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John Hollenhorst ReportingAn FBI announcement Friday about a fugitive polygamist cult member has rekindled memories of a violent saga that captivated and frightened Utahns for many years.
The FBI in Texas added Jacqueline Tarsa LeBaron to its Most Wanted list because of four murders there in 1988. That was just a small fraction of the murders committed by that group.
When polygamy cult leader Ervil LeBaron died of a heart attack in his prison cell way back in 1981, it was assumed that would end his cult's violent activities. A bad assumption, as it turned out.
It was an era of extraordinary violence in the polygamy movement, all of it committed by one tiny faction.
The murder of Dr. Rulon Allred shocked Utah in 1977. He was gunned down in front of his patients by two of Ervil LeBaron's wives. The assasination revealed a complex web of polygamy cults and prophets that persists in a different form today.
Allred led one of the largest polygamy groups and was notable as a kindly, peaceful man. LeBaron led one of the tiniest groups, notable for its violence.
In guerilla raids, and assasinations in the 1970s, in Mexico and the U.S., LeBaron followers killed about a dozen people. A couple of victims were rival polygamist leaders. Most of those killed were members of LeBaron's own cult, killed for disloyalty.
Ervil preached that anyone who violated the law of God-- LeBaron's version of it-- should suffer the death penalty with what he called hot lead and cold steel.
After Ervil died in the Utah State Prison, his sons and daughters carried on the violence. Using a hit-list Ervil left behind, the younger LeBarons killed about a dozen more people in the 1980's.
Their most spectacular crime was in Texas in 1988. Three teams of assasins struck simultaneoulsy in three locations, killing three former members of the cult, plus an eight-year-old girl who happened to be with her father when he was killed.
It's that crime, the Four O'Clock murders, that made a fugitive out of Ervil's daughter, Jaqueline Tarsa LeBaron. Tarsa was a key player, along with her siblings and half siblings, and has reportedly been working in Mexico for many years.
The LeBaron cult had historic and family ties to several other polygamy groups, including the one in Colorado City that was later taken over by Warren Jeffs.
He's now famous as a Most Wanted Fugitive, but as far as we know, the Jeffs group has never been accused of murder. The LeBaron brand of violence seems to have died out years ago.
