Two teenage boys had been spotted entering Rachel Youngs home. Do you think if I took $5 million in gold, Id be working out here?. According to historian Brian Hales Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto, Brother Elden, as he was also known, had five wives and 17 children. [W]e directly condemn in action and in words, racist, homophobic or hateful actions against any group or individual, Johnson wrote. Her parents and siblings eventually left as well. Three of his wives are his half-sisters. Also, the birth certificate usually does not . Sex. As time passed, his dogma became even stranger. In secret videotapes of Order church meetings aired on Escaping Polygamy, Pauls nephew Nick Young, speaking from a church lectern, identifies himself as a numbered man, number 72, to be precise. "It's like any inbred disorder," Tarby says. Fumarase deficiency, however sensationalized, is not the only genetic disorder found here. The son of the clans prophet, Knight, then 18, had once seemed destined for a leadership role within the Order. Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Drag Bill But in a 2News . Up to this point, Julie had treated the rumor like a joke. Stephen hangs up and drives home in silence. And they avoid the police, opting to handle any disputes in their own brutal manner. I guess I just had too much soy, Snow smiled. All of the gay people would definitely be the first to go, he said. Allison, a 17 year-old ex-Kingston member says not much has changed since Lu Anns day. More troubling, during a contentious 2004 custody case that ensued when Jessica and her sister Andrea fled Daniel Kingstons household, a judge in the case reportedly was the subject of a death threat, allegedly from Kingston clan members. So what about polygamy? This racist display was no one-off. These days Stephen works on a cattle ranch near the Idaho border, just down the road from where he grew up. Come back, his dad will say. And another one of her sisters married one of my half-brothers, but we have the same blood and genetics because our moms are full sisters." Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. The letter asserts that one of the earliest members of the church was a Native American man and that the Co-op, as it is sometimes called, has been the victim of prejudice and harassment by Utahs majority religion (i.e., the LDS church) because of the formers progressive ideas. Or Aunt Martha did, or somebody did. Ortell is credited with expanding The Orders business empire and making the family immensely wealthy. Control of The Order then passed to Ortells well-educated son Paul Kingston, one of several lawyers in a cult whose members dress normally and try not to draw attention to themselves. But by 2006, Dr. Theodore Tarby, of Arizona, had discovered at least 20 more children living with the condition in Short Creek, all within just blocks of each other. Jessica said she and other children of the Kingston clan a group also known as The Order, the Davis County Cooperative Society, and the Latter-Day Church of Christ dropped the N-bomb all the time, as did their parents. During a recent interview with the Intelligence Report, Jessica Kingston, a former member of the secretive, Salt Lake City-based cult and a star of the A&E reality series "Escaping Polygamy," remembered, when she was 12, her Sunday school teacher coming into class with a . . Every now and then, as hes driving around the ranch, his phone will ring. These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. They were finally getting even. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. Brother Ron Tucker, he would intone, come and get your number. According to the Orders interpretation of the Book of Revelations, only 144,000 numbered men will be allowed to rule in heaven under God. A 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article mapped the Kingstons incestuous family tree, quoting one of Ortells 65 kids, ex-Order member Connie Rugg as saying, My father experimented [with] inbreeding with his cattle and then he turned to his children.. One day, not long after the gold disappeared, Knight got an anonymous phone call. After the chest of gold was stolen, suspicion among the clans leadership immediately fell on a group of rebellious teenagers who had left the cult a few years before. Hospital harm., While part of The Order, Val Snow, a twenty-something gay man with a wry sense of humor, believed being gay was like spitting in the eye of God. Snow is the son of Daniel Kingston, whom he paints as a little man with a lot of power.. As he talked to the woman who lived there, Luke Brown came out of the house, and his brother Scott soon joined him. "Well, needless to say, we had a lot of, uh. KUTV When several businesses inside the Kingston polygamist empire, including Washakie Renewable Energy, was raided by federal agents Wednesday, officials where tight lipped. It was a total spur of the moment thing, Brown says. In the kitchen, he opened a closet and popped a hatch in the floor that led down to a dark, musty basement. I honestly didnt even know there was any gold until they accused me of taking it, he says. The Tuckers think this is all hogwash now, though they were programmed to believe it at the time. 6.3M views 6 years ago Profiles by VICE S1 E23 Although the mainstream Mormon church abandoned polygamy over 100 years ago, many splinter groups across Utah still practice plural marriage. In the 1980s, the state of Utah sued John Ortell Kingston over welfare fraud related to his many wives. The teenagers sitting in the driveway on South Bonner Circle that afternoon in 2009 knew the operation well. According to people who have left the Order, the cult exploits its 2,000 members as virtual slave labor and hides profits from tax collectors. There lives Ross LeBaron Jr., a descendant of another polygamous sect (separate from the FLDS but quite similar in practice) called the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. Or wed set traps and raise them as pets., In many ways it was an idyllic childhood, except for the fact that the ranch also doubled as a work camp for disobedient clan wives and rebellious kids. The incest came to light after the girl tried to escape the arranged celestial marriage an illegal marriage, sans license. "Fred was in charge of the cemeteries, the gravediggers, all of that. To hide the scope of his organization, J.O. The two groups split when Dawna was growing up. WREs influence earned special scrutiny in February 2016 after the IRS, the EPA and other government agencies raided owner Jacob Kingstons house as well as The Orders bank and other locations, carting away bankers box after bankers box of records. Then one of them exhaled slowly, his breath shuddering in the cold air. Luke and Scott often visited the home of one of their aunts, Rachel Young. Meanwhile, Mary Ann Kingston, 22, has brought a $110 million civil suit against 242 Order members and 97 companies they operate, claiming that they share collective responsibility for abuse she. One day, for laughs, he and his half brother Ron Tucker stole some napalm from an Order army-supply store, drew lines of it in the street and lit it on fire as cars drove by. His followers erected a crude stone cross nearby in his honor, covered with inscriptions of the letter K (for Kingdom or Kingston). Obviously, we would love to.. If gay men stay in the closet, they are allowed to remain in the cult as worker bees.. The girl, who as an adult would unsuccessfully sue the clan, then walked miles to the nearest gas station, where she called the police. He snapped the padlock on the first crate and began stuffing the silver ingots into duffel bags, lugging them back out to the waiting Honda. The first questions were about his background. Noticing Stephen, he put the barbells down and came over to the boy. Stephens father seemed to marry a new girl every year, each one younger and prettier than the last. I strongly believe they are an organized-crime family, Shurtleff says. See the Beths Deliver Refreshing 'Expert in a Dying Field' Mini-Set on 'CBS Mornings', Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time, I could boil down what theyre about in three words, says a member who broke with the Order. Two are nieces. But within the Order, where drinking soda pop was against the rules, it was a pretty big deal.. Stephen didnt know what the law said he only knew that the people he loved were being abused and exploited by his own father. What is BBC Future? His arms are sunburned and his hands calloused from long days moving the irrigation pipes that water the fields. The renunciation of polygamy is now church doctrine, and the Mormon church has a policy of excommunicating polygamists. Another of the cults teachings was that soy can make you gay, an anti-government conspiracy theory popular in some right-wing circles. Ron says the cults justification for its racism goes back to early Mormon teachings about a war in heaven between the forces of Satan and those of Jesus. Tom Sizemore, Heat and Saving Private Ryan Actor, Dead at 61 Those twoand a fifth boyalso suffer from the condition that all of this family's sons were born with: x-linked hydrocephalus. But given that the Kingstons command an estimated 6,000 adherents, boast a business empire reportedly worth as much as $1 billion and have outlasted myriad bouts with law enforcement and the press, these dreams of world domination may be less delusional than they first seem. He orchestrated all unions within the cult, which was maintained with classic mind control techniques, corporal punishment, fasting and bizarre dietary practices. The knowledge that one's children are likely to be born with conditions like this one does not prevent FLDS couples from becoming pregnant; instead, they see it as a responsibility and blessing to have many children. He picked fights at school, shot a teacher in the face with a water gun and refused to do homework or answer questions. If they are money-laundering or making money in support of polygamy and incest, then they probably meet the statute.. A lawyer and an accountant by trade, Stephens father hardly looked like the sort of man who could command the unquestioned loyalty of thousands of followers. The theft of the silver bars from Rachel Youngs basement, they concluded, had been a copycat crime. They did it, says Christian Kingston. Is Jasper always unspirited and stony-broke when outvalue some Heisenberg very . Those affected by the genetic disorder suffer grand mal seizures and often have facial feature deformities and severe mental retardation, with IQs as low as 25. Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase. The last infant grave marked in this cemetery is dated 2010; Warren issued an edict from prison banning sex in 2011, so few infants have been born since then (the few babies born each year are the product of institutionalized rape by cult-appointed seed bearers). Supposedly, LaDonna had a dream wherein it was revealed that anyone who left The Order would be tainted by black blood. You had to be, like, a son of the prophet to know where it was.. and cousins. Kingston forebears were among those who suffered this fate. Some children are born blind, others with missing fingernails or undersize heads. Theyre basically the Utah Mafioso of the white power world, Browning told Intelligence Report. Hanging up the phone, she rushed to her closet. One is a first cousin. His most bizarre beliefs, though, concerned the occult. When Rachel Young, a stern and humorless woman, got home, she discovered that several crates of silver in her basement had been pried open whoever had robbed the place had clearly been in a hurry and had left with only a small fraction of her silver. This is your fault, he thundered, glaring at them. If you knew where to look and the Knight boys did it was easy to find. In his teens, Stephen and five of his half brothers stole $4,000 from their father. The FLDS believe they are practicing the one true religion as Prophet Joseph Smith intended it to be. Because that one is going to be genius-level purity, and thats what The Order is looking for., Photo Credit: AP Images / Leah Hogsten, Pool (John Daniel Kingston); AP Images / Jeffrey D. Allred / Pool (Jeremy Kingston), SPLC is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization (EIN: 63-0598743). They steer clear of banks,. He was angry and confused, says a former member of the cult. The battle took place in the spiritual pre-existence that Mormons believe all souls come from. A rare neurological disorder characterized by water on the brain, muscular stiffness, adducted thumbs and aphasia, x-linked hydrocephalus is expressed only in men and carried by women. As the first of Paul Kingstons many wives, Patty enjoyed a privileged role in the Order including access to vast wealth. The polygamous town facing genetic disaster - BBC Future. The quick answer for why this polygamous community has buried so many of its children is inbreeding, according to community members. He no longer believed in the Order, but he knew that leaving would mean being shunned by his own family, and because he had been forbidden from making friends outside the clan, there would be few people in the world he could turn to. Additionally, ex-Order members tell of a reputed church prophecy of an End of the World War, an apocalyptic vision that foresees a bloody race war with the Kingstons as the ultimate victors, chosen by their Heavenly Father to rule the world for a millennium. Accounts of clan babies being born with congenital defects and other problems abound, including dwarfism, albinism and children born minus fingernails or without genitals. Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Youngs claims. The deputy heard the Brown boys knew who stole the gold but suddenly, without explanation, they and everyone in the clan clammed up. Situated at the base of a rugged mountain range, the Orders spread sat in a pristine valley of glistening hayfields and open pasture. But I do have children with other women., Asked if two women named were in fact his first cousins, Young paused, finally replying, I guess Im curious as to what youre trying to get at here.. Then their father said something they never expected. As he grew older, Stephen turned out to be as rebellious as his own father had been as a boy. After the boys were taken into custody, one of their first calls was to Stephen. The Kingstons teach that they are descended from Jesus Christ and these incestous marriages are intended to keep the bloodline pure, but instead have resulted in numerous Clan members being born with disabilties or birth defects, and it's not really that surprising to note that at one point during the second season of Escaping Polygamy, one of Lost Index. I felt for his pulse, but he was already gone., That night, Paul Kingston arrived at the ranch. I tell her I'm not sure, given the context. took great pains to never show his wealth and taught his followers to do the same. Johnson maintained that The Orders vast array of businesses which includes a grocery store, pawn shops, a garbage disposal business, an insurance company, a politically-influential biofuels plant, and a high-end firearms manufacturer employs individuals of various racial and ethnic minorities. He kept his office on a side street in central Salt Lake. 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"They would hand them over and say, 'Would you mind please taking care of them, because we can't?' Kingston taught his followers that they are the literal descendants of Jesus and one of his wives, who had come down to Earth to found a race of chosen people. Similarly, his older brother John Daniel Kingston has had 14 wives, four of them his half-sisters. J.O. Local Policing and Immigration Enforcement, Request for Legal Assistance Economic Justice. . With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. "There were so many young children who were born with abnormalitiesharelips, club feet, heart valvesthat were they were going to die within a year," says Ron. She directs me to the houses she lived in after that: her stepdad Jim Jessop's home; then the rotten, roach-infested house she and her mother shared with nearly two dozen cousins and friends after being removed from Jim's following the Judgment. I dont think theyre organized crime in that regard, but the racketeering statute defines it as any conspiracy or pattern of illegal activity done in concert with others. His seven sons and two daughters by LaDonna Peterson, the second of his 13 wives, are reputed to be the inner circle that runs the cult. By 18, she. Many children have had birth defects due to this inbreeding. Only the inner circle knew the hoard even existed, says Christian Kingston, a former Order member. Others say they buried it out in the desert and are slowly cashing it out. That Stephens father sat atop a mafialike organization was a secret kept from him for most of his childhood. They sat there for a moment, warming their hands against the sputtering heater. She called her sister-in-law Patty Kingston, who lived across town. When he was three, his mother led him into a building controlled by the clan and pointed out an intense man lifting weights in the gym. Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of blackness being a sign of iniquity. LeBaron Jr. has been accused by three of his own sons, who purport to have DNA evidence obtained by saliva samples, of fathering four children with his own biological daughter. This is all compounded by the split between the FLDS and an offshoot group of polygamists that moved to nearby Centennial Park following a disagreement over how the community should be governed, and by whom). Girls, many of them teen brides, answer phones at the Orders law office, bag groceries at its supermarket or tend to the clans many children. ), Related . "There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece," she continues. But we paid it all back.. A retired Arizona law enforcement officer, Browning is the president and founder of the Skinhead Intelligence Network and is in charge of security for the A&E show, where his wife Tawni works as the casting producer. was just as frugal as his brother he lived in a dilapidated shack with planks missing from the porch but he had a better head for business. Chinese people were called stupid, and Mexicans were dirty, said Lu Ann, adding, because of their skin.. "I didn't touch her; I just used a turkey baster," she mimics, rolling her eyes. Stephen moved in with his brother. The son of Pauls sister Rachel herself a daughter of Ortell and LaDonna Kingston Young was the only current member of the Kingston clan, out of the many contacted for this story, who consented to a live, on-the-record interview. And they are growing. Some people say they funneled the money through Mexico. There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece. Unable to visit his mother, Stephen would leave a $100 bill in her mailbox or, with his brothers, buy her new furniture. I pass the dairy, the zoo, the park, the former birthing clinic, the condemned high school built on a foundation of adobe bricks, and so on. Jonathan Turner, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside, hypothesized exactly that, in an article published by the ABC news network in 2008. Immune Response. When Stephen was a boy, the clan would gather for the New Year in a warehouse in the city for its annual ritual: the numbering of the men. Their neighbors had no idea that the family were prominent members of the Kingston clan, the most powerful polygamist cult in America and one of the most dangerous. There have also been charges made that some plural wives and their children have . The boys were sentenced to two years of probation and taken back into the Order. Structural Birth Defects. Another group of kids called the Lost Boys, who were kicked out of the polygamist cult the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ended up on the streets of Las Vegas and Phoenix, some turning tricks for drugs like meth and heroin. As part of a plea bargain, Jeremy spent just one year in prison. Black people supposedly suffered from multiple scriptural curses, from the mark of Cain and Noahs curse on Ham in the Old Testament to the racist tenets of early Mormonism that have since been renounced or abandoned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS or Mormon church. Boys work its coal mine and stack boxes at Standard Restaurant Supply, a massive discount store. They were the type of kids you didnt mess with, says Robert Owen, a former member of the clan. A scrappy white wooden fence runs the length of it along Canyon Street. In its place, someone had left a note. Among the polygamous Kingstons, a number of children have been born with birth defects, among them one born with two vaginas and two uteruses but no Outwardly, she appeared to have no sex organs. We were taught to be polite, but to never make friends with outsiders. The clan avoids hospitals, believing government-backed doctors might inject them with a mysterious disease or demand birth records exposing the Orders lifestyle. Paul would rather have the wealth and the money than the isolation and the conflict, he said. Advance Copy and Printing: Since 2017-$62,450. Theyll do what they need to do to defend whats theirs.. Dawna's younger sister has a little boy with two clubfeet. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. Elden also instituted the church law of one above the other, requiring members blind obedience to the churchs hierarchy of numbered men, with Elden being Brother Number One. Geri and I ask the same question at the same time: "What exactly do you mean by took care of them? There were so many young children who were born with abnormalitiesharelips, club feet, heart valvesthat were they were going to die within a year. But the constant fear has subsided. I think it scared them.. No evidence directly linked him to the missing gold or silver, but his father was convinced he had played a part in the thefts. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. I could tell she loved him, and it seemed like he loved her too. Within a year, Paul Kingston would take a fourth wife. It was a grimy, derelict-looking place. I wonder aloud. Nothing has come of the raids yet, and the IRS refused comment on the matter when contacted by this publication. Julie left the cult at age 19. The adult residents of Short Creek todayboth those still in the FLDS and those who have left the cultare mostly able-bodied, seemingly healthy individuals. Unlike other girls in the Order, Richaun was refined she didnt wear hand-me-downs, and at clan dances, a long line of boys waited to dance with her. To her horror, all that remained was a ring of dust, marking the place where a chest of gold coins had once stood. On the show's pilot, the trio bring a burly security guard along as they help a woman sneak into her own home to grab belongings for herself and her two young daughters. It was all fun, Stephen recalls. The lawyers words call to mind another heavenly curse, described in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5 of the Book of Mormon, where God caused a skin of blackness to come upon a group called the Lamanites, supposedly ancestors of Native Americans.
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