Speaker 1: Ya 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 Herbal. I think by the time Irvill had died,
Speaker 1: I knew it really wasn't over, because with such an
Speaker 1: unstable group founded on such erroneous principles, you never really
Speaker 1: know what to expect. I'm Gabriella le Baron and my
Speaker 1: father is Irvil LeBaron. Children naturally worship their parents, but
Speaker 1: my experience with my dad was taken to a holy
Speaker 1: level because he actually was the representation of God on earth.
Speaker 1: This is the book of the New Covenant. It's a
Speaker 1: manifesto of Irvill le Baron. I mean, it's just wonderful, right,
Speaker 1: consistently crazy all the way through. The cult wasn't even
Speaker 1: a word reknew of. There was no cult. We were
Speaker 1: the KG if anything. Yeah, we called ourselves KG. We
Speaker 1: were God's Kingdom. Changed my life forever, as far as
Speaker 1: my worry about personal safety for me and my family.
Speaker 1: Like the mafia, right, so the mafia breaks apart. One
Speaker 1: team goes against the other team. Now everybody was going
Speaker 1: to try to kill each other. We were in the
Speaker 1: car and she just said, I have to tell you
Speaker 1: the Arthur's been killed, and I froze, like my whole
Speaker 1: body went like cold, white frozen. Don't tell anybody that
Speaker 1: you know that was it. See Hebrew didn't study. He
Speaker 1: was not one of those kind of guys. He was
Speaker 1: more of a party like a rock star type of guy.
Speaker 1: But the thing is in the cults, is it? A
Speaker 1: person can't do that. M Of all the stories Gabrielle
Speaker 1: LeBaron told me about her childhood living in the second
Speaker 1: generation of herbal LeBaron's cult, the Kingdom of God, the Kog,
Speaker 1: there's one that sticks in my mind. I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to it. I went swimming in the ocean. I
Speaker 1: was eight years old by myself, and I swam and
Speaker 1: swam and swam and swam as far as I could.
Speaker 1: Unlike many of the stories Gabriella told me about her life,
Speaker 1: it wasn't about violence at the hands of others. I
Speaker 1: was having this grand old time. I would play this
Speaker 1: game where I would pretend to be a dolphin and
Speaker 1: jump over the waves, hop over the waves. Gabriella was
Speaker 1: out alone in the Sea of Cortez, swimming free, and
Speaker 1: I try to hop and hop over waves as they
Speaker 1: were coming in little mountain waves, and I was hopping
Speaker 1: over them and hopping over them. Then when I finally
Speaker 1: came back to the present moment and turned around and
Speaker 1: to see the shore, I had swam so far that
Speaker 1: people were itty bitty way out in shore. And I
Speaker 1: was like, no problem, you know, just turn around, float
Speaker 1: on the waves, let him bring you back. And I
Speaker 1: came back and it drifted me down like a half
Speaker 1: a mile. When Gabriella started this story, I thought she
Speaker 1: was telling me about happiness, about one of those rare
Speaker 1: moments where she felt real joy. And I walked back
Speaker 1: up and I was like, did you guys see what
Speaker 1: I just did? You know? I came back with like,
Speaker 1: but everyone was doing their thing. Nobody noticed, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody noticed. But as her story went on, I heard
Speaker 1: something else. If I wanted to walk forever into the horizon,
Speaker 1: I could. At this point, Gabriella was just eight years old.
Speaker 1: She had no adult in the world to look out
Speaker 1: for her. Her protective big brother Arthur was dead, her
Speaker 1: mother gone to But it was worse than that for
Speaker 1: Gabriella and all the children and teenagers around her. There
Speaker 1: was no one to protect them from each other. There
Speaker 1: were no boundaries for me. There was absolutely not a
Speaker 1: single person that would stop me. The horizon was forever.
Speaker 1: These traumatized and indoctrinated children and teenagers re enacting the
Speaker 1: abuse and violence inflicted on them. Everybody was a crazy, little,
Speaker 1: freaking spartan extremist terrorist, not knowing anything else in the world.
Speaker 1: This was the Kog. Their horizon was forever, no boundaries,
Speaker 1: not a single person to stop them. This is God's law.
Speaker 1: We have to do it, otherwise the whole world will
Speaker 1: go to hell like armageddon. You know, Satan will win
Speaker 1: in the end. We don't do this. And now in
Speaker 1: there was this nineteen year old kid, newly at the
Speaker 1: helm of their death cult. Hebrew was the authority. William
Speaker 1: Hebrew LeBaron, Gabriella's half brother, just like their dad. He
Speaker 1: was tall, good looking, He had bright, bright blonde hair,
Speaker 1: raised up in an extremist faith, schooled in crime and violence,
Speaker 1: and with a rage inside him that no one seemed
Speaker 1: able to control. We were terrified of him. From the
Speaker 1: Team's at Novel and I Heart Radio, This is deliver
Speaker 1: Us from Herville Episode nine, Abdication. No child of Herbal
Speaker 1: le Baron was permitted a conventional childhood, and his son
Speaker 1: Hebrew was certainly no exception. In age. Just eleven years old,
Speaker 1: he was pulled out of school sent to work in
Speaker 1: an appliance repair operation in Denver run by Herville's then
Speaker 1: right hand man, Dan Jordan's. Here he'd labor alongside his
Speaker 1: siblings in what was essentially a sweatshop. He was one
Speaker 1: of those child slaves, and they worked so hard, all
Speaker 1: of them. There was no wages, right, You couldn't own anything.
Speaker 1: You couldn't buy a new pair of shoes. You couldn't
Speaker 1: you couldn't do anything. He had to send all this
Speaker 1: money back to the family, to the cult. Unlike his
Speaker 1: brother Arthur, who had been Hervil's chauffeur, Hebrew had virtually
Speaker 1: no relationship with his father. This was the case with
Speaker 1: most of Hervil's children. He'd only seen him a handful
Speaker 1: of times. When he was in Denver. Hebrew lived under
Speaker 1: Dan Jordan's brutal supervision, and he was whipped. What they
Speaker 1: would do is these things that they would put inside
Speaker 1: the screen window to hold the screen down, this rubber,
Speaker 1: whatever thing they would stick inside the window. They would
Speaker 1: pull those out and whip the children with them and
Speaker 1: they would get a minimum of pretty lashes. As a kid,
Speaker 1: Hebrew was frail, and he often had little to eat,
Speaker 1: sometimes just living off what the mothers and the clan
Speaker 1: could scavenge him, dumpsters for him and the others, or
Speaker 1: what Dan Jordan's soft fit to pass their way between
Speaker 1: the beatings. Gabrielle lived in fear of those steam belts too,
Speaker 1: but she says Hebrew often got the worst of it.
Speaker 1: And I know that Hebrew grew up with that abuse
Speaker 1: like this earlies who's you know, three or four or
Speaker 1: five years old. The boys were all made to work
Speaker 1: really hard, and they were beat and beat and beat
Speaker 1: and starved and beat and made to work in all cold,
Speaker 1: freezing temperature. They weren't allowed sweaters and you know, warm
Speaker 1: blows or anything. In his teens, Hebrew got to live
Speaker 1: in another colt house in Dallas, Texas. Life there seemed better.
Speaker 1: But at the age of eighteen, a year after Evil
Speaker 1: had died, Hebrew was instructed to return to Dallas and
Speaker 1: the appliance business. When he refused, Hebrew's mom showed up
Speaker 1: and she had a gun with her and some other guy,
Speaker 1: and they were there to force he were to come
Speaker 1: back into in them either come back or die. His
Speaker 1: own mother, Anna Mae Marston, a devoted wife who married
Speaker 1: Irville in nineteen The Colt ordered her to control the
Speaker 1: teenage Hebrew. They sent his own mother to kill him.
Speaker 1: Mother was sent to kill him um. He was scared
Speaker 1: of his own mom for a time. Hebrew had worked
Speaker 1: alongside his brother Arthur to develop the families now growing
Speaker 1: import export business. He decided to begin stealing cars from
Speaker 1: the States and bring him to Mexico and selling them
Speaker 1: and getting tons of cash. And they were so good
Speaker 1: at it. The people who purchased them on the Mexican
Speaker 1: side were the Mexican mafia, and mafia would be like,
Speaker 1: I mean mafia guys. They would be super excited to
Speaker 1: buy cars from us. We brought down like the coolest,
Speaker 1: biggest cars. Together, they expanded their business beyond cars. They
Speaker 1: also started to smuggle marijuana from Mexico to the States.
Speaker 1: Hebrew and Arthur enlisted Gabriella in this new venture. I
Speaker 1: used to help pack the marijuana. Thought that was cool.
Speaker 1: You know, I was eight years old, you know, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is cool. I get I get
Speaker 1: to be part of this like secret work that only
Speaker 1: adults can do. That was so cool and it smells
Speaker 1: so good. So we would pack it really tightly in
Speaker 1: surrand rap as tight as we could, and then um
Speaker 1: pack it inside of guest Inc, a fake guest inc.
Speaker 1: So guess inc would be pulled off. Cut. You stick
Speaker 1: all the marijuana in there, sill it up somehow, and
Speaker 1: then drive that in a normal pickup truck and then
Speaker 1: have somebody who doesn't even know that there's marijuana in
Speaker 1: the car, some cult member who has no idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: you need to go to the States and do X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z, and you're going to drive this car.
Speaker 1: Hebrew may have enjoyed this new line of work, the
Speaker 1: chance to escape Dan Jordan's sweatshop, but he wasn't that
Speaker 1: interested in the other side of cult life, in doctrine, theology,
Speaker 1: or really any of the religious underpinnings of the ko
Speaker 1: G Perhaps unsurprising for a teenager who had suffered such
Speaker 1: abuse at the hands of the deeply religious, or maybe
Speaker 1: hanging out with Mexican mafioso's in the early eighties distracted
Speaker 1: him from Hervil's Book of the New Covenant, a kind
Speaker 1: of freedom for this wild teenager who loved rock and
Speaker 1: roll and the band Scorpions. He was part of the
Speaker 1: smuggling drug smuggling stuff, and he hung out with the
Speaker 1: guys and every now and then he would just he
Speaker 1: would party with them and do some coke and marijuana.
Speaker 1: So he was definitely like a heathenish personality within the cult,
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old rock and roll loving drug smuggler
Speaker 1: living a life far from the theological opinnings of his family.
Speaker 1: You know, he wanted to make money and m Hebrew
Speaker 1: didn't really care about pryank or anything. But when tragedy
Speaker 1: struck Ine and Arthur was murdered by Leo evan ex
Speaker 1: splinter group, suddenly Hebrew, in the final days of his teens,
Speaker 1: was in charge. And having heard the stories of Hebrew's
Speaker 1: neglected childhood, it's kind of hard to square it with
Speaker 1: someone suddenly being given this role the mantle of the
Speaker 1: One mighty and Strong. Then again, Hebrew's name isn't actually
Speaker 1: written into the Book of the New Covenants as a
Speaker 1: future leader. It was the now murdered Arthur who had
Speaker 1: been specifically named as Hervil's successor. But Hebrew had been
Speaker 1: there during that prison ceremony in one when Herville placed
Speaker 1: his hands on Arthur to pass on the title, and
Speaker 1: by birth, Hebrew was the next son in line after him.
Speaker 1: So even though Hebrew didn't have visions, prophecies, or even
Speaker 1: an apparent interest in theology to the Kingdom of God,
Speaker 1: the line of succession was clear. Hebrew's life changed forever.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the pressure was on him to be the authority,
Speaker 1: which he didn't want. He wanted to be happy, go lucky,
Speaker 1: and good concerts and not have this pressure on him.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what to do. He was torn those
Speaker 1: flashes of hedonism and freedom and his new obligations of
Speaker 1: the One Mighty and Strong, with responsibility to keep the
Speaker 1: entire cult together, to make sure the group were tight,
Speaker 1: no one left, that the money was coming in, the
Speaker 1: kids were clothed and fed. And added to this pressure
Speaker 1: was his childhood conditioning violence and punishment all he'd known
Speaker 1: since birth. So would it fell on him? He didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't handle it well at all. That's coming up.
Speaker 1: After the break in. Early Hebrew le Baron, the new
Speaker 1: leader of the kog, arrived in Lahoya. His first order
Speaker 1: of business as One Mighty and Strong to deal with
Speaker 1: the fallout of his brother Arthur's killing. Arriving at the
Speaker 1: ranch in Sonora, there was no sign of Leo Evanick,
Speaker 1: although his enforcers, the Rio's brothers, remained at the camp.
Speaker 1: They were leary on guard, but Hebrew had come in peace.
Speaker 1: When Arthur got killed, there was no vengeance. Nobody was
Speaker 1: trying to take revenge. We were worried about the attack
Speaker 1: coming to us. He told the Rios brothers he wanted
Speaker 1: to end the violence, put this all behind them. Once
Speaker 1: Hebrew gained their trust that he wasn't going to enact
Speaker 1: vengeance against them, they decided to remain at Lahoya, and
Speaker 1: eventually they renounced their ties to Leo and score loyalty
Speaker 1: to Hebrew, the new one, mighty and strong. For several months,
Speaker 1: a calm settled over the camp. Maybe the reign of
Speaker 1: Hebrew would be an era of reconciliation for the colt.
Speaker 1: Hebrew answered that question definitively. One afternoon in March, one
Speaker 1: of the Rios brothers, the one named Gamaliel, was sitting
Speaker 1: in the air stream talking to other cult members. Hebrew
Speaker 1: walked in. After a little chit chat, Hebrew pulled a
Speaker 1: forty five from his waistband and shot Gamiliel in the face,
Speaker 1: turned to the other sitting there and ordered them to
Speaker 1: clean up the fucking mess before nonchalantly walking out. Gami
Speaker 1: Leo's brother, Raoul Rios, was next. A few days after
Speaker 1: Gamilio's execution, Raoul was caught fleeing the camp. He had
Speaker 1: only made it a few miles from the ranch when
Speaker 1: the Kyog ambushed and killed him. The Rio's brothers were dead,
Speaker 1: but Leo remained in the wind, as were the other
Speaker 1: factions of Herbal's former church. Those families the Kingdom of
Speaker 1: God now viewed as threats. The Kog weren't done yet.
Speaker 1: We also had to prepare ourselves for big wars that
Speaker 1: were coming and be tough for it. Leo's group we're
Speaker 1: out there still in dangerous and we had to defend
Speaker 1: ourselves from the real or person threat from Leo's group.
Speaker 1: So um, we all just had to learn how to
Speaker 1: shoot guns. The kids as young as seven were given
Speaker 1: revolvers and a R fifteen two rifle a shotgun. Put
Speaker 1: a little bottle up on a post and try to
Speaker 1: shoot it, you know, and try with all the different
Speaker 1: kinds of guns, and you have to like hold it
Speaker 1: and then you have to pull this thing on the
Speaker 1: air fifteen here click, and then you can let it
Speaker 1: go and then you can shoot. And then you have
Speaker 1: to like hold a position like exactly on your shoulder
Speaker 1: and then you shoot. The air fifteen was pretty heavy, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the shotgun those are pretty big. I have a
Speaker 1: nine year old daughter, and I tried to imagine her
Speaker 1: with these weapons in her small hands, trying to hold
Speaker 1: her body fully upright under the weight of the steel
Speaker 1: of an a R fifteen or a twelve gauge as
Speaker 1: it recoils. It makes me sick to even picture it.
Speaker 1: Shooting the guns is not the traumatic part, you know.
Speaker 1: The traumatic part is the load that comes that you're
Speaker 1: actually going to be faced with a major war and
Speaker 1: you might have to shoot people. So that's the really
Speaker 1: nerve wrecking part, and you have to prepare for it
Speaker 1: so you can't have any kind of feelings, you can
Speaker 1: have any soft feelings. You have to steal yourself and
Speaker 1: and just be really, really tough and be ready to
Speaker 1: suffer anything that comes. But passed, word reached the Kyog
Speaker 1: that Leo had moved to Monterey, California to start a
Speaker 1: new life with his own church. The imminent threat of
Speaker 1: attack had passed for now, and yet the fear of
Speaker 1: a coming war was never far away in their minds.
Speaker 1: The Kog weren't short on enemies. The entire world was
Speaker 1: out to get them, gentiles and infidels, and so the
Speaker 1: Kog prepared like a mafia family. Think of it as
Speaker 1: a committee. It was not a top down government type
Speaker 1: of thing. So it wasn't like a kingdom more the
Speaker 1: king is like, I'm the new king, and everybody's going
Speaker 1: to do what I say. It didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1: People influenced each other. Everybody interpreted a law together. It
Speaker 1: was the whole teenage group was a supreme court basically,
Speaker 1: and the leader was the person saying, Okay, ultimately we
Speaker 1: have to do X, Y and Z, you know. So
Speaker 1: the leader could be like influenced, heavily influenced by the
Speaker 1: other teenage kids who believed, this is what this says,
Speaker 1: this is what we have to do. So Hebrew was
Speaker 1: influenced a lot by the teenage kids. We all agree
Speaker 1: that we have to do this. The when and the
Speaker 1: how is something we have to work on eventually. To
Speaker 1: hear Gabriella described them, these teenagers were like mafia cappos
Speaker 1: in this ruling committee, their personalities dictating distinct roles they'd
Speaker 1: carved out for themselves, and this way that they organized
Speaker 1: themselves with the one mighty and Strong at the head,
Speaker 1: but actual decision making done through consensus. It's something a
Speaker 1: lot of cops and prosecutors struggled to get their heads around,
Speaker 1: chasing the colt like exactly who was controlling all this,
Speaker 1: pulling all the strings. Well, it seems like if it
Speaker 1: was any one thing, it was Hervill's Book of the
Speaker 1: New Covenants, the b n C, their father's Opus, which
Speaker 1: was now being interpreted by these different ruling committee members
Speaker 1: who remember, we're mostly just teenagers. There was Hebrew's half brother, Andrew,
Speaker 1: the oldest son of Herville and the now deceased Laura Channath.
Speaker 1: He was the Kog's best mechanic. Andrew was cool. He
Speaker 1: was like funzy cool, and I was like fascinated by him.
Speaker 1: Next was Aaron, who they mostly called Mo Andrew's full brother.
Speaker 1: He was considered frail and the most kind hearted of
Speaker 1: the remaining Labaron's sons. When Hebrew and Andrew were gone
Speaker 1: from the match, Aaron was in charge of the children,
Speaker 1: who were mostly orphans now They called him Mommy mo
Speaker 1: sometimes because he made sure that we ate well. He
Speaker 1: was the one that was like the mellow, studious moral
Speaker 1: compass for us being good and studying hard and praying
Speaker 1: and learning and reading and making sure we were well
Speaker 1: verse in our own doctrine. Other coppos and the KG
Speaker 1: ruling committee were Hebrew sisters. Cynthia. Cynthia was pretty much
Speaker 1: a diva and Jacqueline Jackie was a hardcore extremist. She
Speaker 1: was definitely a person that kept everything to the tea.
Speaker 1: And Patricia or Trish. Trish was one of the adults
Speaker 1: I was kind of scared of. She had a little
Speaker 1: bit of an attitude, but she was definitely the cool
Speaker 1: person of the crowd. There were elite members and then
Speaker 1: there were there nobodies, and Trisha the elite of the elites.
Speaker 1: When she was talking, everyone just had to be quiet
Speaker 1: and listen to her. All these siblings so many names.
Speaker 1: It's hard to keep track, I know, but don't worry
Speaker 1: if you've already lost track. Each would play their own
Speaker 1: crucial role in what's to come, a chain reaction of
Speaker 1: escalating tension and violence that would define the second generation
Speaker 1: of the kog and Yet from the vantage point of
Speaker 1: a kid like Gabriella in the mid nineteen eighties, her
Speaker 1: older brothers and sisters just seemed really cool. The way
Speaker 1: they were their jeans, the way they wore their hair,
Speaker 1: the way they wore everything, everything that they did. They
Speaker 1: were the cool the grown ups, the cool kids. They
Speaker 1: got us all into. Jane fond of workouts and wearing
Speaker 1: cropped off T shirts, a big giant hair, and you know, eighties,
Speaker 1: all this eighties style stuff. I love imagining you, guys,
Speaker 1: don't Jane on the workouts out in the desert. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what we did, Jane, funding workouts out in the desert,
Speaker 1: trailers around you. And they would teach us about being
Speaker 1: good women and preparing to be good wives, and building
Speaker 1: God's kingdom and being ready for whatever had to happen.
Speaker 1: By eighty four, the Kingdom of God had rented a
Speaker 1: house inside the mafia controlled town of Caborca, where they
Speaker 1: converted the front porch to a proper chop shop. They
Speaker 1: specialized in building bulletproof four wheel drive vehicles. Business was booming.
Speaker 1: Clean cut looking teens like Hebrew and many of his siblings,
Speaker 1: who all spoke perfect English. They aroused little suspicion in
Speaker 1: the US, and most were dual citizens, meaning getting back
Speaker 1: and forth across the border was easy for them to
Speaker 1: smuggle guns, drugs, and stolen cars. Things went well for
Speaker 1: a while, but then one day in the Colt's best mechanic, Andrew,
Speaker 1: that FONSI cool presence in the group, just seemed to disappear.
Speaker 1: He was around, he was one of the guys around,
Speaker 1: and he would play with the kids and scrape bonfires
Speaker 1: and it's just one of those cool kids. And I
Speaker 1: remember one day he just didn't come to the wrench
Speaker 1: and I asked about him, and they said, we don't know.
Speaker 1: Don't ask a question. And I just never saw him again.
Speaker 1: So he was one of those that just never came back.
Speaker 1: Had Heber just had him killed. Just shut your mouth,
Speaker 1: don't think about it, don't talk about it. But Andrew's
Speaker 1: sudden disappearance wasn't the only thing going wrong with the
Speaker 1: cult around this time. Because his night turned to six,
Speaker 1: the Kog's ruling committee were getting more in a little
Speaker 1: frustrated with their one mighty and strong leader, Hebrew. There
Speaker 1: were suddenly money issues for the cult, not helped by
Speaker 1: Andrew's disappearance. He was the group's best mechanic, so that
Speaker 1: shut down a lot of the stolen car business and
Speaker 1: drug smuggling. Then there was also Hebrew's abuse of the kids,
Speaker 1: random violence. Gabriella tells how he would just suddenly explode
Speaker 1: with rage, beat the members of the Kog, whip them
Speaker 1: like he had been whipped as a kid, relentlessly with
Speaker 1: those steam belts, no warning. And then the elephant that
Speaker 1: had always been in the room when it came to
Speaker 1: Hebrew and the Kog, his refusal to engage with the
Speaker 1: culture religion kind of a big deal. Not just that
Speaker 1: he didn't get revelations from God. He didn't even seem
Speaker 1: to know Ervil scriptures. It seemed like all he wanted
Speaker 1: to do was party with his mafia friends. Due to
Speaker 1: Andrew's death, the Kog was no longer flesh with cash.
Speaker 1: They were back to days of hunger and the rank
Speaker 1: and file we're beginning to doubt Hebrew's mantle as the
Speaker 1: one mighty and strong. He needed a miracle, something to
Speaker 1: make them believe in him again. So in he came
Speaker 1: up with an extremely risky plan to get some fast cash.
Speaker 1: He picked up a gun and crossed the border into
Speaker 1: the us that's coming up after the break. The Promenade
Speaker 1: Center in the Dallas suburb of Richardson is a single
Speaker 1: story strip mall underneath endless blue Texas sky. You could
Speaker 1: be in pretty much any U. S suburb on a
Speaker 1: nice day. A main road separates a parking lot from
Speaker 1: low rise housing. Rarely are there people on the sidewalks,
Speaker 1: especially when it's hot, and of course in the summer
Speaker 1: it often is. When the traffic is light. You could
Speaker 1: say it's peaceful if you were being charitable. I guess
Speaker 1: it has that going for it. Good location if you
Speaker 1: don't want to be noticed. On November five, the Promenade
Speaker 1: Center was home to Gibraltar Savings and Loan, a small bank.
Speaker 1: It was just one big room. There were four employees.
Speaker 1: It was small, and then there were a couple of
Speaker 1: desks over to the left side where if someone came
Speaker 1: in and wanted to open a new account, that's the
Speaker 1: part of the building you'd go to. And then to
Speaker 1: the right where the two teller windows. Jane was working
Speaker 1: at Gibraltar Savings and Loan that Wednesday in November alongside
Speaker 1: two co workers, Arlene and Brenda. So I was standing
Speaker 1: at my teller window, with Arlene on my left and
Speaker 1: then Brenda next to her. I remember we had three
Speaker 1: or four people in each line, and I had just
Speaker 1: waited on a customer. They left, and the person that
Speaker 1: comes up next to me was Hebrew. I believe he
Speaker 1: had on a black leather jacket. I think I know.
Speaker 1: He had tape from ear to ear on his chin.
Speaker 1: Hebrew le Baron, leader of the Kog, had arrived in
Speaker 1: Dallas to rob Jane's bank, and the tape, which for
Speaker 1: some reason Hebrew had chosen over the standard bank robber mask,
Speaker 1: was to stop anyone from getting a good look at him.
Speaker 1: I just remember the gun pointing at me, seeing the gun. Yeah, Alicia,
Speaker 1: there is a gun pointing at me. Jane had never
Speaker 1: been robbed, never held at gunpoint, and he said, give
Speaker 1: me all your money, none of that funny money either.
Speaker 1: But she had received training about what to do if
Speaker 1: it ever happened. The most important thing is just getting
Speaker 1: them out of the building. So followed directions. We followed
Speaker 1: directions what he said for the most part. He per
Speaker 1: handed her a plastic grocery back and I took it
Speaker 1: and I emptied my drawer and put all the money
Speaker 1: in there. Including my die pack, which he told me
Speaker 1: not to do. An exploding die pack placed inside a
Speaker 1: bundle of the cash. The thought did cross my mind
Speaker 1: that I shouldn't put it in there, but then again,
Speaker 1: there's not a weight difference, so it's not like he's
Speaker 1: going to tell that it's heavier. And it does have money,
Speaker 1: you know, actual money on the top end bottom of it.
Speaker 1: And then he motioned to my co worker and said
Speaker 1: your money too, and she was terrified. She said mine too,
Speaker 1: and the branch manager says yes, and she grabs the
Speaker 1: bag and opened her drawer and started putting money in it.
Speaker 1: Jane's colleagues were not handling the situ stuation as coolly
Speaker 1: as she was, and we're not handing Hebrew any funny money.
Speaker 1: They did not give their die pack from their drawer.
Speaker 1: So then he just took the bag and left, and
Speaker 1: then we locked the door, which is important when you've
Speaker 1: handed over funny money to an armed bank robber. When
Speaker 1: they go through the door, it activates the die packed,
Speaker 1: and then within so many seconds of going through the doorway,
Speaker 1: the die pack will explode and spew read die all
Speaker 1: over the money, and that is what happened. They busted
Speaker 1: a hole in his bag. Most of Hebrew's newfound wealth,
Speaker 1: about three or four thousand dollars in total, was now
Speaker 1: covered and die and spread all over the ground. I
Speaker 1: heard that he stopped to pick it up, and when
Speaker 1: he did that, he was caught by the police. Well
Speaker 1: not quite yet, but squad cars were coaching from the
Speaker 1: mall parking lot right next to the bank. Heber made
Speaker 1: it to his car, but was immediately blocked in by cops.
Speaker 1: Heber could tell he was surrounded, but he made a
Speaker 1: run for it into an underground garage. More cops arrived
Speaker 1: on foot and on motorbikes. The cops yelling at him
Speaker 1: to stop. Instead, he turned, raised his forty five and
Speaker 1: pointed it at the nearest one before he fired. He
Speaker 1: tried to click off the safety, but hit a different
Speaker 1: button on accident, the one that releases the clip. It
Speaker 1: clauded on the ground. An officer put his gun to
Speaker 1: Hebrew's head and warned him he'd kill him if he
Speaker 1: picked it up. Six days later, Roger Samuel Harrison, the
Speaker 1: fake name Heber had given police, was arraigned on charges
Speaker 1: of aggregated robbery. With his bell set at fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: The Kog took care of the bill, and three weeks
Speaker 1: later he was least with his crime and Bell all
Speaker 1: registered under his fake name. He had no intention of
Speaker 1: ever returning to face the music. He just switched to
Speaker 1: another one of his many fake aliases and crossed back
Speaker 1: into Mexico. But arriving back with his brothers and sisters
Speaker 1: in the Colts, it wasn't a return to business as usual.
Speaker 1: Hebrew felt he had screwed up so bad when he
Speaker 1: had the authority, he gave the authority to the next
Speaker 1: brother in line, Mo, also called Aaron. For Hebrew, the
Speaker 1: short stint in jail for the bank robbery had been clarifying,
Speaker 1: a time of soul searching and repentance. He'd lost his
Speaker 1: way after Arthur had been killed, became more mafia godfather
Speaker 1: than one mighty and strong. So he was giving up
Speaker 1: the authority of that title and the authority of cult leadership.
Speaker 1: From this moment on, he'd dedicated himself fully to his
Speaker 1: father's religion and let someone else lead the colt. With
Speaker 1: Hebrew replaced as leader, it was to be Aaron, the
Speaker 1: studious cult member, the Kog also called Mo, now taking
Speaker 1: charge of the Colt. He was the new One, mighty
Speaker 1: and strong. He was devout, deeply immersed in the Book
Speaker 1: of the New Covenant, and for cult members like Hebrew,
Speaker 1: this meant those nights of coke and booze and their
Speaker 1: mafia friends were gone. When Mo came, it was more
Speaker 1: of like, we have to study really hard, we have
Speaker 1: to pray really hard. We need guidance on the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. We're gonna do things right, study and pray,
Speaker 1: eat healthy. But it wasn't all prayer, study and diets
Speaker 1: in the Kingdom of God at this point. There was
Speaker 1: also planning going on, lots of planning because by the
Speaker 1: kog were for once not on the defensive, not under
Speaker 1: direct attack, and they could start to look outwards across
Speaker 1: the border into America to try to fulfill what the
Speaker 1: Book of the New Covenant was really all about. Vengeance
Speaker 1: on Herville sworn enemies. So he goes off to do
Speaker 1: his business, drops his drawers is in the process, and
Speaker 1: two people walk up. One drills him in the head
Speaker 1: and the other shoots him in the chest. That's coming
Speaker 1: up in the next episode 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 Sharie 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: and Makluso 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