The Nation: A Deadly Messenger of God

Cult Leader Ervil LeBaron leaves a trail of death in the West

In the verdant hills south of Mexico City, a self-proclaimed messenger of God’s wrath is in hiding from man’s justice. Ervil LeBaron, 52, polygamous (13 wives, at least 25 children) leader of the tiny Church of the Lamb of God, is the target of investigations by police departments from San Diego and Los Angeles to Salt Lake City and Denver. Even the Secret Service is interested in his whereabouts, since some of his followers sent a threatening letter to the then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in September 1976. LeBaron’s alleged crime: inducing several of his 40-odd disciples, including a number of women, to murder between 13 and 20 people who failed to abide by what he decreed to be the “constitutional law of the Kingdom of God.”

The killing spree—reminiscent of Charles Manson and his “family”—began five years ago in the Baja California community of Los Molinos, 169 miles down the coast from San Diego. There, Ervil’s older brother, Joel, patriarch of the Church of the First Born, established a settlement in 1963 as a haven for polygamous Mormons. With Ervil as second in command, the community attracted more than 200 followers, nearly half of whom were excommunicated Mormons (the church banned polygamy in 1890).

But the brothers eventually quarreled. Ervil wanted to turn Los Molinos into a beach resort, while Joel envisioned a simple, self-sustaining community. Moreover, Joel, unlike Ervil, thought that a separation of church and civil law was essential. Kicked out of the First Born Church in 1970, Ervil started his own sect, the Church of the Lamb of God, in San Diego. He also began writing tracts claiming the authority to execute anyone who refused to accept him as God’s representative. Less than two years later, Joel was shot dead in nearby Ensenada, Mexico.

Ervil claimed credit for the death of the “impostor and false prophet,” but he failed to lure any followers from the community that his brother had founded. From San Diego, Ervil issued warnings to the townsfolk of Los Molinos to repent, but few listened. Then, on the night after Christmas in 1974, Ervil’s disciples roared through the community in two trucks, tossing Molotov cocktails into the adobe huts and shooting people as they fled into the dusty street. Two were killed and a dozen wounded.

Within 30 months of the raid, at least ten other opponents of Ervil’s new church had either disappeared or were found dead. Among those missing are an Ensenada woman who sided with Joel LeBaron’s sect rather than Ervil’s, and Utah Polygamist Robert Hunt Simons, whose disappearance came after his wife and a daughter refused to move in with LeBaron. Shot and killed in National City, Calif., was 7-ft. Dean Grover Vest, a follower of Ervil LeBaron’s who had begun saying he could do without him.

The latest of the suspected LeBaron victims was Rulon C. Allred, leader of 2,000 polygamists in Utah, Montana and Mexico. On May 10, two young people, who appeared to be women, rushed into Allred’s suburban Salt Lake City office and shot him six times. Allred’s transgression: he had failed to submit to the disciplines of LeBaron’s church.

LeBaron, an imposing (6ft. 4-in.), darkly handsome man, seems almost totally obsessed by his religion. Rather than accept his brother Joel’s view of a charitable, merciful Christ, Ervil bases his belief on a preference for the wrathful God of the Old Testament. Says Polygamist Harold Blackmore of Utah: “He’s always preaching this blood and thunder stuff—you know, if people don’t live the civil law [of Ervil’s God], cut their heads off. He is very pugnacious, but is also a smooth-tongued type.” Residents of the Mexican villages where LeBaron has been hiding out since May describe him as loco and mitad diablo (half devil).

After Joel’s 1972 murder, Ervil was found guilty in Ensenada of being the “intellectual author” of the crime and was sentenced to twelve years in prison. Ervil spent twelve months in jail before a Mexican appeals court overturned the conviction. The lubricant for the reversal, according to one of Joel LeBaron’s followers, was a bribe to local officials. Ervil later spent ten months in Mexican prisons while waiting to go on trial for the Los Molinos raid. But he was eventually released—once more after the intervention of some influential Mexican officials.

It was toward the end of his prison term in Mexico that Ervil came to the attention of the U.S. Secret Service. In the fall of 1976, before Ervil’s release, an organization called the Society of American Patriots was formed. Letters from the group were sent to Evangelist Billy Graham and Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter, among others, threatening them with death if they did not intercede to free Ervil. The Secret Service traced the letters back to two of Ervil’s wives, who had rented a post office box in Pasadena in the society’s name.

Why have law enforcement agencies been so slow in arresting Ervil? One stumbling block is that authorities have little solid evidence directly linking LeBaron to the murder conspiracies. Furthermore, since many potential witnesses are polygamists, they do not want to come forward and testify in public. Perhaps the greatest hindrance is outright terror. Says one suburban Salt Lake City investigator: “So many people are afraid of Ervil.”