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John Hollenhorst reporting Promising new leads have popped up in the 20-year-long search for a fugitive member of a murderous polygamy cult. In fact, the FBI now has its first new photo in two decades of a woman suspected in a quadruple homicide.
A few months ago, the FBI offered a $20,000 reward in the search for Jacqueline Tarsa LeBaron. Eyewitness News did a story, and so did Reader's Digest. The publicity has now turned up surprising new leads.
When four people died in a storm of bullets in Texas in 1988, it was the last violent act, perhaps the last of 28 murders, attributed to Ervil LeBaron's polygamy cult. Most of the killers died or went to prison, but Ervil's daughter Jacqueline Tarsa LeBaron, an accused mastermind of the later murders, has been on the lam ever since.
Then, an article last fall in Reader's Digest brought forward a witness. "This person was living down in Honduras and had a conversation, had run across this woman as a social acquaintance, and after returning to the United States they had run across the Reader's Digest article and they said, 'Oh, I happen to have a photograph of this person,'" explained Juan Becerra, with the FBI.
Apparently that photo is the first new one the FBI has seen since the 1980s. The agency previously took an old photo and used computer enhancement to see what she might look like 20 years later. The new photo matched up fairly well with the computer enhancement.
"From an artist's conception, we felt that we were definitely in the right ball park, definitely getting the right facial features and so on," Becerra said.
An investigation in Honduras showed she was there but has now left that country. The FBI believes she's elsewhere in Latin America.
Still, new leads keep pouring in--a big surprise in a 20-year-old case. "We feel that we are starting to tighten a closer circle around Jacqueline LeBaron, and we're hoping to have an arrest, hopefully soon," Becerra said.
The FBI believes that some people in Utah, possibly in polygamy groups, are in contact with LeBaron. They're encouraging anyone with information to step forward, if not for the reward, then just to get a very dangerous woman behind bars.
