Speaker 1: Ya novel. A listener note this episode contains violence and
Speaker 1: content that some listeners might find distressing. Previously, on Deliver
Speaker 1: Us from Herbal, 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: After he had murdered Joel, it was always the fear
Speaker 1: of them coming an attack in our town. We are
Speaker 1: driving toward Los Molinas. They threw an attack. The attack
Speaker 1: mostop the attacks were kids went and looked through the
Speaker 1: window and at the moment he opened the cord and
Speaker 1: he got shut into head in them. He killed my dad.
Speaker 1: He should paid for it. And it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: he became possess or obsessed with evil spirit. He doesn't
Speaker 1: change the fact that for me, Herbal was a beautiful soul.
Speaker 1: I still love Herbal. Oh, yes, a lot deliberous. The
Speaker 1: host of the following program is solely responsible for the
Speaker 1: program's content. Once for a prophet name Ross, He's had
Speaker 1: to roll wise for just one hoss religion he knows,
Speaker 1: including UFOs, and in all his houses he's the boss.
Speaker 1: Call him please, He's got the keys. Every Friday from
Speaker 1: noon to one. He's the mighty, He's the strong, He's
Speaker 1: the one. Ross Labara, noon to one Friday. Around the
Speaker 1: same time as Irvil LeBaron was forming a cult, having
Speaker 1: his own brother killed and attacking the town of Los
Speaker 1: Milinos across the border in America, another LeBaron voice was
Speaker 1: making waves with his own radio show, older brother to
Speaker 1: Irville and Joel. Ross LeBaron opinionated, controversial, but not exactly
Speaker 1: a smooth talker. Okay, this is Ross LeBaron, they home.
Speaker 1: This will be the first program I done and operated
Speaker 1: from the board. Although he certainly didn't lack in self confidence.
Speaker 1: I know more about God, about the priesthood, about the prophecies,
Speaker 1: about the future and how it operates than any man on.
Speaker 1: And just like so many talk show hoss and podcasters today,
Speaker 1: Ross was into some pretty out their ideas out when
Speaker 1: Adam came here and when he lived in the Garden
Speaker 1: of Eden, he had spaceships. You heard that right, spaceships
Speaker 1: to take the faithful to Heaven. Space Ships were called
Speaker 1: Chair of Them and the Flaming Sword. Ross LeBaron had
Speaker 1: already started building these spaceships out in the Chihuahua Desert.
Speaker 1: This was back when he lived in colonial LeBaron in
Speaker 1: the fifties, but by the sixties he left that Mexican
Speaker 1: town and moved his spaceship Operation I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it to Utah. And while Joel and Herville were
Speaker 1: starting out with those pamphlets to spread the message of
Speaker 1: their dream of Zion, Ross saw the power of radio,
Speaker 1: initially as a guest on other talk shows and then
Speaker 1: with a program of his very own to connect him
Speaker 1: with the masses. My therapy on miss program is too full, stale,
Speaker 1: Martin is um like Christ will build the Law of Moses.
Speaker 1: There is actually a lot I recognize when I or
Speaker 1: Ross le Baron on the radio, all his references to
Speaker 1: doctrine and covenants. I grew up with these terms too,
Speaker 1: So listening in on the scratchy radio clips mixing mainstream
Speaker 1: Mormon stuff with talk of rockets to outer space, it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny. Funny. You're still when you get to
Speaker 1: the show's calling segment, where Ross is often confronted by confused,
Speaker 1: sometimes even angry listeners. Hello, uh am, I aunt, this
Speaker 1: is John Salas. That's very good. You're good, go ahead, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to that. They're you know, makes me suggesting,
Speaker 1: could you kind of you know, seems to could change
Speaker 1: your flat with the behind because when you come on
Speaker 1: it than you. But as funny as he sometimes sounds,
Speaker 1: it would be foolish to laugh too hard at Ross
Speaker 1: labar Arn, to not take him and his kind seriously,
Speaker 1: because Ross le Baron and the shows he would make
Speaker 1: guest appearances on were a kind of lightning rod for
Speaker 1: certain kinds of listeners, often male, usually feeling isolated. They
Speaker 1: can't understand why they don't have it better in life.
Speaker 1: It's an audience hundreds of podcasters and YouTubers, cable news hosts,
Speaker 1: and politicians cater to today this distinctive cocktail of anger
Speaker 1: and confusion seething just below the surface, and a sort
Speaker 1: of quiet desperation to believe in something where you're at
Speaker 1: the center, where you have value and a role to play.
Speaker 1: Among the listeners to Ross le Baron in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties was a man named Lloyd Sullivan. He lived in Vincennes, Indiana.
Speaker 1: In the photos I've seen of him, he's wearing thick
Speaker 1: coke bottle glasses, dark hair, and a sort of shell
Speaker 1: act pompadour. Lloyd Sullivan was of River people's stock, which
Speaker 1: means his family was one of many that lived in
Speaker 1: shanty boats up and down the Mississippi or Ohio River
Speaker 1: Valley after the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties, drifting
Speaker 1: looking for work on paper. Lloyd didn't have much going
Speaker 1: for him, not that educated, not too smart, orphaned as
Speaker 1: a child. Now in his thirties and divorced with a
Speaker 1: couple of kids, had a grown son named Don Sullivan,
Speaker 1: who followed him like a shadow. Lloyd Sullivan started out
Speaker 1: in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
Speaker 1: the church I grew up in, but he started to
Speaker 1: find that mainstream Mormon doctrine was too well mainstream, too dull,
Speaker 1: so he moved on, initially to a far right group
Speaker 1: called the John Birch Society, like a precursor to Q
Speaker 1: and On Proud Boys, oath Keepers, et cetera. The society
Speaker 1: believed their race made them part of the Chosen Few,
Speaker 1: an army of American patriots rooting out the Commies and
Speaker 1: restoring the US to its white Christian foundations. That depressingly
Speaker 1: familiar rhetoric that echoes through much of today's America. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Lloyd Sullivan got bored of that too, and so he
Speaker 1: went back to Mormonism, but this time to the fundamentalist groups,
Speaker 1: which by the late nineteen sixties had sprung up across
Speaker 1: the American Southwest like weeds. But one stood out to Lloyd,
Speaker 1: the one he heard about on the radio. Solaine Halt
Speaker 1: and the blind will gather with me, and the children
Speaker 1: of the kings will be guessed out. The prophecy says,
Speaker 1: the streets of saw Lake wool running blood after they've
Speaker 1: heard my message. Wait a minute, I imagine I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: his ears pricking up while tooling around under a hood
Speaker 1: in his garage. This isn't dull. They'll litter be wiped
Speaker 1: off as the city literally. This is how Lloyd Sullivan
Speaker 1: was pulled into the La Baron orbit. He heard ross
Speaker 1: LeBaron in the sixties as a guest on an ultra
Speaker 1: conservative radio show in Utah, and Ross LeBaron set him
Speaker 1: on a path that would lead him, in just a
Speaker 1: few years, right to the heart of Hervil's expanding crime empire.
Speaker 1: His story is just one example of what that journey
Speaker 1: could look like, but it's similar to so many who
Speaker 1: ended up killing in the name of Hervil. LeBaron, raised
Speaker 1: in the mainstream Mormon Church, then taken in by the
Speaker 1: amis of a return to an old school style of Mormonism,
Speaker 1: and then sucked in further by the draw of an
Speaker 1: uncompromising leader. Lloyd and his shadow, Don Sullivan, moved down
Speaker 1: to colonial LeBaron in seventy two. When Lloyd met Irva
Speaker 1: le Baron, it didn't take long four days. In fact,
Speaker 1: after arguing theology and the finer points of fundamentalist Mormon doctrine,
Speaker 1: Lloyd realized he'd been wrong again. Ross wasn't the one
Speaker 1: mighty and strong Herville was. A month later, Joel is dead.
Speaker 1: Two years after that, Lloyd and Don Sullivan would be
Speaker 1: instrumental in the massacre at Los Milinos. In fact, for
Speaker 1: a while, Lloyd and Don Sullivan would become Irvill LeBaron's
Speaker 1: most enthusiastic soldiers. What Herba was building with his cruits
Speaker 1: he may have called a church, but it had quickly
Speaker 1: morphed into something else. A crime family intermarried, so they
Speaker 1: became intertwined with Merville's own branch of the Labarns family,
Speaker 1: members whose ultimate loyalty would be to him. Within a generation,
Speaker 1: his family tree would mushroom splinter multiply into what he
Speaker 1: saw as the beginnings of a kingdom, something altogether different
Speaker 1: than what had begun in colonial LeBaron. God's kingdom as
Speaker 1: a kind of mafia, now bound to each other not
Speaker 1: just by faith, but by blood, shaped by a theology
Speaker 1: rooted mostly in vengeance. And for those who resisted, who
Speaker 1: refused to bend the knee, well, they would face the
Speaker 1: same consequences as Joel and the town of Los Milinos.
Speaker 1: They would fill the full force of God's wrath. Delivered
Speaker 1: by Hervil LeBaron's colt from the Team's at novel and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. This is deliver us from Herbal I'm
Speaker 1: jesse Hyde, Chapter three, Welcome to the Family. Dorothy Solomon
Speaker 1: already was just six years old in nineteen when the
Speaker 1: two men unexpectedly showed up at her Utah home. They
Speaker 1: came in an old, beat up truck. They pulled into
Speaker 1: our driveway. They drove too fast, is screeched to a stop.
Speaker 1: The Labarns had arrived unannounced Merville with an older brother,
Speaker 1: then the one who called himself the Elephant Strangler. This
Speaker 1: was back when Rville was still signing up followers for
Speaker 1: Joel's church and the La Barren brothers were on a
Speaker 1: recruitment drive. We ran into hiding and I watched them
Speaker 1: get out of the truck and slammed the doors and
Speaker 1: yell anybody home. Dorothy's father was a man named Rulin Alred.
Speaker 1: Like the la Barons, he was a polygamist. He had
Speaker 1: seven wives and forty eight children, but just one legal wife, Myrtle.
Speaker 1: Having just one legal wife is how polygamas avoided prosecution
Speaker 1: still do. And it was my father's legal wife, Myrtle,
Speaker 1: who met them and told them that Rulin wasn't there,
Speaker 1: that they should go away and come back later, and
Speaker 1: they said they weren't going to leave until they could
Speaker 1: speak to him. The two La Baron brothers decided to
Speaker 1: demonstrate just how mighty and strong they really were, and
Speaker 1: they started doing push ups in the driveway. That's when
Speaker 1: they had the stone spitting contest. They were peculiar. Dorothy
Speaker 1: watched as the two men strutted around in front of
Speaker 1: the house like two little bantie roosters. They moved with
Speaker 1: a kind of redneck self assurance. They moved aggressively, not confidently,
Speaker 1: but aggressively. That's why I associate it with redneck men.
Speaker 1: There was a very specific reason why the la Barons
Speaker 1: were at Dorothy's house that day and why they wanted
Speaker 1: to speak to Dr. Alred. He wasn't just the head
Speaker 1: of a huge family, but the head of a sort
Speaker 1: of growing organization too. Around the same time that Joel
Speaker 1: and Herville were built holding their churches, there were a
Speaker 1: few large polygamous factions that existed in America, like the Kingston's,
Speaker 1: the Short Creek Group, and the Alreds. In a way,
Speaker 1: they were kinds of organized crime families too, not killers
Speaker 1: like Rvila Barn's offshoot or even violent, but they all
Speaker 1: lived in the underground, in the shadows. Their crime was polygamy,
Speaker 1: which remember, was illegal. So these families they all sort
Speaker 1: of did business with each other or helped each other out.
Speaker 1: After all, if you believe in polygamy, it's not that
Speaker 1: easy to find a wife. And so these families would
Speaker 1: visit each other, intermarry, and some of these families had
Speaker 1: built empires, amassed fortunes. Hervill coveted. The Kingston's, for example,
Speaker 1: had a catoranche in Nevada, a coal mine in central Utah.
Speaker 1: Eventually they would have pawn shops, their own grocery store,
Speaker 1: a casino and Cali fournia, and trailer parks in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: From pretty much the start of colonial LeBaron Rvill had
Speaker 1: been trying to get rich too. It wasn't just his
Speaker 1: Mara Lago style plans for Los Melinos. His cult would
Speaker 1: attempt other less glamorous business ventures over the years, from
Speaker 1: mushroom farms to washing machine repair businesses. And then, of
Speaker 1: course there were their criminal enterprises, from welfare fraud to
Speaker 1: stealing cars, which it turned out they were quite good at.
Speaker 1: Eventually they'd start stealing cars to order for clients in Mexico,
Speaker 1: switched the plates and ship them south of the border.
Speaker 1: And yet, for all Rville's efforts to grow his empire,
Speaker 1: it paled in comparison to what the other large fundamentalist
Speaker 1: communities were building. But Erville didn't want to emulate those
Speaker 1: other big fundamentalist organizations. He wanted to consume them money.
Speaker 1: After all, as far as he was concerned, he was
Speaker 1: the one, mighty and strong, and these other families they
Speaker 1: all owed him tithing. The Kingston's, the people in Short Creek,
Speaker 1: the Allreds, especially the Alreds you see with them. It
Speaker 1: was personal. Irville wanted what they had. He thought he
Speaker 1: could get it, He thought he should get it. Shortly
Speaker 1: before Dorothy was born, the all Reds had been one
Speaker 1: of the first families settling in colonial a Baron. When
Speaker 1: they arrived and they got down from the truck that
Speaker 1: carried their belongings, they burst into tears because it was
Speaker 1: a wasteland. There was a small garden, and otherwise it
Speaker 1: was sage brush and rattlesnakes and blackwodow spiders and trunchs.
Speaker 1: They might have been polygamist refugees, but they saw the
Speaker 1: harsh reality of early life in colonial LeBaron. Less than
Speaker 1: a year after they had got down from that truck,
Speaker 1: the Alreds got back on it. They rejected the LeBaron
Speaker 1: Zion took their chances living polygamy in the shadows back
Speaker 1: in the US, and there they had prospered. In Utah,
Speaker 1: ruling already established what would become one of the largest
Speaker 1: Mormon fundamentalist sects to ever exist. Today, there's still one
Speaker 1: of the biggest. If you've ever seen the TV show
Speaker 1: Sister Wives, that family comes from the sect ruling started.
Speaker 1: And what's more, Rulin already did this without ever needing
Speaker 1: to use those grandiose titles Irville or his brothers did.
Speaker 1: He never claimed to be a prophet. There are people
Speaker 1: who hold him as a prophet, but I heard him
Speaker 1: say on different occasions that he was not a replacement
Speaker 1: for the leader. And there are many fundamentalists who have
Speaker 1: commandeered lives, and commandeered brides, child brides, and done violence
Speaker 1: to people, become tyrants over people in the name of
Speaker 1: being the one mighty and strong. And I want it
Speaker 1: clear that my father never aspired to that. Dorothy grew
Speaker 1: up in a big gray house in the foothills of
Speaker 1: a place in Utah called Bluff Bell. They had twenty
Speaker 1: acres meadows and swamps and skiing hills, and it was
Speaker 1: a beautiful place to grow up and all the playmates
Speaker 1: you could ever want. Of course, with seven women broke
Speaker 1: creating all at once. I had many, many siblings near
Speaker 1: my age, and I loved them. The world Dorothy remembers
Speaker 1: as a child in Utah was kind of the polar
Speaker 1: opposite from the childhood that Stephanie Spencer endured. Stephanie, who
Speaker 1: was regularly beaten and humiliated by her fundamentalist parents in
Speaker 1: Colonia le Baron. Dorothy's childhood in Utah sounds pretty storybook,
Speaker 1: devoid of the violence and fear. With so many kids around,
Speaker 1: it was hard for Dorothy to find time with her father.
Speaker 1: I used to go out to the barns with him
Speaker 1: in the morning, because that was time I could spend
Speaker 1: just with him. Nobody else wanted to milk, and my
Speaker 1: mother would indulge me. She'd put on my sweater and
Speaker 1: wash my face and send me out smiling, and he
Speaker 1: helped me milk the cow. And you know, that was
Speaker 1: kind of a theme. I wanted to be like my father.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have that much respect and power, respect power.
Speaker 1: Merville wanted that, and Rulin had it, the kind of
Speaker 1: effortless stature Hervill could only dream of, could only covet.
Speaker 1: My father was a reluctant leader. He wasn't proselyting, he
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to increase his numbers. He was simply trying
Speaker 1: to protect those who believed that he was there leader.
Speaker 1: And he had a council of men advising him too.
Speaker 1: He didn't try to lead by himself. Rulin was a
Speaker 1: natural pathic doctor, a healer, a medicine man for the
Speaker 1: new age, didn't do surgery, didn't prescribe medicine. It was
Speaker 1: all natural homeopathic. He had a thriving actus, mostly fundamentalists
Speaker 1: who avoided hospitals because hospitals asked too many personal questions.
Speaker 1: That day, when Irville and Ben barged up to Dorothy's
Speaker 1: home started doing push ups in the driveway, Rulin was
Speaker 1: at his office. Rulin's wife, Myrtle, called him and said
Speaker 1: the La Baron boys had showed up, and Rulin was alarmed.
Speaker 1: My father came home from his office that day too,
Speaker 1: had them off because he was worried about the safety
Speaker 1: of his family. He could sense there was a darkness around.
Speaker 1: He wrote about it in his journals that he had
Speaker 1: disagreements with Therville, who felt strongly that he should be
Speaker 1: in charge of not only the mainstream Church of Latter
Speaker 1: day Saints, but the United States government. Of course, when
Speaker 1: Joel was killed, then everybody's antennas sprang up. After Joel's
Speaker 1: death in seventy two, Dorothy remembers her dad returning from Mexico,
Speaker 1: where he had attended the funeral in Colonial LeBaron. Arriving home,
Speaker 1: he told the family what he had learned. It was
Speaker 1: really true, Joel le Baron had been murdered, and it
Speaker 1: was Joel's own brother, Herbal, who was responsible. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long after that that the alred started to receive chilling threats.
Speaker 1: That's coming up after the break. About a month before
Speaker 1: Dervil's followers carried out the massacre and Los Milinos, Herville
Speaker 1: met with a man in a diner in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1: It was November of seventy four. The man belonged to
Speaker 1: the Kingston's, or as they called themselves, the Davis County Coop,
Speaker 1: one of those large fundamentalist groups I mentioned earlier. Herville
Speaker 1: brag to him he was untouchable. You could try to
Speaker 1: shoot him with a pistol, but the pistol wouldn't fire.
Speaker 1: God protected him. Hervill also told him that within a
Speaker 1: year he'd be the head of a separate nation which
Speaker 1: would have power over the whole planet. To do that,
Speaker 1: he had to cleanse the earth. He asked for a
Speaker 1: meeting with the head of the Kingston Clan. The meeting
Speaker 1: was set up and Rville told the Kingston's they owed
Speaker 1: him tithing. In fact, all the fundamentalist groups did, the Kingston's,
Speaker 1: the Alreds, the council of friends down his Short Creek.
Speaker 1: He was the one mighty and strong, and he had
Speaker 1: been for twelve years. For twelve years, he'd been asking
Speaker 1: for tything, and they hadn't given it, And so Herbal
Speaker 1: gave them a deadline. They had until January one, nine,
Speaker 1: one year, basically to pay him a ten percent cut
Speaker 1: from all their businesses, the cattle ranch, the pawn shops,
Speaker 1: the coal mine, or as he put it, there would
Speaker 1: be bloodshed. He'd burned their businesses down. Herval had come
Speaker 1: as a man of God, but this felt more like
Speaker 1: a mafia style shakedown, as they say in Mexico Plata Oploma,
Speaker 1: silver or lead. Herville visited Short Creek and the Alreds
Speaker 1: and gave them the same ultimatum, pay up or else.
Speaker 1: The man was done waiting around. My father actually had
Speaker 1: people come and try to protect him during these times
Speaker 1: of threat. Dorothy Alred remembers the intimidation wasn't just escalating,
Speaker 1: it was becau coming more direct. My mother came home
Speaker 1: one night and saw printed in footprints on the deep snow,
Speaker 1: we'll be back. This particular threat happened on December, a
Speaker 1: few days after the Los Milinos attack. Just as word
Speaker 1: of the massacre had started to spread. Now across the border.
Speaker 1: Up in Utah, cars were seen prowling around the all
Speaker 1: Red compound. Rocks were thrown at their home, and then
Speaker 1: someone cut the electricity the phone ring. You think you
Speaker 1: were very secure, don't you. There was a string of threats,
Speaker 1: pamphlets left on the windshield of his car with handwritten
Speaker 1: threats affixed to them, Threats that if he didn't repent
Speaker 1: and follow the true prophet, he was going to die.
Speaker 1: Up until the spring of seventy seven, these threats against
Speaker 1: Rulin Allred had remained just that threats, no actual violence.
Speaker 1: One reason for this might have been that Rville was
Speaker 1: occupied with another target, his younger brother Virlin LeBaron, Virlin,
Speaker 1: who was still head of Colonial LeBaron and the Church
Speaker 1: of the Firstborn, the church Ervil had helped start with
Speaker 1: his brother Joel. Since the Los Milinos massacre in seventy four,
Speaker 1: when Rville had first tried and failed to have Virlin killed,
Speaker 1: Merville's hatred for him had only grown with a venom
Speaker 1: and passion that even startled some of Rvill's followers. Virlin
Speaker 1: knew this, and from seventy four, he was living in hiding.
Speaker 1: Herville continued to hunt him through seventy six and into
Speaker 1: seventy seven. He attempted further hits, got cult members to
Speaker 1: dress in disguise and patrol the streets of Mexican towns
Speaker 1: where he thought Virlin might be holed up. They had
Speaker 1: orders to shoot to kill on site, but these missions
Speaker 1: had also ended in failure. By the spring of seventy seven,
Speaker 1: Hervil's more zealous followers like Lloyd Sullivan, We're getting impatient.
Speaker 1: Why wasn't this getting done? Lloyd wanted to know. Why
Speaker 1: weren't there businesses growing faster. Why weren't they able to
Speaker 1: take over these other fundamentalist clans to unite the entire
Speaker 1: Mormon Church. Why wasn't their profit Hervill able to deliver.
Speaker 1: On April, Herville called a military emergency meeting. He got
Speaker 1: up and announced he had a plan to finally get
Speaker 1: to Rlin. If they couldn't find him, they draw him
Speaker 1: out into the open. His plan was to use a funeral,
Speaker 1: the funeral of one of Rlin's close friends, someone who
Speaker 1: had married two of Rlin's nieces. Ruling alread Rulin, then
Speaker 1: Verlin hervill would take them both out one after the other.
Speaker 1: Then maybe people would finally take him seriously pay that
Speaker 1: tithing he felt they owed. Rulin's assassination was going to
Speaker 1: be the spark that would start the fire. It would
Speaker 1: be carried out by one of Gerville's most trusted followers,
Speaker 1: from a bedrock family of his crime empire. This particular
Speaker 1: family were called the Chinnas. The city of East Layton,
Speaker 1: a little north of Salt Lake City, Utah, is surrounded
Speaker 1: by pasture and open land in the winter, snow capped mountains.
Speaker 1: It's peaceful, but also kind of boring in that way.
Speaker 1: Most suburbs are sleepy, well ordered, unremarkable, both figuratively and literally,
Speaker 1: more than a thousand miles away from the extremes of
Speaker 1: the Chihuahua Desert and colonial a Baron, but it used
Speaker 1: to share one key characteristic with that Mexican town. Almost
Speaker 1: everyone who lived there was Mormon. This was the upbringing
Speaker 1: of Glenn shinaf All right, well, Glenn, First off, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in Glenn's living room on a cold December morning.
Speaker 1: That dog a problem. He's got a couple of little
Speaker 1: dogs that he's putting in a kennel off in the
Speaker 1: kitchen to keep them from jumping up on me, not
Speaker 1: of me. Glenn seventy nine is wearing blue coveralls, sturdy
Speaker 1: black boots, thick glasses, blue collars, like all the uncles
Speaker 1: I grew up with who worked construction. There's a picture
Speaker 1: of Jesus on the wall, like the one my grandpa
Speaker 1: had in his double wide trailer. It's all very familiar,
Speaker 1: even Homie sitting with him, like we could be related.
Speaker 1: Although Glenn and I are a few generations apart. His
Speaker 1: upbringing was much more like mine than anything that happened
Speaker 1: in colonial LeBaron. We're both products of the mainstream Mormon church.
Speaker 1: In both our families, religion was front and center. It
Speaker 1: was pretty well the only thing. My dad was worked
Speaker 1: out at the Hill Air Fource base. My mom was
Speaker 1: very religious. We went to church, went to all the activities,
Speaker 1: family prayer, church, basketball games, campouts with the local congregation
Speaker 1: up in the mountains Rockwellian. And then of course there
Speaker 1: were Glenn's siblings, Mark the musician. Mark was a really
Speaker 1: good piano player. Just bring a piano up and he
Speaker 1: could just make it, saying younger brother Victor, who was
Speaker 1: five years my junior. He was well built. I remember
Speaker 1: I couldn't pick him up, and he wasn't fat, he
Speaker 1: was just solid built little guy. His little sister, Lorna
Speaker 1: age wise, I was closest to her, but she was
Speaker 1: a pain in the but little sister to me. And
Speaker 1: then there were the two babies of the family, Dwayne
Speaker 1: and Rena. You know, I changed their diapers and I
Speaker 1: maybe said that happened. There was another sibling to Jerry,
Speaker 1: but he died young, aged just seven. Tragedies like this,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how parents ever recover. There were other
Speaker 1: tensions in the Chinath family too. You see, Glenn's dad, Bud,
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a devout believer. Sure he went to church,
Speaker 1: but he smoked, which is taboo among Mormons, and he
Speaker 1: drank a lot. He filled the family room with car parts,
Speaker 1: engine blocks, tools. I guess that's why for Glenn's mom, Thelma,
Speaker 1: church became sort of a refuge. She was committed baking
Speaker 1: a ham for a funeral, showing a quilt for Christmas.
Speaker 1: The church became her family too, and so in nineteen
Speaker 1: when her brother introduced her to two important looking believers
Speaker 1: who were in town from Mexico. She invited them to
Speaker 1: visit her home, and that's when the Labarns showed up
Speaker 1: and things got pretty rough after that. You know, it's
Speaker 1: been a long time since this all happened for you
Speaker 1: recalling these memories talking about this, How do you feel
Speaker 1: about that? I'm doing okay with it. I'm past the
Speaker 1: point where it brings tears. The La Barons arrived in
Speaker 1: Glenn's life during that period where Joel and Rville were
Speaker 1: still operating as a united front before Rville pulled away
Speaker 1: and started his own colt. The two brothers told the
Speaker 1: family about the new community they were building down in Mexico.
Speaker 1: They should come check it out for themselves. There was
Speaker 1: space for the whole family. Joel was you know, I
Speaker 1: could see he believed what he believed. I saw no
Speaker 1: violence there at that point, and it was hard to
Speaker 1: resist what he wanted to do because it was an
Speaker 1: easy going, nice, decent guy. But whatever it was the
Speaker 1: two men in suits were selling, Glenn wasn't buying. I
Speaker 1: couldn't win in a debate or a discussion, but I
Speaker 1: I just didn't buy their teachings. It was a confrontation
Speaker 1: because they wanted me to think their way, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do it, So Glenn started avoiding the
Speaker 1: house altogether during their visits, but in his absence, the
Speaker 1: labar Ends were finding fertile ground. My mom converted first,
Speaker 1: then my sister, oldest sister, this was Laura. She was
Speaker 1: just seventeen when Erville arrived and aspiring actress and model, tall,
Speaker 1: willowy and beautiful. One day, Laura told her mom she
Speaker 1: wanted to marry Herville. Hervill already had three wives and
Speaker 1: was a full nineteen years older than Laurna, but Thelma
Speaker 1: had converted to and had no objections. Initially, they kept
Speaker 1: this a secret from Glen's dad, but Laura told her
Speaker 1: dad she was going to take a job at the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon for the summer. When she didn't come back
Speaker 1: for school, Filma told him the truth. Their daughter had
Speaker 1: married Hervil LeBaron and moved to Mexico, and then she
Speaker 1: was gone. That's the last time I saw her ever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: once Hervil's claws were into the family, he wasn't going
Speaker 1: to stop at Lorna. Thelma wanted to go to Mexico too,
Speaker 1: but Bud wasn't so sure, so Thelma moved into her
Speaker 1: own room, contemplating divorce. Realizing what was at stake, Bud
Speaker 1: quit drinking and smoking, started studying his scriptures, cleaned up
Speaker 1: all his tools and engine parts in the front room,
Speaker 1: and eventually Bud converted to They all did, only Glenn
Speaker 1: held out. The whole family just up and moved. So
Speaker 1: I'm at that point pretty well out on my own,
Speaker 1: and it was tough on me. By nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: all the Channaths minus Glenn, had relocated to Mexico to
Speaker 1: join the Labeyreans. Their destination was Los Milinos. They thought
Speaker 1: they were going to go out and save the world.
Speaker 1: Herbal was their leader. He had convinced him that they
Speaker 1: could go up say in the world, And they all
Speaker 1: got on this ship. And as they went along, I
Speaker 1: started thinking, and then it caught on fire. That's coming
Speaker 1: up after the break. What Glenn Channath experienced losing his
Speaker 1: entire family to the Labaron Colt was one personal tragedy
Speaker 1: of many. As Erville built his crime family outward, converting
Speaker 1: followers marrying their daughters who would then bear him children.
Speaker 1: And because these were polygamous relationships, many wives having many children,
Speaker 1: Herville was able to grow his followers at scale rather
Speaker 1: than just one by one, and the Channaths would rise
Speaker 1: to the highest ranks of his family. They'd become Ervill's
Speaker 1: most beloved disciples. To use a word from scripture, mercenaries, assassins, concubines.
Speaker 1: That would be the more crass but honestly more accurate
Speaker 1: way to put it. Herville had plans for all of them.
Speaker 1: Thelma had brains and she was not afraid to speak
Speaker 1: her mind. She would become one of Ervill's chief strategists.
Speaker 1: Bud had his uses too handy, dependable, but his greatest
Speaker 1: gift to Rvill were his kids. After becoming Ervill's wife,
Speaker 1: Laura would bear him eight children. Her brother Victor would
Speaker 1: become the family's money man, kind of like the infamous
Speaker 1: mob accountant Meyer Landski. Rvill would eventually name him Minister
Speaker 1: of Finance. Mark, the gifted musician who could have looked
Speaker 1: at the kid with a mop of black hair, who
Speaker 1: loved one of the corniest bands of all time, the Monkeys,
Speaker 1: and seen a straight killer. No one back in East
Speaker 1: Layton saw that, but the things Mark would end up
Speaker 1: doing with a gun cold blooded. Herville saw that Mark
Speaker 1: would become one of the killers of the Los Milinos massacre,
Speaker 1: and that would be just the start. Dwayne would also
Speaker 1: prove to be deadly with a gun. At Los Milinos.
Speaker 1: He had been the attacker, unmasked by his former almost
Speaker 1: girlfriend before he drove around the town, burning his neighbor's
Speaker 1: houses and shooting into their homes. But of all the Chinas,
Speaker 1: none would prove more valuable and for a time more
Speaker 1: loved than Glenn's youngest sister, Rena. She too would marry Herville,
Speaker 1: bear him children, and like her brothers, she had been
Speaker 1: at the Los Milinos attack, watching from the sidelines. But
Speaker 1: on April nineteen seventy seven, when Herville held that military
Speaker 1: emergency meeting, the one where he outlined his audacious plan
Speaker 1: for double murder, first of Rulin Alread, then his own
Speaker 1: brother Verlin. At the funeral, it was Rena's turn to
Speaker 1: take center stage. She had been selected to kill for Herville,
Speaker 1: a murder that set off a chain of events altering
Speaker 1: the path of Rvil's Colt forever. On the morning of
Speaker 1: May nineteen seventy seven, the hit team arrived in the
Speaker 1: Salt Lake Valley, twenty miles south of there. In Bluff Dell.
Speaker 1: Dorothy was arriving at her family's compound, I was alarmed
Speaker 1: to see that in front of the White House, which
Speaker 1: was the original property my father had acquired, there were
Speaker 1: these big gouges in the front lawn. They looked like grapes.
Speaker 1: With the dirt pile to the side, Dorothy could see
Speaker 1: that the barn was being torn down. Maybe the gouges
Speaker 1: had something to do with that. Still, she felt unsettled.
Speaker 1: And then she heard something tapping on her car window.
Speaker 1: And I looked, and I thought I saw my grandmother,
Speaker 1: who had lived on that compound with us prior to
Speaker 1: her death, and she used to reach through with her
Speaker 1: cane and tap on my mother's bedroom window when she
Speaker 1: needed help. Well, she was tapping on my window urgently,
Speaker 1: and I thought I could hear it. I looked, and
Speaker 1: there was nothing there. And then I turned my attention
Speaker 1: back and I heard the tapping again. It was the
Speaker 1: same experience. And my little girl said ghosts. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know she knew that word, and that gave me chill,
Speaker 1: and I said, got honey, and she nodded very seriously,
Speaker 1: and I shivered. It just kind of stayed with me.
Speaker 1: As we left, I looked at those gouged out holes
Speaker 1: that looked like graves. Dorothy was due to meet her
Speaker 1: dad that day, but she had an invitation to meet
Speaker 1: up with a friend, so she had postponed. On her way,
Speaker 1: she passed by her father's doctor's office. As we passed
Speaker 1: my father's office, I saw two women out in front
Speaker 1: when it was in a blue parka, and I got
Speaker 1: those chills again. Around this time, two of Hervil's followers,
Speaker 1: Ramona Marston and Riena Schnas. We're getting decked out in
Speaker 1: strikingly similar outfits. Rena in a blue parka from a
Speaker 1: thrift store they shopped at earlier that morning to buy disguises.
Speaker 1: They both wore white shirts, dark pants, curly wigs, wire
Speaker 1: framed glasses with no lenses. Dorothy drove on continued away
Speaker 1: from the city, eventually meeting up with her friend at
Speaker 1: a place called the Mountain Dell golf Course. It was
Speaker 1: a beautiful day up at Mountain Dell. We came out
Speaker 1: about six o'clock, and because we were going down the mountain,
Speaker 1: my brother had the radio on and I couldn't hear
Speaker 1: what he was saying, and so I leaned forward and said,
Speaker 1: will you turn that radio down? Or off, because I
Speaker 1: can't hear you. Otherwise I would have heard the news announcement.
Speaker 1: We stopped to get food for our children, who were
Speaker 1: being babysat at my house. I called to ask what
Speaker 1: everyone wanted. My daughter said, Mama, Grandma wants you to
Speaker 1: call her right now. And I said, don't you want
Speaker 1: something to eat? And she said, Mamma, called grandma right now.
Speaker 1: And so I called my mother and she said, Honey,
Speaker 1: your dad he's spent shot. And I said, as he, dad,
Speaker 1: and she said, yes, she's dead. The all Red family
Speaker 1: gathered that night and began to piece together the details
Speaker 1: of what happened. One of Rulin's wives had actually been
Speaker 1: there at the time of the killing, sitting in the
Speaker 1: waiting room. She had witnessed the whole thing. She'd actually
Speaker 1: had the murder's weapon pointed at her because she stepped
Speaker 1: in the way to try to protect him. At fourte pm,
Speaker 1: two women entered Dr. Alred's waiting room, rena hold caliber
Speaker 1: from her bulky blue park and fired two shots straight
Speaker 1: at the doctor at point blank range. Those were her
Speaker 1: orders to destroy the false prophets phase Herville had ordered
Speaker 1: the killers to shoot his face, a kind of twisted
Speaker 1: additional vengeance against the man he saw as his rival.
Speaker 1: My father wasn't a false prophet. He was just a
Speaker 1: good man. He was a doctor, and he was kind
Speaker 1: and he was a good father. So you know, that's
Speaker 1: good that his face wasn't destroyed, but he was still gone.
Speaker 1: Just like Naoma Stubbs fearing the bombs, fire and awaiting
Speaker 1: gunshots in Colonial LeBaron, Dorothy hadn't just worried about the
Speaker 1: terror she was now experiencing. It was like she'd seen
Speaker 1: it coming. It feels kind of strange to say that
Speaker 1: out loud, but this is the kind of thing people
Speaker 1: have told me time after time while reporting the story.
Speaker 1: I knew that it was coming, but it didn't make
Speaker 1: it any easier. And I was really sorry that I
Speaker 1: hadn't been there. And for me, it was if I
Speaker 1: kept my appointment, maybe I could have faced her down.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could have seized the weapon or talked to her,
Speaker 1: spoken to her about what she was doing. Of course,
Speaker 1: I probably would have been killed myself. There's that part too,
Speaker 1: But I felt a lot of guilt about it not
Speaker 1: being there to protect him. The killing was just a prelude,
Speaker 1: a way to lure Virlin out into the open. And
Speaker 1: it had worked, because now three days after the doctor
Speaker 1: ruling all read murder, the funeral was being held. It
Speaker 1: was held at Bingham High School and their enormous auditorium.
Speaker 1: It was the largest personal funeral held in this state
Speaker 1: of Utah, you know, not of a so called public figure,
Speaker 1: as Hervil had prophesied. Virlin had left his hiding place
Speaker 1: and traveled into Utah. And here he was taking his
Speaker 1: seat with all the other mourners in the auditorium. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: waiting across the street in vehicles or three men with
Speaker 1: sub automatic rifles with banana eclipse taped together. They're capable
Speaker 1: of spewing twenty rounds within seconds. They were prepared to
Speaker 1: go in and kill Virlin LeBaron. But this is where
Speaker 1: Herbal's plan unraveled because as followers waiting outside in the car,
Speaker 1: as the crowds arrived, including Don Sullivan, the son of Lloyd,
Speaker 1: and a man named Eddie Marston, were suddenly having second thoughts.
Speaker 1: They got scared when they saw the police and the
Speaker 1: media and the crowds, and they decided to risk vill
Speaker 1: rather than risk the police, and they left for now
Speaker 1: another massacre had been avoided. A great many people would
Speaker 1: have died because they were instructed to kill anyone who
Speaker 1: got in their way. One U Again, Rvil had failed
Speaker 1: in what he thought was an ingenious plot to kill Verlin.
Speaker 1: And this was far from the only downside for Herville
Speaker 1: because in killing Rulin already a man with more than
Speaker 1: two thousand followers, a man well known in Slake City,
Speaker 1: a man with contacts on the police force and in
Speaker 1: the governor's office, Herville had put himself on the radar
Speaker 1: of some powerful enemies cops, the FBI, prosecutors, and people
Speaker 1: like me journalists. A media led investigation into who Herbal was,
Speaker 1: where he was, and just what he was up to
Speaker 1: was just getting started. I thought, holy cow, have I
Speaker 1: got a scoop on this, and on top of that
Speaker 1: a righteous endeavor because this is a bad guy and
Speaker 1: if you find someone who like Sitan, expose him. That's
Speaker 1: coming up in episode four of Deliver Us from Herville.
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 wolf 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: An Makaluso, or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman and all the
Speaker 1: team A U T A. For more from novel, visit
Speaker 1: novel dot Audio