Prophet of Death_The Mormon Blood Atonement Killings

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by Pete Earley


  After the four student interns had gone, Bill Lord told Jeffrey that it was time to audit the books for the temple and visitors’ center. This was the first year that Jeffrey had been responsible for the records and when Bill examined them, he was disappointed. Donations to the temple were substantially less than what was expected. In previous years, sales of books and souvenirs and contributions at the temple had always increased. But not this year, and Bill couldn’t figure out why. When he checked the visitors’ log at the temple and discovered that a record number of tourists had visited the temple, Lord became suspicious. He called Jeffrey into his office.

  “Something is wrong here,” Lord said.

  Jeffrey looked nervous.

  “There is money missing,” Lord continued.

  Jeffrey suddenly blurted out an explanation. He said that he had been reluctant to mention it during the summer, but he suspected that one of the student interns had been stealing from the cash register. He put the blame on a student he had never liked.

  “We didn’t have any proof,” Lord said later, “so there was nothing we could do.” At the time, neither Bill nor Eleanor Lord suspected that the real thief was Jeffrey.

  Shortly after that encounter, Kevin, Jeffrey, and Alice went to see the movie Manhunter, which is based on the Thomas Harris bestselling novel Red Dragon. Jeffrey and Alice both loved to watch movies and they were constantly seeing parallels between various films and their own lives. Jeffrey was mesmerized by Manhunter, which described a fictional FBI investigator’s pursuit of a ruthless serial killer. The agent eventually caught the murderer by figuring out how he thought. In the movie, this was called developing the same “mindset.” After the show, Jeffrey, Alice, and Kevin spent more than an hour discussing it in the kitchen of the house and then Jeffrey went to study his scriptures. Years later, Kevin would still recall what Alice said once they were alone.

  “Jeffrey reminds me a lot of the agent in that movie,” she told Kevin. “He figures out a person’s mindset—what they want, how they think, what their weaknesses are—and then he uses that to get whatever he wants from them.”

  Chapter 19

  IN the fall of 1985, the adult Sunday school teacher at the Kirtland RLDS congregation decided to take a break, so Jeffrey was asked to teach. He immediately began showing the twenty-five class members how to diagram chiastic poems. Most of them had heard about chiasmus because of an article printed by Ray Treat in The Zarahemla Record. It had pointed out that the Book of Mormon, like the Bible, contained chiastic poems. Treat claimed this was significant because, in his eyes, the fact that both books contained chiasms was proof that the Mormon scriptures had been written thousands of years ago by a band of Hebrews, not by an imaginative twenty-four-year-old New York boy in Palmyra.

  Jeffrey told the adults that Treat had missed the point. By diagraming chiastic poems, he explained, a reader could discover the “secret” truths in the scriptures. Chiasmus reminded Jeffrey of “hidden picture” drawings that he had seen as a child. When you looked at such a drawing the first time, you would see a picture—the face of an old woman with a big nose, for instance. But if you stared at the drawing long enough, the old woman’s face disappeared and you could see a completely different drawing—the outline of a young woman wearing a feathered hat.

  “Jeffrey was just phenomenal when it came to finding these chiasms,” Eleanor Lord recalled. “Everyone in the class was intrigued when he first diagramed them and explained how they worked.”

  While Eleanor liked Jeffrey and enjoyed his classes, she often was uncomfortable about some of his claims. “Jeffrey had a habit in class of making people believe that what he was teaching was some kind of personal discovery that he had made,” she said. Most weeks, she and Jeffrey would talk at the visitors’ center about the scriptures and various concepts. She was the first one, in fact, to show him Ray Treat’s article about chiasmus. She also knew that Jeffrey got many of his ideas from Tom. “But when Jeffrey taught the class, he always . . . gave the impression that what he was saying was based on some great inspiration that he had received by himself.”

  In October 1985, Jeffrey learned that the Church was going to hire another tour guide, so Jeffrey telephoned Tom and urged him to apply. Tom’s wife, Patti, didn’t want to move. She had a good job in Independence and Tom was still unemployed. “But if we move to Kirtland,” Tom argued, “I can sit and study and examine records all day long and I will finally be able to learn the truth.” Patti reluctantly admitted that ever since Tom had been studying the scriptures via the telephone with Jeffrey, the two of them had made some remarkable discoveries. She agreed to move, and in November 1985, Tom reported to work at the visitors’ center.

  That same month, Jeffrey received a telephone call from Jim Robbins. Even though the two men had quarreled before the Lundgrens left Independence, Jeffrey and Jim had renewed their friendship. Jeffrey had initiated the peace process by writing to Jim about the symbols in the temple. Jim responded with a letter and the two men were soon writing regularly. Almost immediately, Jeffrey asked Jim in a letter for a personal loan and suggested that he and Laura once again consider supporting him and Alice. Jim had declined, but had continued to write. Jim had called because he and Laura wanted to spend Thanksgiving with the Lundgrens in Kirtland. Jeffrey was excited about the visit. “I have many new discoveries to share with you,” he told Jim. The Robbinses planned to spend three full days in Kirtland, but the morning after they arrived, Jeffrey began lecturing Jim about the secret power of chiasmus and how Kirtland was the true location of Zion. Finally, Jim protested.

  “Jeff, I just don’t see it the same way as you do,” he said. But Jeffrey continued to hammer away. The next morning, Jim and Laura announced that they were driving to Pennsylvania to visit a friend. They wouldn’t be back until late that night. “We just had to get away from him,” said Jim. When the Robbinses returned that night, Jeff was clearly peeved. “He let me know that he didn’t like us coming up to see them and then going away for a full day. He wanted us there and the reason why was because he wanted to convince us to move to Kirtland.” The next day was Thanksgiving, and after Jeffrey carved the turkey that Jim and Laura had brought with them, he launched into another lecture. By the next morning, Jim and Laura were eager to leave. While they were backing their car out of the Lundgrens’ driveway, Jeffrey stepped up to the car window for one last-ditch attempt to persuade Jim that he needed to move.

  “Jim, this is where the action is going to be—here in Kirtland, not Independence,” he said. “I expect you back here soon.”

  “Jeffrey,” Jim replied coldly, “you will never see me back in Kirtland unless the Lord Himself tells me to come back. There will be no more friendly visits here.” With that, Jim rolled up his window and left.

  That was the last time that Jim and Laura ever saw the Lundgrens. Years later, when Jim recalled that final exchange, he would remember how he felt while driving away. “As crazy as it sounds, even though I had rejected everything that Jeffrey had said, while we were traveling down the road, I turned to Laura and said, ‘Maybe we ought to think about moving to Kirtland.’ Jeff had this magnetism about him. He never expressed any doubts and when he said something, it was like the Lord Himself had said it. To a member of the RLDS, that is very appealing. You are trained to relate to that and I did. Only after we had driven further down the road did 1 realize that what he was preaching was simply nuts.”

  Not everyone thought so. Alice would later insist that at this point in her marriage to Jeffrey, she genuinely believed that he was fulfilling the patriarch’s 1969 prophecy. “I felt God was directing our lives.” She and Jeffrey still argued, particularly about sex. But both of them had eased up and were getting along better than they ever had. “The feces wasn’t so common. Mostly, he would just bend my body in all sorts of uncomfortable positions. He was really getting into dominance and wanting to control me—in the bed and everywhere else. But I still loved him and I truly believe
d that Jeff could be someone important in the church.”

  Jeffrey was working hard to become such a person. Besides learning everything that he could about biblical prophets, Jeffrey was poring over the history of the church. In Kirtland, he found information in the archives that he had not been taught in Sunday school youngster. One such account was an embarrassing moment in Mormon history in 1843, when Joseph Smith, Jr., was given six metal plates that had been discovered next to human bones in an ancient Indian burial mound near Kinderhook, Illinois. The bell-shaped plates were marked with strange hieroglyphics and Smith was asked if he could decipher them. After studying the plates, the prophet declared that he could, indeed, read them, and he translated a sample paragraph. He noted the discovery in his private journal.

  Monday, May 1—I insert facsimiles of the six brass plates found near Kinderhook. . . . I have translated a portion of them, and find they contain the history of the person with which they were found. He is a descendant of Ham, through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. . . .

  The discovery of the Kinderhook Plates sparked rumors of a sequel to the Book of Mormon and sent church members scurrying to their scriptures for clues that would help them identify the mysterious “descendant of Ham.’’ Smith had always said that God showed him only a few of the records made by the ancient Hebrews.

  Shortly after Smith publicly declared the plates genuine, three men from Kinderhook came forward with an announcement of their own. The entire thing was a hoax. The men had cut six pieces of copper from a strip and inscribed letters on each with acid. These “hieroglyphics” were actually characters copied from the lid of a Chinese tea box. The copper was “aged” by rust and hidden in the Indian mound. A gullible Mormon elder was later led to the site, where he unearthed the plates and was urged to rush them to Smith.

  Despite the scam, Smith insisted that other plates made by the ancient Hebrews would someday be found. His claims were consistent with passages from the Book of Mormon that predicted that God would eventually reveal the history of the ancient Hebrews to a prophet [a.k.a. Joseph Smith, Jr.] but would keep part of the records “sealed” because they contained information that the world was not yet ready to receive. Among other things, the records supposedly contained “a revelation” that would explain all things “from the foundation of the world unto the end thereof.”

  Jeffrey had been to Chapin Forest several times trying to find an entrance to the “secret chamber” behind the strange holes that he had found along with Tom Miller and Ray Treat. But he hadn’t had any luck. One morning, Jeffrey came across a passage in Section IOI of the Doctrine and Covenants that described a revelation purportedly given by God to Joseph Smith, Jr., on April 23, I834. According to it, God ordered Smith to build a “treasury” for “all the sacred things” that God had given him. Jeffrey read the verse to Alice.

  “Joseph was in Kirtland when he received this revelation,” he explained, so it was only logical that the prophet would build a treasury in Ohio. “It’s got to be in Chapin Forest.”

  Jeffrey told Alice that he was going out to the park for one final look. About an hour later, he returned and hurried Alice into the bedroom.

  “I found it,” he whispered. “I found the treasury!”

  Jeffrey told Alice that there hadn’t been anyone else at Chapin Forest when he arrived. He had walked down the path—the same one that he had seen in his dream—to where the strange holes were located. Jeffrey had knelt down and was praying when he heard footsteps.

  “My first thoughts were ‘Oh, gosh, some hiker is going to see me praying and think I am stupid,’ but I continued to pray. When I looked up, there was a personage [angel] there and he explained that God had sent him. He was in charge of the treasury. He told me that he had never suffered death and that he had been a guardian of the treasury from when it was built.”

  The personage led Jeffrey to a secret opening, he said. “The guardian told me that the treasury could only be opened if God wishes it to be opened so even if other people go look, they won’t be able to find it.” While Jeffrey waited, the figure went into the treasury. “I looked inside and saw that it was a large chamber. The figure came out with one plate, a single plate, and I looked down and read part of what it said, and then he took it back into the treasury. “

  Alice drilled him with questions. Who was the personage? Was the plate that Jeffrey saw made of gold? What did the chamber look like? Had he seen the Sword of Laban? But the big question that she wanted answered was: “What was written on the plate?”

  “I can’t tell you everything that I read,” Jeffrey replied solemnly, “because I am not supposed to reveal it yet.”

  But, he continued, with a flash of excitement, “I can tell who the writing was about.”

  “Who?” Alice asked.

  “Alice,” Jeffrey replied dramatically, “the writing on the plate was about me and what God wants me to do.”

  Alice was excited. “Jeffrey had finally found a niche in life. He was really, really good at giving tours and really, really good at interpreting scripture. It was perfect for him, and we had Kevin and Sharon supporting us financially, so for the first time in our marriage, I didn’t have to worry about where the next meal was coming from. We had stability and all these wonderful things were happening to Jeffrey. He was seeing things and things were happening to him that just didn’t happen to anyone else.”

  God had used the scriptures to direct Jeffrey to Kirtland. God had created an opening at the temple so that Jeffrey could be a guide there. God had caused Jeffrey to have visions. And God had sent word to Alice through a patriarch at the 1969 summer camp warning her about her future husband. Like pieces of a puzzle, everything was beginning to come together. As she stood there, wondering exactly what it all meant, Jeffrey told her something else.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said. “We are going to have anal sex. “

  Alice stared at Jeffrey and then quietly disrobed.

  All of her life, she had been taught that every religion required its members to make a so-called “leap of faith.” Alice had decided that her marriage to Jeffrey required the same.

  “I had reached a point where I had to choose: Was I going to believe what Jeffrey was telling me and support him or was I going to doubt and question him?”

  As far as Alice was concerned, there was no choice. “I decided that he truly was my Lord and my master.”

  Chapter 20

  NOT many visitors came to the temple during the winter of 1985 and early 1986 so Jeffrey and Tom Miller had plenty of time to study their scriptures. Eleanor Lord would join them some days. All three had become proficient at finding chiastic verses. But Jeffrey was the champ. “Chiasmus was becoming an obsession with him,” Eleanor noted.

  One morning Jeffrey burst into the center and announced that he had made an astounding discovery. He had been reading the First Book of Nephi in the Book of Mormon, which is the equivalent of Genesis in the Bible, and he had found a new meaning for a phrase it contained. According to the book, the prophet Nephi explained that he had written the history of the Nephites “in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.” Most Mormons felt this was a reference to “Reformed Egyptian,” the term that Joseph Smith, Jr., used to describe the writing on the mystical golden plates. But Jeffrey had a different explanation.

  Before Jeffrey revealed one of his discoveries, he always laid the groundwork by quoting scripture and this time he began in chapter 41 of Genesis, which tells how God caused Pharaoh to dream two strange dreams. Jeffrey read part of verse 32 aloud:

  “…the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice; it is because the thing is established by God ...”

  “Why did God cause Pharaoh to dream twice?” Jeffrey asked. Without waiting for a reply, he told Tom and Eleanor to turn to the Old Testament book of Job, verse 14 in chapter 33, which read: “For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.”
/>   Jeffrey paused and then summarized his points. The Hebrews had written their poetry by repeating each line. God had caused Pharaoh to dream two dreams. And the writers of Job said that God “speaketh once, yea twice.”

  “What the scriptures are telling us,” Jeffrey said, “is that God says everything twice—He speaks chiastically!” In Jeffrey’s eyes, it made perfect sense. The reason the ancient Hebrews had used “parallelism” in their poetry is because they wanted to praise God in His own language, he explained. So when the prophet Nephi used the phrase the “language of my father” and the “learning of the Jews,” he was referring to chiasmus.

  Tom thought Jeffrey was on to something, hut Eleanor wasn’t so certain. “I now realize that this was a turning point for Jeffrey,” she said, “because in his mind, he had found a great truth. Jeffrey felt that he had found a foolproof way to separate God’s words from man’s words. If a scripture was chiastic in structure, then it was of God. Otherwise, it was from man, and didn’t really count.”

  Jeffrey was so confident that he used a red marker to cross out the lines in the Bible and his Mormon scriptures that didn’t pass the test.

  A few days after Jeffrey made this discovery, Eleanor asked him if he planned to discard the Lord’s Prayer and Christ’s Sermon on the Mount since neither was a chiastic poem. Did Jeffrey really believe that those scriptures didn’t matter?

 

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