Charles Manson has been up for parole ten times. Every time, parole has been refused.
The Lebarons
A story of a Mormon fundamentalist family
Alma Dayer LeBaron was an American Mormon who relocated to a Mormon settlement in Colonia Juarez, northern Mexico in the early 1900s.
He was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that was set up by Joseph Smith in 1830, and just like many other LDS fellows of that time, Dayer LeBaron was a practising polygamist, which was usually referred to by Latter Day Saints as the act of ‘Plural Marriages’.
When the United States Congress made the practice of polygamy illegal in 1862 many LDS members fled to other countries such as Canada in an attempt to set up free polygamy practicing communities without the fear of persecution or prosecution.
This was the reason that Dayer LeBaron had ended up at a settlement in Mexico and it was here that he fathered five of his seven children; Benjamin, Ross Wesley, Joel, Ervil and Alma.
It was also at this Mormon colony that Dayer LeBaron met Rulon Allred. Allred was convicted of polygamy in the US in 1947, skipped bail and escaped to Mexico where Dayer LeBaron gave him refuge whilst he sorted himself out. Rulon Allred would go on to wish that he had never encountered the LeBaron clan.
In 1944, Dayer LeBaron received a revelation from God which told him to acquire a piece of Mexican land, this became the base for Colonia LeBaron, Dayer’s Mormon fundamentalist sect.
THE LEBARON CLAN
Dayer LeBaron’s children were just as religiously Mormon as their father, and each one ended up setting up their own off-shoot church at some point in their lives. Three in particular became historical members of the LeBaron clan.
In 1944, Benjamin LeBaron the eldest of Dayer LeBaron’s sons had a vision and proclaimed that he was in fact a prophet of God. He believed that he was the ‘Lion of Israel’, and to prove his point would roar at the top of his voice in the middle of the street. On top of this, Benjamin also wished to prove to the rest of humanity that he was ‘Mighty and Strong’. One particular time he stopped the traffic on a motorway in the middle of Salt Lake City – the geographical heart of Mormonism and the LDS – lay face down and did 200 press-ups to show people just how mighty and strong he really was. Benjamin was soon shunned by the majority of his family and friends and spent a lot of his life in and out of mental institutes. But one person did believe him and that was his brother Ervil.
The next child of Dayer LeBaron’s to have a spiritual experience was Ross Wesley. He too claimed that he was a mighty and strong prophet and related his visions to claims made by the founder of the LDS Church – Joseph Smith.
With Benjamin LeBaron in Utah State Mental Hospital and Ross Wesley’s prophecies not amounting to much, Joel and Ervil were the brothers to emerge as the chosen ones.
Joel LeBaron was the third sibling to become a self-proclaimed prophet after being visited by two angel messengers from heaven in the 1960s. Joel was an extremely charismatic man who people warmed to immediately. He was softly spoken and could explain the Scriptures like no other.
Joel set up a Mormon splinter church by the name of the ‘Church of the First Born of the Fullness of Time’. By the spring of 1965, Joel had organized his new church and appointed his brother Ervil as secretary.
BLOOD BROTHERS
There was a problem. Ervil LeBaron was also receiving messages from heaven, and announced that he too was ‘one mighty and strong’ – a prophet from God. He was the more handsome of the two brothers and although he was not as amiable as his brother, he definitely had a way with people, especially women. He had the body of a boxer, and with this came the tendency to hold a grudge, but his flip side was that he was an excellent writer of scripture. His writing became obsessive and at times Ervil would stay up for days at a time living on a diet of coffee to keep him awake but writing extremely profound holy works.
Ervil would constantly have dreams about having many wives with which he would ‘multiply and replenish the earth . . .’ He wanted to be a great and respected man in as many ways as possible and nobody was going to stand in his way.
The two LeBaron brothers soon started disagreeing, and with both of them needing to be the top prophet they ended up having a major fall-out. Joel wished to start an order which abided completely by the Ten Commandments. Joel believe that only when the Ten Commandments were being followed would Jesus return to Earth.
Although Ervil did agree with the idea he believed the only way to form it within the sect was by using brute force, something that pacifist Joel was not happy with doing. The finale to the brothers’ relationship came in the winter of 1969. Joel, the head of the Fullness of Time Church decided to dismiss Ervil from his position within the sect due to his lack of respect for others and his rebellious tendencies towards the movement.
Ervil became extremely angry at Joel’s confrontation and luckily enough it was not long before he had received some orders from God.
God had spoken to Ervil and told him that he needed to get rid of his brother Joel. The prophecy spoke of Joel as someone who even though was seen by many as ‘saintly’ was getting in the way of both Ervil and the Holy One’s work on Earth.
On August 20, 1972, Joel LeBaron whilst at his polygamist community, Los Molinos, was shot twice, once in the throat and once the head; he was killed instantly. The murder had been organized by his own flesh and blood, Ervil LeBaron, and had been committed by one of Ervil's staunch followers.
THE CHURCH OF THE LAMB OF GOD
After the untimely death of his brother Joel, Ervil had reformed his followers under the name of the ‘Church of the Blood of the Lamb of God’ and preached his views to them on a daily basis.
These were the lengths that certain Mormon polygamists would go to to prove their cause was the most spiritually just – prophecies would come at just the right time to give people such as Ervil an excuse to murder people who held different Mormonist ideologies.
By 1975, Ervil LeBaron had murdered about five more people and seriously injured around 15 others, without getting his own hands dirty of course. Each murder was executed by one of Ervil's flock on his orders, which in turn were orders received from God.
Even when Ervil LeBaron was arrested in Mexico in the spring of 1976, his free disciples carried on with the blood bath. His clan ran their operation from a post office box in southern most California, and they sent out circulars opposing governmental taxes, state benefits, gun control and other polygamist groups. Even the late Jimmy Carter received a death threat from Ervil's group when he stood for the presidency in 1976, the Church of the Blood of the Lamb of God believed that Carter’s views were too liberal and un-godly.
In 1979, 11 months after being arrested, Ervil LeBaron was freed by the Mexican judicial system as they did not have enough proof that linked him to the murders over the previous three years, but other reports say that his freedom was more likely to have been through bribes, which were so rife in Mexico in the 1970s.
Whatever, Ervil LeBaron was once again a free man back on his rampage, cleansing the world of anyone who was not in agreement with him and did not do as he said.
Ervil arranged the murder of one of his own daughters due to her insubordination and a few months later had Rulon Allred killed.
Rulon Allred was a prominent Salt Lake City polygamist leader by this point and faced his death in an execution style manner, set up by Ervil. Ervil wanted the followers who Allred had, and thought that if he disposed of Allred he would be able to make make Allred’s flock move their allegiance to the Lamb of God.