Cult Insanity

by Irene Spencer

  The fifteen-hour trip heightened my depression. We all kept our eyes open, hoping our enemies would not detect us. We felt so vulnerable wondering if we’d make it to our destination without encountering any trouble. During our trip, Verlan confided to me that he was weary from the death threats and overwhelmed with so much responsibility. During our conversation he informed me that we would be in the LeBaron colony for only a week, and then he was moving us to Nicaragua, where we would be concealed and safe.

  I cried despairingly, feeling as though I were being taken to the end of the earth, away from all that was familiar . . . away from friends and family into the unknown. As it was, I saw very little of Verlan; he’d been on the run because his life was in peril. I knew I’d be left alone months at a time if he took me to Nicaragua. I felt I could not cope with the fears and responsibilities of my children without his help. Lucy had willingly moved to Nicaragua a year earlier. I knew she and her children would be a comfort to us, but my soul screamed against the plan. I needed stability and a future for my children. None of my family in Utah was capable of taking on all of us. They had large families themselves, and our different religious views had severed our bonds, so I did not reach out to them.

  I cried every day throughout our seven-day trip through Mexico and Central America. The farther we drove, the more desperation I felt. The kids were so tightly packed in the camper that they complained about claustrophobia and we were forced to stop often for them to stetch their legs, vomit, and catch a breath of air.

  Once we arrived on a small farm called the “Arenal” that Verlan had purchased in Nicaragua, we unloaded our few belongings into a three-room wooden structure, with a tin roof and dirt floors, where Lucy also lived.

  Soon I found myself knee deep in the nearby running creek, where the natives taught me how to scrub my dirty clothes on large rocks, then spread them on nearby bushes to dry. Verlan didn’t come back to see me for four months. He returned just long enough to take our older boys back to the States to pick pine nuts. He didn’t even spend the night with me.

  When the pine nut season was over, he returned with his first wife, my sister Charlotte, and Susan, to also live with us.

  All the children were thrilled to see one another and they felt like they were in paradise. They swam in the creek and grew vegetable gardens. They hiked and enjoyed the beautiful rolling hillsides. They even found a parrot and a monkey that became their pets. They felt secure and their anxieties about Ervil’s threats subsided. They were happy that at least four of Verlan’s wives were together. I spent over two years in this foreign country, where we battled ticks, diarrhea, intestinal worms, and loneliness.

  Verlan’s dream of forming a new religious colony failed when other church members did not join us because a revolution began in Nicaragua. Verlan made several trips and moved us back to Chihuahua to the LeBaron colony, where we were subject to face the dangers again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  By 1974, Neomi Zarate had become fully disenchanted with Ervil. She deeply resented that he had coerced her to leave her husband and enter into the forced marriage with Bud Chynoweth—for whom she now had born three sons.

  Of course, the marriage fell apart. Neomi felt trapped, displaced, used, nothing more than a pawn in Ervil’s schemes, as she and even her sister were both married to Bud. Neomi had begun voicing her dissatisfaction.

  Every time I saw her, she was miserable about her situation, coerced to make a new life with a family who were strangers to her and didn’t speak her own language. She was relieved when she could speak Spanish with me. I had given her some of my maternity smocks and tried to comfort her.

  For a few years now, she had witnessed Ervil’s threats and mistreatments against the Firstborners. She felt very vulnerable due to the ways that Bud and other men blindly followed Ervil’s every wish. There was so much talk of revenge and “the sword of justice” falling upon the condemned that death hung in the air like the summer heat.

  Neomi fumed about Ervil killing Joel, saying that if he carried out any more threats, she would “not remain quiet.” (See my account as cited in Prophet of Blood, p. 174.)

  Ervil could not risk waiting to see if Neomi was serious. The voices in his head insisted that Neomi must be silenced so the “work of God could move forward.”

  In January 1975, Ervil’s wives Vonda White and Yolanda Rios left Los Molinos taking an unsuspecting Neomi with them. The three women drove toward the San Pedro Mountains until dark, when Vonda stopped in a dry wash and told Neomi to get out of the car.

  Perplexed but not suspecting, Neomi complied and climbed from inside the vehicle. Without warning, Vonda shot her several times with a .38 revolver. Then her sister-wife Yolanda helped Vonda lift Neomi’s corpse, which they slung awkwardly into the trunk.

  The two women climbed back in the Dodge and searched the hills for a secluded area far away from the road. The women took turns digging in sandy dirt until long after dark. When finally satisfied the grave was large enough, they deposited Neomi’s dead body in the freshly-dug hole and covered it with dirt. They left Neomi in that lonely place and headed for home.

  Vonda reported Neomi’s death to Ervil confirming that his orders had been carried out. Ervil was overjoyed. “You don’t know how pleased the Lord is that that traitor is dead!” (Prophet of Blood, p. 174).

  SEVERAL OF ERVIL’S FOLLOWERS were disappointed that Ervil’s prophecy about Verlan’s death had not transpired when they tried to kill him in Los Molinos. Not wanting to appear as a false prophet, Ervil revealed a supposedly fool-proof plan. He informed his hit men that they should “blood atone” Verlan’s mother-in-law Rhea Kunz (Charlotte’s mother). Certain that Verlan would attend her funeral, Ervil revealed that the Lord would surely deliver him into their hands (Prophet of Blood, p. 180).

  In April 1975, my aunt Rhea, who lived in Draper (thirty minutes south of Salt Lake), received a phone call from a woman named “Bonnie.” She told Aunt Rhea that she was LDS and wanted to learn more about Mormon fundamentalism, but she was afraid to be seen with polygamists in public. She asked if Rhea would be willing to meet her at a horse-riding stable just north of the area where Rhea lived. Aunt Rhea was a serious defender of polygamy, a sergeant of salvation who drilled us about our responsibility to live the Principle and urged souls into line. She jumped at any chance to preach plural marriage. So Rhea agreed to meet this investigator, in spite of the nighttime appointment and unusual location, since the riding club was conveniently close to her home.

  Yet the meeting did not unfold as Rhea had anticipated, she explained to me two months later, at a family reunion in June 1975. Shortly after her departure, Aunt Rhea had had a strange feeling that she was being followed. She stopped briefly at a gas station to wait for cars to pass. She said she had to calm herself before deciding to drive onward in the dark. When she saw the property where the stables were located, an eerie feeling of foreboding came over her. She said that she “felt scared to death that something bad was going to happen” and she decided against keeping her appointment. So she turned her car around and quickly made her way through the dark night back home.

  Aunt Rhea didn’t learn the full truth about that night for another three years, not until Lloyd Sullivan confessed Ervil’s murder plot to detectives. Lloyd also told Verlan the details, which Verlan shared with Rhea. “Bonnie” wasn’t there. Lloyd had been lying in wait for Rhea with a pistol, ready to kill her. After hiding in a ditch for some time he became alarmed when Aunt Rhea didn’t arrive. He began to fear that he himself had been set up by the Firstborners, which made him too jittery to continue. He lunged out of the ditch and ran to the car where Ervil’s son Arturo and Don Sullivan waited. Arturo rebuked him, yelling, “You’re a chicken shit! A traitor!”

  Later, Dan Jordan also berated him, “You’re just a damn coward!” Lloyd wasn’t prepared for the hostility he received for all his efforts.

  Yet Ervil was more embarrassed than angry. During the mo
ments when Rhea was to die, Ervil was elsewhere at the LeBaron safe house in Salt Lake, always ample distance from his own murder plots. Yet he paused from speech, listened to a voice in his head, then falsely prophesied to his co-conspirators, “I heard a shot . . . she is dead” (Prophet of Blood, p. 180; The 4 O’Clock Murders, pp. 139–140).

  However, Aunt Rhea lived, and confirmed that Ervil was a liar. When she heard about the horrific plans for her demise, she gasped and sighed over and over—how “fortunate” she was that “the spirit of the Lord had warned her to leave that night, or she could have been killed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  In 1974, Ervil had sent yet another warning to my uncle Rulon. He sent him a copy of his Society of American Patriots pamphlet, along with a personal letter. He demanded that his pamphlet be distributed to the members of Uncle Rulon’s group. Ervil also instructed him to hold a monthly meeting to teach Ervil’s “civil law.” He criticized Uncle Rulon for “willfully engaging in carrying on psychological warfare against him, one of the foremost champions of liberty of all time. You are charged with criminally disregarding and disobeying minimal law.” Ervil told my uncle that if he didn’t carry out his instructions, the Society of American Patriots would “bring further attention to your case and as a matter of due process, through our legal counsel. We have very impressive methods of causing the rights of honorable men to be recognized, respected, and upheld.”

  Making sure all Mormondom understood the magnitude of his holy position, he sent copies to Spencer W. Kimball, president of the LDS Mormon Church, as well as to four major fundamentalist factions. He figured that once they had read and understood his powerful document, there would be no further excuse for them to reject him as God’s anointed.

  * * *

  ERVIL MAILED THE FIRSTBORNERS and other fundamentalist groups an eighty-seven-page pamphlet titled Hour of Crisis—Day of Vengeance. The cover alone was unsettling, depicting an unsheathed sword. The troubling threats sent chills of fear through everyone who read it:

  The most flagrant and criminal violations must be stopped first. The one single violation of the law, which God hates more than any other, is the crime of ecclesiastical treason among His own people. . . . God has said that He would bare His holy arm, or the military power of His kingdom, in the eyes of all nations and that He would do terrible things that they don’t expect in order to make His name known.

  Though he distributed it as widely as he could, Hour of Crisis had been directed specifically to the Church of the Firstborn and stated:

  The time has now come when the judgments of God . . . are to be poured out without measure, beginning upon this criminal and apostate organization. . . . All who remain in the midst of such wickedness will be utterly destroyed root and branch and will be burned as stubble.

  Verlan knew Ervil’s threats couldn’t be taken lightly, so he notified every authority he could think of—the police, the FBI, the leaders of the LDS Church, and every fundamental faction he was aware of. Verlan was told by authorities that a crime had to be committed before they could charge Ervil.

  The Church of the Firstborn members lived in terror, always vigilant. We felt like sitting ducks fearing for our lives. No one knew the gravity of Ervil’s threats better than we. But before we had time to digest the Hour of Crisis—Day of Vengeance, Ervil distributed more blatant warnings in his second pamphlet, titled Contest at Law.

  A short time later, I was with Verlan. We had traveled from the colony in Los Molinos across the border. While driving through San Ysidro, California, I happened to glance up and catch a glimpse of Ervil in a phone booth. Positive that it was him, Verlan pulled up behind Anna Mae’s car. He wanted to confront Ervil. Ervil looked up from his conversation, then turned his back to us and kept right on talking on the phone. He shuffled his feet nervously. I’d have given anything to have read his mind; I’m sure he thought we’d come to kill him.

  Verlan walked up to Anna Mae’s car beside her open passenger window. “Hi,” Verlan said, startling her. “I haven’t seen Ervil since he killed Joel.”

  Not refuting what Verlan had said, Anna Mae gave a nervous laugh. “It’s not about who killed Joel, it’s about doctrine.” She then stated her complete faith in Ervil and her belief that he was God’s anointed prophet.

  Ervil hung up the phone and got in his car, avoiding any conversation with Verlan.

  Before he drove away, and making sure Ervil could hear, Verlan hollered, “You’re a real chicken shit!” In their youth that was the worst insult they were allowed to say.

  SINCE THE INCEPTION OF THE NEW CHURCH, Ervil had taught that marrying a mother and her daughter was definitely prohibited in the Old Testament. Several of the fundamentalist groups nevertheless disregarded the commandment and did it anyway. Ervil was adamant when he was introduced to a polygamist who openly bragged about his situation being married to both a mother and her daughter, trying to convince Ervil that it was a wonderful principle. He soon found himself in a confrontation with Ervil, trying to justify his position. He became very indignant, deriding Ervil for calling it sin. Ervil pulled out his Bible and read Leviticus to him: “And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you” (20:14).

  Ervil spoke with such vehemence it frightened the new investigator. He left the LeBaron colony immediately after Ervil warned him that he had broken a law that deserved the death penalty.

  DESPITE THE BAD OPINION that Verlan and many others had of Ervil, he seemed to be lucky at gathering wives. Even sixteen-year-old Rena Chynoweth, who had once written that he gave her the creeps, finally was coerced to become his thirteenth wife. Ervil had proposed many times, telling Rena that it was God’s will for her to marry him. Finally, Ervil sent Dan Jordan to give her a message that it was either marry him or she’d be cast into hell.

  Intimidated, fearful, and vulnerable, she complied. On February 3, 1975, believing she was serving God, she allowed Dan Jordan to seal her to Ervil for time and all eternity as his thirteenth wife. However, little did she know that technically she was Ervil’s fourteenth wife.

  Ervil had made it clear that he would not tolerate a man engaging in the unlawful marrying of a mother and a daughter, yet it’s ironic to me how Ervil seemed to break the rules when they pertained to himself. Rumors circulated, affirming that Ervil was indeed sleeping with his mother-in-law Thelma. The fact that she traveled with him gave way to suspicions. When she was in his presence, her eyes focused on him with total adoration. She sat at his feet for hours imbibing every word that came out of his mouth. She idolized Ervil and everyone suspected that he was more than just her beloved prophet.

  Delfina asked Ervil on countless occasions if he’d married Thelma. She became convinced because of the things she saw when Thelma was in Ervil’s presence. When she confronted Ervil, he angrily denied it. Yet, Delfina’s son Isaac told her it was common knowledge that Thelma was Ervil’s wife because they were sleeping together. Then, later when Thelma was confronted by Detective Ron Collins, she confirmed the fact that she had indeed married Ervil LeBaron. This is just one more piece of evidence to prove how unscrupulous Ervil LeBaron was. He bent all the laws and made new rules to accommodate himself. He disregarded God’s law, yet tried to convince Lorna to return to him after several separations when she became privy to the secret.

  THERE WERE MANY FACTIONS and splinter groups throughout Utah that frustrated Ervil. He could not tolerate any man who claimed authority or leadership over any fundamentalist group. He was furious when he visited the fundamentalist Merlin Kingston, who was the leader of the Davis County Cooperative. Ervil heard of their wealth and he resented that the group would not bow down and recognize him as God’s anointed one. He made a point to visit Merlin and held nothing back in their subsequent conversation. He made threats in no uncertain terms. Merlin was to pay tithes to him; if he didn’t, Ervil promised there would be bloodshed. He even thre
atened to burn several businesses owned by the co-op. Merlin immediately warned the other fundamentalist groups to be on the alert.

  * * *

  ROBERT SIMONS, A LONER POLYGAMIST PROPHET, owned a sixty-five-acre ranch in Grantsville, Utah, which Ervil coveted. The Simons had been LDS Mormons until Robert had experienced serious psychological and mental problems which resulted in his divine call as the “one true prophet” and his divorce from wife Mary Jane Anderson. Robert also had a great interest in the American Indians, imagining himself as the prophet who was supposed to lead them.

  Robert had been excommunicated from the Mormon Church. He, like many other self-proclaimed prophets, sought power and believed that he was the long-awaited One Mighty and Strong. Therefore he set out to prepare for the millennium, and he embraced polygamy.

  Robert wedded Samantha McKinnan and her beautiful twenty-nine-year-old daughter Linda. Beguiled by prophecy, polygamy, and power, Robert sought preeminence.

  Ervil claimed it was a crime for a man to marry a mother and a daughter, quoting Leviticus 20:14. Ervil wanted to convert the Simons for three reasons: to eliminate the competition, acquire Robert’s ranch as “tithing,” and woo his young wife for himself. Ervil fell in love with Linda and secretly proposed. Robert was furious when Linda told him of Ervil’s intentions. He wrote a letter to Ervil as one prophet to another, in which he denounced him, openly challenging Ervil’s power and authority.

  Ervil wasn’t one to be challenged or reprimanded. Given the contents of the letter, he concluded that this false prophet must be put to death. Consulting with his minions, Ervil soon developed a plan.

  Lloyd Sullivan, still a devout follower of Ervil, contacted Robert, pretending to have defected from Ervil’s group and flattering Robert with a story that he was considering Robert as the true prophet. Lloyd also claimed that he had contacts with Native American chiefs, who knew about Robert and wanted to meet him. Robert was duped, and a day was set for the pow-wow (Prophet of Blood pp. 187–191; The 4 O’Clock Murders, pp. 132–134).