ROAD TO MURDER
In the spring of 1984, Ron and Dan embarked on a road trip up through America’s mid west and into Canada, they broke up their journey by dropping in on various fundamentalist communities that they knew about. They took it in turns to drive and spent the days having intense discussions about the removal revelations that Ron had had. Although Dan was proud of how far his brother had come, he also noticed he had turned into a violent and savage man.
At times Dan wondered if he should break ties with his brother, and if things had gone too far, but each time he had these thoughts something inside him told him to stick with Ron.
Ron would deliberate over the meaning of the removal revelation and commented that the four people mentioned in it had all been part of the reason that his wife and left him. Brenda being the main protagonist. His eyes would blank over when he spoke to his brother about slaughters that were soon to take place.
On July 24, 1984, Ron and Dan met up with two polygamist friends called Chip Carnes and Richard Knapp. They had planned to go to Salt Lake City – the home of the Mormons – for the day. Before leaving, Ron told the other three that he thought that they should first go to Mark Lafferty’s house to pick up a hunting rifle.
Upon arriving at Mark’s house Ron immediately asked for the gun. Mark gave it to him but wished to know what he was going to hunt as Ron had given up the sport years previously. Ron replied, ‘Any fucking thing that gets in my way’.
The four men then headed to Allen’s apartment, which was in American Fork, a sleepy suburb on the freeway between Provo and Salt Lake City. Ron had said they were going there in search for another rifle. Carnes and Knapp, who were both in the back could hear the brothers discussing whether the removal revelation was to be acted upon that day. Ron really seemed like he was on a mission.
When no one answered the door at Allen’s house they got back in the car and headed for Salt Lake City.
They had not got very far when Dan felt a great urge to turn back and try Allen Lafferty’s house once more. Dan knocked on the door and Brenda answered. He asked her if Allen was in and she said that he was at work. He then asked if he could step inside to use her telephone. Brenda started to sense that something was up and said that he could not enter the house.
A rage had taken over Dan by this point and he was not taking no for an answer. He pushed Brenda out of the way and let himself in. The sound of Brenda and Dan fighting could be heard from the car and it was this point that Ron made his way into the house.
The two friends were left in the car and could now hear Ron yelling expletives at Brenda at which she was yelling: ‘Please don’t hurt my baby! Don’t hurt my baby!’ A deathly silence then came over the duplex and the Lafferty brothers emerged in blood-soaked clothes.
Brenda Lafferty had received a severe beating. An incision had been made to her throat which had sliced through her trachea, both jugular veins, both cartoid arteries and her spinal column. She had then been strangled by the cord of a vaccum cleaner. She had been brutally murdered.
Fifteen month old Erica Lafferty had also had her throat cut from ear to ear – the only thing left holding her head onto her shoulders was the bone. Brenda and Erica Lafferty were to be found dead and lying in pools of their own blood by Allen Lafferty when he returned home from work later that day.
Once back in the car, Dan, Ron, Chip and Richard made their way to the Chloe Low’s house. Chloe had been a good friend of Dianna’s and had also coaxed her into leaving Ron. They rang the door but no one was in. After breaking in and stealing a handful of Chloe’s belongings, the brothers returned to the car and spoke about heading to Richard Stowe’s house – Stowe was the bishop who had excommunicated Ron soon after Dianna had left him.
Luckily for Stowe, the brothers took a wrong turn, which was enough for them to give up with completing the removal revelation. Instead they headed toward Wendover where they rented a holiday flat for the night. The Lafferty brothers cleaned themselves up and put their blood stained clothes into the boot of the car, the four men then put their heads down for the night.
Chip Carnes and Richard Knapp snuck out of the apartment in the middle of the night and made their getaway in the car, disposing of the knives and clothes on the way. They were arrested at Chip’s brother’s house on July 30, 1984.
The next day Dan and Ron realized that they were now on the run and they headed towards Reno. They had a female friend there who worked in a casino called Circus Circus, and had let them sleep on her floor a few months previously. Dan told Ron that they were sure to be met with arrest if they went to her as he had written about her in his diaries, which were now more than likely in the hands of the police.
Ron did not say anything so they kept walking into the Casino and whilst queueing in the restaurant for a coffee they were surrounded by FBI agents. On August 17, 1984 Ronald Watson Lafferty and Daniel Lafferty were arrested for the aggravated murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty.
BROTHERS ON TRIAL
In 1985 the two brothers stood trial. Ron’s lawyer tried to plead insanity in the hope of getting him convicted of manslaughter instead of first degree murder. Ron was found guilty on two charges of first degree murder and was sentenced to death. Dan Lafferty, was charged on two counts of first degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Dan, to this day, states that he was responsible for both murders, but Ron was sentenced to death for killing Brenda and for being the mastermind behind the plot.
If Ron Lafferty had not gone to his brothers’ meeting to try and talk them out of fundamentalism maybe a lot of people’s lives could have turned out different. Or was it Ron’s fate to end up as he did?
The nightmare of that day in July 1984 has not been an easy one to try and get over as re-trials have occurred as recently as 2003. Ron’s defence have made a number of attempts to remove him from death row but each time they have been quashed. He refuses to talk to anyone about the events that happened that year.
Dan Lafferty on the other hand has given many interviews describing the events leading up to and on that frightful day. He still believes that he and his brother were led by God to commit the murders and believes that he will not die in prison. Instead the prison walls will crumble around him and he will emerge as the biblical prophet Elijah, announcing the second coming of Christ. In an interview he gave to the Deseret News in 2002, Dan Lafferty said:
I don’t feel comfortable saying I know I’m Elijah, but I’d be pretty surprised if I’m not. You could say I’m patiently awaiting to see if I’m him. I could be wrong, maybe it’s all just a comfortable illusion.
The Ku Klux Klan
The White Rights Movement
“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Radical Republican Party?” “Did you belong to the Federal Army during the late war, and fight against the South during the existence of the same?” “Are you opposed to negro equality, both social and political?” “Are you in favour of a white man’s government in this country?”
These were the questions drawn up by the KuKlux Klan in 1868 to recruit people to its organisation.
When the black population of America emerged victorious from their struggle for liberation from slavery after the American Civil War, they met with a new enemy – a secret, terrorist, white-supremacist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, who believed in the innate inferiority of the black man and therefore felt that they neither deserved, nor were welcome to, the same rights and privileges as the white man. The freedom of these slaves signified a humiliating economic and social defeat, adding salt to the wounds left by the military defeat they had already suffered. Resentment and loathing bubbled over and a campaign of terror and violence was unleashed on the southern states of America.