 1: she needed to practice for reading, so he would take her.
Speaker 1: Will leave me with the other kids at the store
Speaker 1: and would take her with him so she could read
Speaker 1: to him while he's working and she could practice her reading.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened that day. A little before four pm,
Speaker 1: Dwayne and Jenny got in the truck and set off
Speaker 1: for Arena Street. Lucy would never see either of them again.
Speaker 1: Standing on Rena Street, about twenty miles from downtown Houston,
Speaker 1: the first thing you notice is how normal the area is.
Speaker 1: There's a suburban tranquility to it, well tended lawns, there's
Speaker 1: an American flag waving at a house across the street,
Speaker 1: some pumpkins left over from Halloween, big magnolia trees. It's
Speaker 1: a solidly middle class neighborhood, and considering what happened here,
Speaker 1: there's sort of an eerie quality to it, just how
Speaker 1: placid and calm it is. Monday, jun the three bedroom
Speaker 1: brick house in front of me was vacant today. It's
Speaker 1: an odd house on this street. It sort of stands
Speaker 1: out for how it has an unkempt kind of wild feel.
Speaker 1: At just before four o'clock, Duyne Schinov pulled up to
Speaker 1: that house on Rena Street, but no one seemed to
Speaker 1: be home. If Jayne had got out and asked a neighbor,
Speaker 1: they would have told him the house had been empty
Speaker 1: for a year. There had been a four cell sign
Speaker 1: up until earlier that day. Someone had moved it that morning.
Speaker 1: Duyne wanted to get back home and was just backing
Speaker 1: up the driveway to leave when a black Silverado truck
Speaker 1: came barreling down the street, blocking Duane in the truck
Speaker 1: driver had short blonde hair. In the passenger seat sat
Speaker 1: someone in a business suit with a strawberry blonde beard.
Speaker 1: The person in the business suit got out of the truck,
Speaker 1: Dwayne stepped from the cab of his GMC pick up.
Speaker 1: They exchanged a few brief words and then the man
Speaker 1: in the business suit pulled a three fifty seven magnum
Speaker 1: from a shoulder holster beneath his suit coat. He then
Speaker 1: looked up into the cab and noticed the little girl.
Speaker 1: It was four o'clock. Back across town at Reliance Appliances,
Speaker 1: Mark Snath was still sitting in that swivel chair at
Speaker 1: his desk, but now he had bullet holes across his
Speaker 1: face and chest, and as spreading pool of blood at
Speaker 1: his feet. He had just been shot at four o'clock
Speaker 1: to seconds before. In Dallas, Eddie Marston had been backing
Speaker 1: his pickup into the driveway of a home on the
Speaker 1: west side of town when a dark pickup blocked him in.
Speaker 1: A gunman emerged, shooting Eddie in the head and chest
Speaker 1: four o'clock. Within just four minutes of each other, four
Speaker 1: people were dead, all glory to the Kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: More after the break, we are in Huntsville, which is
Speaker 1: roughly an hour in twenty minutes north of Houston, through
Speaker 1: a pretty wooded green part of Texas, sort of forested
Speaker 1: tall trees. We are on our way to meet with
Speaker 1: retired detective John Burmeister. John, are you doing, Jesse? How
Speaker 1: are you I'm gonna expected you. I like how the
Speaker 1: horses they are able to just wander around the yard.
Speaker 1: That's nice. Ship everywhere. Shut up, doll. We're an hour
Speaker 1: roughly from downtown to Houston, but it feels like a
Speaker 1: world away. Cowboy hats the gas station pasture horseship. John
Speaker 1: Burmeister spent twenty five years as a Houston homicide detective.
Speaker 1: We can gather up some volun chambers and sit in
Speaker 1: the sun. How it sounds great. We're doing the interview
Speaker 1: outside in his front yard to not disturb his wife,
Speaker 1: who was inside sick the day we arrive. Occasionally a
Speaker 1: farm truck passes by at the end of his driveway.
Speaker 1: John is a large man, big broad shoulders, big hands,
Speaker 1: white hair, and the way he looks at you, you
Speaker 1: immediately get the sense this is a man not to
Speaker 1: be fucked with. Kind of looks like Santa gone bad.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, when John was working homicides, Houston
Speaker 1: was booming. It was a pretty busy time for us.
Speaker 1: We were probably having about five hundred plus homicides a year.
Speaker 1: I was on the evening shift. All has had been
Speaker 1: and uh, the evening shift comes in. It's toward the midnight,
Speaker 1: and you basically if a scene comes in, if there's
Speaker 1: a homicide, the patrol unit that gets the initial call
Speaker 1: figures out, yeah, we need to do some investigating on
Speaker 1: this one, and they call the office and the supervisor
Speaker 1: decides who's going out. Un John remembers he was working
Speaker 1: the night shift. He had just got in and was
Speaker 1: doing some paperwork when he got the call. We had
Speaker 1: no idea what we were. Well, we were getting to
Speaker 1: there's two scenes dropped at the same time, and uh
Speaker 1: that this lieutenant got the word that the two might
Speaker 1: be related. My partner and I went out on one
Speaker 1: and another team went out on the other. John was
Speaker 1: headed to Arena Street. His lieutenant didn't tell him much.
Speaker 1: The suspects were unknown. When John arrived at the scene,
Speaker 1: crowds had already gathered. Cops had roped off the crime
Speaker 1: scene with yellow tape. Yeah, the streets were failed with lookers,
Speaker 1: you know, nosy folks. It was kind of chaotic. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of blue suits, a lot of uniforms
Speaker 1: offers there. There wasn't much of a scene to be preserved,
Speaker 1: and uh, the officers that made the original call were
Speaker 1: doing the best they could to preach or of what
Speaker 1: that was. But everything was kind of within ten foot
Speaker 1: of the pickup truck standing on Rena Street. John walked
Speaker 1: over to get a closer look at the truck piece
Speaker 1: together what might have happened. I'll warn you this next
Speaker 1: piece of tape is very hard to listen. To skip
Speaker 1: ahead about a minute and a half if you'd rather
Speaker 1: not listen. The first thing I know, there was a
Speaker 1: blood leaking out of the truck, and uh, I walked
Speaker 1: to the passenger side, and I remember a little girl
Speaker 1: being slumped over in the front seat. And it was
Speaker 1: afternoon and the the sun wasn't high up in the sky,
Speaker 1: and the light was shining through the truck. The sunlight
Speaker 1: was shining through the truck, and uh, you could actually
Speaker 1: see light coming through the little girl's skull from the
Speaker 1: entrance to the exit. And that was that was the
Speaker 1: serious thing I've seen all my life. And it just
Speaker 1: it just was kind of an emotional moment there for
Speaker 1: a little while. What did you feel in that moment? Well,
Speaker 1: I thought about my little girls, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: keep thinking who would do something like that? And I
Speaker 1: never could believe that somebody would actually target a little
Speaker 1: girl like that. Moving away from the crime scene, John
Speaker 1: approached some of the first responding officers, had his notebook out.
Speaker 1: The investigation had begun. The officers told us that there
Speaker 1: were no actual witnesses to a shooter, but there were
Speaker 1: some people that heard the gunshots and came out and
Speaker 1: saw some people getting into I think it was a
Speaker 1: truck and leave. Neighbors told the detectives they'd seen a
Speaker 1: black Silverado truck cruising the street all day leading up
Speaker 1: to the shooting, and uh, we got kind of a description,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't anything unusual, you know. It was a
Speaker 1: guy in a suit with a beard, which really didn't
Speaker 1: tell us a whole lot. And it turned out that
Speaker 1: the other scene and went on Blaylock was directly related
Speaker 1: because it's the same family and they were actually brothers.
Speaker 1: Blaylock that John's referring to here is Blaylock Road. It's
Speaker 1: a boulevard about ten miles west of downtown Houston. It's
Speaker 1: where Mark Chinath ran his shop, Reliance Appliances. An hour later,
Speaker 1: as John and his partner were arriving back at the
Speaker 1: police station, they learned that Mark had been shot there.
Speaker 1: The office was full of people and well I confirmed
Speaker 1: that it was a hit and that it was kind
Speaker 1: of hard to understand what it was all about. It first,
Speaker 1: as John and his team prepared themselves for the investigation,
Speaker 1: some of his colleagues were already with the victims families.
Speaker 1: The first time Dwayne's wife Lucy since something wasn't right
Speaker 1: was around five PM. More than an hour had passed
Speaker 1: since Dwayne and little Jenny had left the house together.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call him, but he's not answering. He's
Speaker 1: not up, So I started calling. No answer, you know,
Speaker 1: and so we probably that he was busy, me know,
Speaker 1: outside the truck and couldn't hear the phone. Then her
Speaker 1: phone did ring, but it was a friend of Dwayne's.
Speaker 1: I noticed something was strange because his friend called very worried.
Speaker 1: This friend had just heard the news about March not
Speaker 1: getting shot, so he was trying to prevent for warm Wayne.
Speaker 1: About was just stick took place and we couldn't get
Speaker 1: a hold of them. A couple of hours passed nothing.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to put the bottle together with what's
Speaker 1: going on. So about an hour or two, the police
Speaker 1: come in and they tell us that that both of
Speaker 1: them where We're dead. Okay, as I was still trying
Speaker 1: to gather and you know, come to terms with the
Speaker 1: news they just told me. I just I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: To me, it was just surreal. It's like, no, you
Speaker 1: could this is gonna be true? You know, just how
Speaker 1: can this happen? And it just all came tumbling down.
Speaker 1: But it was just it was so shocking. It took
Speaker 1: to gus, you know, they used to come with grips
Speaker 1: with it and who did it and why, and that's
Speaker 1: when his past just came to the surface. That's coming up.
Speaker 1: After the break. As police started to piece together the
Speaker 1: motive behind the four o'clock murders, he told some of
Speaker 1: the chinnav family that they wanted to take them into
Speaker 1: protective custody for a few days. Rina Channath seemed the
Speaker 1: most at risk. Two of her brothers had now been murdered,
Speaker 1: one of them on a street that shared her name.
Speaker 1: Worst of all, she had been named in hervil's Book
Speaker 1: of the New Covenant too, and that meant execution. She
Speaker 1: agreed to the protection initially, but then she went home.
Speaker 1: She figured that if the Kingdom of God wanted her dead,
Speaker 1: they would have killed her when they killed Mark and
Speaker 1: Dwayne and Eddie Marston, but Rena did skip the funeral.
Speaker 1: Security missures they did not want her at the funeral
Speaker 1: because they have done that before. When Lucy says done
Speaker 1: that before, she's talking about using a funeral as a
Speaker 1: lure for further killings. This lure was the Colts plan
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy seven with the aborted assassination attempt
Speaker 1: on Hervil's brother Verlin. The police now knew about that connection,
Speaker 1: so when it came to this funeral, they weren't taking
Speaker 1: any chances. The funeral had been delayed so it could
Speaker 1: take place on a Saturday. That way, off duty officers
Speaker 1: could be called in for extra security. That day was
Speaker 1: a very very sad day for all of us, and
Speaker 1: I remember they sat down one of the main freeways,
Speaker 1: I ten, which is super busy, it's an interstate. They
Speaker 1: shut that down and security was really high. Over fifty officers,
Speaker 1: including FBI agents, detectives, uniformed officers, and a SWAT team
Speaker 1: armed with automatic rifles, surrounded the chapel at the Wall
Speaker 1: Trip Funeral Home in Houston, inside the pastor of the
Speaker 1: Church of Odd where Mark had played the Oregon and
Speaker 1: driven the school bus for Sunday school stood before the
Speaker 1: one mourners in a bulletproof vest. Three coffins of gloss
Speaker 1: dark wood, and one tiny pink coffin stood in front
Speaker 1: of the congregation Before they could be wheeled outside for
Speaker 1: the ten mile trip to their final resting place. A
Speaker 1: police dog sniffed its way around the limousines and all
Speaker 1: four horses, searching for bombs. As the caskets were lifted
Speaker 1: from the hearses police found out, creating a defensive perimeter
Speaker 1: in the surrounding trees and tombstones. Not long after the funeral,
Speaker 1: Rena and her mother Thelma did agree to go into
Speaker 1: protective custody, but that didn't mean they would live their
Speaker 1: lives in hiding. In fact, kind of the opposite. It
Speaker 1: was around this time time that Rena started telling her
Speaker 1: story to the writer Dean Shapiro for her tell All book,
Speaker 1: where she confessed to killing Roulin Alred. The recordings you
Speaker 1: heard in episode five. Interesting timing, and Rena wasn't done there,
Speaker 1: nor was Thelma. After that. She you know, the police,
Speaker 1: she talked to them, you know, so did Rena. They
Speaker 1: were probably the ones that talked the most to the police.
Speaker 1: Because of because of all the information they knew and
Speaker 1: all the time. These former cult members were doing this
Speaker 1: more than a thousand miles away in Sonora, Mexico. In
Speaker 1: that base, they called b f A the current incarnation
Speaker 1: of Hervil's Cult, the Kingdom of God. We're starting to
Speaker 1: absorb the impact of the four o'clock murders. In the
Speaker 1: immediate aftermath, they waited for news. When something very serious
Speaker 1: is going on, we would do those kind of heavy
Speaker 1: loaded prayers. So that was the spirit that we were
Speaker 1: in in b f A. In support of the four
Speaker 1: o'clock murders happening in the States. The group had planned
Speaker 1: the whole hit together, not just the targets, but the
Speaker 1: precise timing of the executions. We knew that if one
Speaker 1: of the people got killed, then everybody would go in hiding,
Speaker 1: so they had to target all people at once, and
Speaker 1: that's why the four clock wonders happened. The killers had
Speaker 1: to strike in unison choreographic perfectly, with the kind of
Speaker 1: precision military's aspired to, and they had except well, not
Speaker 1: quite because later when the news of the killings finally
Speaker 1: did reach down across the border through Chihuahua and across
Speaker 1: Sonora to Navajo. The cold we're learning of that fourth
Speaker 1: unplanned murder, Jenny. The assassins had made a mistake. There
Speaker 1: was no contingency plan for that situation, and it was
Speaker 1: a horrific like spur of the moment, what the hell
Speaker 1: do you do? And we never could have any witnesses, um,
Speaker 1: And I know this is I hate I know this
Speaker 1: is all public knowledge now, but I hate to talk
Speaker 1: about it, um, But I do know that it was.
Speaker 1: It was terrible, and we never thought of that possibility,
Speaker 1: and like, what the hell would you do with that happened?
Speaker 1: You know, in that situation, in a situation where there
Speaker 1: was a possible witness, this was not vengeance. Without the
Speaker 1: Book of the New Covenant for guidance, the four o'clock
Speaker 1: Assassin's had to improvise those who participated in the four
Speaker 1: o'clock murders. Had they killed before? I think only the
Speaker 1: um youngest one, I think that was his first time.
Speaker 1: The youngest one that day was seventeen year old Richard LeBaron.
Speaker 1: Richard was a He was overall fun, overall laid back.
Speaker 1: He was I don't know. He never was one of
Speaker 1: the authorities. Never he worked really hard. They made him
Speaker 1: work really hard. He learned how to shoot guns and
Speaker 1: he would stay up on guard all night. But he
Speaker 1: would make jokes out of everything. He was ready to
Speaker 1: crack a joke and turn everything into a joke. I
Speaker 1: liked Richard and that he was just fun. He was
Speaker 1: never violent, He was never mean. He was one of
Speaker 1: the easy going you know, never part of the patriarchy drama.
Speaker 1: Are you know none of that? He was always one
Speaker 1: of the kind of happy go lucky personality. It was
Speaker 1: the happy go lucky Richard who shot and killed eight
Speaker 1: year old Jenny, but the cops wouldn't find that out
Speaker 1: for years to come. Did you notice any kind of
Speaker 1: a change after that with those who participated? I mean,
Speaker 1: when there would be a mission like that, did that
Speaker 1: harden those who participated in some of these killings? The
Speaker 1: hardened part happened so long before that, and there are
Speaker 1: killings already of people much closer to us, so that
Speaker 1: that part was much more difficult. Um, we had to
Speaker 1: be prepared to kill the people we loved the most,
Speaker 1: and that was the only way to save their souls.
Speaker 1: They would be thankful to us in the end, because
Speaker 1: otherwise they woul go to hell forever over our cowardice.
Speaker 1: You have to love them so much that you have
Speaker 1: to kill them so that they don't suffer forever, and
Speaker 1: stealing ourselves for that reality made everything else. There was
Speaker 1: nothing else that was even remotely and severe. Do you
Speaker 1: remember who introduced you to the idea of what that was?
Speaker 1: One of the things that we were, you know, from
Speaker 1: the crib growing up, we always knew basically, I don't know,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about that concept today? It's horrific?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? But it makes me understand. I understand
Speaker 1: what it's like to live in a terrorist organization, and
Speaker 1: like I understand how mothers who strapped bombs to their
Speaker 1: children feel. You know, it's the most horrific thing you
Speaker 1: could imagine, but you think you're doing it for a
Speaker 1: higher good. It's it's it's terrible. It's yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: satanic horrific. Despite Gabriella saying that the four o'clock killings
Speaker 1: didn't further harden the group from an outside perspective, at
Speaker 1: least it definitely changed them change their trajectory from that
Speaker 1: path set in motion a generation before. Ever since Herville
Speaker 1: had his own brother Joel killed by his followers. The
Speaker 1: four o'clock murders reignited a nationwide hunt for the colt,
Speaker 1: re energizing that federal investigation that had started with Dan
Speaker 1: Jordan's killing. The FBI cops and prosecutors, working with Detective
Speaker 1: Dick Forbes, now with a new determination that surpassed anything
Speaker 1: that had come before, a fresh focus and energy and
Speaker 1: new informants. They leaned on all their sources, put former
Speaker 1: cult members like Thelma and Na Channath in front of
Speaker 1: a grand jury, extracted any useful information they could get.
Speaker 1: They would name this new operation after the child, the
Speaker 1: Jenny Task Force. They were going to pursue this new
Speaker 1: generation of hervil Abearance cult like never before, But investigators
Speaker 1: were still going to need some luck and a kind
Speaker 1: of crucial break. Journalist del van Ada had laid out
Speaker 1: to Detective Dick Forbes all those years ago, back when
Speaker 1: they were first uncovering the full extent of Herbal's Colt.
Speaker 1: They were going to need to turn someone on the inside.
Speaker 1: Members of the Kog itself were going to need to crack. Well.
Speaker 1: I had happened just before Christmas. She called Forbes. Forbes
Speaker 1: called us, and she wanted to meet us a couple
Speaker 1: of days later, Laura after Christmas. We uh, we moved.
Speaker 1: We had it when they came forward. That's all it took.
Speaker 1: That's coming up in episode twelve of deliver Us from Herba.
Speaker 1: Deliver Us from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde
Speaker 1: and written and reported by me Leona Hamid and David Waters.
Speaker 1: Production from Leona Hamid and David Waters. Sean Glenn and
Speaker 1: Max O'Brien are executive producers. Lena Chang and Megan Oyinka
Speaker 1: are researchers. Marianna Gongora is our field producer. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Donya Suleman and Sona Avakian. Production management from Shari Houston,
Speaker 1: Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolfe. Austin Mitchell is our creative
Speaker 1: director of production. Michae Lee Row is our managing editor.
Speaker 1: Gavin Haynes is our head of Development. Willard Foxton is
Speaker 1: our creative director of Development. Sound design, mixing and scoring
Speaker 1: by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas
Speaker 1: Alexander and David Waters. Our music is composed by Julian Lynch.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Scott Anderson. Scott Carrier del van Ada,
Speaker 1: Pippa Smith, Saskia Edwards, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norville and beth
Speaker 1: Ann Macaluso, or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman, and all the
Speaker 1: team at U t A. For more from Novel, visit
Speaker 1: novel dot audio