Prophet of Death_The Mormon Blood Atonement Killings

by Pete Earley

  Alice fretted for more than a week and then she finally confronted Jeffrey. He denied everything, and with each denial, Alice became more convinced. “You’re lying,” she yelled. “You’re nothing but a liar.”

  Jeffrey refused to change his story. Instead, he fell back on his scriptures. “Jeffrey had a habit of doing something and then looking for scriptures to justify his actions,” Alice said later. “And that was exactly what he did when I confronted him.”

  By early July, Jeffrey had figured out a scheme. He told Tonya that it was time for him to announce that she was his second wife, but he cautioned her not to tell anyone that they had already been sexually active for two months. “He told me that he’d found a way to deal with Alice.”

  One morning, Jeffrey took Alice for a walk and when they stopped to rest, he told her that God was angry at her because of her rebellion. Opening his Bible, Jeffrey turned to chapter 54 in Isaiah. He read the first two verses to her. The key phrase was:

  ... for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent ...

  Jeffrey diagramed the passage and told Alice that it contained a secret message to him from God. This is what he wrote:

  [A] the married wife

  [B] saith the Lord

  [A] enlarge the place of thy tent

  “The Lord is ordering me to ‘enlarge my tent’ by taking a ‘married wife,”’ Jeffrey said. “Who is ‘the married wife’? Obviously, it is Tonya.”

  “No!” Alice shrieked. “You can’t do this, Jeffrey!”

  “It is your fault,” he replied. Jeffrey explained that God had grown tired of Alice’s constant quibbling and had decided to show her that it was not easy being the “God of the whole earth.”

  “You are always trying to second-guess me and be like God,” Jeffrey said, “so God has decided to let you make a life-or-death decision.”

  God had ordered Jeffrey to “pierce” Tonya. He could do it with his penis by taking her as his wife and having sexual intercourse with her, he explained. Or he could shoot her with his .45 pistol. It was up to Alice to choose which it would be.

  “Jeffrey said it didn’t really matter to him which I chose,” Alice said later, “and I believed that he was ready to shoot Tonya and Molly.”

  Falling to her knees, Alice begged him not to make her choose. “Jeff just stood there with his arms crossed across his chest. I cried and cried and cried.”

  “Choose ye this day,” Jeffrey proclaimed. “You have to pay the price for your disobedience.”

  Alice stood up. “I guess you have another wife,” she said, amid sobs.

  When it was time for scripture class that night, Jeffrey told Tonya to stay in the tent. After his followers were seated, he opened his Bible and read the verses from Isaiah about the “married wife.” He then took out his .45 pistol and held up a bullet so that the group could see it. He loaded and cocked the handgun.

  “I’m only going to say this once,” Jeffrey said solemnly, “so everyone listen. When I’m finished, I don’t want any objections.”

  Jeffrey explained how God had become angry at Alice and had made her choose how Tonya would be “pierced.” As Jeffrey spoke, Alice sat next to him staring at the ground.

  “Rather than taking Tonya’s life, Alice has agreed to my taking Tonya as a wife,” Jeffrey announced. He raised the .45 pistol and pointed it directly at Dennis’s forehead.

  “Do you have any problems with this, Dennis?” he asked.

  “I knew what my response was supposed to be,” Dennis said later. “I answered, ‘No Sir.’”

  That night, Alice began crying when it was time for bed. Tonya was soon in tears too. The two women sat on the bed sobbing. “Tonya said to me, ‘Alice, please don’t hate me,’ and I said to her, ‘I could never hate you, Tonya.’ And then Jeff came in and told me that he was going to go help Tonya take a shower and I said, ‘Oh, Jeff, do you have to do it now?,’ and he sat down and said, ‘Okay, I won’t do it tonight.”’ Jeffrey told Tonya to sleep in the children’s room that night with Molly.

  The next morning, Jeffrey told Alice that he wanted her to go for a ride with him on the ATV. They rode several miles away from camp until they came to a stream. Jeffrey stopped the ATV and told Alice that there were two parts to her punishment. God had required her to make a life-or-death decision, which she had done. But since Jeffrey was Alice’s personal “lord and master,” he too had a right to punish her for her rebellion. Alice was going to have to prove to Jeffrey that she would obey his every command. She told him that she would.

  Jeffrey told Alice to strip, and when she was standing naked in the woods, he ordered her to remove his clothing. “I thought we were going to make love,” said Alice, “but instead, Jeffrey had a bowel movement and he instructed me to cover him with his own feces, leaving just enough for him to use to masturbate with. I did as he commanded and then he told me to tell him how beautiful he was, how wonderful he looked with all of this feces on him. I did this while he masturbated.”

  Jeffrey couldn’t achieve ejaculation, Alice later said, so he commanded her to help stimulate him. “He took some of the feces and put it in his own mouth,” Alice said later, “but he didn’t swallow it. A lot of saliva come out and . . . he pulled me up and made me kiss him on the lips and then he . . . told me to perform oral sex on him without washing any of the feces off.”

  Alice did what he asked, but after several minutes, she became physically ill and began to gag. “He grabbed me and pushed his penis into my mouth and told me not to stop again for any reason. He told me to swallow everything—told me that I couldn’t spit. I went on with it until he had obtained orgasm.”

  Afterward, Jeffrey led Alice to the creek. “I was told to give him a bath and he told me that I had been obedient and that I was forgiven and he thanked me for being a pure wife and I said, ‘Okay.’ And then he told me that he loved me.”

  They got dressed and returned to camp.

  A few days later, Jeffrey announced that it was time for God’s commandment to be carried out. He ordered Alice to “prepare the bed” in the tent for Tonya. He intended to “pierce” her. While Alice did what she was told, Jeffrey raced over to the camp’s makeshift bathroom and surprised Tonya, who was inside. Grinning, he watched her for several seconds as she sat on the toilet and then announced that he wanted her back in the tent immediately.

  When Tonya got there, Jeffrey ordered Alice to leave. She closed the tent flap behind her and hurried over to the kitchen where Debbie and Kathy were baking bread. “Alice was talking a mile a minute about funny things that her children had done,” Kathy said later. “It suddenly dawned on me what was happening.” All the other adults also figured out what was going on and they began gathering around Alice to give her moral support.

  Jeffrey and Tonya were in the tent for only a few minutes when Jeffrey came scurrying outside. He rushed over to Alice.

  “I couldn’t do it,” he announced in a voice that everyone could easily hear. Jeffrey explained that he had been unable to have sex with Tonya because she was not, as he put it, “flesh of my flesh.

  “I was undressed and Tonya was undressed. I saw her and she saw me. I touched her and tried to find something to focus on that was arousing. I’m not trying to belittle her, but she is not my flesh and ... I couldn’t obtain an erection so I got dressed and said, ‘I’m sorry, but if you want any satisfaction, you’re going to have to do it by yourself.”’

  That story is similar to the explanation that he first gave Alice when she discovered ten years earlier that he had spent the weekend in a motel with a fellow employee from Lake of the Ozarks Hospital. Despite the similarities, Alice appeared overjoyed.

  “Oh, Jeffrey,” she squealed, throwing her arms around him. “I knew you couldn’t betray me.”

  The rest of the day, Jeffrey strolled through camp making jokes about his own inability to have sex with Tonya. He told everyone that h
e had been forced to “pierce” Tonya with his finger because he found her so unattractive that he simply couldn’t obtain an erection. Kathy Johnson would later recall that Jeffrey had told her and Keith that Tonya had given a new meaning to the biblical phrase “withering away.’’

  Tonya, who had been told to stay inside the tent all day, could hear what Jeffrey was saying and she was confused and hurt. She knew that he was lying. Why, she wondered, was he belittling her? That night, a completely different Jeffrey from the “loving” one who had wooed her, came into the tent. He briskly told Tonya that she was filled with sin. He had been studying the scriptures, he announced, to see what he was supposed to do with her. “Jeffrey had been telling me for weeks that I was pure and free of sin and now he was telling me I was wicked—just like that. All I could think was that he was setting the stage to get rid of me. He was tired of me and wanted someone else.” Jeffrey told Tonya that she could remain in his tent, but he wasn’t going to sleep with her and he warned her against telling anyone about their sexual encounters.

  At scripture class a few nights later, Alice once again jumped to her feet and lectured the women about how they should do whatever their husbands demanded. Debbie would later recall Alice’s comments. “She said, ‘If Jeffrey wants me to be his doormat, then I’ll be happy the rest of my life cleaning his shoes. He is my master and I live only to serve his desires.”’

  Shortly after Alice made that declaration in late July 1989, Jeffrey told her that God had caused him to dream a strange dream.

  “Jeffrey told me that God had shown him a woman’s vagina in this dream,” Alice later said. “He said that God had ordered him to find this vagina.’’

  Chapter 44

  THE day after FBI agents and the entire Kirtland police force descended on Jeffrey’s farmhouse outside Kirtland, Patrolman Ron Andolsek telephoned a Cleveland-area psychologist for advice. The therapist confirmed Andolsek’s fears. Now that Jeffrey had been confronted by police and had avoided arrest, he would probably claim that he was being protected by God, the therapist said. He might even tell his followers that he had become divine.

  Andolsek drove by the farmhouse later that day and noticed that it seemed deserted. A short time later, a neighbor complained about rabbits, chickens, and other animals running loose at the farm. When Andolsek drove up to the house and peeked in the windows, he could tell that Jeffrey and his followers had fled.

  “Damn!” Chief Yarborough said when he learned that Jeffrey was gone. “At least when he was at the farm we could watch him. Now we got to find him.”

  For four days, both men worked the telephones. They called Jeffrey’s bank, the post office, the different places where group members worked. When that failed, they began calling various relatives of group members. No one knew where Jeffrey had gone. Shar and Kevin had both mentioned that Jeffrey was friendly with Tom Miller so Andolsek telephoned him. At first, Miller was reluctant to talk. He thought the RLDS was behind the probe. But when Andolsek explained that Jeffrey was suspected of conspiring to take over the temple, Miller cooperated. He recalled how Jeffrey had come to see him on April 17 and had acted weird. “He’s gone off the deep end,” Miller said. Like the others, however, Miller didn’t have a clue where Jeffrey had gone.

  On April 28, Andolsek got his first lead. He learned that Greg Winship had used his credit card to buy several items at a local store. Andolsek called Robert Alvord at the FBI office in Painesville and gave him the number of Winship’s credit card. Alvord notified the bank that issued the card and officials there promised to send the FBI a list of Winship’s recent purchases.

  Meanwhile, Chief Yarborough urged Dale Luffman and RLDS Bishop Ken Fisher to leave town between May 1 and May 4. “We don’t know when that idiot might come storming back with guns blazing.” Both took Yarborough’s advice.

  There are few secrets in a small town, particularly after nearly two dozen FBI agents and police officers are seen swarming around a farm. By May 1, nearly everyone in Kirtland had heard about Jeffrey’s plan to take over the temple on his birthday. People figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that he might show up.

  Just before 9:00 P.M. on May 1, Yarborough and Andolsek drove to the same posts near the temple that they had manned one year earlier. But this time, they were not alone. Curious townsfolk cruised past the temple all night long looking for the chief. A few waved. Yarborough felt as if he was part of a circus sideshow.

  On May 2, Andolsek got a call from the FBI. Special Agent Alvord said that Greg Winship had used his credit card on April 18 to rent a twenty-four-foot-long U-Haul truck. Greg had picked up the vehicle within hours after the FBI and police had finished questioning Jeffrey and left the farm. Andolsek telephoned the local U- Haul dealership, which had rented Greg the truck, and learned that Greg had dropped off the truck six days later at a U-Haul dealership in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. When Andolsek called the manager there, he was told that Greg had driven the truck a total of 603 miles and had returned it “full of red mud.”

  Andolsek got out a map of the eastern United States and drew a red line from Kirtland to Falls Church. He then began writing down the names of all the state and national parks along both sides of the line within a six-hundred-mile radius of Kirtland. After compiling the list, he telephoned the U.S. Park Service and asked if there were any parks in particular where red dirt was common. Most parks on his list, he was told, had spots where red soil could be found. Discouraged, Andolsek decided to try a different approach. After obtaining Chief Yarborough’s permission, Andolsek asked the federal park service to send a Teletype to all of its rangers. He also sent the Teletype to state park officials and local sheriff’s departments in a five-state area. The message described Jeffrey and his group.

  Lundgren contends to be a prophet and ... advocates the use of deadly force . . . One member told FBI/Police that they were going to leave for the wilderness” to find the “sword of Laban” which will be used to decapitate people. . . .

  The Teletype contained the telephone number for the Kirtland Police Department and asked rangers to call immediately if they had any useful information. That night, Andolsek and Yarborough returned to their temple posts, but neither felt an attack by Jeffrey was likely.

  “I figured Jeffrey had gone off somewhere trying to find the Sword of Laban,” Yarborough said. “At first, I was relieved and then I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, May third comes around every year.’ Am I going to be sitting in the church parking lot every year waiting for that asshole?”

  When May 3 passed without incident, Yarborough found that he was being criticized by some townspeople and had become the butt of several jokes. A few fundamentalists, who had attended Jeffrey’s classes, claimed that Dale Luffman and the RLDS hierarchy had used Yarborough to unfairly persecute Jeffrey and drive him from town. Others claimed the chief had been taken in and had overacted to the insane ravings of a frustrated blowhard. Even Kirtland’s mayor began to openly wonder if Yarborough hadn’t become obsessed with Jeffrey, making him into a much bigger threat than he really was. Yarborough began to feel pangs of self-doubt. After all, there was still no proof that Jeffrey had broken the law. “Maybe I was wrong to spend so much time worrying about him since he and his group were gone—that’s what I began to wonder.”

  Weeks passed without any word about Jeffrey’s whereabouts. No one whom Andolsek had notified had seen the group. And then on June 5, Yarborough and Andolsek got lucky.

  West Virginia Game Warden Harold “Rocky” Spencer had been on a routine patrol in Yellow Creek Hollow when he decided to check a remote area for turkey hunters. Turkey season had just opened and Spencer wanted to make certain that anyone hunting in the hollow had bought a valid license. Spencer had been going through the woods when he spotted Jeffrey’s camp. As soon as he saw an armed guard standing watch, he became suspicious and ducked behind some bushes. The game warden crept close enough to copy down the license numbers on the cars parked in the camp
. He then carefully retreated and contacted Sheriff Hank Thompson. At age twenty-nine, Thompson was serving his second year as sheriff of Tucker County, a 465-square-mile area that he patrolled with the help of only two deputies. A big man with boyish good looks, Thompson had grown up in Davis and had spent eleven years as a deputy before running for office. He was so well known in the county that he really hadn’t needed to put his last name on his campaign posters. All it took was “Vote for Hank.’’

  Thompson had seen a copy of the Teletype that Andolsek had sent to sheriff’s offices and he rummaged through the pile of paper on his desk and retrieved it. He compared the license numbers that Spencer had given him with the ones on the flyer, and when they matched, he dialed Yarborough’s number.

  “So Jeffrey’s in West Virginia,” Yarborough said. “Well, I’m glad you have him and not me.” The two lawmen spoke for nearly an hour. “My first concern,” Thompson later said, “was keeping a lid on who they were. Ninety percent of the people in my county are coal miners and if they found out some religious cult was camping up there, the first thing they’d do is grab their guns and move them out. I’d have a massacre on my hands.’’

  Since Jeffrey hadn’t been accused of committing any crimes, there wasn’t much Thompson could do except watch the group and keep Yarborough posted. He volunteered to do that. The next day, Yarborough called again. Yarborough called again the following day. The next day, Yarborough called again. Thompson, who had other problems to solve, began to wonder if Yarborough was investigating anyone besides Jeffrey Lundgren.

  Thompson assured Yarborough that he was keeping an eye on Jeffrey, but the sheriff didn’t feel that it made sense for him to go into the heavily armed camp and begin questioning group members without some legitimate reason. Jeffrey had started driving into Davis three or four times a week to buy kerosene for the camp’s electric generator, and even though he was guarded in his comments, he seemed friendly enough when the sheriff spoke to him.