Prophet of Death_The Mormon Blood Atonement Killings

by Pete Earley

  Gail’s folks considered Yarborough a “newcomer” even though his family had moved to Kirtland in the 1950s after his stepfather, a welder by trade, was hired at a nearby General Motors auto plant. Yarborough had grown up poor—a family of five all living in a twenty-seven-foot-long trailer. He never minded.

  The other reason why Yarborough was police chief, besides Gail, was because he genuinely, some would even say naively at times, wanted to help other people. The way that Yarborough treated “old Edna” was typical. By everyone’s standards, she was mean and nasty. Only her cats seemed to like her. She had about a dozen. The chief got stuck with handling her chronic complaints. One hot afternoon, Yarborough spent an hour listening to Edna blab about some insignificant gripe. Finally, he interrupted and asked Edna the names of her cats. It turned out that each of her cats was named for a character from Shakespeare. Pretty soon, Edna was gabbing about the famous English playwright. When it was time to go, Edna berated Yarborough, but begrudgingly added that he was better than the last chief. It was Yarborough who later found Edna dead, lying naked on the floor of her bathroom. She had suffered a stroke. Before Yarborough called the morgue, he took a housecoat out of the closet and put it on the corpse. Several neighbors had gathered outside. “I just didn’t want anyone to see her like that,” he said. “She would have been embarrassed.”

  Yarborough recognized the name Jeffrey Lundgren, when Kevin called. Although he was a backslider, Yarborough was raised RLDS. He’d heard all about Jeffrey’s ongoing feud with Dale Luffman. Gail and her parents were fundamentalists. Yarborough’s mother, who lived with him and Gail, supported Luffman. The chief had gotten an earful from both about the church’s problems.

  Yarborough had always thought Jeffrey was odd. Shortly after Jeffrey moved to town in 1984, he stormed into Yarborough’s office. People were peeking through the windows of his house at night, he claimed. Yarborough waved off the charge. It was probably youngsters, curious about their new neighbors, or tourists who had mistakenly thought the house was part of the temple. Jeffrey didn’t think it was funny. A few days later, Yarborough noticed that Jeffrey had painted the glass on all the basement windows green to prevent anyone from seeing inside. All the shades in the house were kept down all day too. “I wondered what he was trying to hide.”

  A few months later, Yarborough had spotted Jeffrey driving a 1952 green Chevrolet. Yarborough had owned one like it as a teenager. He ran a check on the license plate and discovered it belonged to Danny Kraft, Jr. Curious, Yarborough asked a few questions and discovered that Jeffrey had attracted several young followers.

  He hadn’t heard much recently about Jeffrey, although his relatives had mentioned that Jeffrey had resigned as a tour guide and started a commune at the old apple orchard. And now Kevin Currie was on the phone, telling Yarborough that Jeffrey was going to lead an armed takeover of the temple and behead Dale Luffman.

  By the time Kevin finished talking, Yarborough was “ninety percent” certain that it was true. But it was so bizarre that Yarborough decided to get a second opinion. He telephoned the FBI office in nearby Painesville and asked to speak to Special Agent Robert Alvord. Yarborough considered Alvord a personal friend. A tall, lanky man in his early forties, Alvord had been with the bureau eighteen years and was an ex-F4 Phantom-jet pilot who had served two tours in Vietnam.

  “This is Yarborough,” he announced when Alvord came on the line. “Do I have something that is going to ring your bell!” He quickly highlighted Kevin’s story. “I think he’s telling the truth, Bob,” Yarborough concluded. “How can you guys help me?”

  Alvord wasn’t sure he could, particularly since the FBI office in Buffalo had already interviewed Kevin in person and decided he was unreliable. Unless Yarborough came up with some sort of evidence to collaborate Kevin’s story, Yarborough was on his own.

  The chief felt trapped. If Kevin was lying, Yarborough would look like a rube for believing him, especially since the FBI hadn’t. But if Kevin’s story was true and Yarborough didn’t respond—just the thought made Yarborough shudder. The chief sorted through the stacks of papers on his desk and eventually fished out a calendar. He had three days until May 1. “I was trying to figure out how I could possibly corroborate Kevin’s story. I didn’t have a clue.”

  Yarborough decided to quiz his six officers. Had any of them noticed anything suspicious about Jeffrey and his group? One had. Ron Andolsek, a chain-smoking, skinny thirty-five-year-old patrolman, had butted heads with Jeffrey only a few days earlier. A neighbor had complained because geese from Jeffrey’s farm were running loose. Andolsek had told Jeffrey to keep the geese penned. When Andolsek told the neighbor that the geese were being rounded up, she had told him that Jeffrey and his followers were weird. Caleb Lundgren had told her daughter that on May 3 the “earth was going to open up and all of the devils and demons were going to come up.” Andolsek had figured the story was the result of an overactive imagination, but now he wondered: Had Caleb overheard his father talking about the temple takeover? Kevin Currie had mentioned that there was going to be a great earthquake on May 3. That seemed to fit with Caleb’s story.

  Buoyed by Andolsek’s remarks, Yarborough briefed Kirtland Mayor Mario Marcopoli and asked for permission to pay his officers overtime so that he could stake out the Lundgren farmhouse. The story struck Marcopoli as unbelievable, but he authorized the extra pay.

  Later that night, Yarborough drove his unmarked brown station wagon to a spot near the farm where he could see the house and the route that Jeffrey was supposedly going to use in three days to reach the temple. It had been less than twelve hours since Kevin had called. Kevin said the takeover was scheduled to happen between 9:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M. Yarborough wanted to make certain that Jeffrey hadn’t moved up the date. He stayed at his post watching the house through binoculars until 1:00 A.M. and then he went home. Yarborough hoped Kevin was a nut.

  During the next three days, Yarborough quietly talked with church officials and learned that Jeffrey had been fired for stealing church funds. He was told that Jeffrey despised Dale Luffman. With time running out, Yarborough decided to confront Jeffrey. “I didn’t want to tell him that we knew about the takeover because then he would have figured out that Kevin had called us. But I wanted Jeffrey to know that he was being watched.” Kevin had mentioned that Jeffrey and his group had conducted military training drills in the orchard. Yarborough telephoned the farm and asked Jeffrey to stop by the station.

  “We’ve had some complaints about paramilitary groups being spotted in your orchard,” Yarborough said. “Have you seen them?”

  “No,” Jeffrey replied.

  “Probably guys playing war games with paint guns,” Yarborough continued, trying to sound nonchalant. “We’d appreciate you keeping an eye out for them.”

  “Sure,” Jeffrey volunteered.

  “Of course, we’ll be watching for them too,” the chief added. Jeffrey seemed nervous. Yarborough asked him if he owned any guns. Only a couple of rifles for hunting and some black-powder guns that he collected, Jeffrey said, lying.

  Jeffrey had what the chief later called “dancing eyes.” “He kept glancing around. He was like a frightened rabbit.”

  After Jeffrey left, Yarborough spoke to one of his officers. “How can anyone follow that guy?” Yarborough asked. “He’s a real dud.” Later that day, Yarborough made a private telephone call to a friend from his days in the army. “I need a favor,” he said. A few hours later, the chief picked up a .45-caliber Ingram Mac-10 machine gun capable of firing 1,200 rounds per minute.

  On the night of May 1, Yarborough and three of his men staked out the temple and church. Nothing happened. They were there the next night too. Again, nothing happened. Yarborough hoped his talk had scared Jeffrey away. But he couldn’t be certain.

  On the afternoon of May 3, Yarborough briefed his officers. “If it’s gonna happen, then tonight’s the night.” One of them asked if they had sufficient “probable cause” to be
gin shooting if they spotted Jeffrey and his squad coming toward the temple. There were seven of them and Kevin had said that they would be carrying semi-automatic weapons. Did Yarborough really plan on yelling “Stop! Police!” before opening fire?

  “If we see them in military gear with weapons,” Yarborough replied quietly, “that’s all the probable cause we need.”

  At about 8:30 P.M., Yarborough drove behind the RLDS church. He positioned himself so that he would be the first to see Jeffrey, the first to confront the group, the first to begin shooting. He also would be the group’s most likely target. Yarborough placed the Mac-10 machine gun in his lap. He was angry. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in Kirtland.

  “I had resolved myself,” he said later. “If Jeffrey came up behind the church with his followers, they were never going to make it to the temple alive.”

  Chapter 32

  SHAR Olson got out of bed early on the morning that Jeffrey was scheduled to ask God when He wanted the Kirtland temple taken over. She walked downstairs in the farmhouse and found Jeffrey eating breakfast in the kitchen.

  “Why are you up?” Jeffrey asked.

  Shar had a ready explanation. “I figured if you were going to go see God, then I should get up and support you.”

  Jeffrey smiled and praised her for being such a devoted daughter. A few minutes later he left. Shar watched through a large picture window in the farmhouse as Jeffrey walked toward a hill that he claimed was the largest mountain in Ohio. [It wasn’t but no one in the group had ever checked.]

  Shar had lied. She had gotten up because she wanted to make certain that Jeffrey really did go to the “mountain.” Shar had started to doubt that Jeffrey was a prophet and his comments that morning had made her even more suspicious. A real prophet would have known why she had gotten up early.

  Shar sat at the window for more than an hour. Jeffrey had told his group that God always appeared in a brilliant beam of light. She didn’t see any beams of light, but she noticed two clouds in the sky almost directly over where Jeffrey had gone. When Jeffrey returned to the farmhouse, he again thanked Shar for getting up with him.

  That night Jeffrey told the group during scripture class that God had indeed appeared to him that morning in a beam of light that had shone down through a completely clear blue sky. Shar knew immediately that Jeffrey was not telling the truth. She had seen two clouds in the sky. But she kept quiet and continued to listen to Jeffrey’s story.

  God had been angry when he appeared, Jeffrey said. He was disappointed in Jeffrey’s followers. Despite Jeffrey’s teachings, his followers still needed to repent. “Thus saith the Lord, this is not the year for Christ to return to His temple,” Jeffrey said. “You are unclean.”

  “The reason why it did not happen,” Ron later told investigators, “was because . . . our sin would not allow us to come into the presence of God.” Christ could only return to the temple if it had been cleansed. “There was too much sin in Jeffrey’s household,” Ron said.

  That night, Jeffrey went one by one through the group and described each person’s sin. Only one person was pure enough to meet Jesus. That was Jeffrey. Alice’s sin was disobedience because she still did not submit her will to Jeffrey. Dennis Patrick’s sin was pride and arrogance because he still attempted to interpret scripture by himself rather than blindly accepting what Jeffrey said. But Jeffrey’s harshest criticism was aimed at Richard. It was his refusal to marry Sharon that was the primary reason why the temple takeover had been called off. At one point during the class, Jeffrey took out a .45-caliber pistol and placed it next to his scriptures. Looking directly at Richard, Jeffrey said: “I will get you to meet God—one way or another.”

  After that class, the mood at the farm changed, Shar said. Richard blamed himself for letting the group down. Everyone else felt guilty. People began to bicker. Alice and Jeffrey fought too. Shar had gotten a job as a waitress at night, which meant that she didn’t have to go to work until late in the afternoon. She was generally the only group member home in the mornings with Jeffrey and Alice. One morning, Shar was awakened by the sound of Alice and Jeffrey arguing.

  “When are you going to submit your will?” she heard Jeffrey holler. “When are you going to obey your Lord and master and do what I command?”

  A few minutes later, Alice stormed out of the bedroom and left the farmhouse. She got as far as the gravel drive before she stopped, began to cry, and returned to the house.

  “She spent three days in bed after that,” Shar said. “Alice didn’t come out of her bedroom and Jeffrey catered to her.” He made her milkshakes, brought her shrimp platters, bought her presents. When she finally emerged from the bedroom, Alice said there was something she wanted to tell the group. “She apologized to the family and said it wouldn’t happen again,” said Shar. “It was pretty typical of Alice. After all of these outbursts of hers, she would calm down and she’d say that she was a broken woman now and that she was perfect and she was the submissive wife, but it wouldn’t be too long before they’d be back into it again.”

  In May, Shar got a telephone call at work from a creditor who complained that she was several months behind on her car payments. Jeffrey had assured her that he was paying her bills. Like everyone else, she turned over all of her cash to him. That night at dinner, Shar mentioned the call. Jeffrey ordered everyone to leave the room but the two of them.

  “I don’t owe those Gentiles anything,” Jeffrey said. “God doesn’t need credit and neither should you.” He then criticized her for being “rebellious.”

  A few days later, Jeffrey and Shar clashed again. This time it was over a Mother’s Day telephone call. Jeffrey didn’t allow anyone to use the telephone without his permission and he caught Shar talking to her mother. That night at class, Jeffrey said Alice was sick in bed because of Shar’s disobedience. “I was told that Alice was my mother . . . and I had greatly hurt her because of my sins.”

  The next day when Shar went to apologize, she found Alice lying in bed with the curtains drawn.

  “I’m really sorry,” Shar said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “As a mother,” Alice replied slowly, “it’s just a burden I’m going to have to bear.”

  Alice stayed in bed three days before she felt well enough to rejoin the group.

  Shar decided that it was time for her to quit the family. But she wasn’t going to sneak away like Kevin Currie. She wasn’t going to leave all the clothing and the furniture that she had brought from Independence. She went to see Jeffrey one night while he was in an office that he had made in the barn.

  “I want out,” she said.

  “You wait here,” he replied sternly. Jeffrey rushed over to the farmhouse and when he returned, he had Alice and Danny with him. For the next two hours, Alice and Danny pleaded with Shar to stay. Alice cried. “You can’t do this!” she said. Alice reminded Shar that she was supposed to marry Danny. Their names were written in the scriptures. When Alice and Danny failed to sway Shar, Jeffrey weighed in, only he was nasty.

  “You will never amount to anything if you leave,” he said. “God will curse you.”

  Shar started to cry. “I was sitting on an old ammo box and they had formed a semicircle around me with their chairs and they just kept going on and on and on and then finally Danny said, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ He looked over at Jeffrey and he said, ‘You said that Shar was one of the twelve who was going to make it, going to survive the temple takeover. You said her name was written in the book.’ Jeffrey turned red and then he said, ‘No, if she leaves, she dies.’ And then he looked at me and put his finger in my face and said, ‘I’ll see to it that your flesh will rot if you leave.’”

  Shar became hysterical. “I’ll stay, I’ll stay,” she mumbled.

  And then something strange happened. Alice became irritated and accused Shar of staging the entire evening. She claimed that the real reason Shar wanted to leave the group was because, in Alice’s words, “you�
�re just horny.’’ No one was allowed to have sex at the farm unless they were married. “The bottom line is that you want out because you want to go get screwed.”

  Shar was crushed. “Sex had nothing to do with it, but for some reason, Alice fixated on it.”

  For two weeks, Shar stuck it out, and then one night, Alice came prancing into her bedroom wearing a sexy pair of pink silk pajamas.

  “Jeffrey bought them for me,” she gushed. “What do you think?”

  That very morning Shar had asked Jeffrey for ten dollars to buy a new pair of tennis shoes because her only pair had a hole in them. “We don’t have enough money right now,” he’d told her.

  “Mom,” Shar told Alice, “I want out. I don’t want to live here anymore.”

  Jeffrey was waiting the next morning when Shar came downstairs.

  “Get your shit and get out,” he said.

  As Shar started to leave, Jeffrey came after her. He reminded her that when she had moved to the farm, he had paid to put some of her belongings in storage. He was keeping two expensive quilts that Shar had inherited to pay that bill, he said. Shar didn’t care.