June 1, 2022 • 48 mins
Police try to gain information from new insiders in Ervil’s cult. As more members of the cult break away to talk to the police the cops swoop in to make arrests. By 1978 Ervil remains on the run but prosectors now have enough evidence for a murder trial on his most high profile killings. As the trial leads to an unexpected conclusion, Ervil’s reputation causes further woes for the cops.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Novel. A listener note this episode contains violence and content
that some listeners might find distressing. Previously, on deliver Us
from Hervill, Hervil thought that if he got rid of Joel,
(00:28):
he could just move in and take leadership with Joel's people. Well,
it didn't work. That's the problem. He told me about
a group of polygamous that were in town to kill someone.
It's started with great on almost Morino on December nineteen
seventy four, in the events that led up to that,
(00:50):
So doing jump? Are you nervous? Martin? Normal? What? What
are we doing here? Nothing's happening. I understand that they're
affiliated with the Church of the Lamb of God. Is
that correct? I have been affiliated with what was called
the Church of the Lamba. I guess you wouldn't know
how they got back to get into the car in
(01:11):
the first place with him, and he just turned me
and said, didn't marry or pay for this is your
last chance. They felt that they were putting somebody up
and Ma Sree, the Lord wants this done. Nan upstairs says,
we just got to keep rid of Brillin. It's just
(01:33):
ruling the people and leave them the straight. We ended
up behind the doctor Joflson. The vehicles were waiting there.
The guys handed us outguns and gave us encouraging words
and send us all away. Every city police tonight say
they have no lead. Jepps on who the two women
were who entered the office of polegamous leader of ruling
(01:53):
all read yesterday and shot him dead? Where did you
shoot him, Chessad, I can't time at all. How did
you feel when you pulled the trigger? And she said glibly.
If you want to know that, you'll have to read
(02:14):
the book. Honestly, it was like losing him all over again.
Close your eyes and imagine you're in a cave chained.
All you can see is a blank wall. There's a
(02:34):
fire burning outside the cave, and from time to time
you can see shadows passing in front of the fire,
flickering shadows. You and the other people in the cave
give names to these shadows. They form your perception of reality.
They are your reality. Then one day suddenly you break free,
(03:02):
leave the cave, see the fire outside making its projections.
But the fire hurts your eyes, and even if someone
were to tell you the fire is projecting the objects
onto the cave wall, you wouldn't believe it, so you
run back into the cave to the comfort of your reality.
(03:28):
If you've ever taken a philosophy class, you probably know
the story. It's Plato's allegory of the cave, a fundamental
understanding that in some sense applies to all of us,
whether we are religious or not, the understanding that our
reality is formed by our perceptions. As a journalist who
(03:51):
often writes about faith, Plato's Cave comes to mind a lot,
especially when I talk to people who have left fundamentalist religions,
be because they often grew up removed from the world
at large, grew up in a religion that taught the
world outside is dangerous to be mistrusted. There was always
(04:12):
just a sense of fear, or always so much fear.
This is one of those conversations with Gabriella, who was
raised in a fundamentalist Mormon cultum I was about five
years old, four or five years old, terrified of the
outside world. I'm playing this because Gabriella's previous feelings about
the world outside of her cult are indicative of many
(04:35):
people who leave fundamentalist religions. When she first saw the
fire outside the cave, she didn't want to face it
like most people, she ran back inside the cave. I
was I wasn't going along with idol. Why not because
I honestly believed in it and the truth was to
(04:59):
pain full to face. And so I prayed and I
asked God to show me what to do. And I
remember I was like, look, God, I'm here, I don't
know what to do. You're not telling me what to do.
I'm ready. I was so ready. We never got answers. Okay,
so this is a problem with us. In Plato's allegory,
(05:23):
that prisoner breaks free, then returns to the cave, but
then someone, some mystery person, drags them back outside for
a second time. It takes a minute, but their eyes
do eventually adjust to the light and they can begin
to see things as they are. I was really asking myself,
(05:45):
if God is real, if what we were believing is real,
then why didn't all of these miracles that are supposed
to happen. How come none of them ever happened. They
realize the outside world is better than the cave. They've
chained themselves to a wall from most of their life
in this tightly controlled space, when there was so much
(06:05):
more to see to experience that the reality in the
cave was a distortion. It was like, your idea of
reality is clashing with actual reality. I was like, okay,
in that case, I don't know anything. I don't know anything.
(06:32):
Of course, not all stories take the same course. Not
all fundamentalists have the same experience breaking free. But in
Plato's allegory, the person goes back to the cave a
third time, this time to try to convince people to
come with them, to share in what they've seen, but
nobody listens. In their minds, the person venturing outside the
(06:57):
cave has been blinded by looking at the fire. They
are now a danger, and in Plato's allegory, the cave
dwellers decided to kill them. If you're not religious, you
may think this all doesn't apply to you. But this
isn't just about former fundamentalists like Gabriella. Because most of
(07:21):
us are tribal in some way, and if we leave
that tribe, be it our family, community, even a political affiliation.
Maybe it's hardwired into us. We know it's risky. It
goes back to our earliest ancestors. You leave the tribe,
you're dead. Maybe your old tribe sees you as a
(07:44):
threat and tries to eliminate you. You betrayed them, after all,
if I told you that your reality was a lie,
you'd push back right. Please were closing in on Herville
and his followers, but so far the Church of the
Lamb of God had stayed one step ahead. As far
(08:07):
as tribes go, they seemed united, loyal, this mafia style
clan with an unbreakable code. They knew the cost of
speaking up, of leaving the tribe. It was death. But
light was starting to stream into the cave. A few
had ventured outside enough to wonder if the shadows they
(08:29):
were seeing on the wall were real or the mad
ravings of a psychotic prophet. Herville must have known that
if any of them broke free long enough to see
the outside world, they would leave reject that tight, cloistered,
suffocating existence he'd created of stomach rumbling, poverty, and sadistic
(08:52):
murder of their own kin. The whole thing would collapse.
But the thing about Plato's legory is to fulfill it,
someone from Hervil's group needed to be the first to
break free, and they did, Like Judas when he gave
(09:13):
away Jesus with a kiss on the cheek from the
Team's at novel and I Heart Radio. This is deliver
us from Herville. I'm Jesse Hyde chapter six. The betrayal
(09:40):
of all the murders carried out by Herville and his
followers in the years up to perhaps the hardest to
stomach is the killing of his daughter, Rebecca. Maybe killing
his own brother Joel should have indicated nothing was off limits.
Yet the killing of Rebecca LeBaron in April of nineteen
s who was three months pregnant at the time, show
(10:04):
just how far his followers were willing to go. But
Rebecca's murder has another significance. Her death was the catalyst
for an insider to betray Hervil. Rebecca LeBaron was the
seventh child of Delfina Salito LeBaron, Irville's first wife. He
(10:24):
married her back in nineteen fifty. Rebecca's killing in April
seventy seven was kind of an open secret in the colt,
but no one told her mother, Delfina. That is until
June of seven, when a child in the colt let
it slip. The secret was out. Delfina flipped, initially just figuratively,
(10:51):
raging against the members of the cult, but this instinctive
reaction now put Delphina's life at risk, because the same
cult members who saw Rebecca as a loose cannon now
saw Delphina as a threat and someone who had to
be silenced too. Delphina must have realized this because not
(11:15):
long after her outburst of grief and rage, she tried
to flee to Mexico to escape the colt. And while
this was all happening, word of Delphina's flight from Rvil's
colt had reached the cops. She called her sister in
San Diego, and that sister called Dick Forbes. This is
(11:36):
Larive's Stubbs, whose family helped settle Colonial LeBaron back in
episode one. Ever since Mervil's followers had killed her prophet
Joel LeBaron, she and her husband had been leading the
resistance to Evil's colt. She dedicated every spare minute trying
to track him down and bring him to justice. And so,
(11:59):
now hearing Delfina was leaving the colt, it was Larive
down in Colonial LeBaron that the detective Dick Forbes called
to help bring Delfina in, hoping she could be persuaded
by Larive to testify against the Colt Delfina, which was
herbl's wife. Dick Forbes told us that he needed to
(12:22):
take her to Salt Lake and what would it take.
But hearing all this, Larive's concern was for Delfina. She
knew her life was now in danger from hervil's assassins.
They were already on the plane to go get rid
of her because they want her talking. They thought there's
a potential she would get killed before she could testifies it.
(12:44):
Of course, you think they weren't after her The minute
she left, Dick Forbes told Larive they needed to act fast.
Delfina was on a bus traveling through Texas en route
to Mexico. The bus was going to be making a
stop in the border city of El Paso. It's about
two hundred miles from Colonial a baron a four hour
(13:05):
drive on a good day. Could Larive get there before
Hervil's killers. And he says, she's going to be there
at three o'clock in the morning. And I had to
get up in my house down here, drive Dale Passo
and be in that bus stop at three o'clock. And
the law was on its way to that El Paso
bus stop too, So we're the ones that met her
(13:29):
in al Passo, and it was clear ful of FBI
and CIA and whatever you get it. So they all
converged just in time, and we've interceded, picked her up,
had guys there from Salt Lake that night at three
o'clock in the morning. They flew in next morning. She says, well,
I'll go if Luria will go with me. So there
(13:50):
I was stuck for three weeks, and I was pretty
upset because I had little kids and I needed to
be home. But I went Larive put her life in
Mexico on hold and traveled up to Utah because for her,
stopping herbal had become a single minded mission to stop
the killing. We did go after him with a law
(14:13):
and we worked with Mormon FBI, c I, a UM
and with everybody. Oh, I just wanted to know me
did it day and night, damn night. When the reef
talks about Mormon law enforcement agencies, she's referring to Dick
(14:36):
Forbes and other officials. Not only were they from Mormon backgrounds,
but they had taken to heart the advice of journalist
Del van Ada. Remember it was Dale back in episode
four who had told police to learn and respect the
intricacies of Mormon doctrine, and that had allowed police to
build trust a little by little, trust at all those
(14:57):
guys because I watched him, and I watched him in
law enforcement rely on you guys for information for everything,
because they had all the records on the barrens, you know,
but they didn't know the difference of those who were
against Cervill and those who were for it. Tips and
then you would let them know we didn't hear tips.
(15:18):
We helped him everything they needed, and we knew all
the families. This was a big thing for Larive agreeing
to work with cops. Think about it from her position
as one of those refugees in Mexico leaving the US
as a team because the cops were rounding up and
arresting Polygamus. She'd been told never to trust the U
(15:40):
S authorities. If it was me, even the risk of
becoming a target of Herville would have made me think twice.
I wasn't terrified because I believed more in getting him
behind bars that he can't keep killing. And everybody been
(16:01):
worried about me and for the cops, Larive's intervention was
crucial because getting Delphina safely in custody was one thing,
but now they needed her to talk to them too,
and Larive was able to help them do that. Why
was Delphina such a key witness. She's his first wife
(16:21):
and all his kids are hers, and you had to
be careful even with her. You couldn't just push and shove.
But she ended up telling everything. What Larive means by
everything here is well the killing of Joel, the killing
of Ruling all Read, the killing of Bob Simons, and
invest and on and on the killing of Rebecca, her daughter.
(16:45):
She was the first cult member to give them this
inside information that said Delfina hadn't actually witnessed any of
these murderers firsthand. She just heard about them through the
family grapevine. For prosecutors to get convictions, the cops were
going to need more. You see, nobody has all the information.
(17:09):
I don't know what you know about law work, but
everybody has a little piece and that little piece and
that little piece and that little piece. And this is
where Delphina's son came in, a kid named Isaac. Isaac,
just fourteen years old in nineteen seventy seven, had actually
been at the April twenty meeting that year the emergency
(17:32):
military meeting. The meeting when Herville ordered the killing of
Roulin Alread and Rlin le Baron and told the colt
how he wanted it done. Isaac was a witness. Delphina
told this to the cops, and she was also able
to tell them where Isaac was currently living. On July
(17:54):
n seventy seven, the police swooped in for Isaac, descending
on an unremarkable looking single story suburban home in Dallas.
Here the cult had a safe house. Now in police custody,
At first, Isaac was terrified refused to say anything to
the cops, but over time they gained his trust too,
(18:18):
and two weeks later in August, he started to talk.
It was really a key break in the case, and
basically at that point and we were on our way.
This is David Yoakum, the lead Utah prosecutor. He'd been
trying to bring Ruling Alread's killers to justice from the
(18:41):
very beginning. I said, I attended the scene at the
day of the killing. I had actually been out there
where they were wheeling run Alread out of his office
on a gurney, and my good friend and detective on
the case and informed me they had no idea at
the time who was responsible or why I was killed.
When he first started on the case, Yoakum thought he'd
(19:03):
found his key break in an evidence hall near the
crime scene, two men were looking through a large dumpster
outside of their store and found a grocery sack full
of things that looked strange to them. It had included
a gun box which had a serial number attached to it,
and since the murder had just occurred down the street,
(19:24):
they turned over these things to the Murray Place department.
Some of this evidence had sent the investigators in the
All Red murder on a bit of a wild goose chase.
They traced the serial number on the box through the
FBI and found out the box had been purchased in Denver, Colorado.
It had been purchased by a cult member who had
(19:44):
no further involvement in the killing, and before the cops
had insider information from the colt, they thought the gun
box link meant they had their shooter. Then they found
out she had an airtight alibi, so they were right
back to squa are one and David Yoakum was starting
to fill the heat because what he was learning about
(20:07):
herville and his cult. From the investigation was telling him
just how serious stopping this all was because of the
power that he held over a group of individuals and
the authority he claimed, and that he could actually command
people on his name to murder other people. I felt
(20:27):
that it was so significant, and saying this was significant
is saying something for Yoakum, who had seen some heavy
ship in his career. In fact, just a few years
before this case, he had been the first to successfully
prosecute serial killer Ted Bundy. You know, Ted Bundy was
responsible for a lot of murders, but it wasn't like
(20:50):
he had a whole group of people that he commanded
to kill. He was his sole killer, which is bad enough,
But here Herville had the control over people that he
could order them to kill members of his own group.
He actually had his own daughter murdered, which is pretty
damn scary. But a very evil person that was worse
(21:12):
than I think a serial killer. So yeah, from August
seventy seven onwards, when Isaac started giving cops and prosecutors
witnessed demons from the secret meetings of the cult where
killings were being ordered. Significant probably doesn't cover it. It
was a huge break in the case. He started giving information.
(21:35):
We call it the twentieth Conservation meeting or Herville conducted
a medium as group and talked about selecting two women
to come to Utah to kill a false prophet. This
is an emergency military meeting April where the all Red
and Virlin murder plans were announced. This young man had
(21:56):
a very good memory of that and started giving us
name teams of individuals that were present and who's who.
This included a name for the killer of Dr Roulin Alrett.
Rina Channath Yoakum felt they were ready to make arrests.
That's coming up after the break. By the summer of
(22:35):
fractures and fissures had begun to appear in Evil's once
ultra tight knit church of the Lamb of God. Paranoia
and fear or in some cases, ego had set in.
Lloyd and Don Sullivan, for example, had seen their roles
greatly diminished. Lloyd had once held a roll near the
top of Hervil's mafia like clan. Hearing Rena Channath's testimony
(22:59):
years later revealed how he was the instigator for that
raid on Los Molinos, carried out the hit on Robert Simons,
and had been an advocate for Rebecca's murder too, Yet
a series of botched hits meant he had now lost favor.
The disillusionment went both ways. After the ruling ordered killing
(23:23):
in May seven, Herville fled south of the border. He
had left Lloyd in the US to clean up the mess.
This had effectively left Lloyd in charge of the Colts
American operations. Lloyd started to spend more and more time
with Rena, one of Evil's handpicked assassin's and at one
(23:43):
time one of his favorite wives. We were getting familiar
with each other. Tell me how wonderful it was playing
on my motion, and he was telling me how wrong
it was things had to turn out with durable, how
much he how desirable I was, and how that it
(24:04):
was that I was so unhappy with the woman it
couldn't be right. This is Rena in that interview for
her book with the writer Dean Shapiro years later. Here
she's recalling how after Rulin Alred's murder, Lloyd Sullivan had
suddenly started having his own revelations from God. Lloyd's decided
he was a prophet that needed to write, and so
(24:26):
he was writing, and I was typing for him. Just
like for Herville. Rena was once again typing out the
revelations of a self proclaimed prophet. But that wasn't the
only role Lloyd had in mind for her. We were
driving along in the truck and he had this revelation.
But he said, oh my goodness, I just saw you
and you were wearing this long, beautiful white dress. And
(24:50):
he goes, of course, I'm waiting dress. That means you're
supposed to marry me. This was all very confusing for Rena.
Maybe God was in fact revealing to her that she
should marry Lloyd, even though God had previously told her
she should marry Herville. So she set off to Mexico,
(25:13):
where Rvill was now hiding out, to tell Hervill she
was through with him. Hervill's answer, absolutely not. He told
me that Lloyd was worthless to me, and I was
just cried on tears. Rena had hoped to break the
news to Irville and be back in the US within
(25:34):
a week, but now that she had revealed her true intentions,
there was no way Irvill was letting her out of
his sight. She was his prisoner, now locked away typing
out more insane pamphlets, more unhinged and violent revelations. Their
(25:55):
life ever since the Los Milino's raid had been nomadic
to stay head of enemies real and imagined chasing them.
And it continued traveling, Hi du running, driving, you know,
stuck down there, next call in Healing Lenny, same old ship.
(26:21):
But for Lloyd Sullivan back in the US, Rena's absence
had done nothing to halt his split from Hervil. He'd
already tried to steal Irvil's wife. He'd already called himself
the real prophet. Now it was time to go all
the way. In August of ninety seven, he penned an
(26:44):
open letter to the Church of the Lamb of God.
Why wasn't Herville over here in the US fighting the
good fight? He asked? Why was he hiding out in Mexico.
Then he dropped a bomb. He called Merville a son
of perdition, that sinner who could only be atoned by death.
(27:07):
This was a call to war, and there were only
two ways it could go. Either Ervill would take out Lloyd,
or Lloyd would have to find a way of getting
to Irville. In the meantime, prosecutors against Irville had continued
to build their case and on September nineteen seventy seven,
(27:27):
Yoakum's team filed charges for murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy
to commit murder against all of Rville's inner circle. Roughly
two weeks later, homes and businesses controlled by the cult
were raided by one of the largest joint law enforcement
operations in the history of the American West, a massive
(27:49):
sting operation over one police officers from Utah, Texas, Colorado,
and Oklahoma. They were assisted by agents from the FBI
and the Secret Service. The raid wasn't a total success.
Many of the colts, including Herville and Rena, remained at large,
(28:10):
but they did manage to catch at least one big fish.
This is an interviews conducted in the County Attorney's office
in Salt Lake City present County Attorney Investigator Dick Forbes.
Interview will be conducted by National CITYPD. The cops had
(28:31):
caught Lloyd Sullivan. I'd like to start out the interview
by getting just a little bit of background. I understand
that you're affiliated with are were affiliated with the Church
of the Lamb of God? Is that correct? I have
been affiliated with what was called the Church of the Lama.
What was your position in the church at that time,
(28:53):
you're At that time, I was studying with herbal two
to the Commandments of the Lord. He teaches very very well,
better than any man I've ever heard, and I was
learning under him under his tutorship. At this point, Lloyd
was already looking for ways to eliminate hervil as arrival,
(29:17):
and now he realized the police could help him do it.
So Lloyd started talking to the cops. He gave them
the inside line on many of the cults murders, from
the killing of Joel, the raid on Los Molinos, and
other killings like the murder of Rvil's daughter Rebecca. Having
a knowledge and being intimate with people in that group
(29:41):
where most of them prone to follow out commandments without question, yes,
of that magnitude. Yes, let's say that the Lord you
do this no hesitation. Have you heard her will give
other people similar commandments? Yes, He's given him to me.
And did you have that same feeling about it that
(30:01):
it was in fact God's commandment? I did. What would
happen if you failed to carry out that type of commandment?
Dead or who whoever was commanded and refused? Was there
any question about that in your mind? That if you
refused to carry out a commandment that you would be killed.
(30:22):
Never with Lloyd Sullivan giving them information, Forbes and Yoakum
now had a network of informants. Together with people in
colonial LeBaron like Larife Stubbs, their intelligence on the Church
of the Lamb of God was growing, how they operated,
how they thought, who was currently in favor, but also
(30:47):
crucially the location of the remaining fugitive cult members who
had so far eluded arrest. In the early morning hours
of October thirty one, in a rural part of Mexico,
(31:07):
not far from Mexico City, Federals closed in on an
apartment complex. Inside We're Rina chinaf hervil A Baron, some
of Hervill's other wives, Dan Jordan's, his right hand man,
and other remaining members of L's inner circle, all hiding
out together. Rena had been typing yet another pamphlet till
(31:32):
late into the night and had fallen asleep on a
blanket on the floor of one of the bedrooms. At
one in the morning, without warning, Federals crashed through the door. Yeah,
they had automatic Shane Gainst pointed at us, and there
must have been five or six of them and I
(31:52):
can't remember if they weren't wearing army fatigues or anything
when we're wearing street clos Then they came roaring into
the bedroom. This is Rena in that interview with writer
Dean Shapiro. At this point in the fall of seventy eight,
Rena had already had one child with Herville. Rena was
now three months pregnant with their second child. I said, well,
(32:14):
can I put some clothes on or something here? And
the guy said, well, okay, and let us go in
the bathroom. We have to stand with the door open,
And so I got some clothes on and they took
me out and handcuffed me, hands behind my back, and
they put me in this van outside and left me
there all night. Sitting in the van, her hands cuffed
(32:35):
and her feet tied, Rena looked for Irville, expecting to
see him being led away in handcuffs too, but instead,
as she looked out into the darkness, she saw the
Federali's leading out Dan Jordan's. They brought Dan Jordan out
and put him in the van. They looked at him
(32:56):
and it was picture and for some reason they decided
that he wasserble middle of Kitty a lot. The cops
had in fact questioned Herble that night, but he had
played innocent, said he was just some minor follower of
the Church of the Lamb of God, and the Federals
didn't recognize him. It was when they'd found Dan Jordan's
(33:19):
that they thought they had their main man. So they
thought they were arresting hercles, so they thought they had
and Dan and Garvey with him. Cops blindfolded both Rena
and Dan and took them to a prison in the
Mexican capital. And when we got to Mexico City, I
laughed at the sergeant like face and they were trying
to interview You had it right and new dressed, and
(33:41):
you didn't even know what's new. Comes goes to prue.
I felt, it just goes through that we're right and
theyre wrong, because God, so you should escape. After Mexico City,
the cops eventually handed Rena over to American law enforcement.
They put us in the back of a car and
they poled us to the ordered like two days, all
(34:02):
day and all night, and we drove and over the
gop you're fighting trap. They took us to the boarder
in the rito. I tried to picture Arena there standing
at the border, a river running free in front of her,
about to cross from one life of captivity to another,
(34:27):
free of herville, something she had dreamed of since he
started to pursue her when she was just twelve years old.
She had at times prayed God would strike her by
lightning to end this nightmare, and now, miraculously, as she
walked across the bridge leading from Mexico to Laredo, Texas,
(34:49):
God had answered her prayers. Rena was free from the
lambs of God, but headed to jail. The FBI today
rested a key suspect in the nineteen seventy seven religious
assassination of Polygamust patriarch ruling Alread. Agents arrested twenty year
old Na Nath at the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas.
(35:11):
Janath has charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to
murder in the Alred case. Authorities have described the killing
as a religious assassination ordered by the fanatic irvil LeBaron,
the leader of a rival Polygamust cult. Ten people have
been charged in the case. Most of the gang had
now been caught, Detectives were now interrogating them, building a
(35:32):
case for trial. LeBaron himself and one of his sons
remain at large. The FBI said Shannav would appear at
a federal removal hearing in Texas Monday and then be
returned to Utah or prosecution. And surely it was just
a matter of time before they caught Hervil himself, and
when they did, the killing would stop. That was the
(35:53):
hope anyway more. After the break m the trial of
Rina China and other accomplished members of the Church of
the Lamb of God began in a Salt Lake City
(36:15):
corep room on Tuesday, March six. N David Yoakum, the
man tasked with prosecuting the colt, he feared the trial
was going to play out as an internal face off
between cult members. There was a battle are between the
group and blaming one another. You know which group of
(36:36):
people were responsible here Roulin Alred's daughter Dorothy took her
place in the courtroom. There was a great deal of
angry energy emanating from Herville's people who attended the trial.
There were just a lot of angry energy. Rena and
the others had refused any kind of plea deal. As
(36:58):
she told the writer of her memoir of years later
at this point she was all in on a not
guilty verdict. I think when they when it was mentioned
to me, I said, no, you wanted now, we did
this in God's name and we got darn or get
us out of this. If you've ever sat in a
(37:21):
courtroom during a trial, it can be surprising how mundane
the proceedings are. Even murder trials are sometimes boring once
the legal arguments are underway. This is why little things
can make a big difference. Little things that cut through
to make an impression on jurors, sometimes as much as facts,
(37:42):
things that give them positive feelings about those called to speak.
And the problem for prosecutor David Yoakum was that not
many of his witnesses in the trial were likely to
cut through in a particularly positive way. They weren't exactly
sympathy addic, especially Don Sullivan. People were on trial. We're
(38:05):
pointing their fingers at Don Sullivan, and then you know
they were the supposed ringladers the whole thing, and that
Rena had nothing to do with it. Don Sullivan, who
had come across with his dad Lloyd, to cooperate with
the cops. He had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy and
agreed to testify in exchange for immunity from further prosecution.
(38:28):
So this was a self confessed conspirator to murder two jurors.
He probably seemed like a psychopath. On top of that,
he'd been indoctrinated to live for years. So again not
exactly a credible witness. And Rena's defense team we're saying
Don was the one responsible. This was the internal face
(38:50):
off between cult members. Yoakum was concerned about, and that
kind of he said. She said reasonable doubt wasn't the
only issue. The prosecution based all the publicity surrounding hervill
Le baron, the local TV news coverage, the articles in
newspapers and magazines, well, it had created a picture of
(39:11):
the cult that was terrifying. In January nine nine, for example,
the National Enquirer had run a front page with Hervill's
mugshot blaming him and his cult for the assassination of JFK.
He had that kind of notoriety now, and that freak
(39:31):
jurors out. There was a failing that during the case
that some of the jurors were actually concerned for their
health and welfare because they were afraid that if they
bought back a guilty verdict that Hervil group and Nervil's
being out free, running around and still having a following,
that they may be harmed if they found any member
(39:53):
of the group guilty. The Mormon manson who could control
killers with his mind, he seemed capable of anything, which
is why to this day Yoakum is both grateful and
inspired at the courage of people like Hervil's son Isaac
agreeing to take the witness stand, and Yoakum had impartial
(40:18):
witnesses too, like the woman who had sold Rena a
disguise shortly before the killing of Roulin Alread. She remembered
selling it to Rena, remembered her, well, that was kind
of an ominous feeling to have somebody come up there
and say you've been in this store, and that she'd
never forget that face, and she remembered how happy and
(40:42):
I wasn't it It's just kind of shone or something
like that is beautiful. But other witnesses were less helpful
to the prosecution, like one who was at the crime
scene but couldn't pick Rena out of a photo lineup.
They had that composite picture that that guy in the
waiting room was hypnotized, and he gave it in posit
(41:05):
and it looked more like dog full of him than
my attorney had fun with that. This is the thing,
this is who you said. It was under hypnosis and
doesn't look anything like my client, if anything, looks like
a man, and that's what they were stressing that it
could have been a man dressed up and most likely
(41:25):
could have been the States witness. Perhaps witnesses like this
one explain why David Yocum felt like he needed to
close his argument with some kind of grand flourish, or
perhaps that was always going to be his style. My
closing arguments always were quite strong. I was accused many
(41:46):
many times unethical conduct, and in cases I'd go right
up to the wall, I'd say, and but not stepping
over the line, and that I just pushed my cases
to the brink either way. David Yoakum strode towards the
judge and slammed a copy of the Bible onto the
table in front of him. Both jury members and even
(42:09):
the defendant were a little taken aback. I remember Yokum
picking up that Bible and slamming back down on the
judges bench on the table in front of the judges bench,
where yeah, it's and I thought that was kind of shocked.
And I don't imagine everybody else. I can only imagine
what everybody else felt where he did that, and he's
(42:30):
very coffee David Yoakum wasn't worried about shocking people. That
was the point, so the jury would wake up to
the threat posed by Hervil's colt bring them to justice.
And he felt the cops and prosecutors had made their case.
Now it was up to the jury to find Rina
(42:52):
Chanof and her accomplices guilty of killing. Ruling alread. Even
though we didn't have a saw eyewitness testimony that she
was on the pole the trigger, I was pretty confident
that we had sufficient evidence to convict Rena. The pretty
felt that we had a good case. Just four hours later,
(43:15):
the jury of six women and two men were filing
back into the core room with a verdict, and I said,
the verdict was in. When I went back to the courtroom,
my attorney were there and he was concerned because normally
when the jury reached that quickly it's Rena sat alongside
(43:35):
her lawyer, a guy named John McConnell, and I was
leaving John's hats a herd. I could hardly I imagine
blood was stop. That was not so chuit, waiting too
well for that. And uh, we all sat there and
saying they whoever it is, added to the data and
(43:57):
takes to the judge. And judge raised the verdict, and
then he looked up and he said, now I'll have
no outbursts from the crowd. Not tolerated any outburst or
something like that. And then when they began reading the verdicts,
gradually I let off on his hand, let off, squeezing
(44:19):
on his hands. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not
guilty on whatever, twenty three accounts. Just eighteen days after
the trial had begun, not only was Rena cleared of
all charges, but all remaining lambs of God being held
for the murder of Rule and all read were cleared
(44:40):
of charges in relation to his murder too. Rena was free. Well,
we hugged all the way around, and I don't know
what the crowd reaction went. I don't I was too involved.
Rena sent back to Sell to gather up her personal
(45:01):
belongings and say goodbye to the friend she's made. She's
then processed out to meet family members who are waiting outside.
I remember walking out from this underground tunnel and there
were cameras there. Chriss was waiting when I couldn't believe. Actually,
I was just in the days. I think I was
in a day most of the time. Like I just remember,
(45:21):
I was in the car and I was looking up
at the mountains, looking around at the lights, and here's
the world. I've been walked up this along and there's
a beautiful mountains. They're in folt Lang snow on on
the top of them. It was it was fresh air.
Rena is free to put her whole past behind her,
(45:42):
or to go and write a book about it and
tour the US cable news networks for the next decade.
Either way, when it came to the colt, she was out,
leaving behind her the stunned cops and prosecutors like Yoakum.
I didn't cry or anything, but I was really disappointed
(46:04):
all of the prosecution team. Where we're disappointed in the verdict.
What would it take to get a conviction against hervil
Le Baron? Was God really on his side protecting him? Well, No,
I knew one thing that would make me pill less
artist to apprehend and capture and try rble, which, of
(46:25):
course we got that chance. That's coming up in the
next episode of deliver Us from Hervill. Deliver Us from
Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written and
(46:47):
reported by me Leona Hamad and David Waters. Production from
Leona Hamid and David Waters. Sean Glenn and maxwe'brien are
executive producers. Lena and Megan Oyinka are researchers. Marianna Gongora
is our field producer, fact checking by Donya Suleman and
(47:08):
Sona Avakian. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and
Charlotte Wolfe. Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production.
Michae Lee Raw is our managing editor. Gavin Haynes is
our head of development. Willard Foxton is our creative director
of development. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Chris O'Shaughnessy,
(47:31):
Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music
is composed by Julian Lynch. Special thanks to Scott Anderson,
Scott Carrier, delvan Ada, Pippa Smith, Saskia Edwards, Matt O'Mara,
Katrina Norvelle and beth An Makaluso, or In Rosenbaum, Shelby
Shankman and all the team at UTA. For more from Novel,
(47:57):
visit novel dot Audio eight
Novel. A listener note this episode contains violence and content
that some listeners might find distressing. Previously, on deliver Us
from Hervill, Hervil thought that if he got rid of Joel,
(00:28):
he could just move in and take leadership with Joel's people. Well,
it didn't work. That's the problem. He told me about
a group of polygamous that were in town to kill someone.
It's started with great on almost Morino on December nineteen
seventy four, in the events that led up to that,
(00:50):
So doing jump? Are you nervous? Martin? Normal? What? What
are we doing here? Nothing's happening. I understand that they're
affiliated with the Church of the Lamb of God. Is
that correct? I have been affiliated with what was called
the Church of the Lamba. I guess you wouldn't know
how they got back to get into the car in
(01:11):
the first place with him, and he just turned me
and said, didn't marry or pay for this is your
last chance. They felt that they were putting somebody up
and Ma Sree, the Lord wants this done. Nan upstairs says,
we just got to keep rid of Brillin. It's just
(01:33):
ruling the people and leave them the straight. We ended
up behind the doctor Joflson. The vehicles were waiting there.
The guys handed us outguns and gave us encouraging words
and send us all away. Every city police tonight say
they have no lead. Jepps on who the two women
were who entered the office of polegamous leader of ruling
(01:53):
all read yesterday and shot him dead? Where did you
shoot him, Chessad, I can't time at all. How did
you feel when you pulled the trigger? And she said glibly.
If you want to know that, you'll have to read
(02:14):
the book. Honestly, it was like losing him all over again.
Close your eyes and imagine you're in a cave chained.
All you can see is a blank wall. There's a
(02:34):
fire burning outside the cave, and from time to time
you can see shadows passing in front of the fire,
flickering shadows. You and the other people in the cave
give names to these shadows. They form your perception of reality.
They are your reality. Then one day suddenly you break free,
(03:02):
leave the cave, see the fire outside making its projections.
But the fire hurts your eyes, and even if someone
were to tell you the fire is projecting the objects
onto the cave wall, you wouldn't believe it, so you
run back into the cave to the comfort of your reality.
(03:28):
If you've ever taken a philosophy class, you probably know
the story. It's Plato's allegory of the cave, a fundamental
understanding that in some sense applies to all of us,
whether we are religious or not, the understanding that our
reality is formed by our perceptions. As a journalist who
(03:51):
often writes about faith, Plato's Cave comes to mind a lot,
especially when I talk to people who have left fundamentalist religions,
be because they often grew up removed from the world
at large, grew up in a religion that taught the
world outside is dangerous to be mistrusted. There was always
(04:12):
just a sense of fear, or always so much fear.
This is one of those conversations with Gabriella, who was
raised in a fundamentalist Mormon cultum I was about five
years old, four or five years old, terrified of the
outside world. I'm playing this because Gabriella's previous feelings about
the world outside of her cult are indicative of many
(04:35):
people who leave fundamentalist religions. When she first saw the
fire outside the cave, she didn't want to face it
like most people, she ran back inside the cave. I
was I wasn't going along with idol. Why not because
I honestly believed in it and the truth was to
(04:59):
pain full to face. And so I prayed and I
asked God to show me what to do. And I
remember I was like, look, God, I'm here, I don't
know what to do. You're not telling me what to do.
I'm ready. I was so ready. We never got answers. Okay,
so this is a problem with us. In Plato's allegory,
(05:23):
that prisoner breaks free, then returns to the cave, but
then someone, some mystery person, drags them back outside for
a second time. It takes a minute, but their eyes
do eventually adjust to the light and they can begin
to see things as they are. I was really asking myself,
(05:45):
if God is real, if what we were believing is real,
then why didn't all of these miracles that are supposed
to happen. How come none of them ever happened. They
realize the outside world is better than the cave. They've
chained themselves to a wall from most of their life
in this tightly controlled space, when there was so much
(06:05):
more to see to experience that the reality in the
cave was a distortion. It was like, your idea of
reality is clashing with actual reality. I was like, okay,
in that case, I don't know anything. I don't know anything.
(06:32):
Of course, not all stories take the same course. Not
all fundamentalists have the same experience breaking free. But in
Plato's allegory, the person goes back to the cave a
third time, this time to try to convince people to
come with them, to share in what they've seen, but
nobody listens. In their minds, the person venturing outside the
(06:57):
cave has been blinded by looking at the fire. They
are now a danger, and in Plato's allegory, the cave
dwellers decided to kill them. If you're not religious, you
may think this all doesn't apply to you. But this
isn't just about former fundamentalists like Gabriella. Because most of
(07:21):
us are tribal in some way, and if we leave
that tribe, be it our family, community, even a political affiliation.
Maybe it's hardwired into us. We know it's risky. It
goes back to our earliest ancestors. You leave the tribe,
you're dead. Maybe your old tribe sees you as a
(07:44):
threat and tries to eliminate you. You betrayed them, after all,
if I told you that your reality was a lie,
you'd push back right. Please were closing in on Herville
and his followers, but so far the Church of the
Lamb of God had stayed one step ahead. As far
(08:07):
as tribes go, they seemed united, loyal, this mafia style
clan with an unbreakable code. They knew the cost of
speaking up, of leaving the tribe. It was death. But
light was starting to stream into the cave. A few
had ventured outside enough to wonder if the shadows they
(08:29):
were seeing on the wall were real or the mad
ravings of a psychotic prophet. Herville must have known that
if any of them broke free long enough to see
the outside world, they would leave reject that tight, cloistered,
suffocating existence he'd created of stomach rumbling, poverty, and sadistic
(08:52):
murder of their own kin. The whole thing would collapse.
But the thing about Plato's legory is to fulfill it,
someone from Hervil's group needed to be the first to
break free, and they did, Like Judas when he gave
(09:13):
away Jesus with a kiss on the cheek from the
Team's at novel and I Heart Radio. This is deliver
us from Herville. I'm Jesse Hyde chapter six. The betrayal
(09:40):
of all the murders carried out by Herville and his
followers in the years up to perhaps the hardest to
stomach is the killing of his daughter, Rebecca. Maybe killing
his own brother Joel should have indicated nothing was off limits.
Yet the killing of Rebecca LeBaron in April of nineteen
s who was three months pregnant at the time, show
(10:04):
just how far his followers were willing to go. But
Rebecca's murder has another significance. Her death was the catalyst
for an insider to betray Hervil. Rebecca LeBaron was the
seventh child of Delfina Salito LeBaron, Irville's first wife. He
(10:24):
married her back in nineteen fifty. Rebecca's killing in April
seventy seven was kind of an open secret in the colt,
but no one told her mother, Delfina. That is until
June of seven, when a child in the colt let
it slip. The secret was out. Delfina flipped, initially just figuratively,
(10:51):
raging against the members of the cult, but this instinctive
reaction now put Delphina's life at risk, because the same
cult members who saw Rebecca as a loose cannon now
saw Delphina as a threat and someone who had to
be silenced too. Delphina must have realized this because not
(11:15):
long after her outburst of grief and rage, she tried
to flee to Mexico to escape the colt. And while
this was all happening, word of Delphina's flight from Rvil's
colt had reached the cops. She called her sister in
San Diego, and that sister called Dick Forbes. This is
(11:36):
Larive's Stubbs, whose family helped settle Colonial LeBaron back in
episode one. Ever since Mervil's followers had killed her prophet
Joel LeBaron, she and her husband had been leading the
resistance to Evil's colt. She dedicated every spare minute trying
to track him down and bring him to justice. And so,
(11:59):
now hearing Delfina was leaving the colt, it was Larive
down in Colonial LeBaron that the detective Dick Forbes called
to help bring Delfina in, hoping she could be persuaded
by Larive to testify against the Colt Delfina, which was
herbl's wife. Dick Forbes told us that he needed to
(12:22):
take her to Salt Lake and what would it take.
But hearing all this, Larive's concern was for Delfina. She
knew her life was now in danger from hervil's assassins.
They were already on the plane to go get rid
of her because they want her talking. They thought there's
a potential she would get killed before she could testifies it.
(12:44):
Of course, you think they weren't after her The minute
she left, Dick Forbes told Larive they needed to act fast.
Delfina was on a bus traveling through Texas en route
to Mexico. The bus was going to be making a
stop in the border city of El Paso. It's about
two hundred miles from Colonial a baron a four hour
(13:05):
drive on a good day. Could Larive get there before
Hervil's killers. And he says, she's going to be there
at three o'clock in the morning. And I had to
get up in my house down here, drive Dale Passo
and be in that bus stop at three o'clock. And
the law was on its way to that El Paso
bus stop too, So we're the ones that met her
(13:29):
in al Passo, and it was clear ful of FBI
and CIA and whatever you get it. So they all
converged just in time, and we've interceded, picked her up,
had guys there from Salt Lake that night at three
o'clock in the morning. They flew in next morning. She says, well,
I'll go if Luria will go with me. So there
(13:50):
I was stuck for three weeks, and I was pretty
upset because I had little kids and I needed to
be home. But I went Larive put her life in
Mexico on hold and traveled up to Utah because for her,
stopping herbal had become a single minded mission to stop
the killing. We did go after him with a law
(14:13):
and we worked with Mormon FBI, c I, a UM
and with everybody. Oh, I just wanted to know me
did it day and night, damn night. When the reef
talks about Mormon law enforcement agencies, she's referring to Dick
(14:36):
Forbes and other officials. Not only were they from Mormon backgrounds,
but they had taken to heart the advice of journalist
Del van Ada. Remember it was Dale back in episode
four who had told police to learn and respect the
intricacies of Mormon doctrine, and that had allowed police to
build trust a little by little, trust at all those
(14:57):
guys because I watched him, and I watched him in
law enforcement rely on you guys for information for everything,
because they had all the records on the barrens, you know,
but they didn't know the difference of those who were
against Cervill and those who were for it. Tips and
then you would let them know we didn't hear tips.
(15:18):
We helped him everything they needed, and we knew all
the families. This was a big thing for Larive agreeing
to work with cops. Think about it from her position
as one of those refugees in Mexico leaving the US
as a team because the cops were rounding up and
arresting Polygamus. She'd been told never to trust the U
(15:40):
S authorities. If it was me, even the risk of
becoming a target of Herville would have made me think twice.
I wasn't terrified because I believed more in getting him
behind bars that he can't keep killing. And everybody been
(16:01):
worried about me and for the cops, Larive's intervention was
crucial because getting Delphina safely in custody was one thing,
but now they needed her to talk to them too,
and Larive was able to help them do that. Why
was Delphina such a key witness. She's his first wife
(16:21):
and all his kids are hers, and you had to
be careful even with her. You couldn't just push and shove.
But she ended up telling everything. What Larive means by
everything here is well the killing of Joel, the killing
of Ruling all Read, the killing of Bob Simons, and
invest and on and on the killing of Rebecca, her daughter.
(16:45):
She was the first cult member to give them this
inside information that said Delfina hadn't actually witnessed any of
these murderers firsthand. She just heard about them through the
family grapevine. For prosecutors to get convictions, the cops were
going to need more. You see, nobody has all the information.
(17:09):
I don't know what you know about law work, but
everybody has a little piece and that little piece and
that little piece and that little piece. And this is
where Delphina's son came in, a kid named Isaac. Isaac,
just fourteen years old in nineteen seventy seven, had actually
been at the April twenty meeting that year the emergency
(17:32):
military meeting. The meeting when Herville ordered the killing of
Roulin Alread and Rlin le Baron and told the colt
how he wanted it done. Isaac was a witness. Delphina
told this to the cops, and she was also able
to tell them where Isaac was currently living. On July
(17:54):
n seventy seven, the police swooped in for Isaac, descending
on an unremarkable looking single story suburban home in Dallas.
Here the cult had a safe house. Now in police custody,
At first, Isaac was terrified refused to say anything to
the cops, but over time they gained his trust too,
(18:18):
and two weeks later in August, he started to talk.
It was really a key break in the case, and
basically at that point and we were on our way.
This is David Yoakum, the lead Utah prosecutor. He'd been
trying to bring Ruling Alread's killers to justice from the
(18:41):
very beginning. I said, I attended the scene at the
day of the killing. I had actually been out there
where they were wheeling run Alread out of his office
on a gurney, and my good friend and detective on
the case and informed me they had no idea at
the time who was responsible or why I was killed.
When he first started on the case, Yoakum thought he'd
(19:03):
found his key break in an evidence hall near the
crime scene, two men were looking through a large dumpster
outside of their store and found a grocery sack full
of things that looked strange to them. It had included
a gun box which had a serial number attached to it,
and since the murder had just occurred down the street,
(19:24):
they turned over these things to the Murray Place department.
Some of this evidence had sent the investigators in the
All Red murder on a bit of a wild goose chase.
They traced the serial number on the box through the
FBI and found out the box had been purchased in Denver, Colorado.
It had been purchased by a cult member who had
(19:44):
no further involvement in the killing, and before the cops
had insider information from the colt, they thought the gun
box link meant they had their shooter. Then they found
out she had an airtight alibi, so they were right
back to squa are one and David Yoakum was starting
to fill the heat because what he was learning about
(20:07):
herville and his cult. From the investigation was telling him
just how serious stopping this all was because of the
power that he held over a group of individuals and
the authority he claimed, and that he could actually command
people on his name to murder other people. I felt
(20:27):
that it was so significant, and saying this was significant
is saying something for Yoakum, who had seen some heavy
ship in his career. In fact, just a few years
before this case, he had been the first to successfully
prosecute serial killer Ted Bundy. You know, Ted Bundy was
responsible for a lot of murders, but it wasn't like
(20:50):
he had a whole group of people that he commanded
to kill. He was his sole killer, which is bad enough,
But here Herville had the control over people that he
could order them to kill members of his own group.
He actually had his own daughter murdered, which is pretty
damn scary. But a very evil person that was worse
(21:12):
than I think a serial killer. So yeah, from August
seventy seven onwards, when Isaac started giving cops and prosecutors
witnessed demons from the secret meetings of the cult where
killings were being ordered. Significant probably doesn't cover it. It
was a huge break in the case. He started giving information.
(21:35):
We call it the twentieth Conservation meeting or Herville conducted
a medium as group and talked about selecting two women
to come to Utah to kill a false prophet. This
is an emergency military meeting April where the all Red
and Virlin murder plans were announced. This young man had
(21:56):
a very good memory of that and started giving us
name teams of individuals that were present and who's who.
This included a name for the killer of Dr Roulin Alrett.
Rina Channath Yoakum felt they were ready to make arrests.
That's coming up after the break. By the summer of
(22:35):
fractures and fissures had begun to appear in Evil's once
ultra tight knit church of the Lamb of God. Paranoia
and fear or in some cases, ego had set in.
Lloyd and Don Sullivan, for example, had seen their roles
greatly diminished. Lloyd had once held a roll near the
top of Hervil's mafia like clan. Hearing Rena Channath's testimony
(22:59):
years later revealed how he was the instigator for that
raid on Los Molinos, carried out the hit on Robert Simons,
and had been an advocate for Rebecca's murder too, Yet
a series of botched hits meant he had now lost favor.
The disillusionment went both ways. After the ruling ordered killing
(23:23):
in May seven, Herville fled south of the border. He
had left Lloyd in the US to clean up the mess.
This had effectively left Lloyd in charge of the Colts
American operations. Lloyd started to spend more and more time
with Rena, one of Evil's handpicked assassin's and at one
(23:43):
time one of his favorite wives. We were getting familiar
with each other. Tell me how wonderful it was playing
on my motion, and he was telling me how wrong
it was things had to turn out with durable, how
much he how desirable I was, and how that it
(24:04):
was that I was so unhappy with the woman it
couldn't be right. This is Rena in that interview for
her book with the writer Dean Shapiro years later. Here
she's recalling how after Rulin Alred's murder, Lloyd Sullivan had
suddenly started having his own revelations from God. Lloyd's decided
he was a prophet that needed to write, and so
(24:26):
he was writing, and I was typing for him. Just
like for Herville. Rena was once again typing out the
revelations of a self proclaimed prophet. But that wasn't the
only role Lloyd had in mind for her. We were
driving along in the truck and he had this revelation.
But he said, oh my goodness, I just saw you
and you were wearing this long, beautiful white dress. And
(24:50):
he goes, of course, I'm waiting dress. That means you're
supposed to marry me. This was all very confusing for Rena.
Maybe God was in fact revealing to her that she
should marry Lloyd, even though God had previously told her
she should marry Herville. So she set off to Mexico,
(25:13):
where Rvill was now hiding out, to tell Hervill she
was through with him. Hervill's answer, absolutely not. He told
me that Lloyd was worthless to me, and I was
just cried on tears. Rena had hoped to break the
news to Irville and be back in the US within
(25:34):
a week, but now that she had revealed her true intentions,
there was no way Irvill was letting her out of
his sight. She was his prisoner, now locked away typing
out more insane pamphlets, more unhinged and violent revelations. Their
(25:55):
life ever since the Los Milino's raid had been nomadic
to stay head of enemies real and imagined chasing them.
And it continued traveling, Hi du running, driving, you know,
stuck down there, next call in Healing Lenny, same old ship.
(26:21):
But for Lloyd Sullivan back in the US, Rena's absence
had done nothing to halt his split from Hervil. He'd
already tried to steal Irvil's wife. He'd already called himself
the real prophet. Now it was time to go all
the way. In August of ninety seven, he penned an
(26:44):
open letter to the Church of the Lamb of God.
Why wasn't Herville over here in the US fighting the
good fight? He asked? Why was he hiding out in Mexico.
Then he dropped a bomb. He called Merville a son
of perdition, that sinner who could only be atoned by death.
(27:07):
This was a call to war, and there were only
two ways it could go. Either Ervill would take out Lloyd,
or Lloyd would have to find a way of getting
to Irville. In the meantime, prosecutors against Irville had continued
to build their case and on September nineteen seventy seven,
(27:27):
Yoakum's team filed charges for murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy
to commit murder against all of Rville's inner circle. Roughly
two weeks later, homes and businesses controlled by the cult
were raided by one of the largest joint law enforcement
operations in the history of the American West, a massive
(27:49):
sting operation over one police officers from Utah, Texas, Colorado,
and Oklahoma. They were assisted by agents from the FBI
and the Secret Service. The raid wasn't a total success.
Many of the colts, including Herville and Rena, remained at large,
(28:10):
but they did manage to catch at least one big fish.
This is an interviews conducted in the County Attorney's office
in Salt Lake City present County Attorney Investigator Dick Forbes.
Interview will be conducted by National CITYPD. The cops had
(28:31):
caught Lloyd Sullivan. I'd like to start out the interview
by getting just a little bit of background. I understand
that you're affiliated with are were affiliated with the Church
of the Lamb of God? Is that correct? I have
been affiliated with what was called the Church of the Lama.
What was your position in the church at that time,
(28:53):
you're At that time, I was studying with herbal two
to the Commandments of the Lord. He teaches very very well,
better than any man I've ever heard, and I was
learning under him under his tutorship. At this point, Lloyd
was already looking for ways to eliminate hervil as arrival,
(29:17):
and now he realized the police could help him do it.
So Lloyd started talking to the cops. He gave them
the inside line on many of the cults murders, from
the killing of Joel, the raid on Los Molinos, and
other killings like the murder of Rvil's daughter Rebecca. Having
a knowledge and being intimate with people in that group
(29:41):
where most of them prone to follow out commandments without question, yes,
of that magnitude. Yes, let's say that the Lord you
do this no hesitation. Have you heard her will give
other people similar commandments? Yes, He's given him to me.
And did you have that same feeling about it that
(30:01):
it was in fact God's commandment? I did. What would
happen if you failed to carry out that type of commandment?
Dead or who whoever was commanded and refused? Was there
any question about that in your mind? That if you
refused to carry out a commandment that you would be killed.
(30:22):
Never with Lloyd Sullivan giving them information, Forbes and Yoakum
now had a network of informants. Together with people in
colonial LeBaron like Larife Stubbs, their intelligence on the Church
of the Lamb of God was growing, how they operated,
how they thought, who was currently in favor, but also
(30:47):
crucially the location of the remaining fugitive cult members who
had so far eluded arrest. In the early morning hours
of October thirty one, in a rural part of Mexico,
(31:07):
not far from Mexico City, Federals closed in on an
apartment complex. Inside We're Rina chinaf hervil A Baron, some
of Hervill's other wives, Dan Jordan's, his right hand man,
and other remaining members of L's inner circle, all hiding
out together. Rena had been typing yet another pamphlet till
(31:32):
late into the night and had fallen asleep on a
blanket on the floor of one of the bedrooms. At
one in the morning, without warning, Federals crashed through the door. Yeah,
they had automatic Shane Gainst pointed at us, and there
must have been five or six of them and I
(31:52):
can't remember if they weren't wearing army fatigues or anything
when we're wearing street clos Then they came roaring into
the bedroom. This is Rena in that interview with writer
Dean Shapiro. At this point in the fall of seventy eight,
Rena had already had one child with Herville. Rena was
now three months pregnant with their second child. I said, well,
(32:14):
can I put some clothes on or something here? And
the guy said, well, okay, and let us go in
the bathroom. We have to stand with the door open,
And so I got some clothes on and they took
me out and handcuffed me, hands behind my back, and
they put me in this van outside and left me
there all night. Sitting in the van, her hands cuffed
(32:35):
and her feet tied, Rena looked for Irville, expecting to
see him being led away in handcuffs too, but instead,
as she looked out into the darkness, she saw the
Federali's leading out Dan Jordan's. They brought Dan Jordan out
and put him in the van. They looked at him
(32:56):
and it was picture and for some reason they decided
that he wasserble middle of Kitty a lot. The cops
had in fact questioned Herble that night, but he had
played innocent, said he was just some minor follower of
the Church of the Lamb of God, and the Federals
didn't recognize him. It was when they'd found Dan Jordan's
(33:19):
that they thought they had their main man. So they
thought they were arresting hercles, so they thought they had
and Dan and Garvey with him. Cops blindfolded both Rena
and Dan and took them to a prison in the
Mexican capital. And when we got to Mexico City, I
laughed at the sergeant like face and they were trying
to interview You had it right and new dressed, and
(33:41):
you didn't even know what's new. Comes goes to prue.
I felt, it just goes through that we're right and
theyre wrong, because God, so you should escape. After Mexico City,
the cops eventually handed Rena over to American law enforcement.
They put us in the back of a car and
they poled us to the ordered like two days, all
(34:02):
day and all night, and we drove and over the
gop you're fighting trap. They took us to the boarder
in the rito. I tried to picture Arena there standing
at the border, a river running free in front of her,
about to cross from one life of captivity to another,
(34:27):
free of herville, something she had dreamed of since he
started to pursue her when she was just twelve years old.
She had at times prayed God would strike her by
lightning to end this nightmare, and now, miraculously, as she
walked across the bridge leading from Mexico to Laredo, Texas,
(34:49):
God had answered her prayers. Rena was free from the
lambs of God, but headed to jail. The FBI today
rested a key suspect in the nineteen seventy seven religious
assassination of Polygamust patriarch ruling Alread. Agents arrested twenty year
old Na Nath at the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas.
(35:11):
Janath has charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to
murder in the Alred case. Authorities have described the killing
as a religious assassination ordered by the fanatic irvil LeBaron,
the leader of a rival Polygamust cult. Ten people have
been charged in the case. Most of the gang had
now been caught, Detectives were now interrogating them, building a
(35:32):
case for trial. LeBaron himself and one of his sons
remain at large. The FBI said Shannav would appear at
a federal removal hearing in Texas Monday and then be
returned to Utah or prosecution. And surely it was just
a matter of time before they caught Hervil himself, and
when they did, the killing would stop. That was the
(35:53):
hope anyway more. After the break m the trial of
Rina China and other accomplished members of the Church of
the Lamb of God began in a Salt Lake City
(36:15):
corep room on Tuesday, March six. N David Yoakum, the
man tasked with prosecuting the colt, he feared the trial
was going to play out as an internal face off
between cult members. There was a battle are between the
group and blaming one another. You know which group of
(36:36):
people were responsible here Roulin Alred's daughter Dorothy took her
place in the courtroom. There was a great deal of
angry energy emanating from Herville's people who attended the trial.
There were just a lot of angry energy. Rena and
the others had refused any kind of plea deal. As
(36:58):
she told the writer of her memoir of years later
at this point she was all in on a not
guilty verdict. I think when they when it was mentioned
to me, I said, no, you wanted now, we did
this in God's name and we got darn or get
us out of this. If you've ever sat in a
(37:21):
courtroom during a trial, it can be surprising how mundane
the proceedings are. Even murder trials are sometimes boring once
the legal arguments are underway. This is why little things
can make a big difference. Little things that cut through
to make an impression on jurors, sometimes as much as facts,
(37:42):
things that give them positive feelings about those called to speak.
And the problem for prosecutor David Yoakum was that not
many of his witnesses in the trial were likely to
cut through in a particularly positive way. They weren't exactly
sympathy addic, especially Don Sullivan. People were on trial. We're
(38:05):
pointing their fingers at Don Sullivan, and then you know
they were the supposed ringladers the whole thing, and that
Rena had nothing to do with it. Don Sullivan, who
had come across with his dad Lloyd, to cooperate with
the cops. He had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy and
agreed to testify in exchange for immunity from further prosecution.
(38:28):
So this was a self confessed conspirator to murder two jurors.
He probably seemed like a psychopath. On top of that,
he'd been indoctrinated to live for years. So again not
exactly a credible witness. And Rena's defense team we're saying
Don was the one responsible. This was the internal face
(38:50):
off between cult members. Yoakum was concerned about, and that
kind of he said. She said reasonable doubt wasn't the
only issue. The prosecution based all the publicity surrounding hervill
Le baron, the local TV news coverage, the articles in
newspapers and magazines, well, it had created a picture of
(39:11):
the cult that was terrifying. In January nine nine, for example,
the National Enquirer had run a front page with Hervill's
mugshot blaming him and his cult for the assassination of JFK.
He had that kind of notoriety now, and that freak
(39:31):
jurors out. There was a failing that during the case
that some of the jurors were actually concerned for their
health and welfare because they were afraid that if they
bought back a guilty verdict that Hervil group and Nervil's
being out free, running around and still having a following,
that they may be harmed if they found any member
(39:53):
of the group guilty. The Mormon manson who could control
killers with his mind, he seemed capable of anything, which
is why to this day Yoakum is both grateful and
inspired at the courage of people like Hervil's son Isaac
agreeing to take the witness stand, and Yoakum had impartial
(40:18):
witnesses too, like the woman who had sold Rena a
disguise shortly before the killing of Roulin Alread. She remembered
selling it to Rena, remembered her, well, that was kind
of an ominous feeling to have somebody come up there
and say you've been in this store, and that she'd
never forget that face, and she remembered how happy and
(40:42):
I wasn't it It's just kind of shone or something
like that is beautiful. But other witnesses were less helpful
to the prosecution, like one who was at the crime
scene but couldn't pick Rena out of a photo lineup.
They had that composite picture that that guy in the
waiting room was hypnotized, and he gave it in posit
(41:05):
and it looked more like dog full of him than
my attorney had fun with that. This is the thing,
this is who you said. It was under hypnosis and
doesn't look anything like my client, if anything, looks like
a man, and that's what they were stressing that it
could have been a man dressed up and most likely
(41:25):
could have been the States witness. Perhaps witnesses like this
one explain why David Yocum felt like he needed to
close his argument with some kind of grand flourish, or
perhaps that was always going to be his style. My
closing arguments always were quite strong. I was accused many
(41:46):
many times unethical conduct, and in cases I'd go right
up to the wall, I'd say, and but not stepping
over the line, and that I just pushed my cases
to the brink either way. David Yoakum strode towards the
judge and slammed a copy of the Bible onto the
table in front of him. Both jury members and even
(42:09):
the defendant were a little taken aback. I remember Yokum
picking up that Bible and slamming back down on the
judges bench on the table in front of the judges bench,
where yeah, it's and I thought that was kind of shocked.
And I don't imagine everybody else. I can only imagine
what everybody else felt where he did that, and he's
(42:30):
very coffee David Yoakum wasn't worried about shocking people. That
was the point, so the jury would wake up to
the threat posed by Hervil's colt bring them to justice.
And he felt the cops and prosecutors had made their case.
Now it was up to the jury to find Rina
(42:52):
Chanof and her accomplices guilty of killing. Ruling alread. Even
though we didn't have a saw eyewitness testimony that she
was on the pole the trigger, I was pretty confident
that we had sufficient evidence to convict Rena. The pretty
felt that we had a good case. Just four hours later,
(43:15):
the jury of six women and two men were filing
back into the core room with a verdict, and I said,
the verdict was in. When I went back to the courtroom,
my attorney were there and he was concerned because normally
when the jury reached that quickly it's Rena sat alongside
(43:35):
her lawyer, a guy named John McConnell, and I was
leaving John's hats a herd. I could hardly I imagine
blood was stop. That was not so chuit, waiting too
well for that. And uh, we all sat there and
saying they whoever it is, added to the data and
(43:57):
takes to the judge. And judge raised the verdict, and
then he looked up and he said, now I'll have
no outbursts from the crowd. Not tolerated any outburst or
something like that. And then when they began reading the verdicts,
gradually I let off on his hand, let off, squeezing
(44:19):
on his hands. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not
guilty on whatever, twenty three accounts. Just eighteen days after
the trial had begun, not only was Rena cleared of
all charges, but all remaining lambs of God being held
for the murder of Rule and all read were cleared
(44:40):
of charges in relation to his murder too. Rena was free. Well,
we hugged all the way around, and I don't know
what the crowd reaction went. I don't I was too involved.
Rena sent back to Sell to gather up her personal
(45:01):
belongings and say goodbye to the friend she's made. She's
then processed out to meet family members who are waiting outside.
I remember walking out from this underground tunnel and there
were cameras there. Chriss was waiting when I couldn't believe. Actually,
I was just in the days. I think I was
in a day most of the time. Like I just remember,
(45:21):
I was in the car and I was looking up
at the mountains, looking around at the lights, and here's
the world. I've been walked up this along and there's
a beautiful mountains. They're in folt Lang snow on on
the top of them. It was it was fresh air.
Rena is free to put her whole past behind her,
(45:42):
or to go and write a book about it and
tour the US cable news networks for the next decade.
Either way, when it came to the colt, she was out,
leaving behind her the stunned cops and prosecutors like Yoakum.
I didn't cry or anything, but I was really disappointed
(46:04):
all of the prosecution team. Where we're disappointed in the verdict.
What would it take to get a conviction against hervil
Le Baron? Was God really on his side protecting him? Well, No,
I knew one thing that would make me pill less
artist to apprehend and capture and try rble, which, of
(46:25):
course we got that chance. That's coming up in the
next episode of deliver Us from Hervill. Deliver Us from
Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written and
(46:47):
reported by me Leona Hamad and David Waters. Production from
Leona Hamid and David Waters. Sean Glenn and maxwe'brien are
executive producers. Lena and Megan Oyinka are researchers. Marianna Gongora
is our field producer, fact checking by Donya Suleman and
(47:08):
Sona Avakian. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and
Charlotte Wolfe. Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production.
Michae Lee Raw is our managing editor. Gavin Haynes is
our head of development. Willard Foxton is our creative director
of development. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Chris O'Shaughnessy,
(47:31):
Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music
is composed by Julian Lynch. Special thanks to Scott Anderson,
Scott Carrier, delvan Ada, Pippa Smith, Saskia Edwards, Matt O'Mara,
Katrina Norvelle and beth An Makaluso, or In Rosenbaum, Shelby
Shankman and all the team at UTA. For more from Novel,
(47:57):
visit novel dot Audio eight
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